In the little volume in which Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells brings a great deal of fresh and honest thinking to various social topics, there are two essays that I find peculiarly interesting. I do not remember seeing elsewhere the "Transitional Woman" dealt with as a fact so intimately and frankly; and the phenomenon of "Caste in American Society" is viewed from a point not hitherto seized. The word caste always suggests to the readily heated imagination of the sympathizer with toil and poverty their oppression by a superior class through invidious social distinctions, if nothing worse. This is the recognized form of caste, and it is perhaps the most odious, but it is not, certainly, the most ridiculous. There is another phase of the same iniquity, which Mrs. Wells's practical relation to questions of social reform has enabled her to study with singular advantages. In every age and in every country the manners, customs, and prejudices of the more enlightened have descended to the less enlightened, like cast-off clothes; and they sit on their possessors at second hand with the edifying grace of old coats and rumpled gowns. In this way it happens that at a moment when cultivated people who think seriously of the matter think with shame and misgiving of the social distinctions which are not based on character and achievement, the lines have never been more sharply drawn between the different sorts and grades of labor. As Mrs. Wells has learned:

"The lower we descend in what is called social life, the more perceptible become its demarkations.

A marriage between a laundry maid and a washerwoman's son is contrary to all the rules of propriety, and ends in family feuds. The regular visitant at hotel cupboards who receives pie is further removed from the tattered mendicant at back doors than a member of the diplomatic corps from a native of Washington.

..

us, and goes up and up to kings and emperors. A woman with many servants despises her with one; and she with one despises the woman who does her own work; and she who does her own work looks down upon her who goes out to work; and the one who goes out to do special house-work scorns the scrub-woman, who is the end of womankind.' In a conversation with several of them, it was asked: What is the real grievance of the working-women?' And the general answer was that it was due to the spirit of caste, which prevented combination and coöрeration, the two agents that could lighten the burdens of ill-paid labor; yet they had sufficient intelligence to see that social union among themselves must first be effected. The stern self-restraint, the power of self-sacrifice, the delicacy of taste, refinement of feeling, appreciation of knowledge, and acts of touchingkindness to one another that are found among hundreds of them, do not negative the statement that the social line, based on kinds of labor, is closely drawn among them.

"Here is a classification given by one who understands, works, and aids others in various ways: 'Employments of working-people are either subjective or objective; one cannot consort with another. Under the first are included (1) the stenographer, (2) the newspaper hack, (3) the type-writer, (4) those engaged in life-insurance business and in any sort of nursing; the second division embraces (1) mercantile women, (2) saleswomen, (3) tradeswomen, and (4) servants, who are Pariahs, so to speak, in the eyes of all other working-women.'"

These are curious and novel aspects of our democratic civilization; but I suspect that further observation would develop more facts of the same kind. I remember hearing a gentleman who had some official relation to the construction of a large public building, where the workmen were lunched on the premises, say that three different tables were necessary to preserve the different sorts of artisans and laborers from contact at their meals. It is all very droll when it gets down to this, and exclusiveness among carpenters and bricklayers is no more impressive than it is among lawyers and doctors, or their ladies. Perhaps it is even less so, being in the nature, as I said, of a cast-off garment with these humbler swells. The fact shows, however, that we are still indefinitely remote, in every grade of life, from the democratic ideal, which is also the Christian ideal. Very likely the comparative method of observation would discover far greater liberality and generosity in the higher society - even in the thin air of the heights where Fashion sits - than in the world of hunger and hard work, in which we have hitherto taken it for granted that fraternity and equality reigned. We ought, - I am talking as if I were myself a social magnate, whereas I have my pocket full of wholesome snubs of assorted sizes,-in the interest of these poor fellows and silly women who think they elevate themselves by trampling upon those of a lowlier trade, to get rid of what exclusiveness is left us, and let our light down among them. Then, in another generation, we should have a bricklayer eating at the same table with a hod-carrier, and feeling no sort of contamination. But in the mean time let us not smile at the tinsel of his tawdry distinctions; ours are not more genuine or valuable.

This whole essay of Mrs. Wells's is full of fresh suggestion, and it is pervaded by the same just and humane spirit which characterizes the book. What she chiefly does is to accumulate the facts for you, and then tacitly invite you to do your own thinking about them. Other essays in the volume are more didactic, the one on "Personal Influence" being perhaps the most direct appeal to the sense of brotherly and sisterly responsibility which they all in some measure involve. The paper on the "Transitional Woman," which I began by mentioning, is a study of the characteristics of contemporary life, which portrays the tumult in the feminine mind with the accuracy of feminine touch. One says "mind," in the Hebrew fashion-discovered by Mr. Matthew Arnold - of throwing language out at an object; but it is not exactly "mind" always. Much of this undirected or misdirected yearning and striving on the part of modern womankind is the reverse of mind, as Mrs. Wells distinctly recognizes, with no intent to be satirical of her sex. Money and laborsaving inventions have deprived that respectable sex of the old-fashioned necessity of domestic work; and the fact is that it does not yet know what to do with its leisure. The old-fashioned American wife and mother is extinct, and something better has not been born. In the mean time, we have something very pretty, very brilliant, very cultivated, very ambitious, very amusing; packages of electrical nerves, hysterical inspirations, infinite good intentions, enlightened views, high aims, noble missions, and perpetual unrest and distraction. They are probably quite good enough for the men; but they are not really any better, not more refined or good at heart; and we poor fellows who were brought up with the expectation of having an example set us, do not quite know what to do. The woman must make haste to cease being transitional, if the world is to go forward. Mrs. Wells gives us some vague hope that the woman will do so by and by, and that then the world will have something much better in her way than it has yet had. I think she might make a beginning in the right direction by making a study of Mrs. Wells's study of her. I am sure that if there were a similar study of the Transitional Man submitted to men, we should not be slow in profiting by it. The difficulty with us now is that if we acknowledge the women to be good enough for us, candor compels us to confess that we are also quite good enough for the women; and this is bad for our native modesty, and tends to spiritual pride.

Mrs. Wells's essay recognizes the absurd aspects of the case with sufficiently humorous perception, but it is a more serious affair with her than my report of it might suggest. She has a conscience about it, as she has about every subject she touches, and what she says should have the greater interest because of her position as an anti-suffragist advocate of the cause of woman. She does not flatter her sex, nor sentimentalize it, as women are so apt to do, and she has for this reason almost a unique claim upon the attention of ours when she writes of men's wives, sisters, and daughters. For once, here is a woman's-rights woman who refuses to believe that there is an antagonism in men to their amelioration, and who directly and indirectly advises women to begin their elevation them

selves.

D.

The Blue and the Gray.

THE last chapter of "Dr. Sevier" and the recent "Open Letters" from the pen of George W. Cable, and "Old Questions and New," by "A Southern Democrat," in the January CENTURY, voice a sentiment toward the North - the war and its issues - which I firmly believe exists to-day among the progressive and thinking classes of the South, and the testimony of these gentlemen comes most gratifyingly to every true Northern heart.

True, there are those at the South as bitter to-day as twenty years ago. It is likewise true there are in the North a few so blinded by prejudice that they cannot or will not believe in a new South. Feeling that a better knowledge of this sentiment now existing in the South is in every way desirable, I cannot refrain from adding a little testimony within my own knowledge.

In September, 1883, Crocker's Iowa Brigade, comprising the Eleventh, Thirteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Iowa, held a reunion in this city, at which was present General D. C. Govan, now of Marianna, Ark., a brave division commander of the Western Confederate forces. He brought with him a flag captured by his command from the Sixteenth Iowa at Atlanta, July 22, 1864, which at his own instance he presented to Colonel A. H. Saunders, in the following words:

"Veterans of Crocker's Iowa brigade: I am unable to find words to express the feelings of pleasure and satisfaction that I feel in standing before you veterans to-night. I feel it a compliment, not only to myself but to every ex-Confederate soldier who served in the late war, that I am permitted to participate in this reunion. They will feel grateful for this honor, and will respond and return it whenever opportunity is offered. I have testified heretofore to the valor of your Iowa soldiers in their heroic resistance at Atlanta; and if I had said nothing, the long list of the killed and wounded of my command would bear mute but irresistible testimony of your courage and valor on that occasion. In behalf of our ex-soldiers I beg leave to return to you the flag won from you on that memorable occasion. I trust you will bear it as honorably as you did on that former occasion; and I assure you, that should it ever again be assailed, the men who opposed you that day will stand by you in the future and vie with you in its defense. I hope that flag may float as long as the everlasting hills endure over a free, prosperous, happy, and united people, as long as the waters flow to the great ocean."

The general spoke in an earnest manner, with a voice full of emotion, and no one present for a moment doubted his sincerity or the truth of his statements. Surely such spirit must soon remove bitterness - such testimony soon convince skeptics.

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA, January, 1885.

C. N. Jenkins.

The Bombardment of Alexandria.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CENTURY:

SIR: As Stone Pasha made use of his private griefs to introduce in the June CENTURY a condemnation of British action in Egypt, it seemed not out of place in noticing his letter to show that the trials to which his family were subjected were seen and accepted by him

VOL. XXIX.-81.

in advance. He alone is responsible for the publication of his motives, and he ought neither to regard nor characterize their discussion as a personal attack, a thing which, it is hardly necessary to explain, was

never meant.

Since people did come from Cairo on the day preceding the bombardment and found shelter on board the ships in the roadstead, I may be pardoned for adhering to my original statement as to the accessibility of the refuge.

Regarding the sending away of all British subjects prior to hostilities, the original expression was Stone Pasha's; only the inference was mine. That inference was the abstract proposition that "other governments are less solicitous than the British for the welfare of their citizens," which, as an abstract proposition, Commander Batcheller, in the October Century, seems inclined to admit and no one can deny.

Commander Batcheller questions my terming the affair of June II a massacre. This subject is treated rather fully in a pithy and interesting brochure * by our consular agent in Alexandria from June 15 to August 26, 1882, a man whose personal and official acquaintance with Egyptian affairs makes him an authority. He is, moreover, free from the grave charge of a leaning toward the British.

I venture to quote a few pertinent lines from this little work, to the eleventh chapter of which, entitled "The Massacre," I take the liberty of referring Com* mander Batcheller and such of your readers as may think the occurrence in question a mere riot.

Page 130: "It has been charged that the bombardment of the 11th of July was a crime. This was not the feeling of the foreign population in Egypt. The crime was committed in the refusal to land troops on the 11th day of June, and the bombardment one month after was a tardy recognition of this fact."

Page 131: "Arabi. had succeeded admirably in proving that he was the power in the country; he had ordered a massacre to prove this, and now he was appealed to to keep order," etc., etc. Yours truly,

C. F. GOODRICH, Lieut.-Commander U. S. N.

Making Light of It.

In the lulls between campaigns, the honest newspaper editor everywhere devotes himself to crusading

* The Three Prophets - Chinese Gordon, El Mahdi, Arabi Pasha. By Colonel Chaillé Long, ex-Chief-of-Staff to Gordon in Africa, ex-United States Consular Agent in Alexandria, etc., etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

zealously against current social evils, such as, in par ticular, the alarming increase of divorce and defalcation. At the same time, the editor does much to offset his own labors by ill-placed levity. He writes a thoughtful leader upon the sinfulness of speculating with other people's money, laying the blame rightly on the public which applauds success without regard to the means by which it is attained, rather than upon the few who are detected in wrong-doing and come to grief. But in the next column is a flippant paragraph of the sort the American public is supposed to crave, perhaps upon the attractions of Canada as a winter resort, or the swell society to be found there in exile. Garnished with quotation-marks and other typographical tricks that catch the eye, the paragraph attracts far more readers than the editorial, and goes to strengthen the unavowed popular notion that defalcation is a huge practical joke on the creditors an impression enforced by facetious headings as well as by funny paragraphs whenever a new exposure is made.

Again, the editor diligently calls upon all good people to uphold the sanctity of the marriage-tie and the sacredness of that divine institution, the family, which is, he says, the basis of society, and to protect and defend the same from all undermining influences. But he allots many a column to grotesque caricatures, or to that utter abomination, the mother-in-law joke, which after years of active service is not permitted the honorable discharge it has earned, while every elopement or divorce is rendered as interesting and spicy as possible by the reporter's art. How can he expect the public to look upon marriage as a solemn thing, or defalcation as a serious crime, or either as anything but a joke, when he freely throws into the opposing scale that unknown quantity - the influence of the funny paragraph? The editor's theory that he must make fun of everything to render his efforts readable is, to be sure, borne out by the popular demand for that species of fun. But there is also a popular demand for the police publications and a good many other things which no reputable editor would touch. To forego all jocoseness in treating of these social evils would be the death of a great number of poor jokes, and would involve a fresh tax on the eternal vigilance of the editor; but it would cut off one way in which loose notions of serious things gain currency, and there would still remain enough bright, pure fun in the prints to save us from becoming an austere and taciturn people.

Uncle Esek's Wisdom.

ECCENTRICITY, at best, is but a fungus, just as apt to grow out of the soil of a philosopher as of a fool.

THE cheapest thing in life is common sense, but a few people seem to have a corner in it, and are holding

for a rise.

WHEN a man preaches morality from the house. tops, he is above his business.

Uncle Esck.

A Book of Nature.

THE Winter's a book of poems,
Sorrowful fantasies,

All pictured with empty bird-nests
Held in the lonely trees.

The turquoise skies are the covers,
Begilt with sunbeams long,
The drifts of snow are the pages,
And the moaning winds the Song.

R. K. Munkittrick.

"Tulips Blooming in the Snow."

TULIPS blooming in the snow,
Snow-wreaths melting in the sun,
Sunbeams dancing to and fro,
Glowing clouds when day is done,-
These are like you, every one,
You splendid, vivid, sanguine one,-
Red-lipped, red-cheeked, dark-haired, dark-eyed,
And everything that's good beside.

R. R.