WILLISTOWN FRIENDS CENTENARY.

THE one-hundredth anniversary of the erection of Willistown Friends' meeting-house, (Chester county, Pa.), will be celebrated by an all-day pic-nic and appropriate exercises, on Seventh-day of next week, Ninth month 10.

The program prepared for the occasion will be as follows: Opening Address, Lewis V. Smedley Acquisition of the Land, William Taylor.

"As the Old Folks Knew It," Aida T. Evans.
Address, George L. Maris, Principal George School.
"Our First-day School," Mordecai T. Bartram.

Class Exercises, conducted by Elizabeth B. Smedley.
History of the Meeting, Arthur C. Smedley.

Poem "A Haunt of Ancient Peace," Professor John Russell Hayes, Swarthmore College.

Address, "Christian Liberty," Dr. Joseph S. Walton. Opportunity will be given during the exercises for those acquainted with the meeting and its history to speak. An invitation to be present is extended to all.

Persons coming from Philadelphia will come by trolley to Newtown Square. Cars for that point leave 63rd and Market streets, every twenty minutes. Cars leaving not later than 8.45 a. m. will be met.

Those coming on the Baltimore Central Railroad will be met at Cheyney Station on the train arriving there at 8. 12 a. m. Those wishing to be met at these points will please notify L. V. Smedley, Willistown Inn, Pa.

The exercises will begin at 10.30 a. m. be provided.

For Friends' Intelligencer. SWARTHMORE.

Light lunch will

And in the woods or garden,

;

She never picked "a flower
But "anemones, hepaticas,
Or "crocus," by the hour.
Both little girls loved birds and flowers,
But one love was the best;

I need not point the moral;
I'm sure you see the rest.

For would it not be very queer,
If when, perhaps, you came,

Your parents had not thought worth while
To give you any name?

I think you would be quite upset,
And feel your brain a-whirl,

If you were not "Matilda Ann,'
But just a little girl."

-A. W. Rollins, in Independent.

WORK AND NEEDS OF BLUE RIDGE
MISSION.

Editors FRIENDS' INTELLIGENCER :

THE influences of the Mission are widening month by month, yet there is stern need of enlarged capabilities, that more and more of these poor people, hidden away in forest solitudes, living often in unspeakable degradation, with no new hope for to-morrow coming to break the weary monotony of to-day, may be rescued.

The work accomplished by J. Addison and Emma Griffiths in the past three years, by the help of "the good Shepherd," cannot be measured in this world. By persistent friendliness and Christian deportment they have, with remarkably few exceptions, won the love and confidence of the mountaineers.

But progress in many directions is continually embarrassed by the poverty of the Mission, especially in relation to the advancement of the school. Neither the building which it occupies, nor the Mission house, is "filled in" underneath. Winter winds whistle through the crevices of the floors, chilling the limbs of the half-clad children; the seats and desks are uncomfortable in the extreme, doing a cruel wrong every day to the young backs and shoulders; window sashes yawn. One can see outside in a half-dozen places without the trouble of looking through

windows.

The "aids in teaching" are represented by three torn, blurred, ancient maps, a broken globe, and two quite good and modern reading charts.

The eagerness of the children and youth to learn

anything-everything-relative to the great world beyond their mountains is pathetic. They come singing down the wood paths, through rain storms, smilingly accepting the drenchings which it must be admitted have apparently no evil effects upon them.

They brave the wild winds that generally follow every storm, blowing often for twenty-four hours with a terrific force that brings down towering pines in the forest, and would lift these little ones into the air did they not cling together as they do, with shout and laughter. Numbers of them, many not more than five and six years of age, walk six miles every day without a murmur, coming in snow and cold with broken shoes, frequently without hat or coat, an old table cover or shawl wrapped carelessly about them. Their parents are miserably poor. They work early and late; but even then five-sixths of them cannot 'keep the wolf from the door," and the little children, as well as the strong men and women, have often scanty food.

There is no money to buy school books. Last winter a reading class of twenty-one possessed six readers among them; and three boys attempted, quite successfully, to study the story of their country from one copy of Eggleston's United States History.

Perhaps there are encyclopædias that have been for a few years relegated to a back shelf in some library, and are standing there unreferred to from month to month because more approved books of reference have taken their place. Their value to the young mountaineers would be beyond human computing, and with them to refer to, the pitiful exclamation expressed in varied quaint local phrase, "If I only had some book that would tell me all about this person or subject!" would not so often smite upon the ears of those who watch them.

Some of these children of the wild places manifest a decided poetic tendeney. How could it be otherwise when their mountains grow grand and solemn before every sun-rising, and at every sun-setting? and when their log-cabin homes are generally "within a stone's throw" of the mighty woods,near enough for them to hear forever the pines "repeating their ancient legends to the winds"? Whenever they travel they must pass through the dim and silent forest, the narrow paths scarcely observed by the stranger, lighted at night by flaming pine torches when there is no moon.

A few inexpensive copies of Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, Tennyson, Scott, or Burns, even if torn or defaced, or in pamphlet form, would be prizes down in that lonely wilderness.

Anything addressed to J. Atchison Griffiths, Friends' Mission, Patrick county, Virginia, would go safely to its destination.

The children of the primary department sit patiently, crowded together upon their forlorn benches, without desks, without books, gazing at the blank walls upon which hang no attractive pictures or mottoes to hint to the young hearts of brighter and better things. A few have slates, usually furnished by the good. missionaries who are willing to "spend and be spent" for the welfare of their flock.

Even

babes will resort to tobacco-chewing and "snuff-dipping" unless closely watched; and it has happened sadly often that a little child, a new pupil, has come in with cheeks flushed by a morning draught of whiskey. Yet the distilleries in the vicinity of the Mission are gradually disappearing before the steady and courageous effort always directed upon them; and there is a very satisfactory growth in favor of the temperance cause.

These poor brothers and sisters of the Blue Ridge are so cheery in their poverty, brave in suffering, friendly, grateful, so "strong in the right as God gives them to see the right," that I would a thousand loving Christian hands were stretched out "in His name to help them. M. E. BROWN. Haverford, Pa.

Traveling Libraries in Kentucky. Ar the recent annual meeting of the Kentucky federated women's clubs, at Louisville, the report of the travelinglibrary work was a feature of special interest. Boxes of books traveled through the mountains of Kentucky, reaching the isolated homes in those districts. In the report which Mrs. C. P. Barnes, of the Woman's Club of Louisville gave, she told of the reluctance at first felt by the mountaineers to receive the books. They could not understand that they were absolutely free to them. When, however, this explanation was accepted, their eagerness to enjoy them was pathetic. It has been found that three months is too short a time to leave the boxes in a single place, and six months is therefore allowed. The precious little libraries are carried over the mountains by wagons, or on the rivers by boats in April and October.

Bismarck's Character.

No saying, among the many ascribed to Bismarck, has been oftener quoted and commented upon than his reputed declaration that political problems are questions of power and not of right. This sentiment seems to tally well with the estimate of the man's character given by Wm. Roscoe Thayer, in the Atlantic Monthly (issue of Ninth month). In type, he says, Bismarck belongs with the Charlemagnes, the Cromwells, the Napoleons; but, unlike them, he wrought to found no kingdom for himself; from first to last he was content to be the servant of the monarch whom he ruled. As a statesman he

possessed in equal mixture the qualities of lion and of fox, which Machiavelli long ago declared indispensable to a prince.

He had no scruples. What benefited Prussia and his king was to him moral, lawful, desirable; to them he was inflexibly loyal; for them he would suffer popular odium or incur personal danger. But whoever opposed them was to him an enemy to be overcome by persuasion, craft, or force. I discern in his conduct toward enemies no more regard for morality than in that of a Mohawk sachem toward his Huron foe. He might spare them, but from motives of policy; he might persecute them, not to gratify a thirst for cruelty, but because he deemed persecution the proper instrument in that case. His justification would be that it was right that Prussia and Germany should hold the first rank in Europe. The world, as he saw it, was a field in which nations maintain a pitiless struggle for existence, and the strongest survive; to make his nation the strongest was, he conceived, his highest duty. army of puny-bodied saints might be beautiful to a pious imagination, but they would fare ill in an actual conflict with Pomeranian grenadiers. He held that by blood and iron empires are welded, and that this stern means causes in the end less suffering than the indecisive compromises of the sentimentalists. Better, he would say, for ninety-nine men to be directed by the hundredth man who knows than for them to be left a prey to their own chaotic, ignorant, and internecine passions. Thus he is the latest representative of a type which flourished in the age when the modern ideal of popular government had not yet risen.

An

Hints Concerning Kitchens. “THERE is a fine, large kitchen," will often be heard from the house-hunter, but every foot of room beyond what is needed is a distinct detriment. So says Mrs. H. M. Plunkett, in Harper's Bazar. And then she proceeds: Most of the French hotel kitchens, where fascinating gastronomic marvels are produced, consist of a range and a table at the cook's back, with just enough room for him to stand in. His pots and pans are hung on hooks on one side of the range, and the necessary dishes are ranged on wall-shelves at the other. He wastes no steps.

If "piped water is introduced from a town or city water-works the labor of housekeeping is immensely diminished, but as this happy condition is by no means universal, the location of the well or the cistern becomes an important consideration. Thousands of steps may be saved and hundreds of exposures avoided by thinking beforehand on these : a little longer piece of lead pipe will bring the cistern water into the kitchen, so that the pump can be placed close to the sink, and a short length of rubber hose-pipe fitted to the spout will save the heavy lifting that keeps many women ill all their days.

Space and steps can be economized by placing the kitchen windows so high in the wall that a hanging table can be placed under them, and put up out of the way when not in use. Some of the undesirable “ largeness of the kitchen could be utilized in a light closet, where all cooking utensils, from pots and pans to æsthetic jelly-moulds, could be stored, and the kitchen sink, of iron, with legs of the same material, would give no means of hiding damp rags and brushes to breed mould and bacteria. The kitchen sink itself, and the sink in the butler's pantry, should be arranged on the same plan, with a broad shelf for soiled dishes at the right, and a grooved drain-board at the left, and a dresser immediately above for the reception of the cleaned dishes. Suppose you reverse the position of the table and the board. Washing dishes three times a day for 365 days of one year makes 1,095 dish-washings. Think of the vital force wasted in putting these dishes across to the other side! Until a race of lefthanded dishwashers shall have been evolved, the arrangement described is the only proper one. The doors leading from the butler's pantry to the dining-room, and from the kitchen into the pantry, should be swing doors, hung so that a maid with a full tray of dishes can pass without touching them, while the undesirable smells and sounds of the kitchen are excluded. All doors should be hung so as not to interfere. With a cellar properly made under the whole house, a laundry in the basement should be provided, so as to remove the soiled garments from the neighborhood of cooking food. This does not necessarily involve set tubs, but it does need a simple laundry stove, and when once that is secured the basement can be warmed sufficiently for drying in the winter; for it is little less than murderous for a woman to carry clothes from a hot steaming laundry into a zero atmosphere. The martyrs of the clothes-yard are uncounted.

[It seems to us very likely that the quite small kitchens, and windows "high in the wall," may be less advisable in this country than-for example-in France, because of our hot weather in summer. More space to "turn 'round in,'' fresh air," are called for here.—EDS. INTELLIGENCER.]

more "

Keeping the Sexes Apart.
Lyman Abbott.

WE parents who have passed through this experience, or rather entered into it for we do not pass through it as though we went out at the other side-we have a duty towards our sons and our daughters who are growing up to be young men and young women under our influence. We are to prepare them for this new experience of life. And we are not to prepare them for it by trying to keep them apart. Of all the insane follies of which mankind have been guilty, this seems to me to have been one of the greatest. God meant man and woman to come together; and to build some wall of conventionalism between the two, and keep them in separated apart

ments half their lives, until the hunger has grown unappeasable and the desire has grown irresistable, and then suddenly let them rush into companionship without oversight-this is one of the inexplicable follies of mankind.

For if history shows anything, it shows this: that the attempt to keep the sexes apart has, just in the measure in which it has succeeded, produced vice. They are most kept apart in Turkey, where vice is the worst. In Christendom they are more kept apart in France than in England, and vice is greater in France than in England; they are more kept apart in England than in America, and vice is greater in England than in America. We parents should bring the boys and girls together; we should teach them how to grow up with one another; how to become acquainted with one another. We should promote an acquaintance that will develop into friendship, that friendship may develop into love.

Imperialism's Burdens.

Theodore L. Cuyler, in The Evangelist.

LET our people all distinctly understand that Imperialism necessitates an enormous standing army, after the fashion of Germany, and an enormous navy, with its heavy taxation on the labor of our people. Worst of all it changes the whole character of our hitherto peace-loving nation, and it enthrones Militarism as a permanent and dominant principle! Disguise it as they may, and blink at it as they must; that is the cataract towards which the rapids of this new imperialistic mania are rushing us! One of the ablest imperialists exclaimed the other day: ‘Our American Republic is casting off its swaddling-clothes of baby-hood, and already stands up as an international giant ‘armed cap a pie!'"' There are some of us who have supposed that the mission of our beloved land was to work out the great vital problem of intelligent republican self-government before the world, and that we are by no means a baby" at the business of instructing the old monarchies of Europe and Asia.

To follow in their old beaten track of governing by the sword has not been the noble and sublime purpose of Washington and Lincoln-the republic which bases its life on the bed-rock of popular intelligence, peaceful industry, and Christian conscience. We have too many tremendous problems to settle here at home without having the people's attention (and that of the churches also) all absorbed by vexing and distracting perplexities over foreign possessions.

THE popular hotel, at low rates, opened in New York by D. O. Mills, last fall, has proved so successful that Mills Hotel No. 2 has since been built, on the corner of Rivington and Chrystie streets, and was lately opened. It has room for 600 lodgers, being smaller than No. I, which has room for 1154. In arrangement No. 2 differs from No. 1 in having baths on every floor, instead of in the basement only. Both hotels are open to all respectable men who have twenty cents.

It is a help to manhood, to culture, to piety, to know one's self akin to those who suffered oppression and made noble sacrifices for the sake of conscience, helped to found our great Western civilization, or rallied to the defence of the infant nation when its life hung in the balance. Not to take a gen

uine interest in one's forefathers is almost as indefensible as to be vain because they were in some way notable.—Congregationalist.

GREAT BRITAIN has annexed the Santa Cruz and Duff Islands, near the Salmon Islands. The islands contain about bering about 5,000. 800 square miles, with a population of Papuan negroes numbering about 5,000. The islands are likely to be valuable as coaling stations.

-The American Social Science Association began its annual meeting at Saratoga Springs on the 29th ult. Reports showed the association to be gaining in membership and its influence spreading.

-The steamer Hope, which took Lieutenant Peary's party to Greenland, has returned to St. John's, and reports all well with the Arctic explorers.

CURRENT EVENTS.

A REMARKABLE movement has been begun by the Czar Nicholas of Russia, in the direction of the reduction of their armaments by the European nations. By order of the Czar, Count Muravieff, the Russian Foreign Minister, on the 24th ultimo, handed to the foreign diplomats at St. Petersburg a note declaring that maintenance of peace, and the reduction of the excessive armaments now crushing all nations, is the ideal for which all governments ought to strive. The dispatch from St. Petersburg conveying the information, says: "The Czar considers the present moment favorable for the inauguration of a movement looking to this end, and invites the powers to take part in an international conference as a means of thus ensuring real and lasting peace and terminating the progressive increase of armament.

THE full text of the proposition was printed with the dispatch announcing that it had been made. It is a very remarkable document, and some of the sentences in it form a forceful indictment of the present abominable militarism in Europe. We shall print it in the INTELLIGENCER next week. The proposal is received variously by the press in other countries of Europe, but many newspapers hail it as a sign of a better time. We can judge better in a few days what effect it will have. An international conference can hardly be avoided, when thus proposed. One story is that Emperor William of Germany intended to take this step himself, and to issue his proposal from Jerusalem, where he is going presently.

FORMAL announcement was made in Washington on the 26th ult., of the completion of the membership of the Peace Commission, to meet at Paris to make a definitive treaty with Spain. The five members chosen by the United States are William R. Day, the Secretary of State; United States Senators Cushman K. Davis, of Minnesota, and William P. Frye, of Maine; Whitelaw Reid, of New York; and Justice E. D. White, of the United States Supreme Court. The composiThe composition of the Commission is criticised by advocates of " 'imperial extension," as being likely to be conservative in their policy. The Spanish Commissioners have not been announced at this writing.

THE daily reports concerning the war are now chiefly accounts of the sick soldiers, their condition in the camps, removal to hospitals, provision of special supplies, etc. The number of fever cases, malarial and typhoid, is large, and vehement complaints are made of the medical department, and generally of the officials responsible for the management of camps and hospitals. It is not probable that an analysis of the facts will ultimately show that the loss of life by disease is in excess of what must be expected in a war begun and conducted as this has been,-considering, of course, the unhealthy climate of the West Indies in the hot season. The condition of the troops in Porto Rico is said to be nearly as bad as was that of those at Santiago.

AN "investigation" of the War Department, and its management of the military operations, is loudly demanded by many of the daily newspapers. It is probable that something of the sort will be ordered,-if in no other way, by Congress when it reassembles in Twelfth month. The exact proportion of fairness in these attacks is not very easy to determine; many of them are inspired in part at least by political and personal hostility to Secretary Alger, the purpose being to drive him out of the Cabinet. The clamor over the matter may be expected to continue for some time, though it may be checked by the suggestion, which has already been made, that the whole military service is discredited by such complaints of its inefficiency, and that the plans for a large increase of the army may thus be made more unacceptable to the people.

GENERAL SHAFTER and his staff sailed from Santiago on the 25th inst., for Montauk Point. On the 25th, also, three Spanish transports left Santiago, with 4,568 soldiers bound for Spain. Eight men died on the way to the ships. Most

of the Spanish troops have now left. Santiago, and the first of them have reached Spain. A dispatch on the 28th says that three steamers would leave next day for Guantanamo, Baracoa, and Sagua for the Spanish passengers there. "The condition of these men is distressing, and it is probable that death will claim nearly half of them before they reach Spain. Their condition is the result of hard living and the prevailing fever. The rations and medical aid sent from Santiago were practically too late.'

PRESIDENT MCKINLEY and his wife left Washington on the 27th ult., and went to Middletown, near Harrisburg, Pa., where they visited an encampment of troops recently made, Camp George G. Meade; they then proceeded to Somerset, Pa., where they spent First-day at the home of the President's brother, Abner McKinley, and on the 29th left for Cleveland, Ohio. They proposed to go thence to their home in Canton, Ohio, for a day, and to proceed on the 1st inst..to New York, where the President would inspect the camp at Montauk, L. I., before returning to Washington.

DISPATCHES from Russia within a few days past announce another prospective famine in several large districts of that country. The crops in these are almost a complete failure, and the people will inevitably be in great want of food. A beginning to ask the Government for relief. The peasants dispatch on the 29th says that "even the landed gentry are are denuding their cottages of the thatches in order to feed the stock. In spite of all that can be done cattle and horses are dying in great numbers."'

NEWS AND OTHER GLEANINGS.

THE "Zionist Conference"-Jews who propose a return of their people to re-occupy Palestine-began its sessions at Basle, Switzerland, on the 28th ult. Dr. Theodore Heral, the originator of the project to purchase Palestine and resettle the Jews there, presided and welcomed the delegates. Dr. Max Nordau made an address on the situation of the Jews during the past year.

It is difficult to get people to understand," says Meehans' Monthly, "that trees can die from root drowning. A Boston correspondent refers to two large horse chestnuts which were moved last spring with the greatest skill, but they died. In the fall, an examination was made, and the holes found to be full of water within one foot of the surface of the ground. The holes were really flower-pots without the necessary holes in the bottom to allow the water to escape.'

—A pleasure party of eleven persons drove in front of a passenger train on the Boston and Maine railroad, at Ware, Massachusetts, on the night of the 27th ult., and five members of the party were killed and several others seriously injured. The driver was unable to control the wagon in descending a steep hill, which led to the railroad crossing.

-It was announced at the War Department on the 28th ult., that General Merritt, military commander at Manila, was to go to Paris to give the Peace Commission, the benefit of his experience in the Philippine Islands. Another dispatch stated that he would sail on the 30th.

-The barns and outbuildings on the farm of Edgar Conrow, on the Bridgeborough road, near Moorestown, N. J., were destroyed on the 8th ult., by a fire believed to be of incendiary origin. The loss is stated at $4,000, with a small insurance.

-A monument to Czar Alexander II., of Russia, (grandfather of the present Czar), was unveiled at Moscow by Czar Nicholas, on the 28th ult. Alexander II. is the one who set free the serfs of Russia, in 1861, and was killed by glass bombs, by Nihilists, in 1881.

-The coal miners of South Wales have agreed to the terms proposed by the employers, including an increase of five per cent. in wages, and thus terminated a long continued and injurious strike.

-Ex-Governor Claude Matthews, of Indiana, died at Indianapolis on the 28th ult. He was stricken with paralysis, a few days before, while speaking at a public meeting.