the good of the whole. They forget or have never thought that we are all in the same boat, and must float or sink together. It requires magnanimity to forego selfish interests for the public good, and magnanimous men have not abounded on the earth. Thanks to the progress of Christian civilization, the common brotherhood and common weal of man are better appreciated than formerly. In barbarous and monarchical times, the doctrine was, "Might makes Right," and kings were supposed to possess the divine right of controlling the wills, the work and the wealth of their subjects. Paley makes this striking illustration of the condition of property under hereditary monarchies: "If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn; and if (instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted and no more) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap, reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse, keeping this heap for one, perhaps the worst, pigeon in the flock; sitting round and looking on, all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about and wasting it; and if a pigeon more hardy and more hungry than the rest touched a grain of the hoard, all the others flying upon it and tearing it to pieces; if you should see this, you would see nothing more than what has been practiced among men."

The precepts laid down by the great Lawgiver, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," have gradually leavened society to such an extent that Paley's picture of it seems now a caricature; still, there remains too much of the old selfish principle. The practical workings of this principle have been everywhere more or less modified by the Christian law of love, but they are still manifest on the farm, in the workshop, the factory, and wherever capital and labor are accumulated. The greater the accumulation, and the greater the number of middlemen between the capitalist and the laborer, the less does sympathy exist between them, and the less is the unity of interest felt. Hence come exactions and oppressions on

one side, and strikes and riots on the other, which end in great loss to both parties. Both are generally to blame, and both suffer. The mutual dependence and common interest are not apt to be appreciated by either party. On the side of the capitalist there is a consciousness of power-the power of wealth which furnishes the sinews of war; and with this consciousness comes very naturally a feeling of lordship, if not of oppression. "On the side of the oppressor there is power," as the good Book puts it. The capitalist may not be conscious of this feeling, but human nature is found among intelligent capitalists as well as among other folks. If they can be so blinded to the rights of humanity as to grind their employes down to the living point,-just where soul and body can be kept together, while they live luxuriously, it is no wonder that the latter are sometimes goaded to madness by toil, self-denial and suffering. They forget that the wear and tear of their muscles are offset by the brain work and nervous irritation of the capitalist who is weighted with great and varied responsibilities. Let the laborer and capitalist help bear each other's burdens, and the toil of both will be lightened and the profit increased.

How can labor and capital be brought into closer union and be made to co-operate more harmoniously for their mutual benefit and the advantage of society at large? This is the question of the day. The answer is that the great principle of community of interest between labor and capital must be preached till it is fully understood, and then employers and employes will devise ways and means of carrying the principle into practical operation.

One mode we desire to suggest, and this is, that operatives in organized corporations be made sharers, under certain conditions, in the profits of their labor. This makes them not only theoretically interested in the corporation, but directly and tangibly. When dividends and wages jingle together in the pockets of laborers they will feel a stimulus to faithful labor such as they never felt before. Touch a man in his pocket and you touch a force that has great power.

We are aware that this method has been ridiculed by some capitalists as Utopian, but experience has shown that it is as wise in practice as philosophical in theory. It is no new method. Farms have always been leased, more or less, on shares. Many manufacturers are now dividing profits, above a certain per cent on their capital, with their operatives. But the most noted and most successful example of the practical workings of this principle is furnished by our whaleships. The owners of these have always made partners of all the crew, from the captain down to the cabin boy. Each has for his wages a certain fraction of the oil taken, the fraction varying with the skill and service of the whaler. All understand that the success of each depends upon the success of all, and each works with a will. Vigilance, fidelity and co-operation are the watchwords on board of a whale-ship. The principle of partnership between

labor and capital is capable of various modifications to suit varying circumstances. That it can be introduced in some form into all our industries we have no doubt. There is an intrinsic community of interest between labor and capital, whether it be recognized or not; but it is far better for all concerned to make it so apparent that the dullest operative can see it and conduct himself accordingly. When this good time. comes the demagogue will no longer have a cry with which to stir up riots and rebellions, and the laborer will not succumb to morbid madness, as he contrasts his circumstances with those of his employer. Not the least of the blessings of this system is the satisfaction which the capitalist will feel in seeing his employes contentedly and faithfully doing their duties, not as eyeservants but as partners, and, more than this, as men whose manhood is acknowledged. Alexander Hyde.

Julia C. R. Dorr.

THE REPORT OF THE AMATEUR TRAMPS. THE report of the two detectives who traveled as amateur tramps through Western Massachusetts last summer ought to be profitable for doctrine to some and for reproof to others. These two men joined themselves to whatever strolling bands they chanced to fall in with, and before the end of the season they had learned the trade of the tramp, and had informed themselves of the number and character of these marauders in the district assigned to them.

Several hundre professional tramps were prowling about this district. Sometimes they would collect in large camps; generally they traveled in gangs, but on approaching a settlement they always scattered. Their subsistence was gained partly by begging but chiefly by stealing. When they were begging they always pretended to be seeking work; but when they gathered in their camps they made no concealment of their determination never again to soil their hands with labor. During the railroad riots about four hundred of these tramps collected near the Boston and Albany railroad and prepared for a descent upon the nearest large town for the purposes of pillage, as soon as the strike should be reported.

These social parasites have been increasing ever since the war. Many of them are men who once worked for their living, and who took to the highway at first because they were thrown out of employment, but who have become so thoroughly demoralized by their vagrant life that they will never work again unless they are compelled. Many others are men who never did work, and who follow the profession of the vagrant because they like it best.

It ought to be evident that this is an evil requiring sharp and summary treatment. A little longer nursing of it will render a good many districts of our country as insecure as Italy was under the Papal regime. And the things to be done are plain.

First, we must stop feeding these tramps. Those good Christians who cannot turn a hungry man from their doors ought to read the detectives' report and find out whom they are supporting. The testimony of an experienced English police officer, quoted by Professor Wayland, that ninety-nine out of every hundred professional mendicants are also professional thieves, and practice either trade as occasion serves," is am

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ply borne out by the evidence of the amateur tramps. It is better that the hundredth innocent man should suffer than that the ninety and nine freebooters should be helped on in their villainous career. Pray think, good ladies, of the crimes that you are abetting, and the suffering caused by these crimes to your neighbors when you help these miscreants on their way. Do not bestow all your pity on the tramp. Have a little mercy also on the honest people whom the tramp preys upon!

Second, we must have, in every state, some such system as that recommended by the New York Charities Aid Association, and outlined by Professor Wayland in his paper on Tramps, by which every vagrant beggar shall be arrested, placed in confinement and compelled to work for his living not less than ninety days for the first offense and not less than six months for the second. We cannot enter here into all the details of the plan referred to, but it has been carefully considered, and all legislators ought to study it. The evil is a serious one; it cannot be reached by moral measures; the only remedy is force and it cannot be applied too soon.

OUR NEW SAINT FRANCIS.

His other name is Murphy. He belongs to the Holy Catholic Church, the Methodist wing of it; and he has been canonized in his lifetime by the blessings and the prayers of thousands of the poor.

The other Saint Francis was something of a scamp in early life. His escapades are carefully narrated by his biographers as a good background for his later sanctity. Finally he was flogged and thrown into prison for his offenses; and while in prison he was converted and devoted himself to the service of the poor.

Much of this is true of the modern Saint Francis. He, too, found Christ in prison-(for the prison is a place where men sometimes find Christ in more senses than one)—and gave himself up to a service whose demands and whose rewards he did not then at all forecast.

"Mediæval Europe," says the historian, "owes much to the Franciscans. They went everywhere, and were like flames of fire wherever they went. First of all they roused the masses. Poor men, wearing nothing but brown frocks girded about the waist by bits of rope, they brought the gospel home to the poor. By and by they made

themselves felt in every walk of life." It begins to look as if modern America were going to be a large debtor to the new order of Franciscans-to Murphy's men. If "the masses" of mediæval Europe were any more thoroughly roused than the masses of some of our American cities and towns have been by the preaching of Murphy it must have been a sight to see them.

It is to the poor that Francis Murphy preaches -the poorest of the poor-the men who have lost manhood and honor and self-respect in the bondage of strong drink. And when he preaches they listen. No doubt about that. Night after night the largest halls are crowded to suffocation; hun dreds stand for hours, or cling to the edges of platforms and the railings of galleries, listening to his proclamation of liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison doors to them that are bound.

He is a study this man Murphy. Get a seat on the platform if you can, where you can watch his movements. The great crowd, orderly and cheery, is waiting for his appearance. Suddenly there is a brightening of faces and a clapping of hands and Murphy walks forward, bowing to the audience, shaking hands right and left and beaming on everybody. He is a short man, about as tall as Moody but not quite so stout, though his chest is full and his limbs are muscular. The face is Celtic but shapely, the bright eyes look out from under heavy eyebrows, the clean shaven jaw is firm, and the generous mouth is curtained by a black moustache. A good-natured man, beyond a doubt; and on the best of terms with his envi

ronment.

The service begins with singing. The great choir lead in two or three of the "gospel melodies" of Bliss and Sankey, the congregation joining in the chorus; and there are one or two sacred songs of a more pretentious character by singers who go about with the apostle of temperance to sing the gospel, after the manner of Sankey. Then Murphy rises, Bible in hand, and reads a few verses, commenting on them in a homely and pointed fashion. His exegesis is sometimes queer, but never mind about that! Bad exegesis often yields good doctrine. If the sacred writer does not say just what the expounder represents him as saying, he might well have said it. Then there is a short prayer, and the orator naturally passes along ways of familiar and informal talk into the speech of the evening.

The story of his own life makes up a good part of all his speeches. If he stays only a day or two in a place you get an abridgment of it; if he tarries longer he gives it to you at length, in install ments, with more or less of discursive moralizing and description and appeal thrown in evening by evening. The story is well told. You would not tell so much of it if you were in his place;

but you do not feel, after all, like censuring his frankness. You can see in his experience the depths of degradation and woe into which drink plunges men; and he evidently thinks he has a better right to show you the dark side of his own life than that of any other man's. Often as he has told the tale it is far from being a mere recitation. His heart swells with emotions that are not simulated, and the tears start from his own eyes as he speaks of the woes of "mother" and the children in the days when drink was cursing his home.

Now and then he strikes off into digressions humorous, descriptive, dramatic,-some of which are very telling. The story of the Irish girl, who felt so grand riding in her mistress's carriage that she wished she could stand on the sidewalk and see herself drive by is capitally told; and always when he drops into his native brogue the Irishman that he gives us is a genuine bit of character. Some of his more tragic passages are simply tremendous. His description of Sheridan's Ride, for example, or his imaginative portrayal of the "upas tree" of intemperance, are astounding performances. Such rhetoric, such elocution, such acting are not often heard nor seen. He races back and forth across the platform; he roars like a caged tiger; he leaps, at the climax of his passion, three or four feet into the air.

But it does

Of course you do not approve all this; it is not your way of doing it. Neither do you approve all of Murphy's orthoepy or syntax. the business. Crude though the performance may be, in spots, it is a telling performance. The acting is immense, but it is scarcely more excessive than is often seen upon the classic stage. The rhetoric may be faulty, but it is a big-hearted man that is talking; and the people do not stop to measure his words by critical standards. And now and then comes a passage of natural description or a touch of human nature that mark the real orator.

ew,

What is better the spirit of the man and his methods of work are so wholly Christian that they disarm criticism. "You can't querl with me," he says every day, "for I won't querl." If the Catholic priest forbids his people to attend Murphy's meetings, Murphy eulogizes Father Mathand says not a word about the priest except in kindness. For "the rumseller," so long the black dragon of the temperance reformer, he has nothing but sympathy. And if the prohibitionist denounces him for his gentle treatment of the liquor dealers he only says to the prohibitionist, "God bless you! we are going to get every body to stop drinking liquor, and then nobody will want to sell it!" Not a word of censure or denunciation falls from his lips.

Better still, his whole reliance is on the divine power. All his meetings are intensely religious meetings. All the songs that are sung are sacred

songs. The pledge includes the phrase, "God helping me." Every man who signs it is told that he will need God's help in keeping it. And almost all of those who are reclaimed in his meetings confess their sense of this need and their purpose to seek this help.

There is nothing to say in the view of all this, except to heap Murphy's oft-repeated benediction upon his own head and cry "God bless him!" May the new Franciscan order grow faster and live longer than the old one! May the boys with the badges of blue like the Gray Friars of old go everywhere, and be wherever they go, "like flames of fire," kindling a new hope in the heart of the drunkard, and lighting the way by which he may escape from degradation and woe!

LOOK ON THE RIGHT SIDE. SOME things and some themes are of such a nature that they can only be seen or known in part; their vastness makes it impossible to comprehend them. It is only a partial view of them that the largest mind ever gets. All those truths which relate to the mode of God's being are of this character. Men try to make definitions of God; to define the infinite; to bound the boundless; to map the shoreless sea. Of course this is sheer fatuity. And the man who makes his picture of God, whether it be of wood or of words, and insists that you must worship it-that you are not to be allowed to think any thought of God that his image or his formula does not give you-ought to be told that he is not only a bigot but an idolater. It may be well for us often to try to express our ideas respecting the Almighty. The expression of them may help to enlarge and refine them. But the attempt to impose our phrases upon other men as the measure of their thought about God is a mental absurdity and a moral wrong.

But while there are some subjects which, from the nature of the case, can never be comprehended, there are others of which some satisfactory view may be had if we will only put ourselves at the proper point of view. They are to be looked at from a certain definite stand-point; they cannot be seen at all clearly until you reach that stand-point. They are like those curious street-signs once in vogue, that were all blurred and jumbled until you reached a certain position in front of them or on one side of them, when they became legible.

Almost every artistic production must be looked at from the proper point of view, else it is not truly seen. The stereograph is not shown to you in its clear perspective until you have adjusted its distance to the lenses of your eye. The oil painting is a mere blotch of color until you stand in the line of the reflected rays. The painted window shows you its glory by day only on the inside, and by night only on the outside.

There are some kinds of cloth that are made to be looked at on one side. They have a right and a wrong side. And there are statements of truth that are made in the same way. Every creed has a right and a wrong side. Every attempt to put religious truth into systematic statements must have rough and uneven surfaces and raveled ends. Yet the people who make these statements always turn the best side of them towards themselves when they look at them. They see all their beauty and symmetry; they see none of their defects. And generally every sectary contrives to look always on the right side of his own creed, and always on the wrong side of every other man's. All there is of harshness, of inconsistency, of incompleteness in beliefs that he does not hold he will see and gloat over; he will exaggerate and caricature the weak points of other men's doctrines; he will make it appear that persons holding such beliefs must be fools. They would be fools if they thought what he represents them as thinking. The right side of their beliefs -the side that they look at--he takes good care not to see. And they, for their part, will be equally careful to keep their eyes on the wrong side of his belief.

Why will men be so perverse in their uncharitableness? Why not look sometimes on the right side of the things of others?

MANUSCRIPTS that come to this office rolled are sometimes unrolled,-not always. A writer who does not know that a rolled manuscript is an abominable nuisance is presumably illiterate. It is of no use to send anonymous contributions. Our articles are all signed. We cannot return a manuscript to "Xerxes, Springfield, Mass.," because the postmaster will not receive a letter bearing such an address. If "Xerxes" has a box in the Springfield Post Office we can communicate with him through the mail without the use of his name; otherwise we cannot. Neither can we undertake to return nor to preserve manuscripts not accompanied with stamps for the prepayment of return postage.

THIS looks serious. Professor Phelps of Andover, who ought to be good authority, says in the Sunday School Times, that a revival of religion means all these things:

"The payment of honest debts; dealing in trade by equity rather than by law; the giving up of tricks of trade; a living price for slopwork; the sale of pure milk; the surrender of trades which are inimical to public morals; the destruction of distilleries; the refusal to lease houses for immoral uses and hotels for the sale of alcoholic liquors; care not to be ignorant of such leases; suffering loss of dividends for the observance of the Lord's Day; the honest report of property to assessors; a fair day's work when working for the government; refusing to cheat the post-office; truthful invoices of imported