through somehow, but on your life don't you let the boy hear. He is in it now." All things come to an end, and this did too. When the King was gone and Ribe had settled down to talk it over, I had my chance of getting even for sundry little digs at my home across the seas that we had scored up. They will do it; it is in the blood. To the old country, when it is as old as Ribe, we shall remain, I suppose, to the end of time a lot of ex-savages, barely reclaimed from the woods and scalp-locks and such, and in the nature of things not made to last. It was at a social gathering, where the one all-absorbing topic was the Domkirke, that the worm turned. The walls would stand now a hundred years, some one said, and shot a pitying glance at me, that said as plainly as speech: "Your whole republic isn't much older than that, and where will it be in another hundred?" But I had been up in the roof of the church the day before with the boss carpenter to look at the big beams, and something there seemed familiar. To my question he nodded: Yes! he had bought the lot on the sea, a ship-load of American timber, pitch pine, and there it was. So I was not slow to rise to my friend's bait.

And," I added, when I had told them, "your walls of old-world stone may stand a hundred years on your own showing; or give them two. But the carpenter told me that, barring accidents, there is no reason why the roof of

American timber should not last a thousand and be as good as new." I think I scored.

But we bore no grudges. I owe them too much for that. The sun shone so brightly upon my mother's new-made grave, which hands of loving friends had garlanded with flowers against her boy's home-coming, the grass was so green and the thrush sang so sweetly in the hedge, that the sting went out also of that sorrow and only the promise remained. It is good to have lived, and though its days be mostly gray under northern skies, glad am I that mine were framed in the memories of the Old Town. We sought and found it together, She and I, the house in which I dreamed as a boy, in the street of the Black Friars.

The window-pane was still there upon which I wrote 'From here I can see Elisabeth's garden" beyond the river, heaven knows with what stylus to cut so deep. With a dozen little mouths to feed in our home, diamonds were not lying loose there. The trees have grown and shut garden and stream out of sight. But the river divides us no longer, and though the shadows lengthen and the frost is upon our heads, into our hearts it cannot come. Hand in hand we look trustfully across to that farther shore, to the land of the rising sun where we shall find what we vainly seek here: our youth in the long ago.

So we came home. I shall not soon forget the morning when, to the wondering sight of our thousand immigrants, the panorama of the great world city rose out of the deep. They crowded the rail of the steamer as it came slowly up through the Narrows. Clad in their holiday clothes, they stood in quiet groups, gazing silently toward the land, all the fun and the horse-play of the voyage gone out of them. To the jester of the steerage it was but a dull mood, and, thinking to cheer them, he leaped upon a chest and harangued the crowd, telling them in their own language that they were coming to a land where the golden rule read, “Do others or they will do you."

"Cheer up!" he shouted, "and let's have a song. Who can give us a jolly

one ?"

There was no answer. Till somewhere in the crowd a lone, far-away voice began a verse of an old Norwegian hymn and sang it to the end in a clear alto. There was a little uneasy laugh in the corner by the wheel-house, but as the singer went on, never faltering, here and there a voice fell in, and before he had come to the end of the second verse it swelled in one common strain-"On this our festal day." Everybody was singing. The jester had disappeared. He was forgotten, as they looked out, men and women, with folded hands, toward their Promised Land. I thought of my friend who fears for our democracy, and wished he were there to hear his answer. For it was the answer. hope in keeping.

Such as these have its

JOHN F. WALLACE Chief Engineer

they will serve in little more than an advisory capacity.

President Roosevelt has been fortunate in obtaining the services, for the three lines of work into which the canal-building has been divided, of men who are young and strong, and at the same time experienced to a recognized degree, and temperamentally fitted for coping with difficult and perplexing problems.

Mr. Shonts, the head of the Commission, is a self-made man and a very capable railroad man. Railroad activities are very many-sided, but Mr. Shonts is said to have mastered most of them. He has started in on a railroad enterprise by obtaining the right of way. He has graded the road, laid the tracks, equipped it and then has operated it, filling the various positions of general superintendent, general manager, and president. Of the same system he has been in charge of the accounting or auditing department, and he has also been traffic man

ager. He has an income, outside of the $30,000 to be paid as his salary as Chairman of the Commission, which has been estimated by an intimate friend at $100,000. And he is but forty-nine years of age. To Mr. Shonts have been assigned the fiscal affairs of the Commission, which means that he will pay out all the money that is expended by this Government on the Canal. Thus in ten years' time Mr. Shonts is expected to disburse at least $200,000,000. He is to have charge of the purchase of all supplies and materials, is to control the audits of the work, and will direct the commercial operation of the Panama railroad and steamships in the United States. This means that Mr. Shonts will be, in addition to other things, the traffic manager of the freight route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Isthmus-a position of equal importance to the transcontinental railroads and the shippers of merchandise.

To Mr. Magoon has been assigned the control of the civil affairs in the Canal Zone, and this will also include the sanitation of the zone and the complete revolutionizing of health methods in the cities of Colon and Panama, which have for centuries been plague-spots. Judge Magoon is specially qualified for this post. He is a level-headed lawyer, who has the respect of such legal authorities as former Secretary of War Root and Secretary of War Taft. He has great tact in getting along peacefully with the Latin races, and has made his mark as legal adviser of the Insular Bureau of the War Department. He has made a study of colonial law, and is the author of a book on "The Law of Civil Government under Military Occupation," which is a standard. He came to Washington an obscure lawyer, with no reputation outside of the local courts of

Nebraska. On him fell the duty of deciding the status of the peoples in the Far East who had come to us with the treaty with Spain. He made his own researches, and wrote the famous opinion that the Constitution does not follow the flag, which was sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States. When he began his researches, he was of the opinion that the Constitution did follow the flag. Of this opinion Secretary Root said to Senator Spooner, of Wisconsin, when he handed it to him, "Here is what I believe will prove to be the greatest contribution to American law in the last fifteen years." Judge Magoon brings to his new work familiarity obtained by two visits to the Isthmus, and by a year's service as attorney for the old Panama Canal Commission.

Having given Mr. Shonts full swing in his particular sphere, and made Mr. Magoon supreme as the lawgiver on the Isthmus, President Roosevelt has placed the actual construction and engineering in charge of John F. Wallace, who was the Chief Engineer under the old Commission. Mr. Wallace, when he was picked for Chief Engineer nearly a year ago, had already made his reputation as a civil engineer, having had complete charge of the digging of the great Chicago Drainage Canal. He astonished even experienced engineers by finishing this work within the specified time, and he did it at a low cost by bringing to the work the latest appliances and modern methods. He has also been Chief Engineer and Vice-President of the Illinois Central Railroad. There is only one matter about which Mr. Wallace will not be permitted to have absolute freedom of choice. He is in favor of a sealevel canal. But President Roosevelt is not going to permit such a momentous question to be settled by one

man.

CHARLES E. MAGOON Governor of the Canal Zone

The technical Commission of 1890 condemned the sea-level plan of De Lesseps, and reported in favor of a canal with locks. Since then engineering has been almost completely revolutionized, and Mr. Wallace believes that the Canal should go to sea-level. The President has decided to leave this question to a Commission of Nine, to be composed of the most eminent American and foreign engineers. But on all other engineering questions Mr. Wallace's judgment will be supreme, and he is enthusiastic about the ability of American genius to construct and maintain the Canal. Like the others who have been given full authority in their respective fields, Mr. Wallace is a comparatively young man. All these men will be expected to spend most of their time on the Isthmus of Panama, and their appointment may be regarded as marking the beginning of the epoch of energetic canal construction.