course impossible to separate my first impressions from my later direct knowledge. I do remember that I was at once impressed with the feeling that here was a political leader whose methods differed from those of any politician to whom I had listened. Lincoln's contentions were based, not upon invective or abuse of "the other fellow," but purely on considerations of justice, on the everlasting principle that what is just, and only what is just, represents the largest and highest interests of the Nation as a whole.

This speech decided the selection of the National leader, not only for the political campaign, but through the coming struggle. If it had not been for the impression made upon New York and the East generally by Lincoln's speech and by the man himself, the vote of New York could not have been secured in the Convention for his nomination.

Robert Lincoln, writing to me in July, 1908, says: "After the address in

February, father.came to me at Exeter. The news of his speech had preceded him, and he was obliged to speak eleven times before leaving New England." It was because he had made a personal impression upon the voters, not only of New York, but of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, that when the New York delegates in the Convention found that there was no prospect of securing the nomination of Seward, and, in accordance with the instructions of Bryant's committee, gave their vote to the man from Illinois, the delegates from New England followed the lead and made the nomination assured.

An edition of the Cooper Union address was put into print in September, 1860, by the Young Men's Republican Union of New York. The publication of this pamphlet shows that as early as September, 1860, the historic importance and permanent value of this speech were fairly realized by the National leaders of the day.

Never was a political leadership more fairly, more nobly, and more reasonably won. When the ballot-boxes were opened on the first Tuesday in November, Lincoln was found to have secured the electoral vote of every Northern State except New Jersey, and in New Jersey four electors out of seven. Breckinridge, the leader of the extreme Southern Democrats, had back of him only the votes of the Southern States outside of the border States, these latter being divided between Bell and Douglas. Douglas and his shallow theory of "squatter sovereignty" had been buried beneath the good sense of the voters of the North.

It is well that Americans should remember the valuable service rendered by William C. Bryant in helping to bring about the selection as the leader, not only of the new party, but of all Americans who fought and worked to save the Republic, the great Captain, Abraham Lincoln.

HE

T

new Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island, Robert E. Tod, avoids interviewers. He has no set theories on immigration. His policy is to say little and do much, and that the latter is the case is quite evident to anybody at all familiar with the Ellis Island of the past. Some real changes have already been made on the "Island of Tears," as Ellis Island is generally referred to in the foreign-language press, and this leads one to think that the entire ambitious programme laid out by the Committee on Immigrant Welfare Work will become a reality in the course of time.

It is almost ten years since I first set foot on Ellis Island, and I have seen and watched the changes that crept in with each changing Commissioner.

To me, familiar with the immigrant and his habits, it was always a source of wonder how the "Island" managed to be so clean and decent, but there were some spots that shocked even my unbiased mind-unbiased in that I have always recognized the difficulties of handling immigrants in such rapidly changing multitudes. The Great War naturally affected the conditions very materially, for it created entirely new and unforeseen situations. Meanwhile the complaints recently made by betterclass aliens were probably well founded: Ellis Island is a clearing-ground for peasants, and not for people of culture.

But Commissioner Tod has dared to face these evil spots. He is eradicating them from the Ellis Island routine. A daring undertaking, for Ellis Island is a system--inexorable and unfailing and thorny is the path for him who dares attempt to change it.

Commissioner Tod comes from Scotland, and he was a commander in the Navy during the war. His close-knit frame bespeaks the forceful man. Efficiency, a much-abused word, is written in his deliberate movements, and the firm line of his mouth shows that reticence which baffled and forced me on a prowling voyage of discovery at Ellis Island.

The system at Ellis Island was an excellent one in the days of long ago, before the Great War came and introduced unforeseen factors into daily life and into systems in general. The routine that had answered all previous needs could not fill the new demands, and it took a man of original observation and pioneer daring to establish radical ameliorations to meet these changing needs. This is what Commissioner Tod has done.

"We had never thought of doing this," was the comment I heard from several of the old-time officials as they pointed out some of the changes; "and isn't it an improvement?"

From high officials to the most modest ones, I caught this spirit of satisfaction and pride in the doings of the new "chief." In pre-war days immigrants were taken from the ships to Ellis Island on barges designed only for the most temporary sojourn. After passing Quarantine, medical examination used to be simple. But the war brought vermin, and medical examination took on serious aspects. The discovery of a few small insects would hold up whole bargeloads of immigrants sometimes for hours, thus exposing them to crowding and inclement weather. This was a new problem. Commissioner Tod solved

it very simply. He converted a large room, formerly used for storage purposes, into reception-rooms, where immigrants are taken directly from the barges and where they can wait in comfort. What especially attracted my attention were the nice water fountains in the middle of each section-truly an improvement.

Another striking change was the establishment of a cafeteria in the big Information Room for relatives and friends of incoming aliens, where they sometimes wait for whole days before they are called to identify the new arrivals. This is a master stroke, for much criticism comes from these already Americanized immigrants, who are equally quick to appreciate comfort and service.

The recently opened baby nursery for teaching immigrant women how to bathe and properly clothe their infants is another innovation. Surely this is the soundest first lesson in true Americanism. The nursery, with its pale-blue and white decorations, is a model of simplicity and practicability, and the teaching is done by the nurse in charge. The Della Robbia baby on the wall undoubtedly conveys no message to the immigrant mother, but I enjoyed it, so there is no harm.

These were some of the more important innovations that I saw; there were many minor improvements that mean little to any but the initiates on Ellis Island. But even this start gives a value to Commissioner Tod's programme of reform that most proposed programmes do not convey to those of us cynics who have seen and know.

A director of information is to be ap

:

pointed in the near future to take charge of all welfare work. Interpreters are to be numerous and available to immigrants at a time when they are forbidden to communicate with relatives and friends. Few people can realize the importance of this last provision unless they have spent many days at Ellis Island, as I have done.

I remember some of my visits to detention quarters, where men, women, and children wait, sometimes for weeks, until they are released. Coming in as an outsider from the "other" world, I was usually quickly surrounded by anxious people, showering me with questions in a dozen different languages, asking advice. I remember women begging me to help them get more frequent information regarding their children, lying sick at the Ellis Island hospital. They would cry softly, wiping the tears with their head kerchiefs, but still eagerly listening to my words of just plain human sympathy. That was all they needed-a little encouragement, a sense that they were not forgotten in that mass of waiting immigrants.

The "system" had worked in the past,

when sickness was not so prevailing, but the war changed that. The fearful conditions at the ports of embarkationmany are the tales I heard from immigrants about them-were the cause of wholesale sickness and destitution at the New York port. Ellis Island became overcrowded. The hospital was full of the sick; information was not given out frequently. Anxious mothers wept; the detention quarters were a well of unending misery. That Commissioner Tod has tackled the problem of that headquarters of suffering will go a long way towards eliminating the title of "Island of Tears."

Another great improvement is the proposed establishment of a bigger detention room for women and children. It is to be located in the so-called "Railroad Room," a beautiful and airy room. The mere mention of this change brings back to my mind a picture of horrormy last visit to the detention room. It was overcrowded. There were few benches and many, many people standing around for lack of seats. Women reclined uncomfortably on piled-up baggage, children simply lay around on the

floor-and everywhere those weeping faces. The room was dark. I think it has few windows-I do not rememberbut the impression was that of a murky cellar. And the stench! Bilge water and dirt and neglected children-it followed me to New York and to my home, though I resolutely walked the deck of the ferry to drive it away.

That visit was made at a time when Ellis Island was overcrowded, so it is perhaps an unfair picture. But the mere possibility of such conditions should be sufficient for reform. I anticipate the pleasure of seeing the new detention room. Perhaps it will wipe out the horror of that last visit.

There are also plans for improving living conditions, but I can say nothing about them, as I have no personal knowledge of what has been in the past.

Commissioner Tod states that he has not mastered the immigration situation, he has no panacea to offer for its evils, but apparently he knows that Ellis Island has been the "Island of Tears" and he is determined to change the name. A worthy object and a worthy beginning.

A

HERBERT

NY American who ever saw the collection of African trophies and the sculptures by Herbert Ward in that sculptor's studio in Paris or at his country house will welcome them in their new home at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. They are shown in the palatial new building of the Institution which we call the National Museum. The collection is a fit counterpart to the Roosevelt collection, on the same floor, at the other end of the Museum.

Herbert Ward was the eldest son of a distinguished naturalist, Edwin Ward, and was born in London in 1863. His boyhood showed the characteristics of his later career-adventure and love of nature. When hardly fifteen years old, he left home in an emigrant ship to see some unexplored lands-New Zealand, Australia, Borneo, Africa. He had been three times around the world before he was twenty-one years of age. For a time he had served as common sailor aboard an English merchantman; he had bunked in the forecastle, he had eaten hardtack, and had done work aloft. In Australia he tended cattle for herdsmen in the hills. In Borneo he commanded a military expedition into the interior. Then he entered the service of the Congo Free State. Here he began to gather his marvelous collection of native curios and trophies, and also relics of the stone age. In 1913 at Rolleboise, and again in 1916, when on a flying visit to America, he told me that

HEAD OF AN AFRICAN WOMAN (In the Luxembourg)

he would like to give this collection to the Smithsonian Institution. He saw the need for it there.

Three years after his arrival in the Congo Sir Henry Stanley made a wonderful journey across Africa from east to west. Learning that Stanley needed

men to carry provisions, Ward, on his own initiative, collected some four hundred natives and marched to meet him. He commanded the rear-guard of the Stanley expedition and remained with Sir Henry in the Congo for two years. Ward was the sole survivor of the Stanley expedition, and has told the world about it in his books "Five Years with the Congo Cannibals" and "My Life with Stanley's Rear-Guard."

Herbert Ward always had a love of art. He used to say to me: "My earliest recollections are of drawing and attempts to paint in water-colors. It became natural to me to sketch when on my travels, and, anyway, always to look on the picturesque and beautiful side of things. But only in sculpture could I portray the African nature."

After he came home from the Congo Ward opened a studio in London, but found that his ideas were hampered by the influences then emanating from the Royal Academy. In France, on the contrary, when his first work, the model of the head of a native African, was exhibited, he received a "mention" at once. This encouragement, he told me, resulted in his going to live in France. The bronze head referred to received more than a "mention." It was afterwards bought by the French Government for the Luxembourg, and a girl's head made later by Ward is also in that national gallery.

Ward married a daughter of Charles H. Sanford, of New Jersey, a banker

The

and financier in South America. Wards had five children. The eldest son, Captain Charles Ward, of the Grenadier Guards, one of the finest lads I ever knew, had been a champion boxer of Christ Church, Oxford. He represented Oxford University against Cambridge. His popularity was shown when he knocked out an adversary in the first round of one of the heats. The adversary came to, and Charlie, bending over him, said, "I hope you will soon be all right." The other, looking up, recognized young Ward, and, though feeling badly shaken, said: "Oh, I'm all right. I do hope you'll win." And Charlie did. He was to fall at Neuve-Chapelle (1916). Another son, Captain Herbert Ward, on the outbreak of hostilities joined the Royal British Flying Corps direct from Eton. He was shot down in 1915, badly wounded in an aerial duel over the enemy's lines, and taken prisoner by the Germans, but, after six months of captivity in German hospitals and prison camps, managed to escape to Switzerland. The third son was named for Ward's early co-laborer in the Congo, Sir Roger Casement, but on Sir Roger's

amazing defection during the war Parliament was petitioned to change the boy's name to Rodney, so that there should be no difference in the name "Roddy," by which he has always been called. Of the two daughters, Sarita, the elder, her mother's namesake, is the wife of Sir Colville Barclay, British Minister to Sweden, while her sister, Frances, is the wife of Eric Phipps, Councillor of the British Embassy in Brussels.

Herbert Ward died (1919), a willing and conscious sacrifice, from excessive exertion and injuries received in the war. Having voluntarily given his splendid property at Rolleboise for hospital uses, he gave himself. His unit, "Number 3 Convoy," an English Red Cross section serving with the French, became one of the best-known units in any army. He was its heart and soul. His book "Mr. Poilu" (the proceeds from which were given to the French Red Cross) is a notable tribute to the French soldier and to the French woman in the war. As an instance of the latter he told me about Sœur Claire, of Gérardmer, and about what happened every morning at dawn when "there occurred the

same sad ceremony, the same line of stretcher-bearers, carrying to the cemetery the bodies of those who had died in the hospitals during the night. Sad enough it was, and rendered even more touching by the accompaniment of orphan children from Sœur Claire's orphanage near by, dressed in black hats and capes. 'What could be more fitting,' Sœur Claire said to me, 'than for these children who were already parentless to represent the new orphans and to follow the lonely bodies of the soldiers to the grave?" "

But to return to the Smithsonian exhibition. It portrays the primitive African-indeed, the soul of a very primitive Africa-these gaunt bronzed figures, many of eloquent solemnity, pathos, and dignity, surrounded as they are by the broad knives and other weapons of what seems to us a cruel civilization or lack of civilization. Certainly the collection shows what the savage was who lived and fought and died before the moderns vulgarized him. As Ward said to me about them: "I fraternized with every one I met, and I soon found that there was a fund of

THE NEGRO WARRIOR ("DÉFI")

good humor in the African's composition. In this free and easy way I entered into the lives of the natives. Commencing in a casual manner, I became imbued with a profound sympathy for African human nature. My sympathy was with them in the beginning, and it ripened with time. They appealed to me because of their simplicity and directness and lack of scheming or plotting, and by the spontaneity of everything they did. Hence my efforts to learn their language in order that I might know them better. I have tried to explain this somewhat in my book 'A Voice from the Congo.'"

Ward's sculpture is expert sculpture. Take his "Warrior." In showing it to me he said: "You know, as a rule, warriors in sculpture have their arms flung out. They are full of movement. But I have been present at a good deal of fighting, and I have noticed that the man most intent on killing some one is so intent that he keeps himself in, knitted together, like a modern boxer."

His figures are more than mere sculpture. They tell us something about a mysterious, savage, suffering world of which we know little. "People ask me," Ward once remarked to me, 'Why do you do these ugly Negroes? Why not do things that can be put into a drawingroom?' I reply that if I do these and know what I am doing, some day a man will come along who will understand. I love the native Negro because he is the unspoiled son of nature. He is without what you might call modern vice. He may be cruel, he may be childish, but he learns this from nature. He has innate dignity."

Ward used to illustrate this by a story which you may find much expanded in Hopkinson Smith's "Armchair at the Inn:" "Once circumstances made it necessary for me to make an expedition into a district inhabited by cannibals and typical savages so far as morals and habits were concerned. Manioc was about their only food. The women tilled it-in fact, that which protects her from being sold as food is her value as a worker. Four days' march led us to a hilly country where the villages were few. As no food was to be had, I was obliged to push on. We met a new kind of native tribe; they spoke one of the dialects I knew, however. The fifth day we had spent trying for game. At nightfall I sent my men ahead and pushed along myself until I caught sight of another village, the first one I had seen in that day's march. The inhabitants were squatting in front of their rude huts and stared at me in wonder, for I was the first white man they had ever seen. One man threw his arm around his wife as if to protect her; she crouched close to him, and both were naked as the day they were born. I used this pair in a group I exhibited some time ago, under the title, "They Have Eyes and See Not'-you may remember it. When I got in the middle

of the village, I had a sudden desire for a pipe. I felt for my match-box. Then I remembered that I had given it to one of my carriers to start our morning blaze. I now looked for some sign of a fire, and finally in the very last hut discerned the glow of a heap of embers. Huddled over it were two figures-a man and a woman. I walked into the hut and made the sign of peace and asked in Mabunga for a light. The man started and sprang to his feet. He looked at me in amazement, but returned my greeting and touched his forehead in acquiescence. The woman made no gesture. I leaned over to pick up a coal, but, needing to steady myself, involuntarily laid my hand on the woman's shoulder. It was cold and it was as hard as wood. I looked at her closer. She was a dried mummy. Then the man said: 'She was my woman. I loved her. I could not bury her.''

There is something about the Ward collection of sculptures which mirrors not only African primitive life, but hints of the primitive life of all men, and at a long-ago, elemental universal brotherhood. It carries out the principle I heard from Ward, "Great art is along universal lines. It expresses the human heart, no matter what the period or the nationality."

No wonder that these bronzes have

received all the honors France can give to a foreigner.

Herbert Ward was more than a mere explorer and sculptor. He had another life-work-to bring about international friendship. No one labored more tellingly than he to engender understanding and sympathy and friendly feeling between England and France, England and America, France and America. "As to France," I heard him say once, "in my opinion, it comes nearer being a real democracy than England or America. There is no such caste in France as in England and there is no such aristocracy of wealth as in America. In France you have the aristocracy of intellect."

How pervasive Ward's influence was may be gathered from the "Armchair at the Inn." "Monsieur Herbert," namely Herbert Ward, is the principal character. The Inn is the Guillaume le Conquérant at Dives, Normandy, near the English Channel, and not far from Houlgate and Trouville and Cabourg. The Chair is an old Florentine affair with carved heads on the top. "Nothing like a chair," affirmed Lemois, the landlord, and the prince of major-domos, "for stirring up old memories and traditions." He continued:

And do you see the carved heads on the top? I assure you they are alive! I have caught them smiling

or frowning too often at the talk around my table not to know. You don't believe it? You laugh. Ah, that is just like you modern writers; you do not believe anything, you have no imagination. You must You measure things with a rule. must have them drawn on the blackboard! It is because you do not see them as they are. You shut your eyes and ears to the real things of life. It is because you cannot understand that it is the soul of the chair that laughs and weeps. Monsieur Herbert will not think it funny. He understands these queer heads-and, let me tell you, they understand him. I have often caught them nodding and winking at each other when he says something that pleases them. He has himself seen things much more remarkable. Since he was fourteen years of age he has been roaming around the world doing everything a man could to make his bread-and he a gentleman born, with his father's house to go home to if he pleased. Yet he has been farmhand, acrobat, hostler, sailor before the mast, newspaper reporter, four years in Africa among the natives, and now one of the great sculptors of France with his works in the Luxembourg and the ribbon of the Legion in his buttonhole! And one thing more; not for one moment has he ever lost the good heart and the fine manner of the gentleman.

FISHIN'

'Postles, 'Postles,

Fishin' in de sea.

Yore nets am fuller sinners

En yo' done kotch me.