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engineers. From the lowest engineer on the aqueduct to the most expert of the consultants the view is practically unanimous that the contract for the dam was rightly awarded; that the lowest bidder was inexperienced in dam construction, that his bid was too low, that the acceptance of his bid would have resulted in wastefulness and delay. As to the second charge, the answer is plain. The work of the Board of Water Supply is to be judged by its fruit and not by the number of times its members sit in their office chairs. Its achievements so far come near to being unprecedented; it is both unreasonable and unjust to apply to such a Board the tests that are suitable for office-boys.

We do not know whether some personal quarrel, some political ambition, or mere mania for investigation, has been the cause of putting this Board under fire and placing the construction of the aqueduct in peril. Whatever the cause, we hope that the Mayor, who deserves great personal credit for his leadership in the creation of the aqueduct, will put an end to the scandal and save the city's project from further impairment by dismissing the charges.

One of two partners would travel along the line of the railway as a drummer and would sell playing-cards at a marvelously. low figure to all the hotels. Three weeks later his partner would follow him, and would allay the suspicions of the wary by never having a pack of cards of his own, but always buying them of the hotel for the game. The issue of the game was of course never doubtful.

Coming East at the close of the Civil War, I found a different kind of gambling going on in Wall Street. This story of the Street was told me by one of its habitués. A certain stock speculator whom I will call Mr. X. had a considerable amount of unprofitable stock which he wished to dispose of. He had acquaintance with the popular pastor of a large and fashionable congregation who was totally unable to keep a secret. shrewd speculator called on his unsuspicious friend one day and imparted to him, in the closest confidence, some valuable information. The stock of the

The

Mining Company was certain to

rise. "I have been buying some of it myself," he said, "and I advise you to invest in it for a rise. How much money have you got?" "A thousand dollars in savings banks, but that is my little all," said the minister. "Draw it

A Word on Gambling and buy the mining stock. I am so

During the Civil War I resided in Terre Haute, Indiana. This city of fifteen thousand inhabitants was on the direct line of the great inter-State railway between New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore on the east and St. Louis in the southwest. Indianapolis to the east of us and St. Louis to the west of us were great gambling centers, and gambling through that whole section was a common vice. In my congregation there attended, occasionally, a very polished gentleman who was without any recognized profession, and was currently believed to be a professional gambler. He was unquestionably familiar with that profession, and gave me some interesting information concerning it. Many of the playing-cards of commerce, he once explained to me, the skillful expert could read from the back as well as from the face. Gamblers hunted in couples.

sure of it that if it fails to rise I will take it off your hands at the price you paid for it. But remember, this is a profound secret. Not a word to any one else." "Surely not," said the delighted minister, "not a word to any one." He drew the money and bought the stock. He told all his relatives and all his wife's relatives, and they told all their friends, and before the week was out the report of the " sure thing was all over the parish, and Mr. X. had sold his unprofitable stock at a very good profit. It did not rise; the minister came to his counselor with a rueful countenance. Mr. X. was as good as his word, took the shares the parson had purchased and paid him back his thousand dollars. But when the parson hesitatingly suggested that some of his intimate friends had made purchases also, he was reminded that the

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promise and repay you," said Mr. X., "but I can't take care of your friends."

Whether these stories are true or not is immaterial, though I have no reason to doubt their truth. Legends serve as well as history the purpose of illustration; and these stories, whether legends or histories, illustrate the methods of the gambling fraternity.

There may be some gamblers who play the game fairly, but, so far as I can learn, they are very few. For it is the nature of the gambling passion to breed dishonesty. A truly honest bargain is by both parties to it intended to be profitable to both. If A buys a horse of B for $250, and the deal is a square one, it is made because A values the horse more than he values the $250, and B values the $250 more than he values the horse. It is true that the deal may be dishonest on one side or on both. The vender may palm off a worthless horse; the purchaser may pay in counterfeit money. But if the bargain is a square deal, it is one by which both parties are supposed to be profited. In a gambling transaction only one party can profit. What one gains the other loses. One makes his money out of the other. Gambling is simply a scheme for transferring money from the pocket of one man to the pocket of another man, with no equivalent given in return. The only semblance of an equivalent is the chance that the transfer may be made in the opposite direction. The honest gambler is not a thief. He resembles a thief in one important respect: he transfers his victim's purse to his own pocket, and gives him nothing in return. he is unlike the thief in one equally important respect: he gives, or professes to give, the victim a chance to get his opponent's purse without giving for it any return. But whether the gambling is by boys pitching coppers on the sidewalk, or by fine ladies playing bridge, or by professional gamblers playing with cards or dice or roulette-wheel, or by speculative gamblers on 'Change playing with stocks or grain, the basic motive is always the same-the desire to get something for nothing. And, however veiled, that is always essentially a vicious and sordid desire.

But

There are three morals to be drawn from these incidents and the principle they illustrate.

First, If you gamble with cards, be sure you know not only your cards but also your partner.

Second, If you gamble with stocks, trusting on "inside" information, be sure you understand the motive of the man who first furnished the information.

Third, Do not desire to get something for nothing; then you will not gamble at all. L. A.

Springs of Life

Multitudinous as are the human lives which flow upon the earth, the hills of the Lord are infinite, and each little existence finds its source in a secret peculiar spring. Much of the trouble on every hand, the strain and restlessness, comes from the failure to keep a path open and traveled back to this spring, each man for his own feet.

The neglect is easy enough, and comes about for the most part in very virtuous ways. Such a one is working hard for his fellows; how can he possibly drop his tasks and run away and sit down by himself? Then, again, as one travels down the widening world-valley, one encounters many hundreds of streams deeper and finer than one's own, some of them prating loudly enough of the merits of their success. Would it not be a broader and humbler action to follow these streams back to their springs, when the need for primal refreshment comes, than to go ever tracing and retracing one's own familiar windings?

As a matter of fact, there are, of course, no paths for us to other men's springs; the Wisdom which has created us has seen to that interdiction. But if there were, there could hardly be a mistake more cruel and dull on our part than the effort to follow them up. It would seem that a flaming angel must stand at the final turn to smite us away and blind our daring eyes. We may drink of the rivers of all the world and thank God for the privilege; but only of one spring,

our own.

One may learn to guess from the eyes

of the various people one meets in the world which of them have kept the path open, which have neglected it, which, alas! have lost it utterly. The tell-tale expressions range all the way from a clear shining of peace and humor to a haunting tragic restlessness, or, worse, a lethargy. There are not many-sad. truth to tell who seem to follow the path every day. Yet there are some such people. The writer once stood beside a woman whose notable kindness of heart brought her friends daily to lean upon her, and heard her instantly refuse a sufficiently simple office of philanthropy.

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'Why would you not do it?" he ventured to ask, when the baffled advocate had departed, and he stood alone again with his friend.

She regarded him with her clear eyes a moment, hesitated, then smiled and answered:

"Well, yes, I will tell you. I have found that I cannot do work like that; it cuts me off from my springs."

It seems that the poor vexed earth must be glad if all her children would thus relieve her of their insistent presence awhile during each strenuous day. Of doing and doing there is no end, of planning and hoping and striving; but of simple being there is not enough always to keep the mill-wheels in motion and bear the ships to the sea.

In a world of diversity so surprising and so unfailingly excellent as this motley globe ("motley's the only wear ") it follows of course that the springs of life lie in all sorts of nooks and corners, strange and inexplicable enough to those who do not own them. What is this brother doing, perversely setting his feet towards the flinty rock, and that towards the very desert? Springs do not rise there; they rise in the forest, green and fragrant and cool. Ah, but the truth of the matter is that springs rise everywhere; in the heart of New York City there still are springs, and in the sandy plain. It is only essential that every man understand his own thirst.

To the perfectly honest and simplehearted such understanding is clear. They drink and remain unperplexed. But the timid and doubtful refuse some

times to claim their own through humility, and the world loses them. Yes, it is even so bad as that; the world, which has need of them, every one, loses them and suffers. That they lose themselves is sad enough; but that the world and their fellow-men lose them is downright sin on their part. What sort of children demands the world, human lives of what nature? Faint and trickling, muddy and dull? Away with them! No; give her joyous lives, springing each day from the primal source, welling anew from the infinite, touched by the angel of peace. Only such vigorous lives as these can do her work for her.

We have an abiding conviction that joy was meant for the children of men, joy and peace, even here and now. Eternity will be no more begun when we are dead than it is at this moment; why, then, do we insist on postponing our eternal advantages? The way to our joy and our peace is more simple than any trouble of which we complain, and lies close at hand: Only to be true to ourselves, to hark us back to our springs of life, and then to go bravely down through the world, doing our work well. The primal secret is our own, but we interpret it to the world in daily parable.

The Spectator

Not many seasons ago the Spectator had an opportunity to observe somewhat closely the mental processes of a little group of French teachers in a Catholic private boarding-school in one of the suburbs of Paris. During the vacation boarders were taken-chiefly teachers from similar schools in Paris or the provinces, with a semi-occasional foreigner seeking a chance to practice the language. It was with this aim that the Spectator had become, for a few weeks, a member of the household. The school, it should be said, was not merely formally Catholic; its directress and senior teachers were members of an "Institut " founded expressly to educate the young in the true faith; its daily life from early messe to evening "prière" was practically that of a convent; and the views and methods of its teaching force may

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fairly be taken as representative of those of the religious bodies whose schools the République Française has recently abolished—differing, if at all (it would seem fair to assume), on the side of greater liberality. The fragments of conversation which follow are chosen as among the more significant utterances of the various teachers with whom, from time to time, the Spectator talked. They are transcribed here with the thought that they may prove, to the reader, interesting side-lights on that vexed question of Church and State which is still rending France.

It was on the morning of the 11th of July, the great national fête day on which is celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, that the Spectator first received naïve enlightenment as to the reactionary spirit of the little group. It had struck him that a certain coolness, as well as a noticeable lack of information, had been displayed whenever the subject of the day's festivities at Paris had been broached. In a sudden burst of confidence the true state of feeling was revealed-by the teacher, as it chanced, of highest rank and attainments in the institution. She had merely paused for a moment in passing, when some casual question precipitated her pent-up feelings.

"You know," she began, "not all the French like the quatorze juillet. No! not half of them. For what does it stand for? The Revolution! and the French do not love the Revolution."

"But the Bastille ?" suggested the Spectator. "Surely you do not wish that the Bastille were still standing?"

She raised expressive shoulders. "What harm would it do us, the Bastille? But all these strikes, all these mauvaises gens brought up without religion—! And then it was only a mob that took the Bastille. Also, la France is not glorious now as she was in the time of Louis Quatorze. Ah, there was order in those days!-and under Napoleon too-he made order. But Louis Quatorze-ah, it was then that la France was glorious, and great, and respected abroad !"

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But not so much so," the Spectator

could not help suggesting, " under Louis Quinze-"

She waved aside the implication— "Ah, but in the time of Louis Quatorze—”

One afternoon, drawn on by a brighteyed little woman who showed an unusual amount of interest in things American, the Spectator found that he had passed from the general subject of the multiplicity of sects in the United States to the curious phase presented by Christian Science. Not being himself of that persuasion, the Spectator would have been much put to it to produce, in English, a clear statement of its fundamental doctrines, and he smiled internally at his own temerity as he rattled on in faulty French, recounting tales of apparently miraculous cures resulting from the application of a new interpretation of Biblical history. The little Frenchwoman listened with rapt attention; but when the Spectator paused, she sighed deeply, shook her head, and remarked:

"For my part, I suspect it is the devil, not God, who works these cures."

"But why," asked the Spectator, "should the devil do good?"

"That a greater evil may follow," she answered, with the glibness of one who utters a stock phrase. Then

"That is the way the Masons perform their miracles, you know-by the aid of the devil."

On the Spectator's expressing surprise, not to say doubt—

"Yes," she continued, "the devil is there in person. Oh, I wouldn't believe it myself, at first. But some of our priests got themselves introduced into one of the meetings. to see what happened, and there was the devil in person,, sitting in a chair! And when they made the sign of the cross, he vanished. So now, of course, I know it is true!"

It was on another day and with another teacher that the Spectator introduced the subject of the Reformation.

"Ah, Luther? Of course it was just self-will and obstinacy that made him

start the Reformation. In the first place, he set himself up against the Pope in the matter of indulgences, which was very wrong. Then, when the Holy Father corrected him, he got angry-his amour propre was roused. Of course he was a very wicked man, for he seduced a nun. She was to blame too, naturally, but not so much as he-car Luther était un homme très séduisant. . . . The English Church? Oh, that was quite a different story-a very simple one. There was just one cause for it. Henry the Eighth wanted to divorce his wife, and the Pope wouldn't permit it. So he founded a new church, with himself as the head-et voilà l'église anglicane."

From these eminently simple and concise explanations the general character of the histories in use at the pen sion may be imagined. The History. of French Literature was an especially interesting work. However brief the biographical notes on any author, there was always space for an account of his education by the "good Jesuit fathers;" for the relation of death-bed scenes in which the calling of a priest figured largely; or, perhaps, for an expression of regret that the writer had not lived longer, as in that case the "sound religious teaching instilled into him in his youth would surely have borne fruit."

In this connection the experience of a young English girl encountered by the Spectator at the pension is in point. She had spent nearly a year there "buried," as the phrase among students in Paris is, far from her friends, in concentrated study; and at the time of the Spectator's stay was following the summer course at the Alliance Française, whose certificate is much prized by teachers. Brought to this severe test, she found herself well up to the standard in her grammatical knowledge and in her speaking and writing grasp of the language. But when the question of literature arose, it was quite another story. After her first lecture, beginning to realize her deficiencies in this line, she

mentioned to her teacher at the pension the name of a certain French Literature (the most complete and scholarly published) which the Alliance had strongly recommended. Hands were raised in holy horror. What! That impious, that scandalous book! Never! She must not sully her young mind by contact with it. Daunted by the outburst, she did not venture on the purchase of the history till toward the end of the course, when, in desperation, she bought and secretly read it. But it was too late. She failed in her examination by two or three points-a deficiency amply accounted for by the character of her training on this one most important line. Her confession of these facts to the Spectator toward the close of his stay was not, as may be imagined, wholly untinged with bitterness. As to the new history, her young girl's innocence had found in several weeks' peru sal nothing to shock it; while as to the one in use at the pension--" What does it tell you?" she exclaimed. "That a

man lived and died a Christian! And that's about all!" So, at the eleventh hour, was the truth brought home to her that the scathing condemnation of "Tartuffe " as an attack on the Holy Catholic Church does not equal in value, as training for a scholarly examination, its analysis as one of the masterpieces of the world's dramatic literature. Now, there is no doubt in the Spectator's mind that, whatever may have been true of Molière and the "good Jesuit fathers," the teachings instilled into their pupils. by certain devout Catholic ladies of his acquaintance do, in many cases, bear excellent fruit-moral, if not intellectual. With minds hermetically sealed against the reception of an idea opposed to the Church's teaching, these children may grow up, and grow old, in the serene conviction that theirs is the one true Church-the greatest, the most glori ous, the "safest "--and in the practice of all, or nearly all, the Christian virtues. Why, then, you may ask, if they are happy, find fault? Well-the République Française has found fault-for reasons which the Spectator, at least, no longer has any difficulty in imagining.

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