most thorough. She scouted the thin compromise of veiling.

"You would n't wrap your body in a veil and consider yourself decently clothed," she said. "If a part of your face is improper, cover it up and cover it up good."

Mohammed Eli had a picture of a veiled Eastern woman which showed the eyes looking over the curved top of the veil; so he was of the opinion that the eyes need not be hidden. Bertha was for doing better than the Turks, but Annie was not-Annie had an effective eye and Madame Matilda said that they could not see to go about if they bandaged the eyes at all thickly.

"I have always read," said Aunt Miriam after the debate had gone on for a while, "that the mouth is sensuous. Let us begin with the mouth."

"That's so," said Madame. "He had a sensuous mouth.' How often have I seen that in novels!"

"It certainly would be better," said Mohammed Eli, "if people never thought of one's mouth at all. The mouth suggests kissing-yes, it does. You can't tell me. The more I think of it, the more I know our Eastern sisters are right. A woman goes out on the public street with her sinuous, projecting, unclad lips hardly a layer of skin over them-fully exposed to every man who passes. I tell you it is provocative of evil thoughts. Every decent woman should cover her lips"-and he thrust his own out to give emphasis to his dictum.

"I declare I feel quite ashamed of mine," said Aunt Miriam covering hers with her hand; but it was not shame that twinkled in her eyes.

"Dear me, yes," agreed Bertha. "We ought to set the example of just putting them out of sight."

"It's plain enough,” added Madame, serenely. "Clothe the lips and people will forget that there are such things."

So it came about that the ladies of the Saunders household walked down Main street the next afternoon, each one with

a neat covering, like a respirator, over the lips. Gainstown balanced between sympathy and uproarious amusement. Was it a sudden and four-pronged attack of lung trouble; or was it a new freak of Mohammed Eli's? It was a venturesome thing to ask Madame, for she disliked enquiry into her new religious customs. She lacked the missionary spirit. But Mohammed Eli courted enquiry; so when he came along a little later, everyone stopped him with

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Saw your women folks wearing something on their mouths to-day. Anything wrong? "*

And then he would explain and expound. That night Gainstown wellnigh exploded. Never before were the mouths of the Saunders ladies so much in the public mind. People tried to remember what they looked like; photographs of them in the old, unregenerate days became new objects of interest; and young men sat about the village grocery and turned the "sensuous lips" idea over conversationally until ladies hesitated to go shopping there of an evening. Before long every woman in Gainstown felt when in public that her lips were being examined to see if they were "suggestive," and the custom of holding a handkerchief to one's mouth-or a fan-grew in a marked manner. If they escaped temporarily from this lip-conscious feeling, one of the Saunders quartette would come in sight and instantly every mind was riveted upon LIPS.

One day Bertha met a catastrophe. When coming home from the post-office, the elastic holding the lip bandage in its place broke, and the bandage fell off. She reached for her handkerchief, but she had forgotten it, and she was gloveless. Hurrying home, she arrived there with a face of fire and panting as if she had been running.

"Oh," she said, after the terrible accident had been told and mourned over, "it was awful. As soon as people saw me they looked-they looked right at my mouth. Even poor old Mr. Adamson,

though he tried not to look at me, took a quick glance at my lips as he passed. Oh, Mother, as soon as anyone sees us, he thinks 'lips, lips,' whether we have our bandages on or off."

Mohammed Eli came to the rescue. The things that that man knew about what constituted proper behavior for his women folk were astonishing. "You need n't imagine," he said, "that the long experience of your Turkish sisters has taught them nothing. They, no doubt, experimented with covering the mouth only, and found that it produced the very effect they wished to avoid that it called attention to what they had hidden. So they veiled the whole face. There's your lesson for you. Profit by it."

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So the Saunders ladies came out in thick, white veils, crossing the face just below the eyes and hanging dropped from the nose like a doll's apron out of place. Gainstown was hilarious at first, but they kept at it; and it is wonderful how much dogged sincerity will gain in respect for any cause. Advanced" people began to discuss whether or not after all "the Saunderses" were not right. The very fact that these women of their own town thought it "improper" to show the face, gave every other woman a feeling of doubt about the propriety of exposing hers. They had never thought of the thing as a question of right and wrong before; as a matter of course they walked the streets with nude faces. But now, that they thought of it, was it right? The modesty of woman always wishes to retreat from the questioned position; and the question put so steadily and soberly by the Saunders sisterhood sent more and more of feminine Gainstown behind the veil-the full Western veil that hides eyes and all. As time went on, it became a rare sight to see a native woman in any public place in Gainstown without her veil, and people instinctively felt that strangers who came there and paraded the streets with naked faces

were unfeminine-or inclined to be “rapid," as the case indicated.

Bertha early began an agitation for the substitution of the common American veil for the curious rendering of the Turkish variety they were wearing.

"You'd best be careful," Mohammed Eli warned them. "You know how you got into trouble first along by ignoring the experience of centuries."

The

But the feminine indisposition to be a guy weighed against him, and after a time his "harem," as the irreverent called it, was distinguished only by the thickness of its veils. But that was a poor distinction, for all the veils, having been donned for modesty's sake, were thick. Feminine Gainstown, on the street, was a procession of muffled mourners. churches of a Sunday looked as cheerful as a flower-bed from which the blossoms have all been cut. When a strange woman appeared on the street, every man in the village who heard of it turned out to catch a stray ray of sunshine from her unswaddled face. Men who had business in other towns took it as a holiday and were marked by the manner in which they stared at the women they met. Gainstown was under an eclipse; "a young man's fancy" could have "as lightly turned to thoughts of love" at a funeral; it seemed wicked to remember that there were women in the community. Why had the Deity committed the initial impropriety of creating them?

Of course, this could not last. One Sunday, Clara Wilson appeared at church in a short veil that hung just below the lower lip, but exposed the chin. Nothing shone so white in the minds of the whole congregation as that one naked chin. It was a plump chin and a dimple lay right in the center, and masculine Gainstown feasted its eyes on its soft curves, its alluring flesh-tints, and its sweet, satiny femininity to the utter forgetfulness of all else. The congregation was considerably over half composed of women, but there seemed to be only one;

"I never knew," said old Phil. Johnson to the crowd about the officially deserted railway station that afternoon, "that a chin was so pretty before."

"Pretty! Gum! I should say so," said a young fellow, pulling one side of himself straight so he could push a hand into his trousers pocket in search of his knife.

"We've had a long fast, fellers; that's what's the matter with us," observed another.

"But that's a wicked little chin," said a fourth, with a sly smile, whereat there was a guffaw of laughter all round.

In the Macuish drawing-room the conversation was more decorous.

"That Wilson girl made herself very conspicuous this morning," said Mrs. Taylor.

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Very," agreed Mrs. Macuish. “I can't imagine what her mother is thinking of."

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'Her mother!" scoffed Miss Chandler. "She pays no attention to her mother." "A very forward piece, I think,” said Mrs. Macuish.

"Everybody was staring at her chin," added Mrs. Taylor with emphasis. "I expected to see it turn red with shame." "I should have thought she would have felt uncomfortable-sort of undressedlike," observed Mrs. Mosely, mildly.

"Yes-and the effect on the men," said Mrs. Macuish in a passion of emphasis.

But the days went by, and Clara Wilson's evident popularity whenever she appeared in public began to stir doubts in the mind of many a Gainstown maiden of her own age. Was it so terrible a thing to show the chin? Apparently it was not; for now this one did and now that, until chins became quite common sights again upon the streets, and men ceased to compare them the one with the other, and only the contour of those still

a jocular way.

Strange to say, the next step toward emancipation was taken by the Saunders quartette who again dropped the veil below the eyes, thus distancing in the race for public attention those who had commenced to wear a more transparent veiling. This riveted common thought upon eyes, and Mohammed Eli had a deal of arguing to do with those who held that they were more mischievous and more productive of evil than all the rest of the face together.

"It's a funny thing," said one man to him; "you go and swaddle up all the rest of a woman and let her show her eyes. She'd be less disturbing to the peace of mankind if you reversed the process."

But the eyes, bright as they are, were soon eclipsed; for Clara Wilson came out one day with a bare face. There it was in its staring nudity, "sensuous lips" and all. Gainstown caught its breath— and then let it out in a sigh of relief. The lower part of a hill is so much more slippery than the top.

"Dum! If I do n't believe God made no mistake when he made a girl's face," declared old Phil. Johnson. "We thought they was all right until that crazy loon Eli Saunders came around with his dum nonsense.'

"He was just civilizing us," said one of the young fellows, teasingly.

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Civilizing!" snorted Phil. "Making fools of us!"

"No, no; civilizing," persisted the tease. "There are folks that do n't wear any clothes, and we civilize them into wearing some.'

"Well," said Phil., rubbing his head, dubiously, "that's right, I guess; and, goodness knows, they need clothes bad enough. The fact is, God should have made 'em with clothes on up to the neck; but no higher, by gum; no higher!"

ALBERT R. CARMAN.

Montreal, Canada.

The Story of The Sinister Attempt of a Confederacy of The Great Criminals to Debauch Free Government in The Interests of The Feudalism

TH

of Privileged Wealth.

HE RECENT conviction of the New York Central Railroad Company for what United States Judge Holt described as a deliberate and premeditated crime, and which he holds to be "a very much more heinous act than the ordinary common, vulgar crimes which come before criminal courts constantly for punishment, which arise from sudden passion or temptation," the scathing arraignment by the Judge of the great criminals, who, by the way, are among the leading pillars of Wall street; and the imposing of a fine of $108,000 on this criminal corporation, constitute one of the most important recent events in America, showing, first, what can be done in exposing and punishing crimes when men really want the criminals brought to justice; second, how the judiciary and government officials respond to their masters; and, finally, that the people are at last awakening to a realization of the fact that their hope lies in again becoming the real power in politics instead of abandoning government to the "safe, sane and conservative" criminals who in recent decades have gained control of the government in city, state and nation, manned the posts of vantage with their tools, and then proceeded to rob and plunder every man, woman and child in the land.

So long as the people slept the feudalism of privileged wealth marched forward with apparently irresistible tread. Monopoly after monopoly rose, and trusts were formed to enable the privileged few to become the masters of the wage-earning millions, to the extent that they might dictate the wage and lower the prices paid to workers on the one hand, while placing every member of the community at the mercy of the rapacity of the monopolists on the other.

With corruption and dishonesty rife in public life, business ideals naturally reflected the

same eclipse of old-time integrity. Substi tutions and fraud marked the products of the corporations. Foods were poisoned and often prepared under filthy conditions, to be placed before the people as tempting articles of diet, that corrupt and essentially criminal multimillionaires might acquire still other millions filched from the people.

The great railways, the arteries of the nation's business life, were the pioneer and chief offenders in the corrupting of government; nor did they stop with defeating many laws intended to protect the people from the rapacity and extortion of the public carriers. They deliberately engaged with other unscrupulous corporations in defying such laws as were made, feeling that such was their power in city, state and nation that they were secure in their anarchal course. The fact that these great criminals posed as moral mentors of society and in college, church and press loudly descanted on probity, integrity and national honor, helped to render their continued crimes possible; for it seemed incredible to the people that men with apparently such high ideals and who were so industriously helping church and school, could be deliberately and habitually criminals, defying the laws as flagrantly, though to be sure more cunningly, than the professional burglar, highwayman and sneak-thief.

With Depew descanting on national honor; with Rockefeller preaching Christian virtue; with the whole army of other criminals and law-breakers parroting moral platitudes while purchasing immunity from punishment by princely campaign contributions and "yellow dog" funds; and finally, with the whole confederacy of law-breakers and their agents and mouthpieces with one voice denouncing all high-minded men and women who exposed their criminality as "muck-rakers" or men guilty of "loose talk," the plutocracy wellnigh transformed the Republic into an oli garchy of privileged wealth, with almost as absolute sway as that exerted by the bureaucracy of Russia. It therefore became neces

sary for the reformers to back up every charge with proof, and this for the last five or six years has been done. The magazines led the battle, but certain newspapers nobly seconded them, chief among which were the Hearst chain of papers, and with the great wealth at their command they were able to obtain proofs of the most damaging character. Last spring the "safe, sane and conservative" criminals of Wall street were disturbed one morning by the announcement that Mr. Hearst had secured proof positive of rebates on the part of the New York Central Railroad and the SugarTrust. The proof was placed in the hands of the Federal government, after the AttorneyGeneral had promised to proceed, as the evidence was of such a character as to prove conclusive. As a result, indictments were found and the trial on the first counts resulted in a verdict of guilty and the imposing of a heavy fine on the criminal company.

rate and the tariff rate was maintained as against their competitors-the result might be, and not improbably would be, that their competitors would be driven out of business.

"This crime is one which in its nature is deliberate and premeditated. I think over a fortnight elapsed between the date of Palmer's letter requesting the reduced rate and the answer of the railroad company deciding to grant it, and then for months afterward this business was carried on and these claims for rebates submitted month after month and checks in payment of them drawn month after month.

"Such a violation of the law, in my opinion, in its essential nature, is a very much more heinous act than the ordinary, common, vulgar crimes which come before criminal courts constantly for punishment which arise from sudden passion or temptation. The crime in this case was committed by men of education and of large business experience, and whose

The masterly arraignment of the great criminals by Judge Holt should be preserved by friends of free government as one of the pioneer utterances in the battle of the people to overthrow the confederacy of the great criminals and restore the Republic to its old place as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Space renders it impossible for us to give the entire arraignment, but we quote in the following lines the Judge's admirable words describing how infinitely more culpable and infamous are the great criminals of the railway company than are the vulgar criminals who have through drink or stress of necessity committed crimes for which the law deals swift and heavy penalties:

"The Government's evidence to establish the defendants' guilt was clear, conclusive and undisputed. The case was a flagrant one. The transactions which took place under this illegal contract were very large; the amounts of rebates returned were considerable, and the amount of the rebate itself was large, amounting to more than one-fifth of the entire tariff charge for the transportation of merchandise from this city to Detroit. "It is not too much to say, in my opinion, that if this business was carried on for a considerable time on that basis-that is, if this discrimination in favor of this particular shipper was made with an 18 instead of a 23-cent

might have been expected to set an example of obedience to law, upon the maintenance of which alone in this country the security of their property depends. It was committed on behalf of a great railroad corporation, which, like other railroad corporations, has received gratuitously from the State large and valuable privileges for the public's convenience and its own, which performs quasipublic functions and which is charged with the highest obligation in the transaction of its business to treat the citizens of this country alike, and not to carry on its business with unjust discriminations between different citizens or different classes of citizens.

"This crime in its nature is one usually done with secrecy and proof of which is very difficult to obtain.

"Now, under these circumstances, I am forced to the conclusion, in a case in which the proof is so clear and the facts so flagrant, it is the duty of the Court to fix a penalty which shall in some degree be commensurate with the gravity of the offense. As between the two defendants, in my opinion, the principal penalty should be imposed on the corporation. The traffic manager in this case presumably acted without any advantage to himself and without any interest in the transaction, either by the direct authority or in accordance with what he understood to be the policy or the wishes of his employer.

"The sentence of this Court in this case is