meant that I My sole com

My

swinging from my coat; this was in care of the conductor. panion on this memorable trip was a yellowstriped kitten (I was very fond of cats). companion and I reached my mother in firstclass condition. I began at once to adapt myself to existing conditions, for I had never before attended school with white children. My little traveling companion, the kitten, began in the wrong way, for she pilfered everything that she could use for self-preservation; and, as the wages of sin is death, in a few short weeks a clean spot in a grassy plot and a few buttercups marked her last resting-place.

I must have been a meddlesome sort of a chap, for every day, much to my dislike, a crowd of my white schoolmates would show me the way home in double time. The two years that I remained in Cranford made a decided change in my life, for here I learned most of my manners. Through contact with the people for whom my mother worked I gained many ideas of courtesy and etiquette. Also the time spent there helped me immensely in my academic work, for when I returned home I was advanced two grades higher than I would have been if I had remained there.

I didn't have any father to help me through school, only a dear mother, and she worked early and late that I might procure an education. In order to relieve the strain a little I would sell papers after school, and soon I became a kind of professional in that line. I could fill pages in relating the little incidents that happened to me while running up and down the streets and boarding the rapidly moving cars, selling my papers, but time and space will not permit me. The thorns had begun to prick just a little, but I didn't mind them.

When I reached the age of fourteen, I became a worker in one of the crate factories at home. The earnings from this job, along with the money from my papers, enabled us to get along pretty well. So time passed swiftly by, and I was surely being educated. When I reached high school, the idea, which some of my mother's Northern friends gave her years ago, of sending me to Hampton reached a full size, and we began working harder than ever to make that idea a possibility.

On June 8, 1911, I finished the high school course, and the following September entered Hampton as a work-year student. Two of my aims were accomplished: first, to com

plete my high school course; second, to become a Hampton student.

My new duties were hard at times, but one must learn to undergo hardships without flinching. I was to check up all freight that came on the wharf, and to do everything that Captain Gibson or any teacher could think of having me do. I helped to deliver freight through beating rain and blinding snow, through the heat of summer and the cold of winter. That work-year winter was cold— oh, so cold! it seemed as if it had waited for me to arrive in order to be the coldest winter in twenty-five years. But through the help of the Lord I survived that winter, and when the birds began to sing and the green grass to appear I felt none the worse for my experience. The summer passed away uneventfully and soon my work-year came to a close.

On October 1, 1912, I entered the Trade School as a first-year machinist. I worked hard and earnestly in the shop, my mother did the same at home, and the thorns began to prick hard and incessantly. But the harder they pricked the harder I struggled for my goal. I clenched my teeth, shrugged my shoulders, and plodded onward, upward, to the beacon light. I spent the summer of 1913 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, working hard to make ends meet, but money was tight, and I returned to Hampton with the thorns still pricking. But I struggled through two more hard terms, and on May 27, 1915, I completed the machinist's trade, and spent the summer of 1915 in Atlantic City again. Most of the summer was very cool, the war was raging, and every one seemed to be trying to see who could hold the eagle the tightest. But I determined to return and finish the academic course, and here I am.

Life

Soon I expect to leave dear old Hampton, soon I expect to try the hard world. is a struggle that all must face, and face it I will. For seventeen terms my mother has kept me in school; she has struggled for me all of my life. She prayed to be spared to see me finish school, and I prayed for her to live to enjoy the benefits of my education. Her prayer has been answered; God grant mine will be answered too!

The people of my race are living in these thorny rose-beds; may I be able, while I am helping my mother, to clear out some of the thorns of prejudice, poverty, and ignorance, and leave them, instead, education, race pride, and happiness!

Proverbs vi. 10: "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep."

H

AVE you ever met any members of the Dilly Dally family? I'm sure you have, for there are such a lot of them. To begin with, there is little Peter Put-Off Dilly Dally-a very well-meaning child, but who never wants to begin anything he means to do right away. He means to study his lessons for to-morrow and know them well, but instead of commencing on them this afternoon before the sleepy evening time comes he stays out a long while playing. "I'll surely get at them the instant I finish supper," he thinks; but he hangs about listening to his older brothers and sisters, and by the time he opens his books the Sand Man has nearly filled his eyes, so he has to go to bed. He means to get up before breakfast and do them, and he asks his sister Lily to wake him.

But he has chosen a very poor alarm clock, for Lily is Lily Lie-Abed Dilly Dally. You never saw such a girl to call in the morning! Her mother raps on the door but gets no answer, goes in and taps her and she rolls over, pokes her and she murmurs: “Oh, just five minutes more; I'll surely get up then." But her mother is no more than gone when Lily is again sound asleep.

Peter and Lily have an older sister, Bessie Blame-the-Clock Dilly Dally, who walks into the room every morning just as the others are finishing their breakfast, and says: "Dear me, am I late? Your watches must be wrong or my clock is slow." Her clock was all right the evening before, but somehow it has the habit of taking a twenty-minute nap in the middle of every night, for Bessie blames it regularly each morning.

Mr. and Mrs. Never-Ready Dilly Dally can hardly find fault with the ways of their children. They live on Pokey Street, about fifteen minutes' walk from the church they attend; and you should see them on Sunday morn

ings! It seems as though breakfast would never begin; and there is such a fuss getting Peter Put-Off and Lily Lie-Abed and their brothers and sisters, Bobby Behind-Time, Tommy Tardy, Sally Slow-Coach, and Dicky Dawdle, started for Sunday-school. (I told you that the Dilly Dallies were a large family.) And I've forgotten Bessie Blame-the-Clock, who belongs to the Bible class. How annoying it is to their teachers to have them strolling in when the session is half over and interrupting the lesson in their classes !

And when the children are all off papa and mamma hustle about, intending to be in time for the church service; but time has a way of getting lost on Pokey Street. By and by Mr. Never-Ready looks at his watch. "Gracious, my dear, church will begin in ten minutes, and that terrible Dr. Prompt is such a stickler for starting on the minute!" "My dear, are you ready?" he calls up the stairs. "Just a second." But Mrs. Dilly Dally's seconds have a habit of stretching themselves out as though they were made of elastic. When she does come down, where is her husband? He is looking all over for his Sunday hat. "Never mind, take any hat; we simply must start." Down Pokey Street they hurry, when suddenly Mrs. Dilly Dally remembers that she has left her envelope with the money for the collection on her bureau; and back runs Mr. Dilly Dally. Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Never-Ready walk down the aisle when the service is more than a third

over.

Now none of this Dilly Dally family are what you would call bad people, but they are really great sinners; for sin is being unlike God, and God is always punctual. We never need worry whether the sun will get up on time in the morning or be late in going to bed at night. Our Father in heaven who sees to the sun's rising and setting never fails us by a minute. To be his true. children is to be always exactly on time.

N Sunday afternoon, June 18, the new lecture hall of the Imperial University in Tokyo was filled to the last seat, and the walls were lined with standing men. More than two thousand silent and interested Japanese were gathered there, together with a hundred and more Hindus, and as many Europeans, to hear Sir Rabindranath Tagore, the great Indian poet and philosopher, deliver his message of India to Japan.

The war has sadly interrupted the succession of Western scholars who come to Japan by invitation of the Government and as guests of the Imperial University. Dr. Eucken was due to arrive in September, 1914, and a long programme had been made out for the great German theologian and his family. His contribution, by the Imperial command of the Kaiser, to the volume of ninety-two essays in defense of Germany's conduct at the beginning of the war was a rude shock and disillusionment to his admirers all over the world.

Sir Rabindranath's visit had long been expected, and he was greeted with many honors. He has been received by the Emperor, fêted at the British Embassy and by the communities of Indian merchants and students in Japan, and now, after this lionizing and sightseeing, is to retire to a monastery for a month of quiet before sailing for the United States at the end of July.

There was a burst of applause when the President of the University appeared, accompanied by the poet in his long white gown and brown velvet cap-an Asiatic of the purest Aryan type, with fine straight nose, large eyes, a level brow, with curling gray hair and beard, and a complexion of old ivory, or as if slightly tanned from his long sea voyage. This graceful, gracious figure, this poet who looked like a poet, stood and quietly read from his printed text in a smooth, clear voice that seemed to carry to the farthest end of the vast, sloping, octagonal lecture hall.

He noted, first, that Asia had long lived in the past, its face so turned backwards that it could never move in the path of progress, and continued, substantially as follows:

"When things stood like this, and we in Asia hypnotized ourselves into the belief that it could never by any possibility be otherwise, Japan rose from her dreams and in giant strides left centuries of inaction behind, overtaking the present time in its foremost goal. . . . One morning the whole world looked up in surprise when Japan broke through her wall of old habits in a night and came out triumphant. . . . And Japan, the child of the ancient East, has also fearlessly claimed all the gifts of the modern age for herself. This it is which has given heart to the rest of Asia. . . . Japan has taught us that we must learn the watchword of the age in which we live, and answer must be given to the sentinel of time if we are to escape annihilation. . .

"Japan has imported her food from the West, but not her vital nature. Japan cannot altogether lose and merge herself in the scientific paraphernalia she has acquired from the West, and be turned into a mere borrowed machine. She has her own soul, which must assert itself over all her requirements; . . . and the process of assimilation is going on.

"For a person like myself, belonging to the East, her present problems and her methods of solution of those problems are matters of utmost interest. The whole world waits to see what this great Eastern nation is going to do with the opportunities and responsibilities she has accepted from the hand of the modern time. If it be a mere reproduction of the West, then the great expectation she has raised will remain unfulfilled.

For there are grave questions that the Western civilization has presented before the world, but not completely answered. The conflict between the individual and the state, labor and capital, the man and the woman; the conflict between the greed of material gain and the spiritual life of man, the organized selfishness of nations and the higher ideals of humanity; the conflict between all the ugly complexities inseparable from giant organizations of commerce and state and the natural instinct of man crying for simplicity

and beauty and fullness of leisure-all these have yet to be brought to a harmony in a manner not yet dreamed of.

You Japanese cannot with a light heart accept the modern civilization with all its tendencies, methods, and structures, and dream that they are inevitable. . . . Once you did solve the problems of man to your own satisfaction, you had your philosophy of life and evolved your own art of living. . . . Of all countries in Asia, here in Japan you have the freedom to use the material you have gathered from the West according to your genius and your need. You are fortunately not hampered from the outside; therefore your responsibility is all the greater, for in your voice Asia shall answer the questions that Europe has submitted to the conference of man. your land the experiments will be carried on by which the East will change the aspects of the modern civilization, infusing life in it where it is a machine, substituting human heart for cold expediency, not caring so much for power and success as for harmonious and living growth, for truth and beauty. . . .

In

"India is too vast in its area and too diverse in its races. It is many countries packed in one geographical receptacle. It is just the opposite of what Europe truly is—namely, one country made into many. . . . In America and Australia Europe has simplified her problem by almost exterminating the original populations. Even in the present age this spirit of extermination is showing its fangs in another manner-in California, in Canada, in Australia-by inhospitably shutting out aliens through those who themselves were aliens in the lands they occupy. . . . The political civilization, which has sprung up from the soil of Europe and is overrunning the whole world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is always watchful to keep at bay the aliens or to exterminate them. It is carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies; it feeds upon the resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. It is always afraid of other races achieving their eminence, naming it as a peril, and tries to thwart all symptoms of greatness outside its own boundaries, forcing down races of men who are weaker, to be eternally fixed in their weakness.

"Before this political civilization came to its power and opened its hungry jaws wide enough to gulp down great continents of the earth, we had wars, pillages, changes of monarchy, and consequent miseries, but never

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such a sight of fearful and hopeless gluttony, such wholesale feeding of nation upon nation, such huge machines for turning great portions of the earth into mincemeat, never such terrible jealousies, with all their ugly teeth and claws ready for tearing open each other's vitals. This political civilization is scientific, not human. It is powerful, because it concentrates all its forces upon one purpose, like a millionaire acquiring money at the cost of his soul. It betrays its trust, it weaves its meshes of lies without shame, it enshrines gigantic idols of greed in its temples, taking great pride in the costly ceremonials of its worship, calling this patriotism. And it can be safely prophesied that this cannot go on, for there is a moral law in this world which has its application both to individuals and to organized bodies of men. You cannot go on violating these laws in the name of your nation, yet enjoy their advantage as individuals. This public sapping of the ethical ideals slowly reacts upon each member of society, gradually breeding weakness, where it is not seen, and causing that cynical distrust of all things sacred in human nature, which is the true symptom of senility. You must keep in mind that this political civilization, this creed of national patriotism, has not been given a long trial. . . . But ruins of sky-scrapers of power and broken machinery of greed even God's rain is powerless to raise up again; for they were not of life, but went against life as a whole-they are relics of the rebellion that shattered itself to pieces against the eternal.

"The East, with her ideals, in whose bosoms are stored the ages of sunlight and silence of stars, can patiently wait till the West, hurrying after the expedient, loses breath and stops. The East knows that she is immortal, and she will appear again and again in man's history with her draught of life. Europe, while busily speeding to her engagements, disdainfully casts her glance from her carriage window to the reaper reaping his harvest in the field, and in her intoxication of speed cannot but think of him as slow and ever receding backwards. But the speed comes to its end, the engagement loses its meaning, and the hungry heart clamors for food, till at last she comes to the lowly reaper reaping his harvest in the sun. For if the office cannot wait, or the buying and selling, or the craving for excitement, love waits, and beauty and the wisdom of suffering, and the fruits of patient devotion and

reverent meekness, of simple faith. And thus shall wait the East till her time comes.

"Eastern Asia has been pursuing its own path, evolving its own civilization, which was not political but social, not predatory and mechanically efficient but spiritual, and based upon all the varied and deeper relations of humanity. The solutions of the life problems of peoples were thought out in seclusion and carried out behind the security of aloofness, where all the dynastic changes and foreign invasions hardly touched them. But now we are overtaken by the outside world, our seclusion is lost forever. Yet this we must not regret, as a plant should never regret when the obscurity of its seed-time is broken. Now the time has come when we must make the world problem our own problem; we must bring the spirit of our civilization into harmony with the history of all nations of the earth; we must not, in foolish pride, still keep ourselves fast within the shell of the seed and the crust of the earth which protected and nourished our ideals; for these, the shell and the crust, were meant to be broken, so that life may spring up in all its vigor and beauty, bringing its offerings to the world in open light.

"In this task of breaking the barrier and facing the world Japan has come out the first in the East. She has infused hope in the heart of all Asia. Asia now feels that

she must prove her life by producing living work; she must not lie passively dormant or feebly imitate the West in the infatuation of fear or flattery. For this we offer our thanks to this land of the Rising Sun and solemnly ask her to remember that she has the mission of the East to fulfill."

Sir Rabindranath was listened to with deep attention. Storms of hand-clapping followed some of his most telling sentences and accompanied him when he quickly retired at the close of his address.

The visit of the Indian poet and philosopher is an event of more than usual significance to the Japanese, and perhaps even to the entire Orient. For, besides his attractive and magnetic personality and the record of his achievements, Tagore is an Oriental whom all Europe acknowledges and honors, an Asiatic upon whom the Occident has bestowed its first prize for literature, an Eastern poet who ranks with the distinguished Western bards of to day. The Nobel prize carried a special significance to the whole Eastern world when it was bestowed on the gifted Tagore.

The importance to the Occident of this message of India to Japan lies in this fact: there is an Asia, and its various peoples are rapidly coming to a national consciousness. E. R. S.

T

HE average sailor of to-day has no

bed of roses. At the same time, he is not so terribly treated as we are sometimes led to believe. I do not mean that the conditions under which he works are faultless-they seldom are; but that there are men ashore whose surroundings are worse.

It was to compare the present condition of American sailors with the conditions of sailors under foreign flags that took me, during February and March, on a rambling and not altogether uninteresting trip in American, British, Swedish, and Danish ships. The ships I was on are all freighters. None of them are licensed to carry passengers. It was consequently necessary for me to sign on as a member of the crew on each of them.

I sailed from Philadelphia in February on an American steamer carrying coal to Havana. The ship was built four or five years ago on the Great Lakes. She has been in the transatlantic trade recently, and can be taken as a fair example of an American freighter.

Including the officers and engineers, there were twenty-seven men aboard. The crew, in the ordinary deep-sea meaning of the word, was made up of six firemen, three oilers, two quartermasters, and four deck-hands. It was in these men that I was particularly interested.

In this ship the engines, bunkers, and accommodations are all in the stern. Nothing is forward except cargo space. In the deckhouse the officers have their rooms. On the deck below the engineers have their quarters.