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ROMANCE IN BUSINESS.

with. Yet the trader, though his scalp might be "raised” at any moment, at least made his journeys in comparative comfort. But the trapper had to skulk like the beasts he hunted, in a country swarming with hostile savages, who always kept their eyes "skinned" in search of “sign.” Scalps at any time had an irresistible attraction for the wandering braves; and, moreover, they naturally gave no quarter to the intruders who scared the game from their hunting-grounds. So when some little knot of trappers was caught and "cornered," there was nothing for it but to sell their lives dearly. The chance of death had few terrors for them. But whether game was abundant or plentiful they still might have to endure terrible privations, for when they knew the red men were around them on the warpath, they dared neither discharge a rifle or kindle a fire. They followed the fur-bearing animals like the sleuthhound, and though they never neglected immediate precautions, no fear of consequences stopped their advance. They committed themselves on brawling torrents flowing into unexplored wildernesses, to the frail canoes they constructed of birch-bark, and were swept down between walls of precipices and past coverts that might be alive with lurking enemies, to the rapids that sucked them toward plunging cataracts. Farther to the north, or in the depths of the

The Old World has been making marvelous progress, and rival nations running each other hard, have been amassing fortunes undreamt of by their fathers; but the United States of America are, after all, the stage for dramatic business par excellence. They boast the broadest field, the biggest capitalists, and the boldest ventures. There would seem to be something in the climate and soil that breeds a certain quick-sighted daring, which is nevertheless tempered by caution and shrewdness. While not a few are attaining to enormous wealth, while many are making splendid competencies, multitudes are continually being ruined and beginning again, for hope springs eternally out of disappointments and misfortunes, nor is anybody inclined to resign himself to failure. The average American seems to turn to business as Charles Fox betook himself to the hazard-table. Making money is the greatest pleasure in life, but next to winning comes the excitement of losing. In fact, the Americans are perpetually playing at games of chance; from the agricultural pioneer who shifts westward from farm to farm, selling each successive holding in a vague notion of bettering himself; from the miner who goes prospecting for the precious metals in the wild solitudes of the western territories, to the tradesman who starts his dry-winter, they had to endure such terrible extremes of cold, goods store on credit, and the professional man who stakes his savings in railway stocks. Nowhere does money change hands more quickly; nowhere is retail trade brisker in good times; nowhere does any plausible schemer or inventor so easily find backers with dollars in their pockets. An American who has "made his pile" hedges against future ill-luck while making free with his capital. Should al! continue to go well, he lives in luxury and dies respected as a "cute" capitalist. Should his hopes prove fallacious and his business speculations unfortunate, he has the satisfaction of having had his fling and the zest of recommencing an animated struggle. Nay, even the ladies of go-ahead Chicago, as we see by the journals of that city, have left the parks and the ball-rooms to go upon the corn exchange, and have taken to gambling heavily in grain, which may or may not prove profitable to their husbands. While those magnates of finance who tower above the mass, have attained to the acme of financial enjoyment. They stand together in groups and "rings," intriguing and forming alliances, to monopolize the control of vast national undertakings, which fluctuate according to the results of their combinations. In fact they are the men who hold the national hazard-banks against all comers. And whatever may be the changing fortunes of individuals, the great tide of prosperity flows and swells, thanks to the inexhaustible natural resources of the mighty watershed it drains.

But, notwithstanding all the marvels of modern enterprise, the most sensational chapters of American commercial history were the earliest, and relate to the rivalry of Englishmen with the natives of the States. The name of Jacob Astor, the father of American millionaires, associates itself naturally with the fur trade; and we know nothing more thrilling in historical fiction than the lives of the trappers and voyageurs of the fur companies. When the greater part of the northern continent was an unreclaimed game-preserve, stretching from the icebergs that skirt Alaska and Rupert's Land to the waterless deserts in the old Spanish province of New Mexico; when the strength of the savage Indian tribes was still unbroken as the countless herds of buffalo were scarcely diminished,-the Indian trader of those lawless days literally carried his life in his band, as he tracked his way into the pathless wilderness, laden with such seductive treasures as powder and firewater. He risked his scalp on the doubtful guarantee of the self-interest of the "friendly" Indians he hoped to deal

that even these men of iron often succumbed. Nor was it only with the savages and the elements they had to contend. Competing companies of merchants and respectable investors winked at the ruthless warfare of the people in their service, if they did not positively encourage it. It might have been supposed that the lonely white stragglers meeting in these inhospitable wastes, would have readily lent each other help and sympathy. Not a bit of it. In the territory of the United States, the American Fur Company and the Rocky Mountain Company-in the British Dominions, the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwestern Company-perpetually carried on a remorseless warfare, subsidizing, for one side and the other, the tomahawks and scalping-knives of the tribes. In these circumstances the trading-posts of the companies, dotted over the wilds, and isolated in the winter by hundreds of leagues of frozen snow-fields, were comparatively luxurious havens of refuge. Yet even in these, mere handfuls of roughly armed whites had to garrison imperfectly stockaded wooden shanties against mobs of savages, who, when they were brought together for the sake of trade, were maddened as a preliminary with drugged whiskey. So there was hardly a fur robe in the palmy days of the fur trade but was stained with the blood of the trappers who toiled for it.

The history of the United States is emphatically that of a trading people. Other nations have emerged slowly into wealth and prosperity through ages of war, waste, and ignorance, and in spite of the prejudices, indifference, or discouragements of the aristocratic castes that governed them. The Spaniards, who preceded our English emigrants in the New World, were a race of conquerors-literally men of blood and iron-who sacrificed their new subjects to their lust for silver, and left only garrisons behind them in their territories. The French settlers in Canada and on the Mississippi had few of the qualities of successful colonists, had the fortunes of war not gone against them. But the pilgrim fathers, and even the cavaliers who turned planters in the Southern States, carried mercantile and industrial aptitudes with them as the most valuable part of their freight. They found the grandest openings ever offered to agriculture and commerce, in an unlimited expanse of fertile soil, with every variety of genial climate. They had magnificent harbors, with an unrivalled network of water communications, that brought each fresh bit of country they broke up into cheap connection with their seaports. They had only to

which they turn to profitable account. Others with keener brains seize on one of the chances that are always presenting themselves in a new country, and originate some local industry that is the making of a neighborhood, and yields fabulous returns. While others, again, who are pronounced still more fortunate, hit off a vein of silver, discover a coalfield or a copper-mine, or strike petroleum, probably selling the concession for millions of dollars to a company who can find the capital for gigantic works. What with the extraordinary impulse given to joint-stock enterprise; with the growth of the grain trade, the cattle trade, the pork tradewhich not only supply fifty millions of home consumers, but flood the foreign markets; what with the constant construction of railways and other indispensable works,-a class of men have come into existence who are leviathan speculators par excellence. They have no fancy for locking up their money in land. They have no temptation to turn their attention to politics, except in so far as controlling the legislatures may serve their purposes. They have no ambition even to found a family, for those who come after them may take care of themselves, which generally they are very well able to do. They have, for the most part, few personal wants, and no extravagant tastes; and even their lavish ex

contend with wild animals and roaming tribes of savages, who could offer no appreciable resistance to their advance, and who were inevitably doomed to slow extermination. And when once they had fairly organized themselves together for their élan, their progress was as rapid as irresistible. Recruits swelled their hosts from the commercial nations of Europe; and the energy of the Englishman was backed up by the stolid resolution of the Dutchman, and the perseverance of the frugal German. Ireland has sent them legions of sturdy arms, though the mass of Irishmen there, as at home, seem destined to do the rough drudgery of the community. But the result of that blending of blood and races has been a people of feverishly earnest temperament, working with the restless force of a high-pressure engine, abounding in ideas they are bent on realizing, grappling with the difficulties they are determined to vanquish, carrying business into their brief hours of relaxation, and making money one way or another, in season and out of season. Never has a nation lived faster in every sense; and their very distractions take the form of speculations and business enterprise. The lives of careworn men who scramble through their meals, who pass their moments of conviviality standing up at refreshment bars, who sleep night after night in the railway or on the steamboat, trav-penditure, which has usually a practical object, bears an ineling thousands of miles with nothing but a hand-valise, is typical of their pregnant national history. They can boast of no venerable associations, but already the country is one vast World's Fair, exhibiting on the grandest scale and in infinite variety the whole broad range of modern invention. Already the "New" England States, offshoots almost of yesterday from our Puritan England, have fallen behind in the race of enterprise, and are comparatively overcrowded. Already the town of San Francisco, whose "Golden Gate" was only yesterday an outlying postern, giving admission to the wildernesses and back settlements of the Union, has assumed such imposing proportions, and admits such a flood of traffic and population, that it seems likely to dispute with the Empire City the claim to be the principal entrance to the country. The rival railway lines, running parallel across the continent, are fast obliterating the picturesque memorials of the wild Western society of the last generation. Not a dozen years ago the railroad bridges had to be picketed by pairs of armed watchers, who earned inadequate wages on the understanding that their scalps might adorn an Indian wigwam. It was nothing unusual for a through-train to Truckee or Omaha to be brought to a standstill by a stampede of buffaloes. Now the last of the Sioux or Cheyennes have been relegated to their reserves, or lounge about the stations in the last stage of moral dilapidation, ready to lend the palefaces a hand with their luggage. The buffaloes have been wantonly massacred for their robes, and have retreated behind the Red River or to the confines of Texas and New Mexico. The Smoky Forks, famous in frontier warfare, are dotted over with farms and thriving townships; while the "Bloody Creeks," so named from the massacres of mountain men, are moorings for fleets of canal-boats and grain-barges.

The scope that is offered to financial and industrial ambitions in developing and manipulating the resources of such a continent, with its inexhaustible water-power, is practically unlimited. How quickly may money be turned over, and how general must be the diffusion of wealth, when a cluster of wooden shanties in some favored situation springs into a town in the course of a year or two, and grows by geometrical progression from a town to a great city! Steady men are placed in comfortable circumstances by ordinary industry or by the natural advance of legitimate investments. They buy land or building-sites, and bide their time, till the price goes up with the spread of population, in the mean while raising money upon mortgage,

finitesimal proportion to their fluctuating incomes. The one pleasure of their existence is making successful hits, and, to do them justice, they care less for the stakes than the excitement of playing for them. They have their friendships of convenience, and their bitter feuds, like those mediæval barons who were always at daggers drawn. They have their trusted retainers, too, and their troops of dependants, who hold stock by their favor or in their name, and back them up at the board meetings. And, like the feudal barons, they are unscrupulous enough in their dealings, though they may have their peculiar notions of chivalry and honor. So the Vanderbilts and the Drews and the Jay Goulds, with many others whose names have been less familiarly known in England, using the spare millions | which are really of little use to them except as counters, give a strange zest to their feverish lives, by devising combinations to the discomfiture of their opponents. Sometimes the war is waged openly, as when a concerted attack is opened on some combination of lines which has been appreciated by a group of rival capitalists. Or the snares are laid with such skill, that even a "long-headed" ring plunges headlong into them; and then the question is, whether they be strong enough to hold the victims. Only the other day a daring conspiracy of outsiders caught the knowing ones, almost without exception. An incident of this kind is of rare occurrence, and says more for the courage of the plotters than for their wisdom, unless they are satisfied with the coup they have made, and take their leave of Wall Street with their profits. The men who were victimized accepted their defeat with characteristic stoicism, saying as little as possible as to the extent of their losses. But, sooner or later, they are sure to take their revenge; and indeed it would be contrary to all the principles of successful operations, if so unparalleled a piece of audacity went unpunished.

Within the limits of an article, we can but cursorily indicate what might be matter, as we said, for a most entertaining work. Nor would it be an anti-climax, even after allusion to the gigantic speculations and colossal enterprises of the American continent, to end, as we began, with a reference to the life-romances of the humble business folk who are toiling to keep body and soul together. For only genius with dramatic gifts of description could do sympathetic justice to the struggles that are sustained from day to day, and unbrightened by a gleam of either hope or excitement. -Blackwood's Magazine.

"NEVER, FOREVER."

[A TRIBUTE TO LONGFELLOW.]

In the mansion quaint and old, that stands "Somewhat back from the village street," Lieth the poet, with folded hands,

With calm, shut eyes, and quiet feet. "And half way up the silent stair," Sighing as ever the old refrain, Whispers the ancient time piece there, "Never, Forever" he'll wake again. "Never, Forever!" Oh! lonesome earth, Your times and seasons will come and go, With sobs of sorrow, and songs of mirth,

But the "good gray head" is lying low." Never his harp will thrill us more,

Broken and silent, the golden strings Whose wondrous music from shore to shore, Quickened the sense to all lovely things. The day is sad, in its quiet rest,

Though the amber sunlight crowns the hill, Since we know that over the poet's breast The dear old hands are crossed and still; That never again his kindling eye

Will look on the glory of earth or sea, The passing beauty of sunset sky,

Of flower, or meadow, or leafing tree.

Yet ever through nave and architrave

Of worshipful souls his song shall flow, And the "Psalm of Life," so true and brave, In pulsing measures will come and go. Tenderly, then, we say, farewell:

Though the shadow darken our way of life, Eye hath not seen, or tongue can tell,

All that thou seest beyond the strife:
Rivers clearer than that which wends
Silently past thy home to-day,
And fairer branches than they that bend
Over the old familiar way.

And music rarer in touch and tone

Than ever hath thrilled on mortal ear; With harpers thou dost sweep thine own, Through arcs of heavenly hemisphere.

THE SACREDNESS OF PROPERTY.

The common phrase, "The Sacredness of Property," is a very noble and suggestive one. It reminds us that questions affecting property are not to be settled by custom, precedent, or the public convenience, by private contract, or by public legislation, irrespective of divine and eternal laws. If property is "sacred," God has something to do with it. Perhaps many of those who are in the habit of using the phrase in current political and social controversies have hardly measured its meaning.

What is meant by "the Sacredness of Property" becomes clear when we read the four Gospels and the Epistles of the New Testament. The Lord Jesus Christ came to assert authority over the whole of human life. His claims are not met by merely reciting a Christian creed, and offering Christian worship; we must understand, accept, and obey his laws for the direction of conduct. But property has a very large place in human life; it never had a larger place than it has now. In civilized nations, property has its most convenient representative in money, and we are earning money, investing money, spending money, or using the things which money purchases every day, and all the day long. If Christ had not given us laws about property, he would have left a large part of our life free from his control.

He has said so much on this subject, that it would be difficult to compress even a summary of his teaching within the narrow limits of a paper like this. The doctrine of the apostles about property must be dismissed altogether, although there are some passages in the Epistles which ex

press the Christian idea with extraordinary intensity and vividness. Perhaps the surest method of getting at the very heart of the matter will be to concentrate our attention on the two parables in which our Lord has developed his thought about it most fully: I mean the parable of the Unjust Steward, and the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, contained in the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke.

The historical setting of these two parables is full of interest and instruction. The three parables in the previous chapters, the parable of the Lost Sheep, of the Lost Piece of Silver, and of the Prodigal Son, were all intended to justify our Lord's intercourse with publicans and sinners. It was an offence to the "Pharisees and Scribes" that Jesus of Nazareth, who assumed the position of a religious reformer, should have anything to do with the kind of people that now followed him in great crowds, religious outcasts, women of bad character, men who had been excluded from the synagogues for their vices, or for their violation of what were regarded as important religious commandments. These three parables were part of our Lord's great polemic against the Pharisees; and in the second half of the parable of the Prodigal Son, in which he represents the elder brother as sullenly complaining of the reception which had been given to the younger man who had "wasted his substance in riotous living," our Lord holds up the Pharisees to execration and scorn.

He then turned to his disciples. The Pharisees complained that by associating with "publicans and sinners," he was relaxing the obligations of religion and morality; and he therefore declared that his disciples were to strive for a nobler righteousness than the Pharisees themselves were contented with. It was true that he received sinners, but it was to make them saints, saints of a diviner type than the most religious of the men who were criticizing him. This teaching is contained in two parables; and both these parables illustrate Christ's theory of property.

In the first, our Lord speaks of a Steward-an Agentwho is accused of wasting his master's estate. The proofs of his guilt are flagrant, and he is certain to lose his position and his income. He calls together the men who are in debt to his lord, and tampers with their accounts, strikes off fifty per cent. from the debt of one, twenty per cent. from the debt of another, and by this piece of knavery he hopes to make friends who will give him shelter, at least for a time, when he is turned out of his office. His master discovered the fraud, but is represented as having no remedy. The steward has been his agent, and the steward's orders seem to have been valid. And his master recognizes the forethought of his fraudulent servant; the man was an unscrupulous rogue, but he had had the art to look after his own interests. "The sons of this world are for their own generation wiser than the sons of light." Our Lord himself tells the disciples to learn a lesson from the Unjust Steward. "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when it shall fail, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles." Of course it is not the dishonesty of the steward that our Lord proposes as an example to the disciples, but the forethought. And our Master, to whom whatever property we possess belongs, will not charge us with robbing him, if we use it in showing kindness to the poor, in relieving the sick, in teaching the ignorant, in recovering the fallen, that they may receive us at last "into the eternal tabernacles." What was a fresh fraud in the Unjust Steward will be in ourselves fidelity to our trust.

It is not probable that Zaccheus was in the crowd when this parable was spoken; but he might have heard of it; and whether he heard of it or not his conduct was an excellent illustration of its meaning. His wealth was got badly; like the rest of his class, he had used his power dis

honestly and oppressively. When he repented and resolved to serve Christ, what was he to do with it? He determined to make himself "friends of the mammon of unrighteousness."-"Half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wrongfully exacted of any man I restore fourfold." Christ calls wealth "the mammon of unrighteousness," because it has had so much to do with human selfishness, dishonesty, and cruelty; because it is often so wickedly obtained and so wickedly used. By-and-by, when all men become Christ's loyal servants, and when his laws have real authority over secular life, material wealth will receive a nobler description; and the "Sacredness of Property," instead of being a phrase, will represent a most divine reality.

But the complete interpretation of the parable is contained in these words:-"He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: and he that is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much. If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to one and despise the other. Ye can not serve God and mammon."

Our Lord contrasts material wealth with wealth of another kind; to be faithful in the use of material wealth is to be faithful in the use of that which is of very little value; but fidelity in the inferior trust is a test of fidelity in greater matters. He says further that if we have not been faithful in using material wealth, we shall not receive from God real and enduring riches. Nor is this all:-material wealth is not really our own; we hold it for a time, but we shall have to give it up. If we have not been faithful in our use of what is not ours, we can not expect that God will give us an inheritance that will be truly and forever our own.

One great principle underlies these various representations of Property. Our wealth-whatever its amount-is not ours but God's. The corn is his :-it grows on his earth; it is fed by his rain; it is ripened by his sun. The timber is his:-the forests from which we get it were created by his power. The iron and coal are his :-he laid them up in the mines long before our race appeared in the world. All precious things, silver and gold, diamonds, gems, and pearls are his. Wealth is placed in our hands to use it for God; it is not our own; we are stewards; and in our use of wealth we are required to be faithful to him to whom it belongs. This, I say, is the root of Christ's thought. He begins by stripping us of everything-by denying our ownership in everything we possess. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof."

This is in harmony with the whole strain of the teaching of the New Testament. Paul describes us as the slaves of Christ. Not only does our property belong to him; we ourselves belong to him. We are his, without qualification and without reserve. Our bodies belong to him, with the muscles which we use in physical labor; and our minds belong to him, with the knowledge, the keenness of judgment, the tenacity of purpose, with which we conduct our business or discharge the duties of our profession. We are not our own; we are the slaves of Christ.

If we prefer the more honorable title of "children," we obtain no firmer hold of material wealth. Yes, we are children-children in our Father's house. But the house is his, and all that is in it is his. He feeds us and clothes us; but the food and the clothing are not ours but his.

It is the fundamental law of the kingdom of Christ, that when we acknowledge him as our Prince and Savior, we renounce our personal claim to all the things we used to call ours-to our money, our time, and our influence; we part with our property in ourselves, and this

includes parting with our property in everything. It is just as imperative now as it ever was, that we should forsake all and follow him. Do you say that this is a stern and tyrannical law, and that it makes life desolate and gloomy? No; it makes life free and blessed. It quenches passions which often consume the strength of men and shorten their days. If wealth is not ours, it never can be, if when we think of it as ours we are thieves at heart, unjust stewards, making that our own which belongs to God, why should there be any hot pursuit of it? It is pleasant to have the use of wealth for a time, just as it is pleasant to stay in comfortable and luxurious quarters when we are traveling. But we ourselves are none the richer because for a day or two we are guests in a splendid hotel; and if we are traveling through a country which offers poor accommodations, and have to lodge for a few days or a few weeks in rude cottages or village inns, where the furniture is rough, and the walls are bare, and the sheets are coarse, and the table scantily furnished, we suffer only passing discomfort; we ourselves are no poorer; we shall soon be home again. And, perhaps, the parable may be carried a little further::-we may be all the richer when we reach home at last, because we have spent little and fared badly on our journey.

It is pleasant, no doubt, to have command of money and of a great deal of money, but it is not ours, any more than the rents of the Duke of Sutherland or the Duke of Westminster belong to their agents. We may prefer to have the kind of position which belongs to a steward who has the control and administration of a great estate, to the position of a manager who has the control and administration of a small business; the higher position brings with it an increase in the sources of personal comfort, and of some things which are much more valuable than the sources of personal comfort. But in either position the wealth which passes through our hands is not ours.

If it is our habit to take this view of wealth, the disposition to get it unjustly or unfairly will be checked. Other men are God's stewards as well as ourselves. When we are trying to get by unfair means what is in their hands, we are trying to get possession of property which is not theirs, which can not become ours, but which is intrusted to them, not to us. It is the case of one agent trying to collect rents from an estate which is under the management of another agent of the same master.

This habit of regarding wealth relieves us of care as well as of a passion for money. We say that we are children in our Father's house, but how few of us have the spirit of children, the trustfulness, the light-heartedness, the freedom from anxiety and from fear of the future! I doubt whether the true "spirit of adoption" will come from dwelling exclusively, either on those large aspects of the divine Fatherhood which are among the principal topics of modern theology, or on those wonderful representations of the prerogatives of the sons of God in the apostolic epistles, which were the favorite subjects of meditation with the saints of former generations. The precepts of the Sermon on the Mount are a discipline of the spirit of sonship; in obeying the precepts the divine Fatherhood will be discovered by us, and apart from obedience the discovery will be withheld. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth. . . . Be not anxious for your life what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on Behold the birds of the heaven

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. your heavenly Father feedeth them. Consider the lilies of the field . Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." If we keep these commandments it will be possible for the Spirit to bear witness "with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."

ICAN LITERATURE.*

The root of very much of the restlessness of heart by THE NATIVE ELEMENT IN AMERwhich we are perplexed, and which is not soothed by the most gentle and gracious revelations of the Divine love, is very obvious. We say that we are children in our Father's house, but we insist on being grown-up children, and we have private speculations of our own in cotton and iron and corn, in railways and ships. No wonder that we are vexed and wearied with anxiety and care. Not until we become children in spirit as well as in name, in practice as well as in title, and cease to hold any property of our own, will the true temper and blessedness of God's children become ours. When this renunciation has become complete, we shall offer with quite a new spirit and meaning the prayer which Christ taught his disciples, "Our Father which art in heaven. . . Give us this day our daily bread." We shall think of the bread as his, though we may have worked for it; just as the corn which a son has helped his father to harvest is the father's, not his; just as the fruit which a child has picked for his father is the father's, not his. But when everything that once seemed ours passes out of our own possession and becomes God's property, we cease to be anxious about it, and we live a life of faith, a life of continual and happy trust in the infinite love of our Father in heaven. Does this conception of the "Sacredness of Property" impoverish us, and leave us with a sense of miserable destitution? On the contrary, if we accept it frankly, we only part with our right to very poor and narrow possessions in order to enjoy illimitable wealth. We come to understand the great paradox which is so unintelligible until it is fulfilled in our own experience: "There is no man that hath left house or brethren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands for my sake, and for the gospel's sake, but he shall receive a hundred fold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life." I travel over the estate of a great proprietor: the land is covered with rich crops; every now and then I pass farm buildings well built and well kept; through the trees I see the castle in which the great proprietor is living. Perhaps by his courtesy I am permitted to go through the stately rooms, and I see costly furniture, noble sculpture, beautiful pictures, precious gems curiously worked, ivory, agate, malachite, and jade. Shall I envy him? Why should I? The things are not his any more than they are mine. They all belong to God. He is God's child and so am I. He is there only for a time, like the man who shows me over the house; and perhaps the man will live there longer than his master. The duke has the keeping of the pictures and the sculpture; I have the delight of seeing them. He has the responsibility of choosing and buying the ancient coins, the gems and the pottery; and perhaps he is sometimes worried because he is deceived about their value; I have only to admire them. His estates, stretching over two or three counties-perhaps they give him a joy inferior to the joy they give to me; perhaps they enrich his life less than they enrich mine. He receives the rents, but of all that the estate yields, the rents are the least worth having. I may hear a song in his running streams that he never heard, and see a grace in the woods that he never saw; in my memory, for years after I have seen it, the heather on the hills may glow with a splendor of which he never caught a transient glimpse; and from the heights which rise above his home my thoughts may take wing to a heaven which he has never visited. Why should I envy him? Men call the estate his; but it is God's; and if God, who loves me as well as he loves the duke, gives me a home for a few years under the smoky skies of a great manufacturing town, and sends the duke to a castle among the hills, it may be all well; and the fairest and most precious part of the duke's estate may be mine more truly than his.

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What is the distinctly native element in American literature? In what do our best books differ from those produced in other countries? What is there in American prose and poetry which has a distinct flavor of the soil, the absence of which would take away the native and characteristic element from the productions of the American mind? This is a good time to consider these questions, and to answer them so far as we may. The foreign neglect of American literary men and American literature, fifty or seventy-five years ago, which led Sidney Smith to make that now most hackneyed query, "Who reads an American book?" has been succeeded by an overpraise on the part of English critics, which is quite as unjust and injurious as their quondam sneers and snarls. Just as English coaching, and English tailors, and English fox-hunting, and English this-that-and-the-other are now assiduously cultivated by the Anglo-maniacs of our leading cities, so are American men and things, and even American books, to a certain extent, in vogue in London and Paris. We have just won the Derby and Grand Prize races, a triumph which does more for our foreign reputation, among many "society" leaders, than all our other victories in peace and war, from Yorktown to Appomattox, from Fulton's steamboat to the Bell telephone, from the Puritan college of 1636 to the Chautauqua of 1881, from Ben Franklin's proverbs to the last novel of Mr. Howells or Mrs. Burnett. Thus it is that London book-sellers find it more and more worth while to issue the works of Lowell, or Bret Harte, or Holmes, which London critics praise and which are read in Piccadilly and Kensington. But the English still misapprehend us, after all; they are yet surprised, as Washington Irving used to say, at seeing an American with a quill in his hand instead of on his head; and therefore they take the wilder and the more startling productions of American genius for its most characteristic expressions. To them our real American literature, or at least our truest and best, is the literature of Walt Whitman's cosmic yawps, Joaquin Miller's lariats, and Comanches and brown Indian princesses, Bret Harte's gulches and Poverty Flats and gamblers and outcasts, Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad" or Jumping Frogs, Petroleum V. Nasby's Confedrit X Roads or Bascom's. Even Lowell, after whom all England is now running with a proper though belated deference, has been known only as a humorist, until very recently; and his "Biglow Papers" have been read, not for their common sense, and political pungency, and grave moral purpose, but for their Yankee dialect and jokes. In other words, the English public, or a part of it, prefers to see our American literature in clown's paint, or with fool's bells, or border-ruffian's bowie knives, and would have it that we are only natural and native when we present ourselves in such accoutrement. Our humor is thoroughly American, and some of it is very good indeed, but it is not all, nor the best we can show. Some of our foreign critics rate us aright and distinguish between the exaggerated and the true, between the superficial and the profound; but it is still too soon to conclude that we have come to our proper inheritance of foreign appreciation, or to accept the say-so of London or Paris critics as the due measure of our natural characteristics in literature. People of another nationality or race naturally notice that which is most unlike, or most at one with, themselves; they commend their opposites or their counterparts, and so a good part of London would have America a sort of expanded Poker Flat, and

*A Lecture delivered in the Temple at Chautauqua, by C. F. Richardson, July 22, 1881.

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