Freedom worship were almost entirely suspended travagant respect for those who possess for want of persons ordained to conduct them. In Ilocos and Union, however, natives had been promptly placed in the sacred offices left vacant by the imprisonment of the Spanish priests; and at the time of our visit they were conducting all the services of the Church. of thought marked the views of every Filipino that I have heard express himself on the subject of religion, and, although I certainly have met devout Catholics among them, I judge that that Church, on account of the abuses with which it has been associated on the island, has failed on the whole to secure an exclusive hold on the minds of the natives. In speaking of the Filipino people, I have had reference throughout principally to one class of their society, which I have called the cultured class. If my observations of that class are just, however, I think that inferences can safely be drawn from them that extend their application over the entire Tegalog population. The great mass of this population has been kept in an unenlightened state by deliberate legislation which has effectually deprived them of every possible opportunity for advancement. Those who have acquired education have acquired it at an extravagant cost that has placed it hopelessly beyond the reach of all but the wealthy. There are few, if any, among that number, however, who, while possess ing the price of a schooling, have neglected to apply it to that end. I cannot see what better gauge we can obtain at present of the intelligence and ambition of the whole Filipino race than the progress that has been made by its favored members with the limited opportunities at their command. Throughout the island a thirst for knowledge is manifested, and an ex it. I have seen a private native citizen in a town in the interior exercise a more powerful influence than all the native officials over the minds of the inhabitants, simply because he was known to have been educated in the best schools at Manila, and was regarded for that reason as a superior man. The heroes of these people are not heroes of war, but of science and invention. Without rival, the American who is best known by reputation in Luzon is Mr. Edison, and any native with the slightest pretension to education whom you may question on the subject will take delight in reciting a list of his achievements. The ruling Filipinos, during the existence of their provisional government, appreciated the necessity of providing public schools to be accessible to the poorest inhabitants. Had events so shaped themselves as to have provided an opportunity for carrying into effect the plans formed on this point, it seems possible that the mental plane of the entire population might have been raised gradually to a surprising height. Out of respect to the statements of other people which the narrative of my experience may seem to contradict, I wish to say that I have found the native of the interior of Luzon an astonishingly different character from the one ordinarily met in Manila. Previous to my journey, I regarded those whom I had encountered in that city with great dislike, and after my return I was unable to overcome that feeling. They are not a fair sample of the race; and I cannot expect any one who has formed his judgment on the subject merely from observations of that type to express an opinion similar to mine, as recorded above. A Poppy By Edwin H. Keen Flaunting her cloak of flaming red, The scarlet woman of the fields Ye bees and butterflies, beware S EVERAL years ago I met and talked with an intelligent man, who at that time was one hundred and ten years old. For seventy years of his long life he had been an expert machinist, that is, a constructor of machinery. He had preserved all his faculties in an unusual degree, and his memory was particularly good as to his early life, which in his case stretched beyond what we generally call middle age. In our conversation I asked him what he considered was the most remarkable achievement of science in his time. He asked me to walk with him. About two hundred yards from his house was a trolley line. Soon after we reached the line a car came whizzing along at something like twenty miles an hour. "That," said he, pointing at the car, "is the most wonderful thing I have ever seen. I come to look at the cars go by every day." I should like to have heard that old man's opinion on the electric or gasoline automobile, but at that time there was none in his neighborhood, and now he is no more. The trolley is a very wonderful method of propulsion, but I consider, and I believe that the venerable machinist would have agreed with me, that the motor vehicle at present used on the city streets and country roads is even more wonderful. And especially is it wonderful when it is driven by electricity. Road traction first engaged the attention of engineers, and had it not been for the diversion of this attention to rail traction by the invention of the locomotive, it is likely that we should have had steam road carriages long ago, and good roads to drive them over as well. Cugnot, a Frenchman, built a steam road carriage in 1763, Murdock built a steam tricycle in England in 1781, and Oliver Evans in America applied in 1786 to the Legislatures of Pennsylvania and Maryland for a patent on a steam road carriage. Towards the end of the last century Trevithick, sometimes called the Father of the Locomotive, turned his attention to road motors, and in 1801 built a steam carriage, which climbed steep hills faster than a man could walk. Until the inventive attention was turned to railway development there were many attempts to perfect these road carriages, but they had to be made in the face of the opposition of the landowners and those with other vested interests. In 1833 Squire and Macerone built several steam carriages in England, and these attained an average speed of fourteen miles an hour. But the success of the railroad put a stop to the improvements in these road carriages for nearly half a century. Indeed, it has only been within the past ten years that capitalists could be induced to invest anything in experiments looking towards the perfection of these motor vehicles. And we, on this side of the Atlantic, were not the first to go into this new-old venture. We let the French and the English take the initiative, and Mr. Duryea, an American automobile maker, says that as lately as four years ago it was almost impossible to get capitalists to look seriously upon a proposition which contemplated the building and the selling of these carriages. They regarded the idea as fanciful and chimerical. In the brief space of four years an immense change has taken place. Three of these years may be said to have been given up to the education of conservative capitalists and the growth of the demand for the carriages on the part of the public. The other year has been a time of immense action, for now there are a great many plants in America working night and day to build the carriages that have been ordered, while there is up wards of $400,000,000 of capital invested in the business. One manufacturing company accepted an order in July for 4,200 carriages. To fill this order the company will need to spend something like eight millions of dollars for material and labor. It is likely that no new business ever grew to such proportions within So short a time. Four years ago there was no business at all; one year ago the building of automobiles had just passed the experimental stage; to-day it is a great industry, and the demand for the product of the manufacturers is growing all the while. Those who could keep up with the times must be wide awake, for the best ingenuity of the world is engaged in the improvement of the motor vehicles which were fads yesterday, but are thoroughly practical and serviceable means of locomotion to-day. In New York a carriage propelled by gasoline, steam, or electricity attracted much attention a year or so ago on the streets; now there are hundreds of such, and the passing of one of them is not noticed any more than an ordinary hansom cab pulled by a horse. In another year there will be four times as many, and it is proposed that some of these shall carry passengers as an ordinary omnibus, and run in connection with the surface and elevated railways, transferring passengers from the one to the other at a single fare. New York is rarely foremost in the matter of urban transportation, and what will ultimately be done in the metropolis will probably be accomplished long before in other American cities, not handicapped by a THE DE DION-BOUTON QUADRICYCLE slow conservatism. New York capitalists The manufacturers of the electric automobiles do not seem to be satisfied that they are making machines which will not be obsolete in a few years. Therefore they prefer to rent the machines rather than sell them outright. Many inventors are at work trying to improve them-inventors from Edison all the way through the list. These inventors are not concerned so much with the carriages as with the motors to drive them. It is generally recognized that the combined weight of the carriage and the motor is at present too great. We know that strong carriages can be made of any desired weight; so the present problem is to lessen the weight of the motor. Then, of course, the carriage can be made lighter, and the cost of construction lessened. Mr. Edison is at work on this problem. He says, without hesitation, that he will soon show how to build cheaper, lighter, and faster vehicles; but he is not now willing to be more definite than this. What he might say would be interesting to the public, but Mr. Edison does not care to have other inventors start in the same line of experiment he is pursuing. Independent, however, of what there is in the future of the automobile, the present is most interesting, for the carriages of the day are good, practical machines, capable of doing hard work. day after day and making great journeys at a high rate of speed. Already in this country a gasoline motor vehicle has made the journey from Cleveland to New York, more than seven hundred miles over the rough country roads, at a high rate of speed, and at this time. there are two such vehicles on the road making the long journey between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Electric vehicles cannot, under present conditions, make such journeys, as the storage batteries used will only run a vehicle a little over twenty miles. twenty miles. Recharging takes several hours, and the motor must be at an electric station where there is a generating plant; but the motor can be removed and replaced in a few minutes. This is the plan used by the company operating the numerous electric cabs in New York. When the electric carriages come into general use, stations will be dotted all over the country, and fresh electricity will be as easy to obtain as food and drink now are for a horse. That seems long in the future, but if the progress continues as it has for the last twelve months, we shall have such public stations in a very few years. At present the electric carriages are not, as a general thing, sold to the persons using them, but rented by the month or One of the largest companies prefers to do this at present, because the managers recognize that improvements are likely to be made very often, and they do not wish to sell to their customers what will be very quickly behind the times. Owning and caring for the carriages themselves, the manufacturers can add the improvements as each is made and keep them always up to date. The company just alluded to does this renting through a subsidiary or transportation company. It was this transportation company which gave the large order of 4,200 carriages mentioned in the beginning of this article. It is in these electric motors that the greatest improvements are to be expected. Electricity as a motive power appears to be only in its infancy, notwithstanding the marvelous trolley and the improvements in storage batteries; so it is only natural that those engaged in making electric motors for road vehicles should feel entirely sanguine that the perfection of the motor is merely a matter of a short while. Meantime, however, the makers of other motor vehicles are going ahead as though electricity was not a particularly serious competitor. The gasoline motors have proved very successful both in Europe and in this country. In France the manufacturers are a year behind with the orders, and before the demand grew so rapidly in this country American machines were sent there and sold at a good premium. The chief automobile-maker in France, Count de Dion, was a prisoner in a police court the other day and was fined for working his men overtime. Though |