may send home new varieties; and in this way thousands of specimens are sent to London and New York every year to be crossed, or divided, thus making new and distinct plants. These men sometimes die of fever, and sometimes are killed by accidents; consequently those who survive command high salaries.

"In the Peruvian Andes orchids are common at ten thousand feet above the sea-level, and grow at as great an elevation as fourteen thousand feet. Native labor is employed to gather them, the most serious difficulty being, perhaps, the swarms of ants and other insects which almost devour the men when they climb up the trees. The orchids are conveyed to the sea by mules-a very slow mode of carriage. As a consequence, a long time elapses before the plants are placed under conditions at all favorable to their growth. In some instances a lasso is used to get the orchids from high trees; it is thrown over the branches with a weight attached to the end of the rope, and is afterward drawn down, thus scraping off some of the plants."

Mr. Frederick M. Bird is moved by the recent much mooted article in one of our reviews, signed by "A Literary Hack," to have his say on the relations between the editor and the author, or rather the would-be author. He laments the attitude of "mutual suspicion," which he considers rather an inevitability in a world in which nobody can have his own way. The emotions of the eager young aspirant for literary fame we all know and sympathize with, but perhaps it will be hard for some to palliate this bare-faced defense of the editor by Mr. Bird.

"The editor's position is less familiar, because editors are less numerous than writers, and less given to revealing the secrets of their prison-house. Strange to say, this foe of the guild is almost always, and necessarily, one of the guild himself. He too writes, or has written; he too has had his experiences, his woes, his disenchantments. He too has groaned under the tyranny he now exercises; nor is his, we may hope, the mere malignant joy of inflicting on others what he once suffered. His case is paralleled in part by that of the student turned instructor, or the employee become an employer,-except that these positions imply a superiority which few editors would be fools enough to claim. On the contrary, he probably knows that many of his contributors are better men than he-at least they do work which he could not do, or how should he make up his magazine? The corner grocer has customers whose attainments far surpass his, yet it is his business to know more than they about the price of sugar and the quality of potatoes. A deal depends on the point of view.

"Thus an editor, however humble his gifts, soon learns -what some of his correspondents seem to find it difficult to understand-that a periodical is not an eleemosynary institution nor a mutual admiration society; that it cannot safely be conducted on motives of friendship or philanthropy; that it is 'run' for the benefit of its owners and its readers, and only incidentally for that of contributors. Writers exist for the public, not the public for the writers; the writer is entitled to recognition and reward only so far as he supplies matter likely to be attractive or profitable to the public. The magazine could not go on without contributions, but no particular contributor is essential to it, for others will come forward to take his place. Personal considerations ought to weigh very lightly with an editor. To accept an article out of kindness, fear, or favor, simply to oblige the writer, however dear or however renowned, is excusable only when the question of

claims to be the most authentic likeness yet taken. The Professor gives, in the following paragraph, a vivid impression of the want of economy of the sun-furnace:

"What should we think of the prudence of a man who, having been endowed with a splendid fortune of not less than twenty million dollars, spent one cent of that vast sum usefully and dissipated every other cent and every other dollar of his gigantic wealth in mere aimless extravagance? This would, however, appear to be the way in which the sun manages its affairs, if we are to suppose that all the solar heat is wasted save that minute fraction which is received by the earth. Out of every twenty million dollars' worth of heat issuing from the glorious orb of day, we on this earth barely secure the value of one single cent; and all but that insignificant trifle seems to be

TH

THE COSMOPOLITAN.

HE Christmas Cosmopolitan makes a new departure in magazine illustration with its colored frontispiece, made by the lithographic process. Aside from the opening contribution, "A Christmas Legend of King Arthur's Country," there are no holiday features in cover or in text. One of Robert Louis Stevenson's stories, "A Tragedy of the Great North Road ”—not one of his best by any means-a delightful tale by James Lane Allen, by the airy name of "Butterflies," and a very slight piece of fiction by Sarah Grand, "A Momentary Indiscretion," together with a fourth story called "Tonia," from Ouida's pen, make up the fiction of the number.

THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE ONE'S PARENTS.

The clever and irrepressible Mr. Zangwill reports an imaginary conversation with an author friend of his, who has conceived the idea of according the right to people to choose their parents. "Away," he says, "with compulsory birth, a disability which often cripples a man on the very threshold of his career."

"Henceforth the dreamer of dreams will have only himself to blame if he is born out of his due time and called upon to set the crooked straight. Job himself would have escaped his misfortunes if he had only had the patience to wait. In future, any one who is born in a hurry will be a born idiot."

"What! Will the unborn choose the time of birth as well as their parents?"

"One is implicated in the other. Suppose the soul wished to be the son of an American duke, naturally it would have to wait till aristocracy was developed across the Atlantic-say some time in the next century."

"I see. And is there a public opinion in Anteland that regulates private action?"

"Yes; but I have now educated it to the higher ethics. It used to be the respectable thing to be born of strangers without one's own consent, though at the bottom of their souls many persons believed this to be sheer immorality, and cursed the day they were led to the cradle and became the mere playthings of the parents who acquired them; pretty toys to be dandled and caressed, just a larger variety of doll. But all this is almost over-henceforth birth will be considered immoral, unless it is spontaneous -the outcome of an intelligent selection of parents, based on love."

"On love?"

"Yes; should not a child love its father and mother?

And how can we expect it to love people it has never seen, to whom it is tied in the most brutal way, without a voice in the control of its destinies at the absolutely most important turning-point of its whole existence ?"

"True; a child should love its parents," I conceded. "But is not the quiet, sober affection that springs up after birth, an affection founded on mutual association and mutual esteem, better than all the tempestuous ardors of parental passion that may not survive the christening?"

"Ah, that is the good old orthodox cant," cried Marindin, puffing out a great cloud of smoke. "What certainty is there this postnatal love would spring up? And, at any rate, a man would no longer be able to blame Providence, if he found himself tied for life to a couple for whom he had nothing but loathing and contempt. Even the adherents of the old conception of compulsory childship begin to see that the stringency of the filial tie needs relaxation. Already it is recognized that in cases of cruelty the child may be divorced from the parent. But there is a hopeless incompatibility of temper and temperament which is not necessarily attended with cruelty. Drunkenness, lunacy, and criminality should also be regarded as valid grounds for divorce, the parent being no longer allowed to bear the name of the child it has dishonored."

THE

NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

HE December New England Magazine opens with a set of Christmas verses, poetically illustrated. Dinah Sturgis has an article of unusual length on a "Kindergarten for the Blind," which is accompanied by numerous illustrations which is really illustrate.

Mr. Robert Drail's paper is entitled "The Passing of the Clerical Man of the World." These are the phases in which the clergyman of to-day shows his worldliness, thinks Mr. Drail:

It matters

"It is in the social world that the position of the clerical man of the world puts him most en évidence. Public dinners and private dinners are not complete without him. He says "grace," and tells stories: and in all the larger cities of America the clerical after dinner speakers rank among the most popular entertainers of the day. During the winter season many men of this stamp are as much engaged and overrun with invitations as the son of an English duke on a visit to New York. little what the dinner is. From the annual meeting of a Boot and Shoe Travelers' League to the Irishmen's dinner on St. Patrick's Day, our clerical worldling is there; and with half a dozen puns, some new stories and clever hits upon the passing topics of the street, the market, the drawing room, the football field and the political arena, he holds his own against whomsover it may be. Nor does he confine himself to these public appearances. He scarce has time to change the evening clothes he wears at the opera of a Saturday night before he must don the cassock in which he appears on Sunday morning. He goes to see Coquelin, Irving and Bernhardt as a matter of course; and Dixey, and perhaps Théo, as a matter of audacity. He drops in at afternoon teas; and his purely social duties requiring attendance-according to this new code of clerical etiquette-at dinners and dances and weddings, the theatre, the horse show, the football and baseball matches, little time or tranquillity of mind surely can be left for pious meditation.

"There are still other forms which this new fashion of worldliness takes. The clerical man of the world is a yacht owner, and sails his boat alongside of other boats,

though not of course against them, rejoicing nevertheless at any casual indication that his boat is faster than her rivals or companions, as he calls them. He is a fisherman, a daring rider, a good shot with rifle and shotgun, a tennis player; he sometimes even spars-just for exercise; and he is a member of, not one, but sometimes half a dozen clubs. No man about town is so well known— not to church-goers especially, but to men and women who seldom go to church-as is this busy cleric, whose social position and multitudinous variety of interests bring him into constant contact with all sorts and conditions of men."

TH

MUNSEY'S.

HE December Munsey's celebrates Christmas with a half dozen or more versified and fanciful pictures, each in its own bright hue of ink.

Mr. F. L. Ford reviews individually the work of the more recent Arctic explorers, and says:

"Modern science has done comparatively little for the arctic explorer. The obstacles he has to meet are such as invention can do little to overcome. Nothing can equip the human body to endure temperatures of sixty and seventy degrees below zero. Steam makes a vessel swifter and easer to handle, but can no more propel it through polar ice than could sail power; nor will the modern steel ship resist the 'nip' of floes and bergs one whit better than the old wooden walls. Indeed, wooden ships are still preferred for arctic work. In land travel, experience has suggested divers improvements. Peary, for instance, in his journeys over the great ice cap of Greenland, has developed the art of sledge travel beyond any of his predecessors; yet it was almost sixty years ago that Sir Edward Parry, sledging over the ice from Spitzbergen, reached a spot but forty miles short of Lockwood and Brainard's furthest, and was turned back only by the fact that the drifting floes were bearing him backward faster than he could move forward. And at that point-as further proof of the slow progress of man's northward advance-Parry, in turn, was not much more than a hundred miles beyond the latitude reached by his bold countryman, Henry Hudson, as far back as the year 1610."

Some of the prettiest pictures of graceful and piquant Japanese ladies that we have ever seen, embellish the "Japan's Fair Daughters," by Mr. A. B. de paper on Guerville, the foreign war correspondent. There was a year or two ago quite an epidemic of discussions of Japanese women, but we do not remember that they noted some of the bizarre customs which Mr. de Guerville vouches for. He gives the Japanese civilization the usual credit for extraordinary cleanliness.

I

GODEY'S.

IN the December Godey's Mrs. Mae St. John Bramhall describes the Christmas festivities which she enjoyed in a Japanese go-down.

Mary C. Francis on "The General Federation of Women's Clubs," finds such a large subject that it barely suffices to mention the names of the officers-so extended is the present day field of woman's work and co-operation. She gives the General Federation, etc., credit for representing more completely than any other organization of any kind in the country the "aristocracy of intellect." We quote from this paper in the Department of "Leading Articles."

THE MIDLAND MONTHLY.

EWSPAPER ILLUSTRATING," with sketches

NEW the author, Mr. Charles A. Gray, is a clever

bit of work. Mr. Gray describes the methods of the modern newspaper in arranging its pictorial display, writing as from the "inside." Several of Mr. Gray's own drawings, which accompany his article, are unusually effective in conception and execution. The portrait of Gladstone, drawn from a recent photograph, is remarkably bold and clear-cut.

"Sergeant Floyd's Grave," by Mary Elizabeth Brooks, forms an interesting chapter from the early history of the Missouri Valley. Sergeant Floyd was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 and the first U. S. soldier who died on the Louisiana Purchase. He was buried near the present site of Sioux City, and his remains were exhumed and reburied during the present year.

FR

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

ROM the December Atlantic we have selected the essay by Lucy C. Bull, which she calls "Being a Typewriter," to quote from among the "Leading Articles of the Month."

The Atlantic, whose unillustrated dignity does not permit it to indulge in holiday ornamentations, maintains its usual quiet and high standard of literary worth. Not that two of its contributions are altogether peaceful, intrinsically; "The End of the Terror," by Robert Wilson, is a thrilling recountal of the black deeds and tragic end of a famous Floridian pirate, and W. F. Tilton gives a fine account of that dramatic crisis of English history which saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Franklin Eastman, writing "To a Friend in Politics," while championing the non-practical cult of statesman, makes admission sufficient to save him from the utter condemnation of the non-theoretical worker.

"It is very certain," he says, "that the great mass of the voters enjoy parties and party organizations; and however useful independency may be as a leaven, you cannot make a loaf of bread of nothing but yeast and salt. We shall continue to work by parties for some time to come, and all I have said relates to the inefficiency of your present machinery, not to the immediate abolition of all machinery. I say that your present machines utilize a very small percentage of that enormous motive power, the spirit of the American people, which you ought to have at your command; and I think I can make you see what I mean by a comparison.

“Twenty years ago there were two general methods of travel, by horses and by steam. Men walked, but it was chiefly for the sake of exercise, and rarely to get from place to place; at the other end of the line, ballooning was resorted to only in the last exigency, like the siege of Paris, and flying was in the air. Nowadays, what with bicycles on the one hand and electric railroads on the other, the whole matter of locomotion has been recast; and some sanguine people tell you horses and steam will never be used again, except so far as the former will feed 'wheelmen,' and the latter run electric engines. Meanwhile, Professor Langley and Mr. Maxim are determined we shall fly.

"Now it is perfectly true that the action of a bicyclist is only the combination of human legs with wheels; and it is as true that no economical method of creating elec tric currents has been found except the old fuel and

steam. But the applications are so entirely novel that a revolution has resulted. It is so in politics,-there are two great motive powers: the energy of individual action which is like a man's using his legs, and the force of combined action for a common interest, which is like steam. Politicians have got out of the latter all that their present machinery will effect, and it does not satisfy the people; they are resorting more and more to independent work or chance combination; but, like the direct use of legs, whether human or animal, these are not equal to national demands. Ideal non-partisan politics is almost as much in the clouds as flying. We have got to take our legs and our steam,-our wills, so indomitable if irritated, our love of co-operation, so resistless when aroused,-and utilize them by new methods, which shall do what the old ones, already strained and overstrained, are losing their power to accomplish."

The editors of the Atlantic have an historical reputation for knowing good verses when they see them, and Mr. Scudder being no exception to the rule, there is an interest to begin with in the long poem which he prints in this number from the pen of a young writer, just come up from the provinces, Mr. E. A. U. Valentine. The "Hamadryad" suggests to us a conscientious study of Keats, but it has its own poetic fire and originality of phrasing.

THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

N the December Chautauquan President Charles F.

American People," as it is manifested in and through the American college. Taking the figures of the census of 1890, President Thwing shows that there are now 1347 persons to each college student in the country, whereas, in 1830 there were 3216 for each student. "It is not a little difficult to point out the significance of these proportions. In 1830 the population of this country was small, under thirteen millions of people. Sixty years later the population of this country was somewhat over sixty millions. That is to say, the population of the country was four and one-half times as large in 1890 as it was in 1830, but the number of college students was more than ten times as large."

Prof. N. S. Shaler, of Harvard, contributes a most interesting paper on "The Conquest of the Under Earth." "So slow was the advance in the utilization of the earth products that when our ancestors first came to this country there were not more than about twenty substances other than building stones or gems which were won to commerce from the under earth. These were scantily used; the amount of iron required per capita each year probably did not exceed five pounds, and the amount of coal consumed was even less. At present the annual consumption of iron in this country amounts to about two hundred and fifty pounds, and of coal to more than a ton and a half per head."

Prof. Shaler estimates that the civilized man of to-day, as compared with his ancestors of Queen Elizabeth's time, has increased his dependence on the under earth by not less than fifty fold.

Other important articles in this number are "Iceland and its People," by Ruth Shaffner; "Pensions in Legislation," by Prof. F. W. Blackmar; "New England Customs," by Eliza Nelson Blair; "Student Life in Oxford," by Fred Grundy; "Pasteur and His Life Work," by Felix L. Oswald, and "The Endowment of the Church of England," by James Gustavus Whiteley.

OF

THE BACHELOR OF ARTS.

F all the periodicals devoted to University interests which have appeared in recent years, we are inclined to think the Bachelor of Arts shows the most able management and lively promise of value to the general reader. The November number has thoroughly the courage of its literary convictions. It contains a paper of considerable extent by Nathan Haskell Dole on "The Teacher of Dante," poems by the late H. H. Boyesen, John B. Tabb, and others, and especially a set of verses, which so far defy magazine custom as to occupy some seven pages"A Moonlight Sonata," by E. A. U. Valentine. This last contribution shows such a real poetic spirit and high enthusiasm as not many of the younger writers possess. Mr. John Seymour Wood edits the Bachelor of Arts, and there are such eminent college men and writers on the editorial board as Walter Camp, E. S. Martin and H. G. Chapman.

presses a regret felt by many of Mr. Wister's readers that he has confined himself so closely to themes that are painful, not to say horrible. "This can scarcely have been necessary to the truth of his work. There must be bright spots even on these tragic great plains; and such an artist as he has surely more than a single dark color for his brush. Indeed, the gleams of humor shining through the perpetual clouds give tantalizing glimpses of the sunny flood that might warm the heart, were the sky ever clear."