chance they did such heroic work in smashing machines and rooting out corruption and professional politicians that the New York Evening Mail believes that they have "put the yellow-dog system of politics out of existence." And, indeed, this statement has some color of truth, for the accounts of the killed, wounded, and surviving, and the comment of the press thereupon seem not only to justify the conclusion reached by The Mail, but also to indicate that the Democratic and Republican parties are in danger of disruption, and the country may soon witness an entirely new political alinement. Partizanship apparently had but little to do with the destruction or escape of bosses on November 7. Good,

"AIN'T

The prestige of Senator Lodge has been damaged in Massachusetts, while a hitherto unknown lawyer, J. B. Moran by name, running independently, has wrested the district attorneyship of Boston out of the hands of a candidate supported by the Democrats

CAN IT BE THAT OUR AMERICAN CZARS ARE ALSO
IN DANGER?"
-Leipziger in the Detroit News.

and Republicans. The only conspicuous survivors of the revolt of the people are Mayor Schmitz of San Francisco, who was saved by a tremendous union-labor vote, and Tom L. Johnson of

VOTED

American.

bad, and indifferent victims were caught in the universal ruin. Senator Penrose, the leader of the Republican organization in Pennsylvania, has been shorn of most of his strength through the loss of the State Treasury. Durham was overwhelmed by the city party in Philadelphia. Senator Foraker suffered a severe setback by the defeat of Governor Herrick in Ohio. Cox, of Cincinnati, was put so completely out of business that he has abdicated his leadership for good. Senator Gorman, through the failure of his scheme to disfranchise the negroes of Maryland, sits tottering on his throne, and, if he keeps his promise, will soon retire from politics. Cassidy, McCarren, and Murphy, Tammany heads of the boroughs of New York, have been rendered almost powerless. Dickinson in Jersey City and Lentz in Newark have gone down before the reform that was inaugurated by the young Colby. Senator Smoot, of Utah, altho backed by his great Mormon following, has lost what con

ON A LEE SHORE.

-Bradley in the Chicago News.

Cleveland, whom, however, the local papers seem to look upon as a good boss, guiltless even of taking "honest " graft.

What was the cause of this political upheaval, which, in several instances, overwhelmed the innocent along with the wicked? It was the independent voter, and of him the Cleveland Plain Dealer says:

'The independent voter is a comparatively recent comer. Whether he is the result of the independent newspaper, or came with it, there is no question that the two have worked together and gained strength from each other's support. It is not reaching back in to the distant past to recall the time when the independent voter and the independent newspaper were both looked upon with disfavor. The original mugwump' was ridiculed and despised by both Republican and Democratic politicians. He was not formidable enough to be regarded with concern by either."

The advent and universal activity of the independent voter is attributed by The Journal of Commerce to "the prevalence of graft not only in the public service, but in the conduct of institutions of trust and of many business operations." The moral sense of the people aroused by these dishonest practises was, according to the Kansas City Star, first given direction and concrete form by Governor Folk, of Missouri. Its vitality was added to, as remarked by editorials of the Springfield Republican, by the prosecution of the post-office rascals, and later on of Senator Burton of Kansas, and Senator

AWAKE AT LAST!

-Bradley in the Chicago News.

JOHN M. PATTISON (DEM.),

Elected Governor of Ohio by about 40,000 plurality. Last fall the State went Republican by a 255,000 margin.

him is generally conceded the credit and glory of teaching the people how to fight bosses and upset machines that thrive on graft and corruption. Hence his continuance in office as District Attorney of New York in defiance of all political organizations is looked upon as the most remarkable and important victory of the elections. Says the Boston Transcript:

"The cynical observer who sees in Mr. Jerome's election the mere personal triumph of an honest official and an incomparable campaigner, who knows how to catch public fancy, is sadly and ignorantly mistaken. It is true, only a Jerome could have won this fight; but, let it be remembered, from the first to

Copyrighted by Purdy, Boston.

EUGENE E. SCHMITZ, Union-labor Mayor of San Francisco.

COLLEGE PRANKS AND HOMICIDE.

S it not quite possible for college spirit, even at its sweetest and best, to find adequate expression in some way short of homicide?" This question, asked by the Washington Times, is inspired by

the last, he sought to make a principle take hold upon the mind of his hearers. He did not merely incarnate a protest against concrete wrongs. His was not a campaign against' red light districts' and particular graft. He stood as the spokesman of fundamental liberty, the liberty of a people to say by whom and how they shall be served. And the people have heard, understood, and acted."

And now after Governor Folk has pointed out the way to get rid of boodlers, and Mr. Jehas shown the

rome

WILLIAM H. BERRY,

Democratic and Prohibition candidate for treasurer of Pennsylvania, who was elected with 100,000 votes to spare in a State which last year gave President Roosevelt over 500,000 plurality.

the death of a student at Kenyon College, Ohio, whose body was found near a railroad track terribly mangled by a train. At the coroner's inquest at Mount Vernon, Ohio, it was shown that on the night of October 29 the student, Stuart Pierson, was chloroformed and that he then was tied across the tracks, as part of his initiation into a college fra`ternity. Three days later a bloodstained rope and a wad of cotton, also saturated with blood, were found near the spot where the student was killed. The prosecutor has proof that other students had frequently been treated in the same way, but

GEORGE B. COX,

Republican "boss" of Cincinnati, who announced his retirement to private life when he heard the returns.

can become so criminally brutal or idiotically careless "; and it adds that they "should be kept in restraint because of mental or moral deficiency." The Denver Republican thinks the Kenyon College case illustrates "in a way which demands consideration the loose manner in which some American colleges are conducted," and the Washington Times declares:

"The better feeling in college fraternities does not countenance the methods of initiation in which some of the less influential of their number seem to delight. The fraternity members are coming to see that dignity lends a solemnity to the initiation that brutality can not supply. Indeed, it is only in scattered localities that this thought has not sunk deep in the college mind.

"Very unhappily the college conception of fun is still different from that of the broader world. It is still considered amusing to "lift' nickel-in-the-slot machines, restaurant silverware, barbers' poles, policemen's clubs, and other trophies.

THE FATAL FIST FIGHT AT ANNAPOLIS.

A FEW months ago, Secretary of the Navy Bonaparte, on in

vestigating the death of a sailor who died during a friendly bout" aboard the battle-ship Kearsarge, declared that no one could be held responsible, since there was nothing "crooked " about the incident. Some papers at that time took that statement to mean that the Department countenanced the practise of the "manly art" aboard the war-ships, praised the Secretary for his stand, and declared that the men would be the better for it. It is interesting to note now the almost universal condemnation of the Annapolis Naval Academy authorities who permitted the fist fight on Sunday night, November 5, which resulted in the death of Midshipman James R. Branch. "It is obvious that such blame as is due must fall heavily upon the academy authorities who have permitted the duello code to exist," declares the Baltimore News; and the Pittsburg Dispatch remarks that the fact " that by some fault in the system it was possible for them to fight like toughs in defiance of the law of the academy demands the closest investigation." The United States, we are told, "can not afford to educate prize-fighters for the uniform of naval officers."

The investigation made by the authorities of the academy shows clearly that the fight between Branch and Minor Merriwether was the result of a personal feud. The occasion was a report of misdemeanor, in making which Branch was in line with his duty as cadet officer of the day. The affair is believed to have been deliberately arranged by the two classes, and its details were engineered by the class officers. While there is no legislation which directly prohibits fighting at the academy, and while it is only inferentially forbidden by the regulations, a fist duel, we are told, is proposed whenever any midshipman takes offense at the words or conduct of another, and school sentiment compels the challenged one to fight or be ostracized. When there is a disparity in weight, either party is allowed to select a classmate to champion him. Under this "code" fights have been regular things, altho they have been managed so cleverly as to be kept concealed from the officials.

There are indications that drastic action is to be taken in connection with this affair. The regulations provide for the immediate investigation of the matter by a court of inquiry, which may possibly recommend the trial by court-martial not only of the survivor of the prize-fight, but of the timekeeper and the referee. Among navy officers the affair is discussed as something that would put the academy under a cloud for some time to come. Admiral Sands, superintendent of the Naval Academy, has reduced two cadet lieutenants to the ranks for their part in the affair, and Secretary Bonaparte declares it his purpose to investigate the matter thoroughly and make it the subject of a report to Congress,

with the aim of securing legislation to do away with the custom of settling personal enmities and disagreements by fighting.

The New York Times thus gives its views of the Annapolis "code of honor: "

"The existence of a secret system for the adjudication of cadet quarrels is not necessarily to be condemned because of that killing, any more than are a thousand other habits of business and pleasure that are occasionally marked by fatalities. The abstractly and philosophically serious phase of the case is its revelation that under the official discipline of the Naval Academy there has for years existed another discipline, devised and enforced by the cadets and to some indeterminate extent tolerated by the academic authorities. For it is practically certain that a custom which leads by inevitable matter of course to prolonged fist fights conducted with all the formalities characteristic of professional pugilism, could not have existed without the repeated observance of its physical effects by the men who have the cadets under such rigorous and unremitting inspection and control. The coming investigation, which is also the coming trial, can not be considered as directed against the unfortunate Merriwether, the boys who organized and watched the battle, or the cadet body, but as dealing with the academy as a whole and the survival there of a modified and mitigated form of dueling. . . . It seems to us that the secret code of cadet honor is an anachronism and must go, but there must have been some sort of an argument, if only a poor one, for its formation and long continuance."

TOPICS IN BRIEF.

IF Prince Charles becomes king of Norway he will be known as Haakon VII. Maybe this is why he hesitates.-The Detroit News.

ADMIRAL TRAIN might have avoided all trouble if he had claimed that he mistook that Chinese lady for a deer.-The Chicago Record-Herald.

"THE South applauds the President's aims," asserts the Boston Herald. Largely true, but we do not like the way he fails to pull the trigger.-The Houston Post.

LETTERS AND ART.

"THE APOSTLE," A NEW POLITICAL PLAY IN ST. PETERSBURG.

IN " An Enemy of the People" Ibsen depicted the struggles and

defeat of an honest and independent man, an idealist, in a social environment hostile to disinterestedness and truth. Ibsen's hero is driven by his bitter experience to conclude that popular support is given only to demagogues, and that the strongest man is he who stands alone." A theme somewhat similar is treated in a new social drama by the Viennese playwright, Hermann Bahr, which has just been produced with great success in St. Petersburg, where its "political" tendency has excited much lively discussion. It is interesting to note that this play is among those listed by Mr. Paul Nikolaivitch Orleneff's Russian company now playing in New York city. Russian critics, publicists, and editorial writers find much in the play that bears on the electoral campaign they have just entered upon and the new duties which the Douma, or National Assembly, imposes upon them. The name of the play is " Der Apostel," and it is a picture of contemporary parliamentary life and morals. It is a story of a "scandal" and its effects, of a conflict between a true unselfish servant of the people and scheming, corrupt politicians, as well as shallow representatives who are prone to suspect evil and jump at conclusions. The plot is thus summarized in the press reviews:

and bribe-taker: He claims to have crushing evidence in his possession in support of the startling charge. In response to frantic cries he produces his evidence. It is in the form of notes signed by the Premier's wife, who has borrowed heavily from the National Bank. He has known nothing of these transactions, and is confused, overwhelmed. All turn against him; disorder and rioting ensue, and the mob rushes upon him and subjects him to assault, insult, and humiliation. In the final act the matter is explained. The

poor wife, ignorant of practical affairs, timid, unwilling to trouble him, had lived beyond their modest means. She needed money and was induced, under misrepresentation and fraud, by the very man who exposed her, to sign notes and take money from him, not even knowing that the bank furnished it.

He realizes that he is not without blame in the premises, having neglected his family and his affairs, and having left the young, inexperienced wife without guidance and aid. Of course he forgives her, but the mischief is done. The mob will not believe the truth. The leader of the Opposition, repentant and ashamed of his part in the parliamentary battle, comes to him with a proffer of sympathy and friendship, but rehabilitation is impossible.

He decides to retire from power and politics and to serve the ideals dear to him in some other way. He is still full of hope in the people, in democracy, in progress, notwithstanding the fickleness and credulity and fury of the mob. Only the reformer must arm himself with patience and learn to be more practical and more prudent.

The critics praise the play on its dramatic side, but some remark that such a sentimental, dreamy idealist could hardly reach the premiership and the position of party leader. The St. Petersburg public audiences find the drama significant, absorbing, and vital. Translations made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

tic, tireless, absorbed worker.

But his political opponents are not as sweetly reasonable and fair as he innocently imagines. He has enemies, and one disappointed job-hunter, a low, crafty spoilsman, hates him intensely. He is accused in Parliament of forgetting and neglecting practical, concrete questions while dreaming of and preaching great, abstract, academic things. His high position is slightly undermined, but he is unconscious of it and too optimistic to trouble himself about personal matters.

At last an important issue presents itself, and a potent weapon is placed in the hands of his enemies. A bill for the cutting and construction of an important canal is pending in the House of Representatives, and two companies are bidding for the franchise-the National Bank and. an American corporation. The latter had bribed deputies and politicians, had lobbied and plotted and worked desperately to secure the privilege on terms favorable to itself. The Premier favors the National Bank, honestly believing its offer to be superior; the opposition favors the American corruptionists and grabbers.

A battle royal in the House is expected, and the second act gives us the parliamentary session. It is an exacting, bewildering, sensational sitting. The Opposition has packed the gallery; some of the Premier's followers, having failed to get spoils of office, are restive and hostile to him; the leader of the "antis" is about to make a furious attack on the Premier's bill and general policy.

The attack is launched. Intense interest prevails. Will the Cabinet suffer defeat? But the Premier makes a powerful and brilliant reply, meets all criticisms, and silences the Opposition. Triumph is apparently assured. But just before the vote the Premier's bitterest enemy rises and denounces him as a hypocrite

GIBSON AS FRANKENSTEIN.

blance between the case of Mr. Charles Dana Gibson, as narrated in our issue of November 4th, and that of Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein, fleeing from that which he himself had created. "Is it possible," comes the insinuation, "that the artist has become bored with the Gibson Girl after so many invariable years?" The writer (in the London Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette) goes on to suggest that, sated with regular beauty, Mr. Gibson" turns to worship at the shrine of human angularities and imperfections for the mere sake of a change." The announcement that he will travel to "devote himself to the study of color-painting in Europe" is amended by the English writer so that the last phrase reads "to get the Gibson Girl out of his head." It is rumored that Mr. Gibson's ambition turns toward portrait-painting. If so, we read, "he must crush from his soul the remembrance of other days and other lips." The writer continues:

"Will he succeed, or will he be always a haunted man, whose attendant spirit will brook no trespass on once hallowed ground? Only time can show. But Mr. Gibson will have to struggle hard. Meanwhile he not only invented a type of beauty for the Englishspeaking peoples. He has changed, by the examples of his art, the dress, the coiffure, the-the-the corsets, even the manners of the English girl. He has been a reformer, or a reactionary. The choice of terms is a matter of personal opinion."

Of the deserted Gibson Girl the writer goes on to say:

"No one could escape her acquaintance; she pervaded the air, she set the fashions, she exercised a positive influence on the bearing and adornment of our own living womankind. Even those who

"have conscientious objections to the Americanization of British art, literature, and commerce could avoid neither the knowledge nor the charm of Mr. Gibson's girl. She appeared in English musical comedy and made the name of an actress, she was reproduced in English journals, she figured (for Mr. Gibson was followed by a school just as surely as was Rembrandt or Van Dyck) in all sorts of advertisements. And she was perennially lovely. She was as the high gods of Olympus, always young and always beautiful, good to look upon, but-the suggestion seems impious -dull to live with. Her coloring an unchanging black and white, her gaze always clear, full, and disdainful, she had our worship, but she left us cold. We should have preferred some imperfections. Perhaps Mr. Gibson felt the same about her.

"Her place will soon be taken. A new 'type' will arise, and who knows what we may suffer in the way of changing fashions as the result of this? La reine est morte, vive la reine! That is. the philosophy of this world, and it applies to pictureland. The damsel of Leech, the Du Maurier beauty, the Partridge miss, they all reign and pass away. It is like the enumeration of the kings of Judah and Israel- And Jehoiachim reigned in his stead.' The prerogatives of their crown are many, the devotion of their subjects is deep-seated, for they are one and all reflections of the light of our sanctuary-womanhood."

REMARKABLE PERSONALITY OF IRVING.

BERNAL

ERNARD SHAW complains of having looked in vain for the "word of sane and sober truth" in the "tornado of obituary mendacity" raised by the death of Sir Henry Irving. In reality, however, the comments of the English press on the passing of England's most illustrious actor, the first of his craft to receive the honor of knighthood, and the first since Garrick to be accorded sepulture in Westminster Abbey, furnish much discriminating criticism. These comments range in tone from Shaw's extreme depreciation, which characterizes the dead actor as a narrow-minded egoist who was devoid of culture and who lived in a dream of his own greatness, to the eulogy of Truth's dramatic critic, who exclaims: Genius met genius in the case of Sir Henry Irving and Shakespeare." With the exception of Shaw, however, the critics seem agreed that Irving's remarkable personality has laid the English theater under a great debt of gratitude. He is hailed as having demanded and won for his profession a standing and a recognition not previously vouchsafed it. "He found the stage an entertainment; he leaves it recognized as one of the noblest arts, as one of the most efficient ministers of progress," says the London Evening Standard. His lack of elocution, his physical mannerisms, are spoken of as handicaps which his genius was able to carry, and sometimes even to turn to advantage. But always the emphasis is upon that intangible yet compelling thing, personality. His personality, say many of his critics, would have made him great in any profession. For nearly forty years his personality dominated the English stage. "There have been many better actors than he during his undisputed reign," writes Mr. Charles Whibley in the London Outlook, "but none of them had the spark of genius which gave his best performances their beauty and interest." Mr. Whibley goes on to say that Irving was at his best in farce or in melodrama, and regards it as a misfortune that he was persuaded to put Shakespeare on the stage. We read:

Shakespeare on one side and been content to show us himself in humbler circumstances. It was for other, and lesser, men to interpret the classics with patience and good sense. It was for Irving to show us what could be achieved with a romantic temperament, with a gesture and voice that were irresistibly picturesque. Therefore he was always best in bad plays, which did not distract the attention from the actor, and which gave him the chance of displaying in a brief three hours a tangle of different passions."

"We are told to-day," remarks The Westminster Gazette, "that the secret of Sir Henry Irving's success lay in his intellect, not in his feelings; but if that be so (and we are not inclined to dispute it) his long-continued supremacy is only the more wonderful." His popularity is indicated by a statement in the London Times that "he more than doubled the number of habitual theatergoers in London and in the provincial towns." Yet it is not in his acting, nor in his work as a stage manager, asserts The Academy, that we can find triumphant vindication of his fame. But it adds: "We are driven back to the fact, inexplicable yet undeniable, that Henry Irving was a great man. It was as if the personal influence which he exercised over the footlights night after. night radiated through the world, convincing everybody-even those who did not agree with his rendering of such and such a part or his treatment of such and such a play-that this man was not as other men were, that he had something in him of a divine force, a superhuman genius which set him apart from even the ablest and most beloved of his fellows."

Max Beerbohm, writing in The Saturday Review (London) is another critic who dwells upon Irving's remarkable personality. "As an actor, as a manager, he had his faults; but as a personality he was flawless," we read. 'He was so romantically remarkable a figure in modern life," adds Mr. Beerbohm, " that his death is like the loss of a legend." The critic proceeds to some interesting characterization :

"Irving had, in acting, a keen sense of humor-of sardonic, grotesque, fantastic humor. He had an incomparable power for eeriness—for stirring a dim sense of mystery; and not less masterly was he in evoking a sharp sense of horror. His dignity was magnificent in purely philosophic or priestly gentleness, or in the gaunt aloofness of philosopher or king. He could be benign with a tinge of malevolence, and arrogant with an undercurrent of sweetness.

When he went upon the stage there were two stumbling-blocks in his path. His elocution was imperfect and his gait eccentric. But with an excellent skill he turned his defects to good account. By a touch of exaggeration he made them his own; he identified himself with them; Irving and his faults became inseparable; and those who admired the actor, perforce took pleasure in the strange tones of his voice and the halting strides wherewith he crossed the boards. . . . But it would have been better for his art had he put

As philosopher or king, poet or prelate, he was matchless. One felt that if Charles the Martyr, Dante, Wolsey, were not precisely as he was, so much the worse for Wolsey, Dante, Charles the Martyr. . . . Irving's presence dominated even those who could not be enchanted by it. His magnetism was intense, and unceasing.. And I conjecture that to it, rather than to the quality of his genius, which was a thing to be really appreciated only by the few, was due the unparalleled sway that he had over the many."

In melodrama, says the critic of the London Speaker, Irving "had the fantastic force of an etching by Goya or a story by Poe; the very scene itself, no less than the words he uttered, seemed to take on the strange distortions of his genius."

Mr. Joseph Knight, in the London Athenæum, asserts that the palm of supremacy in English acting rests between Irving and Garrick. We read:

Of Irving it may be said-as it can be said of no other man of the day, whatever his country or position-that he stood absolutely foremost in his line, and that his place is conceded among the immortals. His method was faulty, and often ineffective; his elocution was at all times indifferent, and in some cases unpleasant. When he played Lear, one of the best actors of the day-his own special friend, and in no sense a rival-said it was like listening to the nocturnal noises in the Zoo.' His movements were at times ungainly, and he never acquired the crowning merit of repose.

The palm of supremacy in English acting has to be assigned him or Garrick, and the space between the two men is so wide,