SHOULD THE BANKERS ASSIST THE

TREASURY? ‘OOPERATION of the bankers with the Treasury Department in maintaining the gold reserve was officially recommended by the Bankers' Convention at Atlanta, but the propriety of this policy is seriously questioned in some leading financial organs. The New York Journal of Commerce, which has steadily urged such cooperation, is gratified by the Atlanta resolution for a committee to confer with Secretary Carlisle, and expresses itself as follows:

"The Treasury certainly has reason to desire the cooperation of the banks in the maintenance of its gold reserve. The language of Secretary Foster, in his annual report of December, 1892, proves that the payment of clearing-house balances in gold was curtailed deliberately in the hope that the gold reserve would be increased thereby, but the result was the withholding of gold from the Treasury by the banks, with results of a very serious character to the Government. A government with a large amount of promissory notes outstanding, which is investing largely in pig silver, and finds its gold revenue cut off, is certainly in an awkward position; and while the borrowing of gold is forced upon it, it it not surprising that this measure should afford only a partial remedy.

"The banks ought also by this time to have a realizing sense of the importance of cooperating with the Treasury. If any of their managers ever imagined that the maintenance of the present monetary standard was of concern only to the Government, the long list of bank suspensions in 1893 and the devices resorted to by banks to accommodate their customers and keep their heads above water should be a sufficient demonstration that the banks are vitally interested in maintaining the credit of the Government's notes and averting all apprehensions of the substitution of a cheaper monetary unit than the one now in use. There should be, then, from both sides a cordial response to the efforts initiated at the Bankers' Convention in Atlanta to bring about that harmony of action which a real community of interests dictates."

On the other hand, Rhodes's Journal of Banking is among those who believe the policy of cooperation inexpedient and shortsighted. It says that banks can not direct the movement of the public in the handling of money, and that they can not undertake to pay gold to the Treasury, either in settlement of duties or otherwise, when the public does not use gold in making payments. The enlargement of our paper currency is responsible for the great anxiety to keep gold in bank-vaults. We quote from an editorial in the magazine in question:

"What influenced the minds of the general public to cease paying gold into the banks? It was the gradual enlightenment that occurred as to the extent the Government was straining the resources it possessed for maintaining gold payments. The Treasury notes of 1890 were seen to be a constant and steady drain on the gold reserve. The falling off of revenues in proportion to the expenditures of the Government enhanced and strengthened this view. The gold reserve was depleted just at a time when a new administration of whose financial policy the public were as yet ignorant had taken hold of the management of the finances. Rumors sprang up that silver would be relied on to redeem obligations of the United States if gold failed, and the financial panic and ensuing depression of 1893 were the consequences.

"In all this the banks had merely to go with the current. They could not go against it. To expect them to jeopardize the interests of their depositors and stockholders by undertaking the gigantic task of sustaining the Government suffering from the effects of unwise legislation, was to expect too much. Those who blame the banks for not paying out their gold reserves do not understand the situation. If they had done so gold would have been exported to a much larger extent than it has been. The strong reserve in gold which the banks of the country have accumulated has done as much to sustain the general credit of the business world as the maintenance of the gold reserve by the Treasury Department. If the banks had pursued the policy pointed out by those who censure them, the condition of the Treasury would have been masked as long as the banks had gold to give. As soon as the banks had paid out all their gold the

Government would have had to resort at a later date to the same methods to procure gold that it luckily resorted to earlier, with far less hope of procuring it at as advantageous rates. With the banks and the country entirely exhausted of gold the Treasury would have had to draw all its gold from abroad and at a much greater expense.

"In other words, the action of the banks of the country in retaining as much gold as possible in their vaults is wise and conservative. It is the only way that a stock can be maintained in the country, which gives the Treasury a basis for the negotiation of its bonds at reasonable prices.

"Those who take the view that the banks should pay their gold into the Treasury and thus render it unnecessary for the latter to issue bonds are very short-sighted. It is the Government and not the banks that is responsible for the dangerous ease with which gold can be taken for export, and for the evils in our currency system of which this tendency to exportation is only a symptom."

A

WHY THE SOUTH WANTS FREE SILVER. NTI-SILVER men would challenge the claim that "the South" is a unit for free silver, and there are certainly a number of important newspapers in the South which not only oppose the free-coinage movement, but which assert that the financial ideas described by the term "sound money" have been steadily gaining ground among the business men and farmers of that section. Senator John T. Morgan, of Alabama, one of the Southern Democratic leaders, assumes, however, that the South is still "solid" with respect to free silver, and in The Arena (November) he attempts to give some reasons for this attitude of the South. He briefly states his view in the opening paragraph of his article, and then proceeds to defend it by an elaborate argument. We quote him as follows:

"The interest of the South in silver money relates chiefly to two facts: First, that it is supplied to the world only through the slow and laborious toil of the miner, and its steady production prevents the inflations and depressions of values and prices that are so easily within the control of money that is based on credit, and constantly subject to the fluctuations of those speculations that beset the world with financial gambling. Second, that it furnishes to labor the only safe and convenient measure for the value of a day's work performed by human hands.

"The South,' as we designate the Southern States, has a great natural monopoly of cotton and yellow pine, and is the active rival of all other countries in the production of coal and iron. In these elements of industrial and commercial power the South has no rival whose competition is really dangerous.

"These great factors in all progressive civilization are incapable of full development and perfect use in any country by any other means than individual human hand-labor. The South must always be a great field for such toilers. In this fact we must also discern the close relation between mining for the precious metals, and the bringing into commercial usefulness of the great leading industries of the South. They are, alike, the fruits of individual labor. But there is something more than a close relationship between these industries, growing out of the similarity of the labor employed in them. There is a mutual dependence that makes them essential to each other. Without the free use of silver money, with full legal-tender power, our strength will be wasted in the effort to develop our leading industries."

Under present financial laws the South is practically at the mercy of Eastern financiers, continues Senator Morgan. Its development is hampered and its industries almost paralyzed. We quote again :

"The invested capital of the South is almost exclusively in real estate. The banking laws of the United States forbid the use of any of such property as a basis of bank loans to the people. The only security that the national banks are permitted to take for loans, besides the personal credit of those whose paper they may discount, is bonds, stocks, and liens, in the nature of chattel mortgages, such as bills of lading on exported crops and other productions. The whole advantage of our national banking sys

tem, which rests alone on the taxation of the people, is thus given by law to those engaged in merchandise and commerce and to those who speculate upon the annual crops and productions of the industrial people. The great mass of Southern wealth is rendered useless, under our laws, as a basis for financial credit, and the crops are resorted to and are virtually mortgaged to the commercial classes even before they are produced. This is true as to eighty per cent., at least, of all the productions of the South that enter into commerce.

"Not only are we excluded from using the only real capital we have our lands-as a basis of credit in the national banks which rest for their foundation alone upon the tax-paying power of the people, but we are forbidden to use the rightful power of the States to establish banks of issue, and thus to give our people some rightful use of their own credit, which would be safely based upon actual coin in the vaults of their local banks."

The arguments ordinarily advanced against State banks the Senator deems unworthy of discussion and dismisses as being insults added to injury. Taking up the question of the present money supply in the South, he says:

"The supply of money that reaches the producers and the laborers in the South and the West, under our financial system, is exceedingly meager. In actual circulation, it will not reach five dollars per capita through the whole year. Our paper and gold money does not remain among the people. It is migratory, and is moved to and from great financial centers, under the orders of the capitalists. In a sound monetary system the money of the country would seek the market centers, instead of the markets seeking the money centers. As we are deprived of local banks of issue, by an abuse of the Constitution, and as every national bank is only a stem of the great vine whose root is in New York or possibly in London, we have a need of silver money, drawn from nature's treasury, that is very pressing. It is the only money we have that the bankers can not absolutely control. It is too heavy for distant transportation and it does not come and go through the mails or on express trains to meet speculative demands or to be loaned to stock-gamblers. They do not want it. It lingers in the hands of toiling men and about their homes and promotes thrift among them. It is the only money that is used by nearly two thirds of the toilers throughout the world, and it has never worked a hardship or a disappointment to any laboring-man.

"The South is very much in need of silver money, to reestablish the financial power and influence that, for many decades, was felt in all the marts of commerce, when almost every man of wealth in the South was his own banker."

Senator Morgan discusses the late bond issues, the question of greenback retirement, and the problems connected with the gold The South, he says, is weary of bond issues put forth merely for the sake of maintaining an impracticable system of gold monometalism, and he concludes as follows:

reserve.

"It is now demonstrated by our experience that there is no possible way to protect the one hundred million dollars of reserved gold in the Treasury except to destroy the demand obligations of the United States as fast as they are redeemed, or to announce our purpose to redeem them, at our option, by the payment of the coin specified in those obligations.

"The only way to divorce' the Government from its alleged banking business is to withdraw its alleged banking obligations. To do this without the substitution of local bank issues or full legal-tender silver money would simply destroy the whole country. Yet this must be done, it seems, in honor of the golden god that is enthroned in the Treasury, or else his insatiable maw must be constantly refilled with gold coin, by the issue of more bonds, that he may flood it out to the hungry syndicates and speculators who besiege this temple for more profits wrung from the people, and cry out with loud acclaim, 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians.'

"The South refuses to worship at that shrine; and she would not be permitted to do so, if her knees were ready to stoop with such fawning. In our system of finance, the producing classes are excluded from the advantages that are given by law to those who speculate in money, and this curse will rest upon the country until the people are restored to the full measure of their rights, as the same are clearly defined in the Constitution of the United

States."

No Discrimination Against Negroes at Atlanta.-Editor Fortune, of The Age, has investigated the charges made by Mr. Hagler (THE LITERARY DIGEST, November 2), in regard to alleged outrages upon negro visitors of the Atlanta Exposition, and has found them greatly exaggerated, if not utterly baseless. He says editorially: "From all that we can learn, Editor Hagler has greatly exaggerated matters, if he has not resorted to deliberate misrepresentation. He has not stuck closely to the truth, according to the testimony of reliable witnesses, in whom the editor of The Age has implicit confidence. Editor Hagler is under obligation to tell why he published such a misleading article. He must know that he can not impose upon the reading public, as he has attempted to do, without being found out. He should not want to be regarded as a malicious man, because that would destroy his usefulness as an editor, and yet he has stated what reputable witnesses stigmatize as falsehoods concerning the management of a great enterprise in which all the people of the country are interested." The Atlanta Constitution, indirectly referring to the same matter, writes: "Since the Exposition opened its gates thousands of respectable colored people have attended the big show, and they have been as well treated as their white neighbors. This is a part of the program. Our Exposition is national and international in its scope, and there is no room in it for se tional or racial discrimination. The whites of the South are proud of the splendid showing made by the blacks at our Fair, and they are anxious to have them enjoy the educational benefits which are connected with these object-lessons in art and industry."

TOPICS IN BRIEF.

FERGUS: "I see by the papers that the Turks are committing more outrages."

O'Hoolihan: "Sure 'tis about time the papers let up on us dacent voters." -The Herald, New York.

CONGRESS will soon be in session; but then, alas! the business of Congress too often is to digress from the line of business and transgress the laws of business.-The Transcript, Boston.

SOME California clergymen predict the end of the world in 1896, and we are inclined to think they are about right if they refer to Democracy.-The Tribune, Chicago.

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND must weep when he thinks of Miss Frances Willard's seventeen terms as President.-The Times-Herald, Chicago.

IT would be funny after all this uproar to discover that Mr. Cleveland's foreign policy had merely cut a tooth.-The Tribune, Detroit.

THE joke about the Administration's vigorous foreign policy has already convulsed a whole continent and jerked buttons off over in Europe. - The Journal, Detroit.

THE Sultan of Turkey is accused of being, in common with a number of eminent statesmen, a reformer for publication only.-The Star, Washington.

"EVERYTHING," said the corn-fed philosopher, as he began his daily lecture, "is of educational value."

"Even prize-fights?" asked the freshest youth.

"Yea, even prize-fights. Hath not pugilism taught us the names of the Governors of Texas and Arkansas?"- The Journal, Indianapolis,

IF President Cleveland's foreign policy were half as vigorous as that of the Washington correspondents he would have a Spanish punching bag in his room for constant use.-The Herald, St. Joseph.

GADZOOKS: "I see that a clergyman who was running for the legislature in Ohio has been caught attempting to extort a bribe. This is a sad illustration of the clergyman in politics.'

Zounds: "Oh, no; it is an illustration, rather, of politics in a clergyman." The Tribune, New York.

SILVER

UNCLE SAM: "16 to 1! You're 32 to 1, if you're a day!"-From "Sound Currency," published by the New York Reform Club.

FACT.

HE audacity of Shakespeare in " rattling together" the plots of certain of his plays, in "defiance of the possibilities of history and the capacities of human nature," is commented upon by Dr. Van Buren Denslow in the October Social Economist. Attention has been drawn by various writers to the fact that at no period in the administration of the civil law in Italy during the Middle Ages could the validity of the bond given to Shylock by Antonio, in the "Merchant of Venice," have been made the subject of grave judicial investigation. Dr. Denslow thinks that the "literary audacity" shown in the "Merchant of Venice" pales before the "crude and barbarous vigor" with which all the legal ideas of the Danes and of every other race are defied in "Hamlet," and all the possibilities of Scotch history, habits, and character are trampled under foot in "Macbeth." Concerning "Hamlet" he says:

"It is contrary to the principles of human nature everywhere that the affection of parents for their brothers and sisters should exceed that for their children, and especially for their sons. This being true, the law of inheritance of thrones and rank, which is always fashioned after the law of descent of lands and goods, would necessarily require that when Claudius Hamlet, King of Denmark, the father of young Hamlet, died, leaving a son of full age, the crown should descend directly to the son, and if young Hamlet were a minor the late queen consort would be regent merely.

"But the play of 'Hamlet' opens one month after Claudius's death, with his brother enthroned instead of his son, and the former queen consort to Claudius Hamlet is now consort to his surviving brother.

"Furthermore, this impossible mis-descent is assumed by all the persons of the drama to be a mere matter of course, and the younger Hamlet's entire calamity is pictured as being his loss of his father, with no allusion whatever to his loss of a throne.

"It is not indicated whether the queen had been a queen jointly regnant with the elder Hamlet or a queen consort to him; but the assumption of the text is that her entire dignity had been derived through her husband, not that she was queen regnant in her own right nor that these successive husbands were mere kings consort, deriving their positions through her. The new king assumes all the attributes of a monarch, as if his brother's death were absolutely all that was needed to make him king. He sends commissioners to Norway, and, according to the words of Rosencrantz, this king was assumed to have power to assure the crown to Hamlet at his death, and had done so before discovering whether his own incestuous marriage to his brother's widow would have issue. .

"It was impossible that the Ghost should have assumed that his demise would have devolved the crown on his brother, impossible that young Hamlet should assume it, impossible that any portion of the people of Denmark or of any other kingdom on earth should have assumed it, and therefore impossible that the murder should be assumed to be commissible with the motive assigned, viz., of succeeding to the throne or the queen. She would have been only dowager queen and young Hamlet would have been king."

We have quoted the more salient points of Dr. Denslow's criticism of "Hamlet." Turning to "Macbeth" he continues:

"In 'Macbeth' we have the like assumption on the part of a Scottish captain who has just won in a recent skirmish the title of 'Thane,' that if he can assassinate his king, Duncan, tho Duncan's two athletic sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, survive and are in full health, yet Macbeth will then become king. No election or proclamation by the army, no renunciation by the heirs-apparent, no concurrence of the nobles is called for. To Lady Macbeth the succession appears assured as soon as she learns that Duncan is about to sleep under their roof. Nothing but murder is required to win a crown for a person between whom and the throne there stands two male heirs, both on the ground, one General Banquo, as distinguished as himself, and many earls and notables.

Succession by assassination was at all times as foreign to the Scotch character and history as cannibalism. Hospitality to guests, and especially at night, is an inborn and deeply felt religion among the Scotch. In a country where hospitality is thus sacred and assassination is a thing unknown, the hideousness of murdering a king by night to get his throne is a foreign travesty on its face. Such crimes might occur in Northern Africa or Southern Asia, and even in Italy. During the invasion of Italy by the Lombards events occurred from which the criminal atrocity and ferocity of Macbeth might have been drawn. But to locate them in Scotland at any period is simply to transfer to the atmosphere of the Highlands a kind and form of depravity which, while it never existed in its fulness anywhere, never found any type or suggestion among the Scots."

It is evident that Dr. Denslow does not believe that Bacon wrote "Shakespeare." He says in closing:

Both are sur

"The tremendous energy of Shakespeare's tragedies lifts them Their above dramatic criticism, and makes them the standard. heroes are not men, their heroines are not women. vivals over into the modern stage-life of the artist-made gods of the mythological pantheon. Richard III. is a better Satan than Milton drew. Macbeth is a better Belial. It is a proof of the moral advance of this age that the good taste of society revolts from the notion that Shakespeare's men were human. It does not greatly care for monstrosities of any kind in fiction, any more than for tortures in a theory of destiny. It prefers a drama whose characters are not revolting and do not rape the graceful form of History.

"The three plays cited furnish strong proofs, if any were needed, that the author of the plays could not have looked at his plots through a legalist imagination like that of Lord Bacon, the first lawyer in his day of the kingdom. They are the product of an imagination in which the descent of a throne to a brother, or to a successful chieftain in preference to a son, creates no sense of incongruity."

A

PESSIMISM IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE.

GERMAN editor recently described the Russians as an apathetic people, roused occasionally by short spurts of energy, only to subside again into their accustomed stupor. An Italian writer, E. G. Boner, corroborates this statement in the Nuova Antologia, Rome. According to his view the Russian is too pessimistic to exert himself. He is unable to discover a lasting value in exertion. Life itself appears to him not worth living. This is best illustrated by the tone adopted by the Russian poet and novelist. Mr. Boner says:

"What is it that characterizes the hero of the Russian novelist and poet? Is it love, courage, virtue, honor, patriotism, or abnegation? None of these. The only thing for which the Russian writer is remarkable is his dissatisfaction, a dissatisfaction which is in a slight measure to be found in the English spleen, the German Weltschmerz, the fithür of the Turk, the petit ennui of the Parisian, and the Sicilian's lissa. There is nothing of that vigorous life which characterizes the Western people.

"The fact is, 'their civilization is only skin deep,' as Dumas expresses it. They are as ignorant and barbarous as a nation just beginning life, and yet as corrupt and dangerous as a people nearing their end.' Tourgueneff confesses as much. • What we Russians want,' he says, 'is a master-hand to direct us. As it is, we are satisfied with nothing, believe in nothing, we never feel young, not even in our youth.' In another place he says: 'We Russians have not yet arrived at a true and proper educational system. We live in a certain state of primitiveness; we vegetate, preferring insipid things to things of greater moral and social importance.' And they seem unable to rouse themselves. Everywhere we meet the same lethargy, the same disgust with life, which the Russian writer thinks hardly worth living. Pushkin calls this excessive dissatisfaction the Russian distemper."

The writer quotes liberally from Russian novelists and poets to prove that, with few exceptions, the same want of joyous energy is wanting in all. Yet the Russian men of letters are well aware of their fault. Nicolaus Gogol, in his Confessions, says: "Possessed of the highest natural gifts, master of phraseology,

shall have to present myself twice as often, but I shall get there in the end. It is more for the novel than for myself that I am fighting. I want the novel to be recognized as the most important form of literature, next to lyric poetry, of the century. And the present constitution of the Academy does not recognize this fact. The novel is still in the eyes of the academicians what it was when novels were first written a literary trifle that sat very low down at the table of the banquet of literature. Yes, I shall go on and on.

HONORS TO A DISTINGUISHED PHILOLOGIST.

THR

HREE anniversaries in the life of Dr. Francis Andrew March, professor of the English language and comparative philology in Lafayette College, Easton, Pa., were celebrated at that place on October 24-the seventieth anniversary of

Dr. March's birth, the fiftieth of his graduation, and the fortieth of his connection with Lafayette. The ovation was participated in by many distinguished educators from all parts of the country. During the day addresses were delivered by ex - President W. C. Cattell, Prof. T. R. Lounsbury, Prof. J. W. Bright, Dr. William Hayes Ward, and a number of others. A banquet was served, at which Professor March in a brief speech said:

PROF. FRANCIS ANDREW MARCH, LL.D., L.H.D.

"A college professor has a good position for friends; new troops arrive each year to keep him always young, and when he reaches his jubilee he finds he has a wonderful unearned increment. One is happy in an earnest pursuit of something useful to mankind. We look to the future. We like to help our Alma Mater. The scholar's foster-mother by eminence is his mother tongue, and one has a peculiar delight in doing anything to improve it-to make our English more simple, symmetrical, convenient, beautiful."

Dr. March was born at Millbury, Mass., October 25, 1825; was educated at Worcester, Mass., 1829-41; was graduated valedictorian at Amherst College in 1845, and was tutor there in 1847-49. He studied law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1850. In 1852, broken in health, he engaged in teaching in Fredericksburg, Va., and in 1825 he began his career at Lafayette College. In 1857 he was chosen professor of the English language and comparative philology, a position which he still holds. In 1873 he was chosen president of the American Philological Association. He took the direction, in 1879, of the work in America for the "New English Dictionary on Historical Principles" of the Philological Society of England, now in publication by the University of Oxford, and had charge of the etymologies of the "Standard Dictionary."

He is president of the Spelling Reform Association, councillor of the American Educational Association, vice-president of the London New Shakespeare Society, honorary member of the Philological Society, London, the American Philosophical Society, L'Association Fonetique des Professeurs de Langages Vivantes, Paris; and member of the National Council of Education, the American Antiquarian Society, etc.

A

A GLIMPSE OF STEVENSON, THE MAN. LL the friends of Robert Louis Stevenson praise the grand spirit that resided in the man. They delight to speak of the character, the nature, the personality which his gifts and qualities composed, rather than of his special qualities and gifts. They are fond of telling us that the doer was better than any of his deeds, his art in living finer than his art in writing. In this mood and in such words Mrs. M. G. Van Rensselaer introduces us to Stevenson as she found him ill in the most dismal possible chamber of a dismal New York hotel, in the spring of 1888, after he had come down from the Adirondacks. We reproduce her sketch, as follows:

"There were a great many things on Stevenson's bed-things to eat and to smoke, things to write with and to read. I have seen tidier sick-beds, and also invalids more modishly attired: this one wore over his shoulders an old red cloak with a hole for the head in the middle (a serape, I supposed), which, faded and spotted with ink, looked much like a school-room table-cloth. But the untidiness seemed a proof of his desire to make the most of each passing minute; clearly, the littering things had been brought, not in case they might be wanted, but as answers to actual and eager needs. Ill as he was, Stevenson had been reading and writing-and smoking;, . . and in fact, I call him an invalid chiefly because, as I remember him, the term has such a picturesque unfitness. His body was in evil case, but his spirit was more bright, more eager, more ardently and healthily alive than that of any other mortal.

"I find myself repeating the one word 'eager.' There is none which better befits Stevenson's appearance and manner and talk. His mind seemed to quiver with perpetual hope of something that would give it a new idea to feed upon, a new fact to file away, a new experience to be tested and savored. I could read this attitude even in the quick cordiality of his greeting. The welcome was not for me, as myself, but for the new person-for the new human being, who, possessing ears and a tongue, might possibly contribute some item to the harvest of the day.'

Mrs. Van Rensselaer traces in Stevenson's profile "sensitiveness and refinement of a virile sort in the general cast of the face and head, sagacity in the long but not prominent nose, and poetic feeling in the contour of the brow." In full view the countenance was remarkable. "The upper part, extraordinarily broad between the eyes, was deerlike in its gentle serenity, but the lower part, very narrow in comparison, was almost fox-like in its keen alertness; and the mobility of the mouth hardly seemed to fit with the steady intentness of the wide, dark eyes." To quote again:

"I remember how Stevenson's face looked when he said that, long tho he had been tied to sedentary habits, and deeply tho he loved the art they permitted him to practise, the one thing in the world that he held to be the best was still the joy of outdoor living; it was a beautiful face just then, because it revealed a soul which could endure without bemoaning itself. And for the same reason it was beautiful again when it turned merry over a little tale of attempts to learn the art of knitting as a solace for hours of wearisome languor-unavailing attempts, altho he had persisted in them until he brought himself to the verge-nay, he declared, actually over the verge of tears. An amusing little story it seemed as he told its details, yet in itself and in the manner of its telling it might have moved a listener to tears in his turn, so unconscious did the teller seem that a lifelong story of smiling conflict with bitter denials and restrictions, when reduced to its very lowest terms, then showed the very sharpest, most tragical edge of its pathos.

"I should like to make you understand how Stevenson gave this story, and how he spoke (now with a very conscious pride) about the strategical soldier-games which, in scientific ways, he and his stepson were in the habit of playing; I should like to relate how he pounced upon every Americanism I chanced to utter, not deriding it, but shaking it in the teeth of a pleased curiosity as a bit of treasure-trove, a new fragment of speech with an origin, a history, a utility that must be learned; and in other ways to explain what a zest he had for those myriad little interests, little