fate yours was, and how entirely irresponsible you were for the actions which led up to it. There is one thing, however, which I cannot understand, and that is why you should still be carrying this burden of punishment. If I remember correctly, the story kills you off in the end and you die properly, amid the many expressions of sympathy from your mess-mates, to whom you had become endeared by your many virtues.' "Nolan looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then said, 'I can understand your difficulty, which arises from your lack of knowledge of the law. When I died I was still serving out my sentence, which, you will remember, was for an indefinite period. Now, had a definite term of punishment been assigned to me, whether for a certain number of years or for life, at the expiration of either term I would have expiated my supposititious crime and have been entitled to the same repose which comes to every criminal who has been punished in accordance with the laws of his country. But the court which sentenced me was not informed as to the law, and the department which approved that sentence was about equally enlightened, the result to me being that I died without having served my full time, and my sense of honor, as an officer and a gentleman, will not permit me to take advantage of any technicality; so I am still traveling to and fro, not on government vessels, to be sure, for the accommodations in the new style of naval vessels are very inadequate, and I do not feel called upon to subject myself to such inconvenience. This line of steamers on which we are now is well equipped, and I find the vessels fairly comfortable. The monotony of the existence, however, is, I find, wearing upon me, and I cannot say how long I can stand the strain.' "Well, gentlemen, I don't think that in all my experience I was ever in such an embarrassing position, or where I felt so much and yet saw so little opening to relieve the sufferings of another being. I pondered over the matter, while Nolan sat opposite to me, with his head in his hands, looking into vacancy. "Mr. Nolan,' said I, 'is there nothing which can be done to set your spirit free and give to you the repose to which I feel you are entitled? If there is, command me.' "Nolan raised his head and, speaking slowly and in a meditative way, replied, I think it could be done, perhaps. I have noticed that "The Man without a Country" is still popular, and while this is, to a certain extent, gratifying to such little vanity as I possess, it is, at the same time, humiliating to feel that my disgrace is being perpetuated. I am informed that I am now published in a lound volume and incorporated with other narratives under the attractive and exceedingly complimentary title of "The Modern Classics." I have, however, no desire to be a classic. What I want is rest, and to secure it there seems to be but one course open. I have already said that my term was not served out when I died, nor can it ever be served out if the language of the sentence is to be followed. My father will not take any step in my behalf, for, notwithstanding, my record, he cannot fail to have a pride in the consciousness of having been the parent of such a popular character; but if I could secure a pardon my relief would be instantaneous, for then I would be free once more, with my honor unstained.' "By Jove, Mr. Nolan,' said I, 'I will undertake to get that pardon for you if I have to go down on my knees for it.' "Poor Nolan grasped my hand in his and cried like a baby, and while the tears streamed down both our cheeks, the daylight broke on the horizon and sent a little ray into the window of the room where we were sitting. Nolan slowly rose and, opening the door, stepped out upon the deck, saying as he went, Mr. Head, if you succeed in getting that pardon, the knowledge of the fact will come to me wherever I may be, and I will come to you. May Heaven bless you, my friend. Good-by.' And he was gone. "On my return to the United States, gentlemen, I went at once to Washington and had an interview with the President and the Secretary of War. They were at first inclined to treat the matter somewhat cavalierly; but I finally convinced them that the issuance of the pardon could do no harm, even if it did no good; and, looking at it from this stand-point, the Secretary at last quietly filled up the pardon and the President signed it, and I took the precious paper with me to my hotel. When I entered my room Nolan was sitting there, radiant in expression. He rose at once and, advancing, said, 'I know the good news, my friend, and my gratitude cannot be told in words. I had sometimes thought that, should this happy moment ever arrive, I would, before I sought "that bourne from whence no traveler returns" to rest in peace forever, write a book about Mr. Edward Everett Hale and vindicate my memory. But I cannot forget that he was my father and I leave him to his conscience.' As he spoke he folded the pardon to his breast and faltered Farewell, my benefactor and my friend, farewell.' I bowed my head and the tears ran down my face. When, at last, I looked up, I was alone. "Gentlemen, this is my story, and, while it may seem in some particulars incredible, it is the solemn truth." The members of the club, with one exception, expressed their full belief in every detail. The exception was, of course, that man Jenkins, and he merely said, in that characteristically disagreeable way of his, "Ananias Head, I believe you are a liar." A. H. O'BRIEN. DEPRECIATORS OF THE NATION RARELY does one meet a foreigner, even though he may belong to some insignificant state, who, in conversation, will depreciate his own land and people; but there are Britons who make a practice of "running down" all that appertains to the country of their birth. They seem to consider that by so doing they are giving proof of their own independence and of their superior enlightenment. These national depreciators are to be met with in all ranks of society, but principally among a certain small section of the working-classes. When national criticism emanates from friendly lips and is the result of knowledge and of careful study it should be welcomed by all sensible patriots. Constant improvement is the life of nations as well as of individuals. Stagnation is death; but if the fault-finding be the offspring of ignorance and of a self-sufficient desire to appear more enlightened than others, then it is well that the true character of such criticism should be clearly understood. Some months ago, when publicly advocating the inculcation of patriotic feeling among the children in the board and national schools of the metropolis, I received a long and carefully argued protest from a gentleman who informed me that he was a well-to-do tradesman, a late member of a vestry, a school-board manager, and an ardent admirer of republican institutions, and of the United States of America in particular, and he gave what he doubtless considered excellent reasons why, although, according to him, it was natural that the citizens of the United States should love their country, Britons have no cause to be equally proud of the land of their birth. I also am an admirer of the Constitution of the United States and of the enterprise and intelligence of its population. Indeed, he would be but a poor Briton who could contemplate without feelings of admiration and pride the splendid triumphs of a people sprung from the loins of his own ancestors. Britons the Americans originally were, and in the imagination of the true Englishman kinsmen they ever will remain. But because his heart goes out to them in the way that it does to no 1 Reprinted from Fortnightly Review by permission of Leonard Scott Publishing Company of New York, the American publishers of Fortnightly Review. other people, that is no reason why an Englishman should be blind to the merits of his own country or to the virtues of that portion of his race which has remained at home. The writer of this protest seemed anxious to make it clear that he was not a Socialist, and that the opinions he expressed and the arguments he employed against the inculcation of patriotic feeling among the rising generation were those in common use among men of his own class. The arguments used were in a great measure founded on fictions, evidently put forward by the writer in all good faith as incontrovertible facts. If this letter really represented, as it professed to do, the feelings and beliefs of a certain number of honest but halfeducated men, the following remarks may, perhaps, not be entirely without value. As my correspondent declared himself to be a Radical, it is to be presumed that he sympathizes with labor. If this be the case, the words of such a good friend to labor and to the Radical cause as Mr. W. T. Stead has ever shown himself to be should at least command his respectful attention. In the remarkable book called "If Christ came to Chicago," Mr. Stead says, "The labor movement in America seems to me to be about where the English labor movement stood nearly thirty years since. The unions are still to a certain extent outlawed. They have no allies and many enemies. They have no representatives in city councils, in State legislatures, or in the Federal Congress. The newspapers, almost without exception, are against them. Among the churches they have some sympathy, but little support. They are hampered, as we were not, by the fetters of written constitutions. . . . I have watched the rapid evolution of social democracy in England, I have studied autocracy in Russia and theocracy in Rome, and I must say that nowhere, not even in Russia, in the first years of the reaction occasioned by the murder of the late Czar, have I struck more abject submission to a more soulless despotism than that which prevails among the masses of the so-called free American citizens, when they are face to face with the omnipotent power of the corporations. Wealth,' said a workman, bitterly, to me one day, 'has subjugated everything. It has gagged the press, it has bought up the legislature, it has corrupted the judges. Even on the universities it is laying its golden finger. The churches are in its grasp. Go where you will, up and down this country, you will find our citizens paralyzed by a sense of their own impotence. They know the injustice, they know better than any the wrongs which they suffer, they mutter curses, but they are too cowed to do anything. They have tried so often, and have been beaten so badly, that they have not the heart to try again."" So much for the labor movement! Now hear how the unem ployed, according to Mr. Stead, were housed during his visit to Chicago,― "In the name of that homeless wanderer in this desert of stone and steel, whose hopeless heart lies leaden in his bosom, whose brain grows faint for want of food: in the name of that unnecessary product of American freedom and prosperity, the American tramp, I bid you welcome to the imperial city of the boundless West.' So spoke William C. Pomeroy, vice-president of the Trade and Labor Assembly, on behalf of the labor unions of Chicago, to the convention of the American Federation of Labor which assembled at Chicago in last December." "He but expressed, in his own vivid way," continues Mr. Stead, "some of the bitterness of discontent which all men felt in Chicago last winter. "Among the images which ye have made of me,' the tramp is one of the most unattractive, and in December he was everywhere in evidence. The approach of winter drove him from the fields to seek shelter in the towns, which were already over-burdened with their own unemployed. Like the frogs in the Egyptian plague, you could not escape from the tramps, go where you would. In the city they wandered through the streets, seeking work and finding none. At night, if they had failed in begging the dime which would secure them a lodging, they came together in three great herds, presenting a sad spectacle of squalid misery and forlorn manhood. These nocturnal camps of the homeless nomads of civilization were all in the centre of the city. Of these the most wretched was that which was pitched in Harrison Street Police-Station. "The foot-sore, leg-swollen tramp who had wandered all day through the city streets, looking more or less aimlessly for work or food, sought shelter at night wherever he could find a roof to shelter him and warmth to keep the frost out of his bones. Some kenneled in empty trucks on the railway sidings, rejoicing even in a fireless retreat, others crept into the basement of saloons or coiled themselves up in outhouses, but the bulk of them were accommodated in the police-stations, in the Pacific Garden Mission, and in the City Hall. Such improvised shelters were all the appliances of civilization which Chicago, in the year of the World's Fair, had to offer to the homeless out-of-works. "There is something dreary and repelling about a police-station in the least criminal districts. But Harrison Street Station stands in the midst of darkest Chicago. Behind the iron bars of its underground cages are penned up night after night scores and hundreds of the most dissolute ruffians of both sexes that can be raked up in the dives of the levee. "The cells, if they may be called such, are in the basement, half |