Vice Admiral Uriu is a Presbyterian elder, General Sarrato, who commanded the Japanese forces in the war with China, was, up to the time of his death, president of the Tokio Young Men's Christian Association, and Field Marshal Oyama and Admiral Togo are professed Christians. When we reflect that in England no woman can teach in the state schools, for which all classes are taxed, unless she is an adherent of the established church, we are called on to revise our ideas of the distinction between "enlightened" and "heathen" people.

The death of Hezekiah Butterworth removes another from the scanty list of survivors of a distinct and characteristic literary coterie. He was not great in the sense that Whittier, Lowell and Holmes were rated, but he ranks with them in his consciousness of the New England idea in literature, and in his contributions thereto. Childless, he lived, wrought and wrote for children, and every line was pure and on a lofty plane. His books are a group of New England classics for the young, and his long and fruitful life has been a generous contribution of all that is sweetest and best in the influences that have in so large measure shaped New England character-an influence which will continue to be potent for long years to come.

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new

The New York Post-graduate Hospital has just sent out a bulletin to the medical profession, announcing the result of carefully conducted experiments on a method for the cure of tuberculosis. It is a most startling and important discovery if the favorable results already secured should be reinforced by later and more general tests. The new treatment is simply one of food, two ounces twice a day of the juices of common vegetables being the whole prescription. A dozen or more cures of well established cases are recorded, and all the common vegetables seem to have been used indiscriminately and without particular regard to proportions. All that seems to be necessary is that the patient should get the stated amount of vegetable juices. There should be great joy in the camp of the vegetarians, and tuberculous patients should hasten to test the treatment, for it certainly can do no harm. With a generous vegetable diet the question of expressing the juices before taking does not appear to be essential; nature will extract the juices in the process of digestion. There is one application of the remedy which the bulletin does not mention, but which is of great practical importance. Tuberculous milk fed to infants and delicate women is recognized

as an important agent of infection, and the only efficient check on this agent heretofore has been to destroy the cow when the tuberculin test has demonstrated the presence of the disease in the animal. If the new remedy proves genuine all that is necessary is to feed the animals generously with vegetables and a cure may be expected. The feeding of roots, cabbages, pumpkins, etc., is not a new idea, but is practiced by progressive farmers to a considerable extent on general principles of health and economy. This new announcement should prompt a more general adoption of root feeding, and general experiment with diseased animals should be instituted without delay and the effects carefully noted.

The Medical Times remarks in a recent issue: "It may occur to reflective minds in our inimitable profession of human healing, that, on its trading planes of superabundant technicalities, there has unfolded a noticeable prominence of mental or scholastic attitudinizing, a tendency to medical transcendentalism, the literal speculative and soaring Emersonianism in physics, that, though unique and beautiful enough in its studied impress, may sometimes happen to balloon its flight exaltedly above the very housetops and steeples of average comprehension, and hereby lose the simpler reach for handy practical service." the paragraph is not far from verbal illustration of the fault that is the subject of criticism.

And

King's Chapel burying-ground, Boston, was the scene of an impressive memorial service August 24th, when a memorial stone was erected over graves of Dr. Comfort Starr and his wife, Elizabeth. The stone was erected by Hosea Starr Ballou, of Boston, and he gave a large assembly of relatives an interesting sketch of the life of their first American ancestor. He was a native of Cranbrook, England, son of Thomas Starr, and was baptized July 6, 1589. He came here in 1634 and settled in Cambridge. His son, Comfort was one of the incorporators of Harvard College, and one of his daughters married George Bunker, who gave his name to Bunker Hill. Mr. Ballou gave a resume of the life of Dr. Starr and an extract from his will, which, he said, was remarkable for the high ideals of manhood, the positive belief in the value of higher education and reverence for things holy which it revealed. He not only provided for his sons and daughters, but for his 24 grandchildren, for he directed John Starr, in Boston, his executor, "to give to each of them good kersey and pension

cotton to the worth of 40 shillings apiece, to be paid four years after my decease.' This was done, and the payment was formally acknowledged August 24, 1663, 240 years ago, and the services were held on the anniversary of that event.

President Mitchell of the Coal Miners' Union, in a recent address said: "There can be no permanent industrial peace unless the workmen are recognized as contracting parties in fixing the wages and improving conditions of employment. The workmen must be recognized as a collective unit." But contracting parties are generally supposed to be equally responsible. If the union wants to be a "collective unit" it should be incorporated, so that its responsibility for the keeping of a contract may be legally assured. But all labor unions object to legal incorporation. They would hold employers to contracts but avoid for themselves any such responsibility, and would break contracts at will. They demand law for others, but will not themselves assume legal obligations.

The descendants of Jonathan Fairbanks, the first of his name in New England, and one of the original settlers of Dedham. Massachusetts, held their fourth annual reunion August 23 and 24, in Boston and Dedham. The old homestead in Dedham, which dates back to 1636 was visited by about five hundred descendants. The secretary reported the enrollment of five thousand families claiming descent. The old hometead has been secured to the family association and is to be preserved in its original condition as long as possible.

On July 29th the people of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, dedicated a monument to the memory of the revolutionary patriots who repulsed the British troops who menaced the town in September, 1778. A memorial boulder was dedicated at Fort Phenix, in the presence of a large concourse of the neighborhood people, with appropriate addresses and other exercises.

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A scientific medical statistician announces that observation of over five thousand cases of tuberculosis failed to show a case where the victim was bald-headed. Well, what of it? Of what is this bald fact conclusive? A majority of tuberculous patients are females, and a bald-headed woman is a rarity. Besides, most cases of the disease are of people under forty-five years of age, when even males are rarely baldheaded. The connection between baldness and immunity is not yet demonstrably ap

David Harum remarked that if it was not for difference of opinion there wou'd be no horse-trots, but nowadays horsetrots do not depend on differences of opinion so much as they do on the privilege of gambling. Several race-tracks in New England are threatening to go out of business for the reason that the authorities have forbidden pool-selling in connection with their races. Gambling has become a national vice, and all good citizens will bear up patiently under the affliction if it proves to be the case, as the race-track managers assert, that races cannot be successsful without free opportunities for gambling.

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In our July number the article on John Winthrop, Jr., contained a list purporting to include all his known descendants. A representative of the family calls our attention to its incompleteness. The Connecticut pioneer has a very large list of descendants-hundreds in number, and they represent in large degree the sturdy virtues of the early New England stock.

In a recent Public Health Congress in London, Mr. Blizard, of the Institute of Civil Engineers. read a paper on the relation of ill-ventilated churches to the dissemination of infectious diseases, and on the cause of sleepiness in church. His name alone suggests an antidote for the latter, for if the blizzard could come from the pulpit, doubtless it would tend to dissipate the prevailing somnolence. Dull sermons of course provoke drowsiness, but students of the new psychology will find another "scientific" explanation in selfhypnotism. To sit still for an hour, more or less, is, for the average auditor of the ordinary sermon provocative of the state of mind advised by Mr. Bunthorne-to "think of nothing at all," and this is an invitation to mental unconsciousness which it is hard to resist. Observers have noted that active people, even if interested in an address or a concert, are subject to hypnotic experiences, and these are often in proportion to their interest. Thus absolute indifference and intense attention are both inducive to loss of objective consciousness, and Mr. Blizard's mal-aria is only one factor in his problem. In view of al' the sleep-persuaders involved, the rigid formality of a chuch service might perhans be modified toward the freedom of the modern "smoke-talk."

IT

T was in the month of February, two years ago, that the eager public first had opportunity to inspect the art treasures of the then just-completed Fenway Court. The time of the Museum's début was admirably chosen. For while Mrs. Gardner's palace. would appear in summer merely a sultry spot on a shadeless stretch of Boston's "made land" there was in its atmosphere that midwinter day the almost spectacular impressiveness that comes from cleverly-designed contrast. As Fenway Court welcomed from the bleak winds of the Back Bay the pilgrims who had come to bend a reverend knee before its famous paintings it took on the aspect of the Alhambra. For it is only in such favored spots of the South Land, of course, that luxuriant flowers bloom and happy birds flit among verdant shrubbery to the accompaniment of plashing fountains-in February.

Those who go to the Court on any fine frosty day, obtain in a similar striking fashion the full benefit of this contrast between exterior and interior. The severely plain square building as it then rises up from the level snowbound Fens, speaks in every line its ability to

stand against inclement winds. Moreover, the red-tiled roof and the few Venetian windows, are piquant if slight suggestions of the palace's real contents.

Once within the main corridor, the transformation is complete. At first, one seems to be in a sort of short tunnel,-between the rich, old tile floor and the vaulted brick ceiling of the hallway,-where lines of perspective act as a telescope to strengthen and bring near the view of the central, enclosed court to which the fine-wrought iron gateway stands hospitably open. In the dark, enclosed corridor I stopped to gloat over that first effect, half afraid that this vista of a south land was but a mirage and would not bear closer inspection. But the warm perfume of flowers was undeniably there, and the notes of an alien bird speedily completed the illusion of the tropics. The memory of winter dropped away, and in full tune with the exotic life enclosed there, I joyfully entered the cloistered court.

What is it like, this cloister-arcade, around the square yard open to the light of day? It seems to be built of a tangle of memories of Italy