received earnest proposals from Boston at about the time that Henry the Eighth of cities took to his bosom the twins, Roxbury and West Roxbury, as well as piquant Brighton and coy Dorchester. But Brookline had tasted the life of a care free bachelor maid longer than her neighbors and she declined to give it up. So she has remained, though richer, better dressed, and more beloved than ever. All her friends believe she has done better to live her own life than she would have had she joined the great city that wooed her. In the same way Brookline has set an example to other growing towns so far as the matter of a change of government is concerned. She had people enough to make a city years ago and had the chance to have a mayor, aldermen and all those other vexations of spirit which cities have and pretend to be proud of. Brookline would have none of these. A Massachusetts town with a Board of Selectmen, Assessors and Overseers of the Poor was she born, and a Massachusetts town with all these just and righteous blessings would she live. Now here comes the funny part of it. To all the prophets has she given the laugh. Ordinarily it has been thought that a municipality should have a city form of government when it has a population to the number of 10,000 or 12,000, and particularly when with this population it has a large assessable value, the common argument being that it is only by this means that unwarrantable expenditures of money can be kept down. Now, Brookline has a larger population than Beverly, Newburyport, Chicopee, Marlboro, Medford, Melrose and Woburn; in fact, there are probably other cities in the commonwealth that, in the number of population, are no greater than Brookline, while they do not begin to possess her taxable resources. Brookline has a large industrial population, which contents itself with paying poll taxes, as well as a property tax-paying population. They all attend, or can attend, town meetings, and the fact that thus far politics has been. completely eliminated in town affairs has led to the choice of the best men to administer official duties without the least regard to their opinions on questions of national politics. It was declared that Brookline would find her form of government inadequate to her size and that corruption and inefficiency would creep in. Just the opposite has happened and Brookline is proud of it and all her friends congratulated her on it at her birthday party. It is because the people of Brookline see that, in a greater or less degree, national politics enters into the municipal matters in city governments, and it is because they have thus far found that, by appeals to the people as a whole entirely satisfactory results can be secured. that they insist upon maintaining this old-fashioned, democratic manner of carrying on their local affairs. They are setting an example for the country to study of the benefits of two great political principles, one, non-partisanship in municipal affairs, the other, determining local public questions by the initiative. and referendum. Now it is Boston that bids fair to have a Jerome of its own. Providence-not the city of that name; by no means-Providence, which gives daily strength for daily needs seems to have intervened, and none too soon. The complacent Republican ring and the equally complacent Democratic ring parcelled out the nomination for the office of District Attorney to the same man. That meant that he was to have it without lying awake nights. When both political parties offer you the same hand-out all you have to do usually is to put it in your grip and walk off with it. Nobody else is supposed to be near by to snatch at it. Only once in a while the politicians forget the people and the people remember the politicians, and that's the way Providence works it. The District Attorney's office may have been all right in the past; it might have been all right in the future under the regular nominee-you never can tell; but most of the people did not think so for they cut the regular nominee and voted for John B. Moran. Mr. Moran made what they call a whirlwind campaign. He told the voters in every ward and precinct of Suffolk county just how bad he believed things to be and promised to rip the rottenness up the back when he was elected. So they elected him, just to see what a ripping good District Attorney he'd make. Now it is up to Mr. Moran. No political party elected him and no string is tied to his leg. He can step boldly forward, without danger of being tripped up, on the path that Folk, Jerome and other latter day saints have blazed so successfully. There are not wanting people who believe there is need of him in Boston; people who say that Boston is the worst governed city in the country and that there are depths of iniquity here that would put St. Louis or Philadelphia to the blush. Mr. Moran talked plainly about these things in his campaign and promised to clean them up. That's why the people passed by the regular candidate and elected him. If he has the real Jerome blood in him he'll do it. The lime light is on and he holds the centre of the stage. The Worth of a Song By KONAN MACHUGH One wrote an epic stately and grand Whose fame should reëcho from land to land. One wrote a little lilting lay Of living and loving, for every day, With words of such lowly and common rede That surely, he said, no one will heed. In the dust that falls on an unread tome But the little song of common life, Of living and loving, and child, and wife, Who knows the worth of a song? D Explorer and Alpinist By ARTHUR WINSLOW TARBELL note in the White Mountains. The highest Swiss Alps, which are counted feats enough for most men and are attempted by few women, she next assailed, negotiating the peaks of Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and the forbidding Jungfrau. The other famous Alpine heights ISTINGUISHED honors from France, recently conferred, bring into the public eye for the first time Mrs. Fanny Bullock Workman, a New England woman whose exploits in the Himalayas have been of sufficient daring and scientific value to earn her the grand medaille of the French Alpine Club, were ascended one after another DOCTOR AND MRS. WORKMAN IN THE HIMILAY AS AT AN ALTITUDE OF OVER 20,000 FEET NO WOMAN HAS BEFORE ATTAINED THIS ALTITUDE the different styles of architecture in the Indian temples. Two years they devoted to this purpose, wheeling over four thousand miles, and becoming in the end more interested in mountains than architecture. Every summer since then Dr. and Mrs. Workman have been hard at work in the East making conquests of the loftiest Himalayan crests, exploring the sources, formations and movements of glaciers, and recording the phenomena of these treacherous altitudes that for the most part had as yet been untraversed by the human foot. To do all this, expeditions of considerable size, organized at great expense and much trouble, were necessary. The parties camp servants, a baggage train of from fifty to sixty coolies, and a flock of goats, sheep and yaks. Climbing-ropes, ice-pikes, cameras, scientific instruments and an extensive camping outfit were among the many burdens to be reckoned with; as were food supplies for such a caravan, and fuel to burn when bivouacing above the line of forest growth. The British government, through its Indian office, would send letters out ahead, as would the Maharaja of Cashmir, ordering all chiefs and village headmen to serve the undertaking, and furnish it with provisions and coolies. In several cases the government officials tried their best to dissuade Mrs. Workman from carrying out some of her particularly dangerous journeys, but without success. record of the expedition's doings. Almost hourly on these marches possible death in many forms was During the summers from 1900 to faced. Frequent avalanches, crash1904 the Workmans achieved a ing down with thundering echoes score of the highest Himalayas, on all sides, and sweeping everyliving for weeks at a time in camps thing along in their paths, were the at altitudes above fifteen thousand greatest menace. Overhanging icefeet. They succeeded in reaching walls, hidden crevasses, deep snows, the source of the great Chogo Loongma glacier, which is thirtyone miles long, and had never previously been ascended. On one occasion Dr. Workman broke the world's record for men by climbing 23,394 feet up a mountain 24,470 feet high, and his wife surpassed the rest of her sex, and most male Alpinists, by attaining 22,568 feet. The party traversed large areas, hitherto unvisited, discovering mountains and glaciers that no map had tabulated. Piled one over the other, in white chaotic grandeur, a billowy sea of sky-piercing pinnacles, varied and curious in shapes, all unnamed and intense cold, bottomless abysses and sixty-degree ascents, where a cutting for every step was necessary, were some of the obstacles that had constantly to be met and battled with. More than one poor coolie lost his life up in this white wilderness, although the Workmans, several times in tight corners, came through these perilous experiences safely. That it was their rare nerve, physical fitness and knowledge of mountaineering that made this possible, there can, of course, be no doubt. Severe headaches, difficult breathing, mountain lassitude, limbs pain |