She then introduced Hon. Henry M. Baker, whose address on "Our Forefathers" was most interesting. He began with the early history of England, its paganism followed by Druidism, on through the reign of Henry VIII, when the first note of Protestantism of the world was sounded. The reversion to Catholicism, when Mary ascended the throne, and the return to the Church of England in Elizabeth's reign, and the reign of James I and the persecution of the Pilgrims. Leading the Pilgrims through their various wanderings, known to all true New Englanders, he spoke with much pathos and pride of the courage and indomitable spirit shown by the little band of 101 persons on that historical ship. His concluding remark was, "I came from the Salem Pilgrims." The next speaker, Judge Ashley M. Gould, took for his subject the "Women of Colonial Times," calling attention to the mothers of the sturdy Pilgrims, and said that they deserved much of the credit for the founding of the colonies in this country. He read many extracts from the diaries of the carly colonists upon the trouble in procuring servants, which provoked mirth. He said that during the hard winters, when all the brave hearts of those colonists were beset with the privations which were being endured, no complaint came from the women, who stood out as the bright stars of the colony.

The refreshments were in old New England style, beans in individual bean pots, brown bread, sandwiches, sweet cider and doughnuts, pickles and old fashioned peppermint candy.

A unique feature was the five kernels of parched corn on each plate which were eaten first.

Their present list of officers is as follows: President, Mrs. Bertha M. Robbins, 1622 P St., N. W.; first vice president, Mrs. Chas. Lyman; second vice president, Mrs. S. G. W. Benjamin; recording secretary, Mrs. C. David White; corresponding secretary, Miss Josephine C. Webster, The Concord, Oregon and New Hampshire avenues: treasurer, Mrs. Richard Rathbun; historian, Mrs. Joseph A. Gilfillan.

Mrs. H. H. Barroll, Mrs. J. A. Gilfillan and Mrs. Smallwood then narrated incidents of stirring times in the early days of New England. Mrs. Barroll spoke of the privations endured by women; Mrs. Gilfillan of the difficulties of getting to market in the early times, and Mrs. Smallwood of the times now and then, when there was not and when there is a Pullman parlor car.

And their list of membership is, Active

Members: Mrs. H. H. Barroll, Miss Bessie Baldwin Beach, Mrs. S. G. W. Benjamin, Mrs. Lucy J. Bingham, Mrs. Julia T. Bodfish, Mrs. Paul Brockett, Dr. C. A. G. Burghardt, Miss Alice Huntington Clarke, Mrs. Frederick Perkins Dewey, Mrs. Solomon E. Faunce, Mrs. Joseph A. Gilfillan, Mrs. Charles G. Gould, Mrs. Harry T. Guss, Miss Ellen T. Longfellow, Mrs. Ellis Logan, Mrs. Charles Lyman, Mrs. Marian Longfellow O'Donoghue, Mrs. Robert Gill Proctor, Mrs. Richard Rathbun, Mrs. Bertha Murdock Robbins, Mrs. Louise Turner Schemerhorn, Mrs. George T. Smallwood, Miss Mary Frances Waite, Miss Josephine C. Webster, Mrs. C. David White, Mrs. Lyda J. Young Withee, Mrs. W. H. Seaman, Mrs. E. S. Brinton, Mrs. J. S. P. Ham, Mrs. Francis Fowler Gibson, Miss Emma Fowler, Mrs. W. H. Chaney, Mrs. M. E. Smoot, Mrs. Charlotte Emerson Main, Mrs. Esther Frothingham Noble, Mrs. Charles C. Gibson, Mrs. J. Bernard Brinton, Mrs. P. P. Pealer, Mrs. Herschel Main, Mrs. T. K. Noble.

Mrs. Marian Longfellow O'Donoghue, a niece of the poet Longfellow, and a writer of merit, was instrumental in organizing the Colony, was one of the charter members, and served as president the initial year.

Brooklyn, Colony Eight, has increased in membership to one hundred and seventy. A full list will be published in a subsequent number. They held their second social and literary meeting on January 11th at the home of Mrs. W. W. Vaughn, 200 New York avenue.

A group of songs by Miss Alice Woodrough opened the entertainment. Songs were well rendered and tastefully sung.

A paper on the "Home Life of Early New England Women" was presented by Mrs. Alexander Cook, who treated the physical environment of the early settlers, and the homes of the plain people. Mrs. Washington Hull, a pianist of recognized ability, followed with a fine selection.

The mental and moral characteristics of

early New England women were treated in an informal talk by Miss Sabia G. Ayres, who has been long and favorably known for her work upon the literature of the Bible. Miss Ayres emphasized the courage of the New England women, their adaptability, their aspirations for a higher and broader life for their children, and the great impulse they have given to our civilization, since they have embodied in a large degree the New England conscience and the sense of duty. A second group of songs by Miss Woodrough concluded the afternoon's formal entertainment. A pleasant chat followed.

Volapuk seems to have been a failure after a brief season of interest among teachers and idealists, and it has practically disappeared even as the basis of a "pennya-liner" paragraph. But it has a successor which seems to have the simple and practical qualities which may commend it to permanent attention. Now that the world is drawn so closely together by steam and electricity, a universal language is greatly to be desired; indeed it is not a far away hope that its necessity will ere long become imperative., A Polish physician, Dr. Zamenhof, has given his life to the work of evolving a new language based upon the classics and their lingual descendants of modern times. It bears the name "Esperanto," and its advocates are "Esperantists." They had a congress at Boulogne recently which was attended by several hundred delegates, representing twentythree nationalities, and the French press reports that "the auxiliary international tongue" has made remarkable progress. The delegates claimed

to represent 250,000 "Esperantists," and all the proceedings of the congress were in the new language. Hymns were sung, dramatic and poetic selections were given, both originals and translations, and there was quite a display of books printed in the new tongue. The language rests on sixteen inflexible rules. The roots of existing words are taken and the spelling is strictly phonetic. A root being given, the addition of a certain letter makes it a verb, a different final letter makes it an adjective, and a third similar Thus "amo" is change makes an adverb. love, "ami" is to love, and "amé" is lover. Its advocates claim that the whole language can be acquired by a student of ordinary capacity in a month or six weeks, while more apt pupils can acquire it in two weeks. Contrasted with the time required to secure even a passable familiarity with the classics or with either of the modern languages this seems of great advantage. If the claims of its advocates are just, the new language has a hopeful prospect. They claim that it is not only simple, easy to learn and practical for all ordinary linguistic purposes, but it is also literary and beautiful. It does not obscure finer meanings, shades and subleties of expression, sacrifice pregnant and significant idioms. Poetry, tragedy, humor, metaphysics and science are all possible to it. Its creator says of it-"It is easy to acquire in a grammatical sense, while from a linguistic point of view it is a language threefourths of whose vocabulary one knows be

nor

fore he has begun to study it, since most of the words are taken from known models-French, English, German, Latin and Greek." The congress must have had considerable local recognition and advertisement, for during the session many of the Boulogne shops displayed signs-"Ani herolas en Esperanto" (Esperanto spoken here.) The public reports of the Boulogne congress have stimulated interest in the new language this side the water, and Harvard University has an Esperanto Club with some thirty members at the start. These, and later accessions to the club, will give the new idea thorough tests, and some practical results may be expected.

The Rev. Mr. Jernigan gave New England people a costly lesson, a few years ago, in the art of extracting gold from seawater, and since then there has been a general scepticisni in regard to any such enterprise. But an eminent scientist of Geneva takes the matter very seriously in a recent number of Archives des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles.. He recognizes the fact that a ton of sea-water carries from two to four cents' worth of gold, but he claims that by certain economical processes this has a practical, commercial value. He favors the utilization of the tides to deposit the water in properly located basins, and then by the use of inexpensive chemicals and a simple process he expects to precipitate the precious metal in quantities that will repay the cost of the process. The Professor is confident that the presence of two cents' worth of gold per ton of water gives a practicable promise of profitable extraction, and under his stimulus a company is already working in England with that eminent scientist, Sir William Ramsay, as consulting chemist.

Dr. Charles Eliot Norton of Cambridge, formerly professor of literature at Harvard, has "stirred up a hornet's nest" by seconding Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth's idea of the propriety of putting out of existence the hopelessly insane, diseased, injured and degenerate. He appeals to both reason and compassion against effort to prolong human life under such conditions. The difficulty of his theory is in its application. Only the highest tribunal should be trusted with such powers, and in many cases, especially of disease and accident, it would be so distant or so preoccupied as to be practically inaccessible.

He does not expect a speedy acceptance of his idea, but says: "It is not to be hoped that a superstition so deeply rooted in tradition as that of the duty of prolonging life at any cost will readily yield to the arguments of reason or the pleadings of compassion, but the discussion of the subject in its various aspects may lead gradually to a more enlightened public opinion and to the consequent relief of much misery."

The

The Minnesota Supreme Court has cut a Gordian knot which has heretofore enmeshed the lawmakers. Religious freedom is not a simple problem where, as here, there are representatives of all faiths, each adhesive to its own traditions. question at bar was on the enforcement of the Sunday closing law against a Hebrew defendant who preferred to observe the seventh day as the Sabbath, and to keep open shop on Sunday in opposition to the popular custom. He pleaded his right to religious liberty, but the court ruled that the statute did not interfere with this, as it was not a religious but a sanitary provision, and a legitimate exercise of police power. The distinction is a fine one, but, on the ground of deference to the custom of the great majority of the people, where to please all is not practicable, the judgment of the court will be generally accepted.

Many infant prodigies are recor'ed, but most of them dropped back into the ranks of the mediocre after adolescence. Not so the late John Fiske, whose remarkable precocity was a lifelong equipment. His biographer says he was reading Latin fluently at seven years of age, and a year later was not only familiar with the Greek classics but had read all the plays of Shakespeare. At nine years of age he could speak Greek with ease, at ten years he wrote a history of the world from the days of Moses, and at twelve he had read all the Latin and Greek classics and was master of the higher mathematics. While in knickerbockers he wrote Spanish, spoke German and read the books of German philosophers. At seventeen years he wrote poetry in Italian. translated Spanish poetry and read Sanskrit readily. Grayhaired Harvard professors and all who knew him recognized in him more than a living fulfilment of Goldsmith's village schoolmaster:

"And still they gazed and still the wonder grew,

That one small head could carry all he knew."

Reciprocity with Canada was a practical rather than an academic question at the recent Boston exhibition of the New England Poultry Club, and it had a favorable endorsement. In the one hundred classes, judged the first day, Canadian exhibitors won thirty-three first and twentyseven second premiums. So large a recognition of Dominion merit certainly warrants reciprocity on the part of its people, but they are still very coy.

The

Quite naturally Governor Higgins of New York is greatly exercised over the laxity disclosed in the management of great life insurance companies. It is but fair to state that the criticism of the state insurance department is hardly just, as the law confines its supervision of the companies quite closely to the maintenance of a proper reserve. If this is assured the department has little legal warrant for dictating the details of management. governor observes the defects in the law and has outlined desirable legislative action to remedy some of the weak points. It is gratifying to note that the Massachusetts laws already cover the important points in his suggestions, and that its insurance department several years ago made emphatic and successful protest against what is perhaps the most serious evil recently disclosed-the inter-relations of the life companies and the trust companies.

A New England woman has just died whose personality, no less than her service to humanity, deserves greater notice than the press has given her. Josephine Shaw Lowell was a native of Roxbury, Massachusetts. She received a generous education, including five years in the schools of European capitals. Her husband, Charles Russell Lowell, was killed in the Civil War, as was also her brother. Robert Gould Shaw, colonel of a colored regiment at Fort Wagner. These bereavements shadowed all her later life. but she found respite from grief in charitable enterprises in New York City. She founded several organizations and was the first woman on the New York State Board of Charities. She led in numerous societies for the protection and help of friendless girls, the relief of prisoners, and the promotion of industrial thrift among the ignorant and indigent. At a memorial service in New York City one of the speakers voiced the general sentiment in saying: "Had she lived in mediæval times she would long since have been canonized as a saint."