locality. "Five months." "Congratulations," I answered. "You are about the first man I have talked to that wasn't born in Arkansas. Where are you from?" "Indiana," he replied. "Myself and neighbor came down here to investigate the stories told us by one of our neighbors who had come down in this section to shoot ducks. I came here. Stayed two days. Bought the land, and then went home to bring my family down. My neighbor was less fortunate. He remained a day longer than I did to arrange payments in a local bank. It started to rain about noon. It took him a day and a half to get out. I have never seen him since. So far as I am concerned, I believe that one acre of the land I have got here is worth any two acres I have ever seen in the North." He showed me a crop of potatoes that would go about two hundred bushels to the acre. "I would have had a better crop," he told me, "but I had cotton in that land in the first place. The bollweevil developed in June, and I plowed it under. Replanted to potatoes the last few days in June, and that is the result. I will have every one of my friends down here in the next two years. But," he continued, "I purchased before this road was built. I have been offered more than double what I paid for it, and -would you believe it?-the man I bought it from sold it to me because he was afraid of the taxes. I own four hundred acres now. My road taxes come to $168. I can pay the whole business from the proceeds of the crop taken from two acres of ground."

Near Lake Village I found that the people had welcomed the asphalt road with a celebration. One planter there, with tears in his eyes, told about the difference the highway had made in his family life. "My children have had very little school advantages heretofore. Now they go every day. They are picked up by a bus, and as a result the 'hillbillies' and 'swamp angels' are passing out of the picture; not physically but mentally. We can afford to clear every acre of land we have now, and we will be able to get our crops to market. It is a shame that the rich fertile lands of this rich valley should have been left idle so long when roads and drain ditches can be constructed so cheaply." I asked him if there were any road objectors in his neighborhood. "Can you imagine such a thing?" he answered. "No," I said, frankly. "Neither can I," he answered. "If there is anybody in this district kicking, I haven't heard of it." "But," I interposed, "the charge has been made that you people didn't know anything about road building. That your roads all begin and end nowhere. How about it?" "That is tourist propaganda," he replied. "It is true that the taxpayers of Arkansas did not build roads for scenic purposes. The roads have been built just where they should have been built. They start from railway stations and tap the most fertile land in the district. That is what the farmer is interested in. Getting his crops to market.

THE TYPE OF ROAD THAT MEANS POOR FARMS AND SOCIAL ISOLATION

He has not reached that stage yet where he is willing to spend thousands of dollars building highways through scenic territory. We do not care about roads going to Chicago, New Orleans, or St. Louis. We are interested in roads from our farms to railway stations-to get our children to school and products to market-and that is what we have been doing. We are not trying. to compete with the railways in carrying freight traffic. The time will come when all these lands will be under cultivation, when roads will be connected up to satisfy tourists and politicians."

I believe that the taxpayers of the State have shown rare judgment in their road construction. The men who have administered the funds of the road districts have been men of unquestioned integrity. In practically every case they are the leading taxpayers of the district. They understand their territory. I believe that they have constructed their roads in as good shape and as cheaply as could have been done by securing "foreign" engineers.

The valley lands lying in Mississippi, Crittenden, and St. Francis Counties furnish an idea of what can be done by progressive planters where the district, has been properly drained and a network of good roads constructed. Scores of large plantations can be seen from the seat of an automobile, in all directions, as a result of the improvements the progressive planters in this section have sponsored. However, they had their difficulties. Fifteen years ago R. E. Lee Wilson, a lumberjack of Mississippi County, conceived the idea of draining his land and putting in roads. He appealed to the county Judge for a validation of a road district. However, the "swamp angels" put up a vigorous howl. They arrived at the court-house at about the time Mr. Wilson did. The more robust members of the "swamp angel" contingent harangued the crowd and proposed the lynching of the lumberjack. A rope was procured and Wilson's life threatened. The Judge backed out. A year later Mr. Wilson got his drainage project through, and again went up the howl that all the lands would be confiscated and the landowners ruined. Every man in that county reveres the

name of Wilson to-day. As a result of the drainage canals Mississippi County is considered one of the richest districts of its area in the world. Mr. Wilson has an unbroken plantation of fourteen thousand acres under a high state of cultivation. The proceeds from the crop this year will amount to over a million dollars. The planters who raised the most bitter objections fifteen years ago are now numbered among the wealthiest men of that section. It cost them from ten to twenty dollars an acre for road and drainage improvements combined, but the lands in that district are worth from a hundred to three hundred dollars an acre, and the value of its annual production ranges from one hundred to two hundred and fifty dollars an acre.

Mississippi, St. Francis, and Crittendon Counties are a veritable Garden of Eden. If the balance of the valley lands of the State were developed to the same high degree as these three counties, the value of agricultural products of the commonwealth would be quadrupled. It can, and will, be done as soon as good roads and drainage ditches are constructed, and these improvements will be created as rapidly as money can be obtained.

I asked one large plantation owner in Chicot County if the road and drainage bonds would not act as a burden. He instantly replied: "Improvement issues should not be considered as taxes. Every dollar spent in road and drainage construction is just like laying out one dollar to get five dollars.

"That statement is a statement of fact, not of fiction. I do not believe there has ever been a dollar spent on drainage or roads in the entire valley section of Arkansas that has not returned at least five dollars in enhanced value of agricultural lands to the taxpayer.".

From my observations, I believe the statements of this planter are correct.

"It is true that there were certain road districts, especially in the uplands, where greenhorn commissioners attempted to assess railway property outside the bounds of reason, but they never had a chance in the world to discriminate against these corporations or any other taxpayers. When the districts were advertised, the corporations or in

dividuals discriminated against took their cases to court, and had no trouble at all in preventing the issuance of bonds for construction of roadways.

"The taxpayers of the State are amply protected against unreasonable discrimination if they exercise their right at the proper time.

"We have every protection in this State that they have in any other State, and, we believe, a whole lot more."

One feature of Arkansas's assets that appealed to me more than anything else was the fact that in my trip throughout the State I did not hear a foreign lan

A FARM HOME ON AN IMPROVED HIGHWAY

guage spoken, not even a foreign accent, nor could I learn of a single I. W. W. being within the borders of the State. People looked at me with amazement when I asked them if there were any revolutionary radicals. They took it as an insult. One workman in an industrial town assured me that he had never seen an I. W. W., but he had heard of one about two years ago. He said: "Mr. Rogers, I done heerd of an I. W. W. about fifty miles south of here two years ago. He landed in town just before dark one evening and started to talk. He didn't talk long. Between sundown and

sunup he just naturally disappeared, and he's never been heerd tell of since. You can draw your own conclusions as to what happened to him." I did.

It was a wonderful relief to spend two weeks in a State where every other man was not grumbling about the Government-where there were no strikes or threats of strikes. I never heard so much real loyal, one hundred per cent American talk as I did during my fourteen-day stay in Arkansas. A State in the Union that all who believe in the Constitution of the United States should take their hats off to.

A

66

FRIEND asked Theodore Roose

velt if he knew a certain man with whom he was to be associated in large business transactions.

"Very well," answered Colonel Roosevelt.

"Can I depend upon him?" asked the friend.

"Depend upon him?" echoed the Colonel. "You certainly can. He's a Hollander. Do you know what that means?"

Colonel Roosevelt's remark recurred to me many times last summer while traveling through the Netherlands.

*

I asked the hotel portier to change a bank note of large dimensions. "Certainly," he replied; he would send the change to my room. Shortly a boy appeared bearing a tray heaped with bills and silver, the boy having his palm on the pile to prevent the bills from being blown away. The money must have felt good to the touch of a poor boy!

"Is that not rather a risky manner of sending money to guests?" I asked the portier afterwards.

"Why do you think so, sir? What could happen to it?" he asked in perfect astonishment. I took the veil of silence.

BY EDWARD W. BOK "Less one-half hour spent in harnessing, sir," was the quick response.

*

On the station at Basle, upon entering Switzerland, we assembled some ten pieces of luggage and wondered what we should do with it while we went into the station for breakfast.

"Shall I look after these for you?" asked a station porter as he approached our party. The tourist conductor with our party looked the man over and asked, "You are a Hollander?"

"I am, sir," answered the man in Dutch.

"You will not leave this baggage?" he was asked.

"No, sir; I will be here with the baggage when you return," was his answer. I reminded our conductor of the value of the contents of the luggage.

"I know," he replied; "but this man is a Hollander," and then, curiously enough, he asked the question of Colonel Roosevelt-"Do you know what that means? It means absolute honesty. He will do exactly as he says."

"I have traveled now for over thirty years," said our conductor at the breakfast table. "I have been in every country in the world except the United States, and not only once, but twenty, thirty, forty times. I know the peoples of Egypt, of Asia, of Arabia, as I know

I suppose our party stopped in some fifteen hotels in the Netherlands, in the large cities and in the smaller towns. It got to be a regular game to drop a small money piece in some inconspicuous place on the carpet of one of our chambers and another on the floor of the bath-room. Invariably, the next morning we found the money pieces lying on the bureau.

"That would happen in any first-class hotel," said a hotel proprietor in another country-which shall be namelesswhen I told him.

Unfortunately, I told him, I tried it in four of the hotels in his country, and in only one did I find my money on the bureau on the following morning. I did not add that one of the three hotels in which I did not get my money back was in his own, where I had tried it two nights before.

I remember playing this little game in one of the best-known New York hotels, and when I did not find my two

dimes either on the floor or on the bureau the next morning, and waited for two days, I reported it to the manager. With a smile he said to me, "But don't you think that was making it a little too easy for my maids?" I contrasted this with the remark of the manager of the Scheveningen Hotel, where I remained five weeks and played my little game not less than a dozen times. "What would you have the maid do, sir?" he asked. "Keep money that does not belong to her?"

Just a simple contrast in principles of honesty!

So much for the small things.

*

A fortunate circumstance made it possible for me last summer to secure from a private source two important portraits -one by Rembrandt and one by Frans Hals. Five weeks of travel ahead made it impracticable to take the paintings S with me, and I did not want to take the chance of their shipment without persónal charge. The owner of the house to whom the pictures had belonged was about to leave for the summer. There Ey was only one way out: to leave the almost priceless paintings in complete scharge of a trusted man-servant. The man was summoned, and I saw at once that he was a Hollander who stood for all that his country stood for. "Absolutely safe," was his employer's assurance to me. The man was to take charge of the portraits, live in the house, attend to all the consular and shipping details, pack the paintings, and take them personally to the steamer at Rotterdam and deliver them to the purser, who was to put them into the ship's safe-deposit vault until I boarded the boat at Boulogne. I spoke to four Hollanders as to the trust. "Why not?" each asked in surprise. "Why should he not discharge his trust? He knows the importance of the paintings." It remained for an American to suggest to me that the danger lay in that very fact. -the man's realization of the value of the paintings, his sole charge of them for five weeks, and the singular opportunity it presented to him to have copies of the paintings made by an expert with whom he was constantly in touch, deliver the copies to the boat, and dispose of the originals to his own profit. When I boarded the steamer and opened the cases, I found the two paintings exactly as I purchased them, carefully cased, with every consular and other document in proper shape.

Photograph by Fannie Hoyt

A MAID OF THE ISLAND OF MARKEN Blue eyes and contented faces are character istic of the Netherlands

memorandum from a Dutchman," was his answer.

"But isn't that rather a lax method, after all?" I asked.

"I have never found it so," he answered, "and I have closed some large deals with these Dutchmen. Usually they make a memorandum in my presence, and I make one, and you can depend upon them to carry out their part of the bargain as you can depend upon the sun to rise. I have never known it to fail once in some twenty-two years now."

Then he continued: "I heard you close some deal just now with N―, and you asked him for a contract. Am I right?" He was. "Now, let me prophesy that you won't receive a contract. Wait a few days, and then when it doesn't come ask him why he didn't send it to you."

True enough, the contract did not come, and I put the inquiry.

"Oh, you want a contract?" asked N- of me with a smile. "American fashion? Certainly. But what more can I say in it than I said to you in our talk? Did you not make a memorandum of the facts when you returned home?" I told him I did, and we left the matter there, at my suggestion.

was his answer as he gave me a surprised look. And, to prove his faith, the valuable purchase was on its way to the United States a week before a notification from him gave me an opportunity to remit.

I would not be understood in reciting these incidents to imply that they could happen only in the Netherlands and that they could not be true of any other people. What is true of the people of the Netherlands, however, and not so true of the peoples of some other European countries, is that honesty is a universal national trait. Your Hollander invariably thinks in terms of honesty, whether he is in high or lowly position. Honesty goes down from the top and permeates every class-except, of course, the degenerate who is in every country.

The Hollander is never after an unfair deal. He is keen in his business relations; he will get everything out of a bargain that he can, but always honestly, and once he has given his word he can go no further. He has a characteristic trick in a business transaction of asking you to repeat a remark. He has heard you the first time, but while you are repeating the remark he is quickly turning it over in his mind and when you have repeated the remark he has a thought-out answer ready.

I asked one of the leading educational authorities in the Netherlands to what extent and how the trait of honesty is taught in the public schools.

"Not at all-directly," was his answer. "Honesty is a national trait with the Hollander. It is deep-rooted, it is inherited. We do not have to teach it in the schools. We do not think the schools are the place for such teaching. That is for the home, and we can always rely upon the parents to implant those ethical ideas in the minds of their children. We teach thrift to our pupils, and perhaps the seed of honesty lies in that teaching. But, remember, the national standard stands for thrift and honesty. I say we teach thrift, but in reality we do not except in a remindatory sense. We do not have to teach it. It is there before the child is born and it is born with and in him. And so it is with honesty."

"Of course," he continued, "I would not for a moment say there is no dishonesty in our land. That would be preposterous. But the Hollander is instinctively honest, and thousands live their lives and deal with their fellowmen never thinking of two methods. To them there is only one. And when you come to think of it, it simplifies life very much, doesn't it?"

The traveler need only look into the happy and contented faces and into the clear blue eyes of the people of the Netherlands for his answer to this educator's sage remark and to the question of Theodore Roosevelt: "Do you know what that means?"

BY LYMAN ABBOTT

N

the rest.

that he loved God.

O one who really knew Edward Everett Hale could have doubted As much as any man I ever knew, he understood the saying of Christ: "I call you not servants, but I have called you friends.". He and I many years ago conducted together a service in a Baptist church in the Adirondacks. I preached the sermon; he offered what is infelicitously called the "long prayer." After he had prayed it seemed to me quite unnecessary for me to preach; for by his prayer he had brought us into the immediate presence of God, and that is what we go to church for, is it not? I was not specially impressed with its literary beauty as with the literary beauty of Robert Louis Stevenson, nor with its spiritual beauty as with the spiritual beauty of some of the prayers in the Book of Common Prayer. I did not notice then, I do not recall now, the form of his prayer. But I was conscious of an invisible presence in the room; of One with whom he was talking "face to face." Nothing else counted.

There is a great difference between the Religion of Humanity and the Humanity of Religion. John Cotter Morison has interpreted the Religion of Humanity. In his volume entitled "The Service of Man" he contends that the service of God has been an injury to the human race, and for it we need to substitute the service of our fellow-men. That was not Edward Everett Hale's faith. Nevertheless I think if the angel had come to him he would have hesitated to write himself down as one who loved the Lord and would have said with Abou Ben Adhem

I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-
men.

I regard the Jewish and the Christian religion as essentially the same, and the Old Testament and the New Testament as essentially one book. Judaism is that religion in the bud, Christianity is that religion in the blossom. What Isaiah promises, Jesus fulfills. And this is the only world religion which lays emphasis on the truth that the way to please the heavenly Father is to work with him for the happiness and welfare of his children. Edward Everett Hale's service of

man was his way of serving God; his love of God inspired his love for his

fellow-men. He has described his first conscious experience of the presence of God at twenty-two years of age-first but not his last. I do not think that consciousness ever left him.

I had been reading in my nearly dark bedroom by an air-tight stove. I think I was reading the "Revue des Deux Mondes." But I put the book down for what people used to call reflection, and I saw or perceived or felt that I was not alone and could not be alone. This present Power knows me and loves me. I, know Him and love Him. He is here and I am here. We are together. And it is a companionship much closer than I could have with any human being sitting in that chair.

The difference between denominations is superficially a difference in creeds; it is really a difference in temperaments. It appears in the writers of the Old

Testament and in the Apostles in the

New Testament. Matthew has the tem

perament of a historian; he represents historical Christianity. John has the temperament of a poet; he represents mystical Christianity. Paul has the temperament of a philosopher who is also a poet; he represents doctrinal Christianity. James has the temperament of a moralist; he represents ethical-culture Christianity. His defini tion of religion expresses his tempera ment: "Pure religion and undefiled bei fore God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their afflic tion, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

Doubtless Edward Everett Hale be lieved in historical Christianity, in mys tical Christianity, and in doctrinal Christianity, but his temperament led him to put the emphasis of his life on practical Christianity. He was no ag nostic; he did not substitute for the ser vice of God the service of man. But his service of man was his service of God. In that respect he was typical of his age. The twelfth and thirteenth cen

turies were mystical, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were doctrinal, the twentieth century is practical. There is room in the heart of the Father for all his children; the time will come when there will be room for them all in the Church.

Edward Everett Hale was a Unitarian minister, and he was always loyal to his denomination. He was a Unitarian partly because he was born and brought up in a Unitarian home and a Unitarian church, partly because the climate of the Unitarian Church suited his temperament. But the conception of God which illuminated his life and his writings was more Christlike than the conception of God which darkened some of the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, and his conception of religion as a life of service was more harmonious with the teaching of Christ than the conception of religion as a self-conscious godliness which famous saints in the past have struggled to attain. He never could have written the "Confessions of Augustine" or "John Woolman's Journal;" but neither Augustine nor John Woolman could have written "In His Name," a story which exhibits piety as a self-sacrificing service of others, or the motto which is perhaps Dr. Hale's greatest contribution to religious literature: "Look up, not down; forward, not backward; out, not in; and lend a hand." I wonder whether he realized at the time that he was simply translating into modern phraseology Paul's summary of Christian experience: "Faith, hope, and charity, and the greatest of these is charity." Whatever was the occasion which led to his writing of that now world-famous motto, it is certain that it was the natural expression of his own inner life. He looked up, not down; lived in the spiritual, not the material.

He was care-free to a fault. His loosefitting clothes indicated a wearer who cared more for comfort than for appearance. To have and to hold did not interest him; to be and to do did. His eagerness to accomplish gave his work an ease and spontaneity which was the secret of its charm and one of the secrets of its power. Whether he was writing an article for a magazine or a letter to a friend, whether he was speaking to a friend or addressing an audience, he was essentially a conversationist. Queen Victoria is said to have complained that Gladstone always addressed her as though she were a public meeting. Dr. Hale always addressed a public meeting as though it were a friend. That he put careful thought into his speeches was quite evident, but unless

I am much mistaken he put that thought into what he would say, not into the form in which he would say it. Most New England ministers think in philosophic terms and then endeavor to translate their thoughts into the speech of the people. common Dr. Hale thought in the forms and phraseologies of the common people. He had the prophet's, not the historian's, temperament.

He looked out, not in. I do not think

in all his writings is to be found a piece of self-examination such as characterized the writings of many of his Puritan forebears. He was more eager to serve God than to enjoy him, and enjoyed him by serving him. He neither practiced nor advocated spiritual vivisection.

He was not a partisan of any party in either Church or State; nor the enlisted adherent of any cause. He was not an abolitionist, nor a prohibitionist, nor a Socialist, nor was he enrolled in the ranks of their opponents. How catholic he was as a Churchman an incident in my experience illustrates:

When, obedient to the command of my doctor, I resigned in 1898 the pastorate of Plymouth Church, I was in my sixtythird year and was depressed. My life interests had always been in my work, and I thought my life-work was over. It is true that I was still the editor of The Outlook, but I had visions of a gradual failure there also. Edward Everett Hale, before yet I had succeeded in getting my full release from Plymouth pulpit, asked me to preach for him for two successive Sundays, and when I declined because of my wife's earnest request that I take a few months of absolute vacation from all work, Dr. Hale renewed the invitation the following year, extending the request to four Sundays. Then I gladly accepted. The invitation no less than the service was a tonic. I have not been able to find any record of the sermons preached, but my recollection is that I took this opportunity to put before a Unitarian congregation my interpretations of the nature of man, the nature of Christ, the nature of sacrifice, the nature of the Bible. In doing so I omitted, as I have habitually throughout the fifty years of my preaching omitted, the much battered words of controversial theology, such as Total Depravity, Trinity, Vicarious Atonement, Plenary Inspirationwords conspicuously absent from the Bible and generally from devotional literature. This omission was not due to any concession to Unitarian feeling, but to the fact that my aim in my religious teaching, whether by voice or pen, has never been to advocate a theology but always to promote spiritual life. More than twenty years of fairly active work in the pulpit and the press have passed since then, and I am still writing and preaching, but I can never forget the debt of gratitude I owe to the minister of another denomination, often counted a hostile denomination, for the following letter which Edward Everett Hale wrote me at the close of those four Sunday services:

Jan. 29, 1900 Roxbury Monday morning. Dear Dr. Abbott, I shall stay at home this morning-so I shall not see you.

All the same I want to thank you again for the four sermons:-and to say that I am sure they will work lasting good for the congregation.

More than this. I think you ought to think that such an opportunity to go from church to church & city to city-gives you a certain opportunity and honor-which even in Plymouth

Pulpit a man does not have-and to congregations such a turning over the new leaf means a great deal. Did you ever deliver the Lectures on Preaching at New Haven?With Love always

Always yours

E. E. HALE.

I have said that Dr. Hale was not an adherent of any cause. That sentence requires a word of explanation. He was an advocate of many causes, but he did not belong to or train with any organized body of reformers.

Previous papers in this series, especially the sketches of President Hayes and General Armstrong, have indicated the radical division in the Republican party at the close of the Civil War, one section holding that if the ballot followed emancipation the work would be completed, the other holding that the ballot without education would be a peril, not a safeguard. The attempt to follow emancipation with National aid to education, after a vigorous and at first hopeful struggle, failed. Dr. Hale's interest in that attempt, in which Senator Hoar was a leader, is interpreted by himself in the following letter, which has a historical as well as a personal interest:

I have read with great interest your study of Mr. Hoar's character. It is an excellent review of the book. If you really want to know who killed the national education plan, when he was in the House, I think I can tell you. Dr. Gilman told me that he thought, and they all thought it was going through. It had the co-operation of some of the best southern men, of all the northern men not impracticable and of the Cabinet; when it was savagely attacked by your It friends of the New York Nation. seems as if they acted on the general principle of attacking anything which seemed to promise well. Gilman thinks that but for them, we should have had for twenty years, a thorough system of education at the South supported by the National Treasury.

I am to speak here one of the last days of March at the inauguration of the new President of Howard University. I believe I shall pronounce in favor of a national endowment of a dozen such schools as Hampton. Mead says, and I rather think he is right, that the seven battle ships which they are trying to make us build this winter will cost more than all the endowments of all the colleges. This is so absurd that it seems as if it could be hindered.

Truly and always yours
EDWARD E. HALE.

I have quoted this letter in full partly because it indicates Dr. Hale's possession of a quality with which I do not think he is generally accredited, that of statesmanship.

A great statesman, however wide and diverse his interests, generally accomplishes his result and wins his reputation by concentrating his life energies on some one achievement: Cavour, on