an unbecoming manner. You may try to make friends with him in several languages and various modes and attitudes, but he will have none of you, if you are not the right kind of a man. On the other hand, if, on a second survey, he finds he has made a mistake, he will wag his tail joyfully, yet discreetly, and say in his dog language, "Excuse me, I guess you are all right and a pretty good fellow." A barking dog seldom bites. They will bark fronting you. It is the fellows who come behind and snap a bite that are dangerous among dogs, the same as backbiters are among men, yea, verily, and women, also.

A barking dog is preferable to a biting dog, but a good, genuine dog has always a bite in reserve to back up his bark should occasion require. The snake sounds its rattle, the lion roars while in pursuit, the cat and tiger tribe alone pounce on their prey without warning. Give me the man who will scold his servant girl for wastefulness after leaving an order at his grocer's for a barrel of flour and a ham to be sent to a poor widow with a family. "His bark is worse than his bite."

PROGRESS IN CANADIAN TRADE.

Within the past five years, Canada's total trade has increased by 65 per cent.; that of the United States, 33 per cent.; that of Great Britain, 19 per cent. Canada's foreign trade is $83 per capita; that of the United States, only $35. Her

revenue is $12.49 per capita, and her expenditure $9.56; the United States' revenue being $7.70 and expenditure $7.04. The public debt of Canada is but $66 per capita, while that of her sister commonwealth-Australia-is $230. Canada's over-sea trade last year was $451,000,000, more than double that of Japan; almost equal to Russia's. Her merchant shipping tonnage exceeds Japan's; her railway mileage is half that of Russia.

Every section of Canada has shared in this wonderful betterment. The fisheries of the maritime provinces have steadily grown in volume and value through the stimulus of an annual distribution, in bounties, among the fishermen of $160,000 the interest on $1,500,000 obtained under the Halifax award of 1897 for allowing the United States fishermen free entry into Canadian waters for a term of years. The forest wealth of the Laurentian valleys has been yielding most generous returns, owing to the rapid depletion of the American woodlands increasing the price of this commodity. The dairy and fruit exports from Quebec and Ontario have trebeled in extent and quadrupled in price. The manufactures of the Eastern areas have gradually expanded, until they form a noteworthy feature in the country's assets, while the great Northwest-the vast prairie country, the home of the farmer and the ranchman-is pouring out annually a wealth of yellow grain and kindred products which represents a condition unequaled in any region that has lacked the talismanic influence of gold, which caused the "rushes" to Australia, California, and the Klondike. -From "Canada's Commercial and Industrial Expansion," by P. T. McGrath, in the American Monthly Review of Reviews, for July.

In both branches of the Cape Legislature the provincial newspapers of the Colony are well represented. Most of the papers published in Port Elizabeth, East London, Grahamstown, King William's Town and Queenstown have special correspondents. Some of these are members of the Assembly and of the Legislative Council. Others are proprietors and editors of newspapers.

Anticipating a lively session, the editor and proprietor of a provincial newspaper some years ago started from East London by steamer for Cape Town. There was a storm on the way and the ship rocked as probably never ship rocked before outside the Bay of Biscay. It was therefore natural that the editor should have concluded his first letter to his paper with the words: "My head still carries the motion of the ship."

The editor was one of the best writers in South Africa, but his article describing the voyage to Cape Town and the approaching opening of the Legislature was far below his standard of excellence.

The editor of his rival newspaper noticed the lapse and, under the caption of "What The Folks Are Saying," he inserted the following item: "That the letter from the editor of The Sun indicates that his head carried something stronger than the motion of the ship."

The reporter for The Sun sent its editor a marked copy of his contemporary, with a letter stating that the allusion. to the editor's head carrying "something

stronger than the motion of the ship" had been the subject of a great deal of talk and had caused many a laugh at his expense; also that a number of his readers were anxious to know what reply he would make.

When the editor of The Sun received the marked copy of The Star, together with the reporter's letter he laughed heartily at both. Then he read over his article for the first time since it had been published and remarked to himself, "If such trash had ever reached my hands from a correspondent in Cape Town or elsewhere, I would have thrown it in the wastebasket. Then he wrote his reporter as follows:

"My Dear Green-In my absence I expect you to act as editor as well as reporter. If you ever receive another article as barren of ideas and as utterly inane as the first of my letters from Cape Town, tear it up and throw it in the wastebasket even though it comes from Yours truly,

WM. MCKAY. This greatly surprised the reporter and taught him a lesson he never forgot, viz., that it is always best to frankly acknowledge mistakes, lapses, shortcomings or failures. The ablest editors and the brightest reporters sometimes write poorly, but not every editor and by no means every reporter would be willing to frankly admit it.

The column which contained the funny reference to the editor's article abounded

in similar innocent witticisms, the object of which was to amuse the readers of the paper without offending the parties alluded to. However, the human family has supersensitive members and

"Many a shaft at random sent

Finds mark the archer little meant."

Ilis

This was the case with respect to the item "That the Gray Mayor is the Better Horse." The Mayor's name was Gray and he was a patron of the turf. honor, the Mayor, chanced to be out of town when the item appeared. His wife was at home and some of her lady friends, with characteristic indiscretion, aided her in magnifying the innocent reference to her husband into a serious attack on his character, particularly as a number of citizens were strongly opposed to horse racing and did not hesitate to say it was a mistake for any community to lend its countenance to such a degrading sport by electing one of its patrons to the high office of Mayor.

Mrs. Gray immediately telegraphed her husband to return as his character was being assailed in The Star. The message brought the Mayor home in a hurry. When he read the item in The Star he regretted he had paid any attention to the telegram, but hid his displeasure from his wife to whom he was very devoted.

"Liz," said he with his accustomed gentleness, "there is nothing at all in that. That's merely a harmless play of words, with no sinister motive."

"Harmless, indeed," repeated Mrs. Gray, excitedly, "if the papers were to call you a thief or a malefactor you would find some excuse for them and laugh it off. John, I'm surprised you have so little self-respect. It's lamentable to be lacking in that fine quality."

"My dear," said the Mayor, trying to soothe his wife's feelings, "a public man must expect to have a joke cracked at his expense once in a while, and when no harm is intended none should be taken. Down in Grahamstown only yesterday The News referred to Mayor Brandt as 'a long-legged scarecrow,' who had nothing to his credit as a public official except that he could drink more champagne than any three members of the Town Council."

"Goodness," exclaimed Mrs. Gray, it must be awful to be Mayor of a place like Grahamtown. How terrible for Mrs. Brandt."

"It won't trouble her any," replied Mayor Gray.

"Is she so used to it?" inquired his wife with a horrified look.

"She's dead," answered the Mayor, "and two others before her."

"Has Mayor, Brandt been married three times?"

Lord Beaconsfield once described the Scot very aptly as "a man ablaze with unconscious repartee in spite of seeming dullness." This is a true dictum, for as nature invests man's original capital in his ancestry the Scotchman has no equal, unless it be the son of Erin, in this gifted art. But perhaps many of us regret that the Scotchman is losing much of his rich and racy dialect through contact with the outside world. Be that as it may, no reader of Crockett, Barrie, McLaren and other gifted Scotchmen, who is fortunate enough to rusticate in a quiet little Scotch parish, will deny that this "Land of the thistle and the heather," in spite of its rough and rugged traits, still reflects the superb beauty of its moors and braes in its poetry and literature by the devotional fervor of its peoples to questions of religious truth, and by their rock-like adherence to principles that have given liberty-loving republics their birth. Men have crudely said that the Scotch nature is harsh and cold, but no dialect will compare with the Scottish in rich terms of endearment and kindly expressions of tenderness. If the Scotch nature were hard and unsympathetic, such terms of tender pathos would be unknown.

"My wee bit lamb," "My ain bonnie laddie," "Wee bairnies cooddle doon," cannot be surpassed in our mind for tender sympathy and exquisite poetry. Where can there be found more quaint

humor than that of the Highlands drawn from the experiences of common life? Where, on the other hand, can there be found greater depth of thought than that of the Scottish philosophy?

Obsolete as the dialect of Scotland may become, there are some things in Scotland outside its religion, and its philosophy, which Dean Ramsay calls "Reminiscences" that will never die, and there is an interesting charm and fascination in collecting and preserving national peculiarities of such marked quaintness which are some day to pass like Chaucer and Bede away from us. To a Scotchman in a distant land, they bring to his heart and mind his "ain days of auld langsyne." The Scot never forgets his home, and his heart oft turns of a winter's eve to the "land o' cakes and brither Scots."

While sojourning in the historic Welsh village of Bala, a summer or two ago, we had the companionship of that venerable Scotchman, the late Professor Bruce, who amused us with many characteristic anecdotes that had, from his point of view, "strong internal evidence" of being genuine. "But to illustrate," he would say in discussing some late act of the General Assembly, "that bears to my mind a minister of the old school in Glasgow, who, just before an important meeting of the General Assembly, prayed the Lord that the Assembly may be so guided as no' to do ony harm."