great work of Trinity in the future. Accepting the call of the parish only a year ago, the storm of criticism broke before he had the opportunity of outlining his policy. This he has now done. His statement covers practically every point at which criticism has been directed.

Trinity Parish, its rector declares, has adopted the policy of publicity; has already issued a full public statement of .its financial affairs, showing not only its annual income and expenditure, but presenting a full report of its assets and liabilities, including income-producing property of every kind owned or controlled by the parish. This full statement of its affairs was part of the policy of the present rector when he took his position; and it is to be the permanent policy of the parish for the future. This is a long step in advance; for publicity is a prime element in the management of great trust funds. Trinity Parish has taken up, as a regular and definite part of its work, evangelistic services and street preaching, thus bringing a church of the most conservative traditions, committed by its history and conventions to stately services, into direct personal touch with even the most casual life of the city. The Rev. Mr. Wilkinson, who is well known as a street preacher, is to be the evangelist of Trinity. He will give his whole time to this work, endeavoring to reach men who need religious ministry of any kind in the city. He is also to conduct evangelistic services regularly in St. John's Chapel, an announcement doubly welcome as indicating that Trinity, long intrenched in a conservative position, is about to adopt an aggressive policy, and as assuring the continuance of services and the permanent preservation of St. John's Chapel.

The right of Trinity Parish to plan its work with reference to the highest efficiency in dealing with the entire city, and to readjust its methods from time to time, is beyond question; but the proposal to close St. John's, even though made in the interest of efficiency, was very unfortunate in the manner of its decision and announcement. The parishioners of St. John's ought to have been taken into the councils of the vestry. They constituted a considerable congregation; they were accustomed to worship in a building to

which they have become attached; they had the ties and sentiment which grow up in a permanent organization. Any change affecting their place of worship and their religious privileges ought to have been made only after full consultation with them. If Trinity had been dealing with Trinity Chapel, would it have proceeded as it proceeded with St. John's Chapel? This brings to light an attitude on the part of the churches which is fundamentally wrong; and this criticism applies not to Trinity only, but to nearly every church of every name. There is in the mind of nearly every church a certain distinction, often unconscious, between the well-to-do and the poor; a traditional feeling that the poor to whom a church ministers can be dealt with on a different basis from the well-to-do. This feeling explains to a considerable extent the attitude of the working people toward various churches. The time has come when the whole Church must change its attitude on this matter, and the unfortunate controversy between Trinity and its parishioners in St. John's Chapel is an object-lesson which all churches ought to study. That St. John's is to remain will give great satisfaction to a host of people who love the old building, and who value not only its religious but its architectural and historic interest.

Dr. Manning declares that the moral conditions of the tenements owned by Trinity are now unusually good; that the property consists largely of small, old-fashioned houses, none built by the parish, but reverting to it on the expiration of leases. These houses are occupied by two or more families. The condition of much of this property is good; the condition of none of it as bad as has been asserted, according to the rector; but there are to be important improvements; and the gist of the whole matter is put in a paragraph : "I say unhesitatingly that, as propertyowners, our responsibility for the condition of any dwelling-house property owned by the parish is the most vital and fundamental, and one of the most sacred of all the obligations resting upon us, and that we are bound to do everything in our power to meet this responsibility." The long leases under which much of the property has been held are now expiring, and

Trinity will shortly be able to deal with the property with a free hand, and can be held to the fullest responsibility. Dr. Manning declares that Trinity must set the very highest example in treating this property, and that all property of the parish must be dealt with, not merely from the business point of view, but from the standpoint of religious and social responsibility and of enlightened citizenship. This has been the fundamental issue between Trinity and its critics; and this definite statement of future policy, carried into effect by the rector and vestry of Trinity Parish, will silence those who have kept up a running fire of criticism on the management of the parish for many years on the ground that its great property has been dealt with from a strictly business point of view, rather than as a trust established for religious and beneficent purposes.

Dr. Manning calls attention to the fact that the work of Trinity Parish is largely with the poor; that of twelve hundred communicants on the list of Trinity Parish a very great majority are poor people; and that the attendance at St. Luke's, St. John's, St. Paul's, and St. Chrysostom's shows that the people to whom Trinity is preaching the Gospel and administering the sacrament are far more representative of the poor than of the rich. It is proposed to rearrange the work and to revise the budget of the parish so as to permit more generous help to weak and struggling churches in the diocese; and as a measure in the interests of more thorough organization, the consolidation of the parochial

work of St. John's and St. Luke's, a matter entirely distinct from keeping St. John's open, is to be carried out in accordance with plans long maturing. It is also proposed to take up work among other than English-speaking peoples at different points in the same district, and

to establish branches of Welfare work which will minister to the need of the neighborhood.

Dr. Manning's full and frank statement is entitled to unqualified credence; there have been grave causes for criticism of Trinity in the past, but Dr. Manning is entitled to the confidence of the community, and ought to have public support in carrying out this broader policy. Trinity

THE SPECTATOR

tator made a discovery. You can always On a recent visit to London the Specdiscover something worth while on even the shortest of London walks, and this particular discovery was near the end of a wholly charming and enjoyable stroll. The Spectator walked through Kensington Gardens and entered the High Street opposite De Vere Gardens, and through the Henry James's rooms to a little turn at Gardens past Browning's old home and the end that leads sharply around another

corner and lands one in Sussex Villas. The Spectator had not been here for sev

eral years, and the recollection of Sussex Villas hung to the pegs of his memory with him to walk through its inviting length a tender, tenacious clutch that prompted again. He gazed in at the little old window of the little old semicircular shop that cuddles into the bend of the road, and saw the the same pencils and marbles and tops and same vividly colored English sweets," notions that were there when last he gazed crossed the narrow road and looked in at lovingly through the glass. Then he the bakery. The same tempting, inde

scribable smells wafted out to his nostrils as some customer emerged-smells that had warmed the cockles of his heart on

many another stroll. He was hungry, and he wanted a fat bun with plums protruding, but some fate held him back from entering and purchasing the said bun, and you will see what this fate has to do with the story.

To the Spectator Sussex Villas is one of the most inviting and "homey" bits in all London. The little semi-detached villas stand back in tiny gardens with hedges and clumps of holly and box and yew, and they are plainly the domiciles of simple,

means; but those who trip in and out of the semi-detached villa doors are people that one would rather like to know. They are people that novelists would choose to write about-Hardy or Dickens or William Black-Stevenson would have thought Sussex Villas adorable if he had discovered it, and it is the literary world's misfortune that he did not, for he certainly would have found a story there. Now, that is just what the Spectator did—found a story there; but as the humble Spectator is no genius, he can only tell you the simple facts. It's not a Stevenson story, it's just an American story in a Sussex Villa setting.

As the Spectator loitered along, loving each semi-detached house and its semidetached garden, his gaze was arrested by a rather compelling sign in one of the bay windows that read: " American Things to Eat. On Sale Here, or Families Supplied." Now, the Spectator was very hungry, and as he had not bought that bun at the bakery, he suddenly was sensible of an exhausting famished feeling and such a longing for American "things to eat" as he had never known before. The Spectator's yearning was terrific. He opened the little gate with alacrity, and skipped up the walk with superlative eagerness. When he entered the little drawing-room, he was met by a cheerfulfaced woman, distinctly American and seemingly very glad to see the Spectator, whose accent immediately announced him as one of her own land. In answer to his inquiry as to what particular kind of things to eat she had, she named baked beans, brown bread-she was from Worcester, Massachusetts-cranberry pies, cranberry sauce, apple pies, mince pies, custard pies, pumpkin pies-not tarts, mind you-hot and cold corn muffins, oldfashioned sponge cake, Maryland sweet pickles, and several other things that the Spectator has forgotten.

The Spectator was starving, and the amiable American lady set him down at a little table, and gave him hot, juicy baked beans, some brown bread and Maryland

of tea. Never, never, never did food taste so good; never, never, never did the Spectator realize that the foodstuffs of one's own land on foreign soil possess a flavor that they never do at his hungriest moments at home. And when he had finished and paid his little bill, he lingered and learned the story of his country

woman.

田

Her husband, who had come to London on business, had died suddenly, and she had been left with very little money. She had few ties at home in Worcester, and did not wish to face a business life in her

home city. So she thought and thought what she might do to make a living. London is a sorry place for a woman who must work. There are a dozen applicants for every vacant position, and the pay is so small as to be beggarly. It took a good deal of ingenuity to think around such difficulties as confronted this brave little woman, but she thought so hard that the idea came, and then it was plain sailing from that moment. She rented the little semi-detached villa in Kensington for a mere trifle, and furnished the front room, the kitchen, and her little bedroom, and then started straight away to send out her announcement cards to every American resident in London. She laughed gayly when she related how these same Americans responded. They came in droves; they left orders that she couldn't possibly fill in a fortnight as she was then situated, but she lost no time in arranging matters so that she could meet every order, and in a month she had her little establishment in perfect running order, and two big English errand boys to deliver her hot, fresh productions in the morning and evening in a little covered handcart. The baked beans and brown bread were eagerly sought, her cakes and pies fairly gobbled up, her cranberry sauce was in tremendous demand, and so on. She has not only paid her way, but is making a neat little fortune out of her venture, which will some day enable her to return to the delights of Worcester and live in comfort the rest of her days. All of which only goes to prove that knowledge about the weaknesses of one's countrymen in a for

There is a good deal of fun poked at Americans by English people because of the American pronunciation, but if we performed such gymnastics in pronunciation as our good British neighbors do we might well deserve all the ridicule that is heaped upon us. Here are some of the adventures in names that the Spectator met with on a recent trip to England. It began on the steamer crossing the Atlantic. The Spectator's chair happened to be placed next that of a fine-looking man whose cultivated accent instantly proclaimed him an Englishman. He had a cordial manner, and struck up a conversation with the Spectator at Sandy Hook. In the course of events the gracious stranger handed the Spectator his card, which read: Mr. Clogher; Macclesfield Thorpe, Perversy, Stroud, Glos.; only that wasn't the exact address, but similar. But when the Spectator addressed his acquaintance as Mr. Clog-her, the British gentleman never quivered an eyelash, but said blandly, " Pronounced Klore, if you don't mind," and the Spectator was very careful about it after that.

Things went very smoothly for some time with the language as she is spoken, until the Spectator started, one soft, heavenly day, to go down into Surrey for a little outing. He looked up a little town on the map-it's a way the Spectator has, that of looking for places on maps and starting out on an adventure of discovery. Sometimes he's disappointed, but more times he isn't. The name he found was Pontefract Common. He asked the ticket-seller for a ticket to the place, pronouncing it as it is spelled. The pale eyes of the chinless human being who sold tickets looked perfectly blank, like those of a dead fish. "No such place, sir," he said. Surely," the Spectator protested, "here it is," and, fumbling for his precious map, laid a triumphant finger upon it. "Oh, Pomfret !" said the paleeyed ticket-vender, and smiled pityingly. "That's it-Pomfret," the Spectator said bravely, and pocketed his heavy change.

At the station at "Pomfret" a quaint

the side announcing that it conveyed. passengers to the St. Leger Inn and Wrensfordsley Hall for sixpence. The Spectator approached the sleepy-looking

driver and asked him which was the smaller house, the St. Leger or the Wrensfordsley. Again that blank, dazed look that the Spectator had now learned to connect with his bad pronunciation. Puzzled, thunder could he twist his tongue round he looked at the names again. How in to make them different? What was the answer?

"See here, my good man," he said, pointing to St. Leger with his stick. "how do you pronounce this name?"

"And

"Why, Sillenger, sir." "Oh!!!" said the Spectator. now how do you pronounce this?"-his stick on Wrensfordsley.

make a collection, not of snuff-boxes or After that the Spectator commenced to old Chelsea or Sheffield plate, but of names pronounced as far from the way they are spelled as possible. In little old towns he dodged into shops and asked the startled proprietors how they pronounced the names on their signs; some were quite human and some were quite wild. A Mr. Colclough sold fish in a Surrey village and pronounced his name Cokley, without rhyme or reason. A Mr. Magheramorn was clerk of a hotel, and got Marramorn out of his name. The Spectator was introduced to a Mr. Munie, and found out afterwards that he spelled it Monzie. How do you suppose he ever got Munie out of that? A lovely young English widow was the lady at the Spectator's left at an English dinner party; she was called Riven, but the Spectator learned afterwards that it was only an alias, her real name being Ruthven. The Earl of Wemyss had a birthday while the Spectator was in London, and the newspapers gave a review of his admirable life. The Spectator forgot his caution, and, addressing an English friend, spoke in

praise of the Earl of We-miss's admirable qualities. A shade of the blank look, followed by a flash of enlightenment, came into the Englishman's eyes. "Ah, yes,' blandly, "Weems is a fine old statesman." Weems! Now what do you think of that? When the Spectator encountered the familiar names of Hough and Ralph, he felt secure and on his own ground, but imagine how weak he got in the knees when they came back to him as Huff and Rafe, with the long accent on a.

After that the Spectator thought it was time to go home to rest, and so he sailed for little old New York, where letters spell words, and are not just put in for fun.

COMMENT ON CURRENT BOOKS

NOVELS AND

TALES

The fraternity which gives title to Mr. John Galsworthy's latest novel' is presented as an elusive vision rather than as actuality. The old man who alone sees it as an ideal easily attainable is regarded by his family as more than half "wanting" in intellect. He talks and writes of present-day life as "those" days and "those" people. In "that" time, he says (that is; before the days of Brotherhood in which his soul lives), every man had a shadow-"In huge congeries, crowded, devoid of light and air, they were assembled, these bloodless imprints from forms of higher caste. Men cast them on the pavements and marched on. They did not in Universal Brotherhood clasp their shadows to sleep within their hearts-for the sun was not then at noon, when no man has a shadow." But the supposedly normal men and women of the story, the old man's sons and their wives, cannot see clearly and simply. They would like to do something for the wretched and sodden and immoral "shadows," but they are bound by convention, and their charity and sympathy are make-believe. The spirit of brotherhood is not in them; and so, when sorrow and trouble invade their own world, these people meet the problems hopelessly and without inspiring courage. The book has the fault of stopping without ending-in life things

Fraternity By John Galsworthy. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $1.35, net.

do not "wind up" as in a play, and so far the author is true to life; but literary art is something more than life, and therefore the effect of this way of closing a novel is dispiriting. In sheer ability the novel ranks very high; the characters are alive, the irony is searching, the imagination is poetical. "Fraternity" is not a tale to amuse the idler, but it makes one think.

The fault that one finds it impossible to forgive in Miss Alice Brown's “Thyrza is the matter-of-fact, incidental sort of a way in which the sweet-natured, pure-minded, but not unintelligent or ignorant young girl yields to the passion of a man who does not seem to the reader of the kind to inspire in such a girl a condition of recklessness. The whole story turns on this betrayal, and—once granted the fact-the author treats the situa tion with power and delicacy. The earlier chapters are amusing and charming in their pictures of Thyrza's girlhood, and there is a deal of tenderness in the final chapters, which tell of the strength with which Thyrza and her son faced the world and won happiness by sincerity and honesty.

We believe that " Kingsmead" is the fourth of the "Pam" novels, and the author gleefully admits that, since she pictured Pam as a child in 1885, the generations of the four books are rather crowding chronology. Madame von Hutten is an adept at keeping up cheerful and lively talk among her characters, and there are half a dozen people here worth knowing. As a friendly, bighearted, and modest aristocrat, Earl Tommy is a favorite, and he is well contrasted with two equally warm-hearted nouveaux riches, who drop their h's, but are sweetly unselfish. The dénouement does not strike one as probable or pleasant, and almost spoils an amusing story.

"Dromina," by John Ayscough, is a book of unusual interest. The scene is laid in Ireland, and shifts to Spain and South America. The people are of ancient Irish lineage, with a group of Gypsies from Spain who surround their king, and consort with the descendant of Irish kings. The central figure, though by no means the strongest character, is the Gypsy King Ludovic-disclosed as the last Dauphin, the ill-fated son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The intricacies of the story are infinite, but the author holds the guiding clue firmly, and leads us through many winding ways, to our satisfaction. The latter part of the story merges with a romance almost too fantastic,

The Story of Thyrza. By Alice Brown. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, $1.35, net.

2 Kingsmead. By Bettina von Hutten. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $1.50.

Dromina. By John Ayscough. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $1.50.