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R. H. D. SEDGWICK, in an interesting article in the October Atlantic," confidently prophesies the future predominance of the Roman Catholic Church in America. He says:

There are but three classes of citizens which, as classes, we are sure will not come under her sway: men of scientific knowledge; men of independent character who are resolute to manage their own affairs-a class which is on the wane; and, third, the negroes. Set these classes aside and divide the remainder

into thirds. One-third, composed of the educated, will be divided among disagreeing Protestant sects; but the remaining two-thirds will be a great flock, now scattered and wandering, ready for a wise Church to guide. This Church he believes will be the Roman Catholic. The article has received a good deal of attention, and has naturally met with much opposition, some of which seems just. Mr. Sedgwick has passed very lightly over some strong Protestant claims upon the future, and has ignored some unmistakable signs of weakness in the Catholic Church. For instance, certain sections of her flock, as the farming Portuguese, show a strong tendency to fall away from her ranks, and her gain from country converts is very small in comparison with that of the Methodists; and such facts as these would seem to cast some doubt upon her future. But, on the other hand, there is one point that he has not touched upon which would, I believe, tend to strengthen his argument materially, and it is an interesting point to consider.

I refer to the power of reaching young children and training them into the faith, a power which the Roman Church possesses above all others by virtue of her peculiar organization and her sacraments. This is a matter of greater importance than seems to be commonly recognized. One calls to mind the old Jesuit maxim: "If you give us a child the first seven years of his life, you may do as you like with him afterwards; his religion will be fixed;" and although this is, of course, an exaggeration, it is certain that most persons depend very largely upon their childhood teaching for their religion. This

truth the Catholic Church has always recognized more fully than the Protestant, and her advantage in this respect has grown to enormous proportions of late years since the secularization of the schools. The daily recognition of Christianity in the reading of the Bible and in the prayer, slight and perfunctory as it often was, at least kept the facts of religion before the child's mind and gave them a recognized place in his life. Family prayers also used to be a common institution in Protestant homes, whereas now it is a rare one; and the family, unorganized and preoccupied as it so often is with material or purely intellectual interests, cannot now be relied upon to give systematic training. Thus deprived of regular religious teaching both in the school and the home, the Protestant child has now become peculiarly dependent upon the church. And how do the churches meet its need? By an hour's instruction once a week, under teachers who, it must be admitted, are, as a body, incompetent and irresponsible. There are educated and earnest men and women who give their Sunday-school classes the time and thought and faithful work they give to their daily business, but they are very few in comparison with the number of children to be taught. No one could maintain that the average instruction of children in the Protestant religion is as efficient as is their instruction in arithmetic.

Here the Roman Church has a decided superiority. In addition to other advantages, she has at present the strong bulwark of the parochial schools; but this she can hardly hope to retain, for public opinion is against them, even educated Catholic opinion. They are necessarily poor schools and must remain so, for it is not reasonable to suppose that one class of the community, and that often the poorest class, could raise sufficient money to run the complicated educational machinery of our day, and contribute its full share besides to the support of schools that it does not patronize. The parochial schools are doomed by the irrevocable

sentence of economic law. But without them the Church will still stand strong. In the first place, her services appeal far more than Protestant services to those human faculties, the heart, the imagination, and the senses, which are strongest in children. While the reason sleeps these are alive, making for virtue or vice, for lofty or low ideals and purposes, and determining the springs of action; and the Church which is to be strong must draw from these sources of strength as well as satisfy the reason. If its head should be in the clouds, its feet must rest upon the ground, and this the Catholic Church has always realized to her advantage.

Moreover, the Catholic organization has better means at its disposal than the Protestant denominations for the definite instruction of children in the faith. Its Sunday-schools are more efficient. They

are taught, as a rule, by persons especially vowed to the service of religion, who would naturally make better teachers of its tenets than the average willing but otherwise preoccupied persons who take classes in Protestant vestries and chapels; and their very uniforms inspire respect. They spend a larger part of their lives in the service of the ideas they are teaching, and are therefore likely to teach them with more force and conviction, and they do not so often neglect their duties by absenting themselves from school. The religious orders make very good material from which to draw Sunday-school teach

ers.

The instruction, too, is, as a rule, better organized and proceeds in a more regular and orderly manner from year to year; and, if the results do not always seem to us very good when we question our Catholic servant-maids, we should not forget that Protestantism could not any better afford to be judged by the irrational, conflicting notions of its ignorant supporters. We cannot expect a consistent system of philosophy from persons whose opportunities have not fitted them to receive it; no method of instruction

could accomplish this; for, as the old Sanscrit epigram has it,

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The pitcher at the well is filled, nor more
Draws at the ocean shore."

But it is a serious matter for consideration whether in Protestant churches the wells of instruction do not oftener than need be run dry before the pitchers are filled.

In all these points the Catholic Church will remain strong after she has lost her parochial schools, and she will have still another source of strength in the institutions of the First Communion and the Confirmation. The Episcopal Church retains the latter, but the great opportunity of the First Communion has been relinquished by all Protestant churches; and any one who knows how much the ceremony stands for in the life of French girls, for instance, how it becomes a season of uplift, not only for themselves but for their families, must feel that it is a serious loss. We need such seasons of special exaltation. Monotony is nowhere the rule of human life; we cannot if we would keep Sunday every day of the week, or Lent all through the year; but, although our souls cannot live in the upper air, now and then they can take a flight into the blue, and it is well for us to have them guided thither, as the Roman Church guides her children through the First Communion and Confirmation, when we are docile, enthusiastic, impressionable. There is, I believe, nothing in the Protestant church organization which fully fills the place of these sacraments.

Such advantages as I have mentioned would undoubtedly make a strong case for the future of any Church, and the lesson should not be ignored. If Mr. Sedgwick's prophecy should eventually be fulfilled, it will be, I believe, largely because the Protestant denominations fail to recognize and meet the increased responsibility for the distinctively spiritual training of young people which has lately fallen upon the churches. It will be because they neglected the children.

I was big girl, woman, and could only count ten!"

The minister, who is rather a small man with a reddish beard, is a busy man, is always. doing something, hurrying from one place to another. The Indians have given him a name which interpreted is "Little Red Ant." When school was dismissed the other day, Annie, who was barefooted, ran down the path, but suddenly stopped, calling, "Oh, wait a minute! Brother "-mentioning the minister's name "is

biting my toe." Her foot had been stung by a red ant.

Civilization is fast pushing into the reservation, and in the last few months the great steam-engine has come. As the train came in to the station it gave an uncommonly long, loud whistle; the kindergartner asked, "What is that, Edith ?" Edith was sewing her card, and, without looking

Moving the Animals

Recently the animals in Central Park have been having an exciting time. They have moved from their old to their new houses. The new houses are in the Zoölogical Gardens. Certainly the animals must enjoy the change. Their old home no one expected them to live in permanently; they were mere makeshifts. The new homes are very fine, and large enough for them and their families, even if they included cousins.

The pythons must find life much more pleasant. They have moved from wooden boxes to perfectly ventilated glass boxes, which give them light, and, free sight all about them. These pythons measure, one twenty-two feet, the other fifteen. Billy,

the smaller one, escaped from his wooden box. As you may imagine, there was great excitement when the care-takers

up, answered: I am busy; I haven't time to hear the wagon holler." Last Sunday, at church, it is sadly true, some good people got very sleepy, and one Indian who was sitting

in front was soon nodding. White Buffalo, Edith's father, got right

up in the middle of the sermon, walked round in front of the congregation, and gave the sleepy old man a good shaking. Not only did it wake up old Yellow Shirt, but everybody else was wide awake too, for White Buffalo had his eyes wide open, and his ears too.

After all, you see, Indian children are not very different from white children; and you will find that people are very much the same everywhere, whether black, red, or white. Yet it is not strange, for all people are the children of the one God, who has taught them to say, "Our Father who art in heaven."

The

made the discovery. Word was sent to all the men to look for Billy Python. Some were so frightened that they left the Park. At last Billy was found under some old boards where one of the houses was being reconstructed. He was asleep. The animal expert woke Billy up, and as he raised his head lassoed him. This made Billy angry, and he fought and struggled to escape. At last he was conquered and carried back to his box. next day Billy refused to eat. He sulked, refused to uncoil, and went without food so long as to make all believe he would starve to death. To everybody's joy, one morning Billy was found to be eating his breakfast in a state of good humor-that is, for Billy. Whether Billy had learned that he suffered more than any one else when he refused to eat, no one knows, but this is certain, that when the rope was thrown

around Billy's head and he was dragged from his wooden box to his new home, he I did not resent it. He ate his food and acted as if a glass house was his own familiar abode. His companion is always good-natured.

A Brave Woman

We do not always remember that it requires as much bravery to care for and nurse the soldiers on a field of battle, or in the hospitals near them, as to be a soldier and fight the enemy.

Not long ago, in a city of France, all the soldiers were drawn up on the city plaza. A woman in the habit of a Sister of Charity was called out in front of the Governor-General, and this is what he

said:

"Mother Mary Teresa, when you were twenty years of age you received a wound from a cannon-ball while assisting one of the wounded

on the field at Balaklava. In 1859 the shell from a mitrailleuse laid you prostrate in the front ranks on the battlefield of Magenta. Since then you have been in Syria, in China, and in Mexico, and if you were not wounded it was not because you have not exposed yourself.

"In 1870 you were taken up in Reischoffen covered with many saber-wounds. Such deeds of heroism you have crowned a few weeks ago with one of the most heroic actions which history records. A grenade fell upon the ambulance which was under your charge-you took up the grenade in your arms; you smiled upon the wounded who looked at you with feelings of dismay; you carried it a distance of eighty meters. On laying it down you noticed that it was going to burst; you threw yourself on the ground; it burst; you were seen covered with blood; but when persons came to your assistance you rose up smiling, as is your wont. You were scarcely recovered from your wound when you returned to the hospital whence I have now summoned you."

Then the General made her kneel down, and, drawing his sword, touched her lightly with it three times on the shoulder, and pinned the Cross of the Legion of Honor on her habit, saying:

"I put upon you the cross of the brave, in the name of the French people and army. No one has gained it by more deeds of heroism, nor by a life so completely spent in selfabnegation for the benefit of your brothers and the service of your country. Soldiers, present arms!"

The troops saluted, the drums and bugles rang out, the air was filled with loud acclamations, and all was jubilation and excitement as Mother Teresa arose, her face suffused with blushes, and asked:

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General, are you done?"

"Yes," said he.

"Then I will go back to the hospital !"

Who Was the Captor?

The policeman was as large as policemen usually are; the lamb as gentle, kind, and harmless as lambs usually are. They met on the lawn, and no one expected that the lamb would subdue the policeman.

This lawn was in front of a police station in the outskirts of New York City. As there is a law against lambs running about city streets, the police tied the lamb to a stake on the lawn.

One day the lamb tried to reach some vines growing on an arbor. In some way it became entangled in the rope by which it was tied, and was in danger of being strangled. A policeman was sent to free it. He got the lamb, who was greatly frightened, out of the vine. As soon as the lamb was free it began running around the policeman, winding the rope about his legs until he was thrown and helpless.

The lamb stood over him bleating. Was it in triumph?

At last the policemen in the stationhouse discovered the plight of their fellowofficer and rescued him.

Did the lamb arrest the policeman? If he did, was he not most ungrateful?

A Soldier of Four

A very little boy can sometimes be as brave as the bravest soldier. A small boy four years old who lives in the tenement-house district, where nurses are unknown, has been taking care of a little girl three years old, who lives in the same house, to and from school. Each day he went after her, and, taking her by the hand, would cross the streets where the cars run. No matter what happened, he would not let go her hand until school or home was reached.

One day recently they were crossing the street when a wagon turned the corner so quickly that both children were thrown down and injured.

As soon as he was picked up, this brave little man of four said, "Take care of Aggie !" "Take care of Aggie!" And the doctor, to keep him quiet, had to do it.

You see, it is not always necessary to stand behind a gun or face a cannon to prove that one is brave. To bear pain, to be faithful to a trust, is being quite as much the soldier,