Afterwards I came to know that many and many of these peasant landowners had to sell their last sheep, to mortgage their future harvest or to sell their future labor, to cover the expenses of their journey to the polls. And this is how the Duma was elected, and how it got its overpowering liberal majority.

There is one more word that I should like to add to this narrative of our electioneering campaign, because it may also serve to characterize our common people. More than a hundred thousand

elections in our province alone, some of them eventually getting seats in the Parliament. I have not heard of one single case of bribery or corruption; there was not one single vote among those thousands of poverty-stricken electors that money or power could buy.

It is for my readers to judge whether I am right in thinking that such a people are worthy of freedom, and that there are certain traits of their national character that bid fair to place them in the front rank of nations when they once obtain liberty and education.

BY C. R.

IN two ways, as a worker and as a member of the community, a man is of importance to his fellow-citizens. As the man is, so the child has been; as the child is, so the man will be; therefore the conditions of childhood are of interest to us all as individuals and as a people, and discussions about schools and teaching and about proper environment of youth are constantly heard.

In considering the education of our children we recognize the need of information which can be concisely acquired and concretely applied. That the scope of such information is far wider than that we used to call book learning is beginning to be fully and freely understood. Those who a few years ago initiated the system of manual training and built trade schools have lived past the time when their efforts were decried with our favorite condemnatory word "unpractical." That battle is fought, and with pride and pleasure we begin to reap the gains, in better-trained artisans and better-prepared boys and girls. We live in a highly specialized stage of civilization, and we answer the demand which it involves by carefully differentiating courses of instruction preparatory to the special work which we expect a man to follow. Our colleges do this with some thoroughness; our special technical schools do it still more completely. A man can become a doctor or a lawyer

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only after years of study looking to that end. Well prepared for their duties, our workers fill their functions as workers in the community. In these respects our children are cared for adequately and well in the public schools and in the colleges.

But the child has to be trained not only to be an intelligent factor in life's work, but also an intelligent member of the community in regard to social conditions. Many efforts are being made to treat our public schools not merely as places of instruction, but also as trainingschools in citizenship. One's eye is constantly caught by some new plan to interest and to educate the child in his social duties. School affords in many ways a good field for this training. It may do much in the way of instruction in the theory of human relations, and also something in practice. The art of adjustment to our environment without the sacrifice of our principles is, of course, learned only by practice; but the strength of such teaching is in home life. In the home are learned our first lessons of adjustment softened to us by the amenities of affection; through the little frictions of childhood we are guided by the care and wisdom of our parents. They give us treasures of inherited knowledge, and often give the more wisely because half unconsciously. Here we develop those traits of character which make us intelli

gent members of the community in regard to social conditions. The training usually received in the home, tending to form character and habit and thus to make the future citizen, is given by the State only to certain classes of its children. The inmates of the orphanages and the reformatories, and the destitute poor, are under its care, as well as the sick and the feeble-minded, not for a few hours a day in school, but day and night in all the experiences of their poor little lives. But the State makes no provision for the social training and the care of many other children, some of whom are likely to become its best citizens.

For there are children who cannot be classified otherwise than as children needing care. There are many so unfortunate as not to have happy homes, there are children whose parents must live in unhealthy places not fit for a child to be brought up in, there are "only" children for whom the best possible training is constant young companionship, there are children of first marriages where the presence of the issue of the second marriage makes a divergent influence in the house. All these cases and others analogous to them exist in the world. In each such case the child is exceptional; there are not many of them, perhaps, in one town, in one place, in one family connection, but the aggregate is large. The only provision for these children is boarding-school. The first thought which occurs to the mind of the grown person dealing with the situation is to send them to boarding-school. Where are the boarding-schools? What are the boarding-schools? Are they State institutions, free to any suitable applicant, as the reformatories are? They should certainly be places where boys, in forming their ideals of character, are thrown with upright men, where they learn to expect manly standards and straightforward dealing from each other and from all men, and where they come to know that in a good man strength and gentleness are well met; places where girls grow to understand the value of courtesy and to admire that fine selfrestraint which gives poise to the excit able feminine temperament, where they meet women worthy of the admiration

which they so freely give their teachers, and, emphatically, places where both boys and girls learn to look forward eagerly to carrying their share, in their turn, of our country's responsibilities.

We know that this provision for the care of its young has never been undertaken by the State. It has up to the present time been given either by the church or by private individuals. Private educational enterprises are essentially transitory. They have their place, they often do the best work of their day and generation, they stimulate thought and ambition, they supply the touchstone of comparison. Unhampered by the necessary restrictions and complications of public enterprise, they can and do often serve a high purpose in demonstrating possibilities, in realizing ideals. But, like other commercial enterprises, they are subject to fluctuation and are not permanent factors in the question we are considering. Nothing could be a permanent factor in the problem that was obliged to be self-supporting in the usual understanding of the word. To withstand the fluctuations of business there must be a force of capital behind any institution. To the State this is supplied by taxes, to other enterprises it is supplied by gifts which take the form of endowments. In this matter of boarding-schools these endowed institutions have been generally church foundations. Convent schools all over Europe have supplied the need, convent schools in America to-day still supply the need, and following in their wake, in this as in other good work, Protestant bodies have established schools where children are cared for as nearly as possible as they should be cared for in their homes, where they are taught the elements of religion and those habits and manners which make the man a suitable member of the civilized community.

There is a mistake often made, however, in considering the boarding-school. Led by the associations of the word "school," we are apt to look at the academic part as of the first consequence. With only this in mind, those who say that the children of such a school might as well go to the public school in the lower grades and to college in the upper

grades are often right. In many cases this would be true from the exclusively scholastic point of view. It is a fact that boarding-schools have always provided a department in which lessons are learned, and it seems almost essential that they should do so. It is certainly necessary if they are to be situated in the country, where the children may have the advantages of a country life; and there are other reasons why it is well that the number of children so brought together should be taught together; but the real scope and aim of the boardingschool, its true usefulness in the national life, is in "the care and nurture of the young" rather than in formal teaching.

Seeing that the State does not provide this care, must not the church or private individuals continue to give it as it has always been given? Cannot any one in his experience think of cases where the boarding-school meets a real need, or of cases where he has seen the boardingschool do real good? Of course such establishments are expensive. How enormously expensive is our public school system to the country, though free to the individual! Is it not an expense that is rightly borne by those who would endeavor to meet the needs of man and would try to make of all men good citizens? There is a strong movement now to place on a permanent footing many boarding-schools. Of the convent schools we do not here speak, because they are supported by whatever Order conducts them, and they share its means. Gifts given to the Order are often used for its schools, but are primarily the property of the Order. The boarding-schools established by other church bodies, however, are seeking substantial assurance of a continued exist

ence.

Some private schools, which have done good work and are beloved by their alumni, are preserved from dissolution upon the retirement of the founder by being incorporated; for these also their friends are endeavoring to make permanent provision. Is it strange that boarding-schools as well as colleges should seek endowments, when nearly all education, all teaching, and all care of the young in America are not self-supporting? This should be clearly understood from the first-none of our great educational opportunities are self-supporting; they are supported either by taxes or by endowments. It is to meet a real need, not otherwise provided for, that boarding-schools plead for endowments.

An endowment serves a double purpose.

Not only does it preserve what has been proved useful, but it gives opportunity for continued growth. Freed from the hand-to-mouth existence of dependence upon a fluctuating income, assured of continuance, there is given to the workers a forcible incentive to go on and make perfect what they begin; to try, prove, and hold fast good suggestions; to set firmly and to keep strictly a high standard. Compromise with expedience rather than undeviating allegiance to the best is no longer a temptation. The managers are not subject to the pitiful exigency of choice between financial and intellectual honesty which besets the private school. No need to decide between the best and the cheapest teacher, no need to take the best and by overwork reduce him at once to second best. Governed by a policy anxious only for perfection, the endowed school is free to become one more powerful agent in the development of men and women, valued by their fellow-citizens and of use to the community.

it difficult to enter those of the dozen or more "first families" who prided themselves on being the original "old settlers." These had lived in one-room cabins when the town was very young; they now lived in the best houses and owned an astonishing number of city lots scattered through the most valuable portions of the town site. They welcomed the Pushtons as additions to the population and were glad to have the business firms prosper, but it took credentials of unusual sort to gain entrée to their social set. Naturally this was limited, for only a few could be old settlers when so many came and went with each passing year-perhaps those who stayed through the vicissitudes of trial and triumph were entitled to preen themselves somewhat. Anyhow, the Pushtons and their friends did not care— the newer settlers were vastly in the majority.

The Pushtons were not surprised at their generous social acceptance-they had been through similar experiences elsewhere; the town was not excited scores of other families had done the same. It was the typical Western attitude toward newcomers-indicative of the hearty comradeship marking a plains community.

"The Western local paper is published for about thirty subscribers," said an editor, now a Congressman, who has been through one of the West's most remarkable boom experiences, its succeeding depression, and its regained prosperity. "Twenty to thirty men decide the destiny of the town; the others follow. If these be convinced, the work will be done."

This is because the town's dwellers are busy. It is no slight thing to build a business and to establish a home on limited capital, as have done the Western business men. Little time can be given to things not directly and concretely applicable to individual progress. Because of this the social club, as the Eastern city man knows it, is rare-it is confined to the larger business centers. The towns and villages, save in rare instances, have too little leisure for that.

Major Pushton belonged to three of the eighteen lodges. He joined three more. It was businesslike to do so, both because of the cheap life insurance secured and for social advantages attained. Mrs. Pushton and the girls joined an "auxiliary" lodge. During winter evenings the weekly meetings of the lodges furnished constant entertain

ment.

Initiations were the least of this. Following "work came what the local paper called" a social hour." The floor was cleared of altar and symbolic para

The Commercial Club did not secure the wholesale house nor the railway, but it held meetings to talk about them, and in these were the business men brought close together. The unity of the town's purpose was established. In a sense, the club headquarters took the place of the hotel porch where the Major's father and grandfather had met with other worthies "back East.' The Western town has no such forum in its younger days. As communities become mature, certain stores and offices often are places where those who "do things" gather, but at the Commercial Club is the formal ratification of plans.

ward; singing and dancing, with possibly lunch furnished in the supper-room, brought pleasure to every member. The doctor's daughter and the drayman's son were on the floor together; the lawyer danced with the plasterer's wife. Cosmopolitan, good natured, friendly, it was a common expression of one social feature of newer communities.

In girlhood Mrs. Pushton had known the church social, but she did not find it here. Except for occasional gatherings for young people, the church confined its efforts to services in the sanctuary or to suppers and fairs intended to swell its treasury's receipts. In such comparatively unfixed and ever-occupied society the lodge, its income assured by assessment to be paid on penalty of expulsion,