Every now and again silly rumors appear in print saying that the ATLANTIC has been sold to this interest or that. Please consider that your own inside information entitles you to know that they are unqualifiedly false.

THE health of our religious life — or the lack of it — is of serious concern to the Reverend Herbert Parrish, rector of an ancient New Jersey church. Dr. Parrish writes us: —

Institutions die very slowly. Dr. Ewer, in the middle of the last century, forecast the present situation in his Failure of Protestantism, and analyzed the fundamental weaknesses. The break-up is the economic result of these. Rome may be the residuary legatee so far as the ignorant masses are concerned and in IrishAmerica, but as the world becomes educated she too is doomed. Christianity itself then becomes but one of the great world religions — the best, but possibly not the final one, the organizations breaking up and changing and the doctrines and practices being altered. Ecclesiastical tyranny cannot be reëstablished ever.

The old and new orders are personified in Mary Agnes Hamilton, who while at Cambridge University took a double first in classics and economics. A novelist of half a dozen titles, assistant editor of the New Leader, and, as ‘ Iconoclast,’the author of two recent volumes on Ramsay MacDonald, Mrs. Hamilton in her spare moments is an active member of the Independent Labor Party. ¶The writings of the Right Reverend Charles Fiske, Bishop Coadjutor of Central New York, have brought comfort to many beyond his diocese. Perhaps his most influential volume is The Faith by Which We Live. ¶A young Englishman of the war generation, R. H. Mottram has brought to his books, the war trilogy of The Spanish Farm, a versatile understanding of French and British character. ¶The entries in the secret journal of Jane Steger mark days of suffering and exaltation above pain. The complete journal, containing several chapters which have been printed in the Atlantic, will be published between covers this autumn as an Atlantic Monthly Press publication.

Amory Hare, a Philadelphia poet pleasantly familiar to our readers, is a granddaughter of the late Bishop William Hobart Hare, apostle to the Sioux. ¶Despite his lawyer’s caution, no bean stalk is too hazardous to discourage Samuel Scoville, Jr., from an intimate observation of birds and their nests. Louis I. Dublin is chief statistician of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and a specialist on the problems of race and occupational mortality. Professor John Dewey, of Columbia University, is a philosopher of whom Americans have had frequent occasion to be proud. We note that his present paper defending animal experimentation is incorporated in the record of Congressional hearings on a bill to prohibit the use of dogs for experimental purposes in Federal territory. ¶In the fields and woods of England Sir W. Beach Thomas has observed with what instinct and courage animals do and die. ¶It will surprise some readers to learn that Lord Dunsany has discovered a London club whose members, instead of sleeping, tell marvelous tales.

An Atlantic critic, Ethel Wallace Hawkins is exploring the fresh and esoteric arts of the Continent. ¶It is predicted that Humbert Wolfe’s poems, ‘The Unknown Goddess’ and ‘Humoresque,’lately published in England, will soon make their way in the United States. ¶During the thirty-five years that have identified C. E. Montague with the Manchester Guardian his dramatic criticism and leaders have become an almost essential part of an English middle-class breakfast. Archibald L. Bouton is Dean of the College of Arts and Pure Science at New York University. A. Cecil Edwards has resumed his London residence after thirteen years in Persia, ¶In the January AtlanticWilliam Z. Ripley, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, caught the ear of the public with his article, ‘From Main Street to Wall Street.’ Within a week the great papers of the country had taken up the matter; within a month the Board of Governors of the New York Stock Exchange had taken actual steps to remedy the situation. Following this investigation, Professor Ripley has disclosed another source of danger and mystification in the same field of corporate finance.

In the midst of the crisis which England has had to confront during the past months it is enlightening to hear the expert opinion of three Englishmen, each qualified for his particular study. Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labor Cabinet, the Right Honorable Philip Snowden is a member of the Privy Council. Lord Buckmaster, Lord Chancellor in 1915, was chairman of the first commission of inquiry into the coal mines in 1924. A student of international affairs, widely read and traveled, Robert Sencourt is seasonably at home in Italy and England. We quote from a letter accompanying his manuscript: —

My reflections on the present state of European politics are not very complete without an examination of the practical business theories which underlie all politics, and I have just been writing these out in connection with England’s general strike.
There can to my mind be no doubt that in both Latin and Teutonic Europe the idea of corporate production has fundamentally modified the old ideas of democracy and capitalism which the Anglo-Saxon world turned to such good success. For my own part, I want to give individualism the credit for the wealth and enterprise it brought, while showing the truth of the social organization which it ignored.

This letter sent to us by a friendly reader has a dear, familiar taste for all good sons of Izaak Walton.

These past weeks have been so strenuous that whenever I sat down for an instant it seemed I should be at something else. A diagnostician might say that a fishing trip was indicated; a poet might say that the streams were calling.

So one afternoon a good friend and I took our trout tackle and mess kits and went out — with eight medium-sized potatoes, bread, butter, salt,

bacon, coffee, sugar, a can of condensed milk, and, as an afterthought, a glass of wild pin-cherrv jelly. Our path led along the broad highway, then over a byroad, and a branch from that to the home of the last settler, and finally along an old logging road that to the uninitiated might seem almost impassable, but which to us seemed only nature’s kindly protection of a spot of beauty from all save such as might value it highly enough to make an effort to win it. My friend shut off the motor, then turned to me with a triumphant look. We could hear the brook singing a few rods away in the woods. Many times we have been in that spot and heard the song of the stream, but always when we have come out of the hurry of workaday life into that solitude it seems strangely fresh and new.
There is a little pool below a great boulder, a pool perhaps eight feet across and two feet deep, into which the foaming water rushes. Across the stream at the lower edge of the pool is a huge fallen tree. Beneath this the water flows, and there is always a little patch of white foam carried off to one side. When I have crept up to the edge of the stream and dropped a worm or a fly into that pool, the question of what will happen when it has been carried below that log with its patch of foam completely eclipses in importance all questions of buildings and budgets. Will there be the tug of a hungry trout? In that question all else is blotted out. Will there be the tug of a trout? College problems — perhaps they are carried off downstream with the little flecks of foam. Will there be the tug of a trout? The answer to the question is not of supremest importance: the quest is its own reward.
We did not fish long. In half an hour we had enough trout, speckled beauties of the brook, and preparations for supper were in order. At such times the meal becomes a ceremony. When I had the potatoes peeled and sliced, I took real pride in the fact that I had gauged the supply so accurately that there were just enough to fill the mess kit. My friend displayed the trout, cleaned and washed. He started a pail of coffee, and while the trout and bacon and potatoes were being prepared to exactly the right perfection — anything less were sacrilegious at such a time — we sipped a cup of coffee, and marveled at its quality. We were proud as the proverbial boy with a little red wagon.
Supper! Trout and bacon, fried potatoes, bread and butter and coffee, with the tangy pin-cherry jelly. What a supper as we sat there with the camp fire at our feet, and the trout stream murmuring beside us! As we sat drinking the last cup of coffee after the sun had set behind the trees, and the sky was crimsoned with sunset, the occasion became of almost ritual dignity and splendor. The stars came out, and the little fireflies began darting to and fro. Far off in the hills we heard the first call of the whippoorwill. I lay flat on ray back beside the dancing camp fire, watching the pattern of the thorn-apple leaves above me, lighted from beneath by the camp fire. I studied the perfect arrangement whereby each leaf of each tiny twig is enabled to obtain its meed of sunshine. Busy fireflies were crawling in the grass, and flying in the air. Over all our tiny world, changing moment by moment as day departed and night drew on, were shining and unchanging, infinitely far-distant stars.
A firefly suddenly shone out on the tip of a leaf fifteen or twenty feet above me. Strange! Its brightness for an instant far outshone the greatest star of all the galaxy above me; as it darted away across the sky it might have been some rarely brilliant meteorite.
The fire burned low; suddenly the last flame ceased and there was only smoke From the glowing embers. We poured a pail of water on them and drove home through the night.
The beauty of that evening has been with me for days. I can hear the song of the brook, the whisper of the trees, and all the voices of the night. I can see, when I close my eyes, the camp fire and the thorn-apple leaves, the fireflies and the stars. And I have been unable to escape the memory of the great brightness of that little firefly that outshone the stars, and the thought that perchance elsewhere than on Mosquito Brook it is possible to imagine that momentary fireflies near at hand are brighter than great stars. Perhaps after all that was why I had to get out to the Brook.
N. B. DEXTER

* * *

Miss Repplier’s mirror is never compromising, as this reader is big enough to see.

PORTLAND, ORE.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I wish Miss Repplier’s paper could be read and heeded by all Americans. The unconscious air of superiority we assume toward all foreigners and toward other nations would be humorous if not serious. It shows itself in many ways, and the vast majority of us are guilty. From childhood we are taught in one way and another how much better we are than other people, and that we are but little, if any, lower than the angels. Every Fourth of July or other holiday the air resounds with utterances emphasizing what a powerful people we are, how much better than other poor sinners, and our deep regret for their situation. So too it has now come to pass that our history is being developed into modern mythology by censoring historical facts and cutting out anything and everything that in any way, according to these self-appointed censors, tends to humanize our national heroes. Schools are not permitted to teach facts, and anyone who ventures to say that our forefathers were men with men’s weaknesses and human is damned as not measuring up to the standard now generally defined as ‘one hundred per cent American’ —a very indefinite term.
Another habit of ours is the attaching of nicknames to foreigners. In California, when I was a small boy, Mexicans were always referred to as ‘Greasers,’ Portuguese as ‘Dagoes,’ Chinese as ‘Chinks,’ and to-day the Japanese are called ‘Japs.’ Not so long ago I made a trip to Panama with a judge of the Supreme Court of New York, a member of the faculty of Yale, and a business man of New York. I can recall now with what a perfectly unconscious air of superiority we walked the streets of Panama, leaving in our wake dislike and probably hate. We were not there a day before we acquired the habit of calling the natives ‘spiggoties’ instead of Panamaians. This name arose out of their way of saying that they did not understand English. A native would say in response to a question: ‘No spiggoty Engleesh.’ This was enough. While we could not speak their language, we could not understand why they should not speak English. They therefore became ‘spiggoties,’ and their money was then and there, and doubtless now is, ‘spiggoty money.’
I do not know how much good Miss Repplier’s article will do, but I know that it speaks the truth and holds up a mirror in which one may see himself.
JOSEPH N. TEAL

After reading the sheaf of communications in appreciation or condemnation of his paper, ‘Liberty and Sovereignty,’in the July Atlantic, Mr. Martin sent us this pat anecdote: —

It all reminds me of the experiments conducted at Bedford in England between the folks who think the world is flat and those who think it is round. At that place the Bedford Canal stretches away in a perfectly straight line for six miles. It was agreed that if a sheet were put up at one end and a telescope at the other, then if the earth were flat one could see the sheet; and if the sheet could not be seen it would be because of the sphericity of the world. Well — they got the sheet and the telescope, and then a miracle happened: everyone who thought the earth was flat could see the sheet as plain as print, whereas those who held to Copernicus could not see a sign of it. There was a lot of money up on the result, so they took pictures through the telescope and worked hard; but the same trouble developed as to the photographs: they could not agree as to whether the sheet showed or not. Neither could they find an unprejudiced umpire without preconceptions on the subject.

Man is undoubtedly the funniest ape.

But this letter, whatever its persuasion, makes a distinction that commands consideration in both camps.

WEST CHESTER, PA.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
The suggested use of conscientious objection in regard to the Volstead Act is rather startling to us ‘temperance people,’ some of whom are reputed to be so conscientious that ‘we will not eat a chicken that has roosted upon a ciderapple tree.’ Those who were in connection with conscientious objectors during the World War — the United States had a small concentration camp of them near Philadelphia — read and argued and altogether reviewed the rights of conscientious objection to their limit, but found nothing at all like that suggested by George W. Martin in the July Atlantic. Yet our knowledge of this form of behavior was both extensive and definite. It had to be, when advice was being given to upstanding youths as they departed toward certain persecution, saying gallantly, ‘I’ll take whatever the Lord sends.’
Conscientious objection presupposes two very definite facts of life: the moral right of a fully developed adult to refrain from an act that he regards as wrong, even though the State requires it; and the legal right of the State to punish him for it, if it so chooses. Sometimes there may be inherent in the moral situation a legal right to deny the jurisdiction of the court. This may be an explanation of the silence of Christ at His trial, since even to give a word of testimony involves an acknowledgment of the jurisdiction of those who would cross-question a prisoner. Until someone is denied the right of trial by jury, no legal objection can be made. But should that time come, the anti-prohibitionist has a precedent in the case of the famous London lawyer, Scott Duckers, who refused in 1916 to allow himself to come under the Military Service Act. He denied the war court’s jurisdiction over a civilian and held his objection unbroken through many false trials and imprisonments. Just as the Pacifist Scott Duckers is rated a martyr to Christianity and not to the law, so will this anti-prohibitionist be considered a sufferer for the right to manufacture intoxicants, and not for the right of trial by jury.

Disobedience on moral grounds presupposes the already-mentioned adulthood, not only as a citizen merely, but as a personality, fully educated in ethics. The objector must never, under any circumstances, be in need of outside control. His self-control must be complete, his life self-sacrificing in all other ways possible except the one way. At least, so they told us in war time. Therefore to say, ‘ I have the right to make and sell intoxicants,’ absolutely requires extraordinary helpfulness in all other directions for the public good.
Prohibition wras brought about by the passionate desire of mothers and of motherly women generally to save children from the danger of drunkenness. It was a war of freedom, but not for the freedom of the drinker. These mothers of a sober race in America are getting a little of the liberty for which they are fighting. They are beginning to have their day, and it is a poor day for the people who are in the habit of drinking liquor or of getting rich on its sale. ‘That little fox terrier,’ the owner’s eyes sparkled at the thought of the mother with her boxful of puppies in the garage, ‘that little mother dog killed twenty-seven mice in one day! And,’ he added casually, ‘it was n’t a very good day for mice, either.’
HELEN ELIZABETH RHOADS

Helen Dore Boylston, whose war diaries brought gratification to many veterans, is now in Paris, where she is studying German and Russian before a further advance into the Albanian Mountains. On her present labor she writes us this sprightly note: —

Do you, by any chance, speak German? If you do I can only say that I look upon you with unutterable admiration as a person capable of incredible spiritual gymnastics. It crushes me flat and bores me to hysteria. Compared to it Russian is a lightsome thing that carols as it goes, and beckons to me around corners, promising the mysterious. But the German! It clumps heavily along beside me, and is continually laying a flat hand on my shoulder, saying, ‘Not so fast, Fräulein. Life a serious business is, which must weighed be, and studied, and with yesterday compared. Do not after that wild Russian go! It can you nothing of the seriousness of life explain.’ And all the while the Russian is just ahead and I hear it singing in its strong, free voice. It sings of cornflowers on the steppes, and of old, old waltzes, heard from afar through warm spring dusks — and remembered in the bitter cold of the endless winter nights. It sings of the joy of life and its sadness and its moments. And the German — ‘ Ach, she waits not, the foolish one.’ Nor do I. Many a good kick in the shin bones have I given that German in trying to shake off its fat hand. But it remains. And is undoubtedly meditating profoundly on the meagreness of my deltoid muscle.

’sounding brass . .'

CHEVIOT-ON-HUDSON
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
In your July number Mr. A. Edward Newton remarks that Jefferson must have been crazy when he wrote that all men were created equal. I can throw some light on that. Mrs. Thomas Elwyn, a daughter of Governor John Langdon of New Hampshire, told my mother that she once said to Jefferson, ‘What were you thinking of when you said all men were created equal?’ He replied, ‘I don’t know what I was thinking of. I thought it sounded well.’ Mrs. Elwyn knew all those men well, and stayed often at Mt. Vernon. It was in 1852, when she was a very old lady, that she mentioned this matter to my mother, Mrs. Edward Delafield, who wrote it in her journal, which I carefully preserve and in which I have just read it again. It is absolutely true.
ALICE CLARKSON

‘We are seven!’

BLACK MOUNTAIN, VA.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Knowing of your interest in the human family, I am sending you this authentic account of seven singular sisters and their equally singular parents who lived in Richmond, Virginia, during the first half of the nineteenth century. The original is contained in the diary of my grandfather, Reverend Isaac N. Walter, a traveling minister and relative of the McClures, whom he visited in 1840.
There were twelve members in the McClure family — father, mother, three sons, and seven daughters. All but a married son lived on the old homestead of several hundred acres. ‘On the farm are about forty head of horses, and thirty of them have never had either bridle, saddle, or harness on,’ writes my grandfather. ‘Their home is very large. The second story is all in one room, about forty by fifty feet, but it is divided into many apartments by lines running in every direction, on which hang their dresses, bedclothes, and so forth. On one line hang all the mittens they have ever worn for thirty years, and on another line all the stockings. In the garret are all the old boots and shoes.
‘The girls each have a saddle and bridle, costing thirty dollars apiece, which have never been used. Each of them has also a water bucket, and when one goes for water they all go. Each has a milk bucket, and when one goes to milk they all go. Each has a big wheel, little wheel, and reel, and when one spins they all spin; when one reels they all reel. When one starts to get a meal they all start. They all sleep in the same room, each occupying a bed; when one retires they all go, and when one gets up they all get up.
‘They go to church very regularly, and always go in single file. All sit down together. When one gets up they all get up, and when one goes out they all go out. Each of them carries a reticule made of different colors, in which they carry apples and pears. They think much of their minister and frequently give him their apples and pears. When one gives they all give, and they often fill his pockets and his hat. He has to take them or he would offend them. Each carries an umbrella, but never do they spread them on a rainy day or a hot day. Their dress is after the fashion of forty or fifty years ago, and they wear old-fashioned scoop bonnets, very high and flaring before, with a plain red ribbon across the middle.
‘The old man would not permit anyone to marry one of them unless he married the oldest, and so on down in regular order; but it happened that no one fancied the oldest, and consequently they are all old maids. They are very kind to anyone who visits them and very hospitable to strangers; but if any person goes there on Saturday night the horse is put under lock and key until Monday morning. If the traveler desires to go to church on the Sabbath, he may have the privilege, but he must walk. They consider it wrong to ride on the Sabbath, except in extreme cases.
‘The old man was peculiar in his manner of doing business. Everybody could depend upon what he said in the sale of articles, and he always had his price or never sold his produce. If corn was selling at 12½ cents per bushel he would have 25 cents, and if it was selling for 50 cents he would take but 25 cents, and so with everything else.
‘About four weeks ago the old man, his two sons, and a daughter died of congestive fever. The daughter died on Tuesday, and the next Saturday the father and sons were all buried in one grave. Thus in one week four members of his family were numbered with the dead. In attending to the settlement of the estate it was found, upon examination, that no person was owing the estate; nor was the estate owing any person, from the fact that the old man would never credit any person or ask any person to credit him.’
JOSEPHINE M. CATHCART