Diplomats at Washington. Editor AMERICAN MAGAZINE: I have read with interest the clever article of Mrs. Logan, in your June number, on "The Art of Entertaining."

I do not wish to be captious, yet I beg you will permit me to point out an error into which Mrs. Logan has fallen.

I refer to her remarks concerning the order of precedence to be assigned the diplomats who are sent to Washington. She says: "The placing of the diplomats in line to be presented on occasions of ceremony must be done in strict observance of rank and importance of each," etc.

Such a rule as Mrs. Logan thus creates would simply cause "confusion worse confounded."

Who is to decide as to the relative importance of nations, to say nothing of the manifold perplexities attendant upon a proper discrimination of shades of difference between "little European provinces " and "secondclass South American states "?

The fact is, that in order to avoid just such bewildering entanglements, a very simple rule has always prevailed. Allow me to quote from my "Etiquette of Social life in Washington," which thus defines the usage: "This preredence, relatively to each other, is accorded to priority of residence among us. The Dean, or Doyen, enters upon his functions in virtue of length of stay near our Government."

In accordance with this established usage, Bacon Von Gerolt was for years Doyen, preceding Lord Lyons and others, at a time when the powerful German empire of to-day was only Prussia; and, later on, the Costa Rican Minister took precedence. By this simple arrangement, no exceptional or invidious comparison can exist, and harmony is carefully preserved.

Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren.

writings come purely from my own brain, and as the facts stated never existed and are pure inventions by me, of course the ordinary patent law protects them from infringe

ment.

called invention) was patented yesterday. To illustrate: My last article (properly No one can infringe on this invention. It is mine forever. I call it:

ELI PERKINS' CYCLONE INVENTION. (Patented July 1, Liber XXIII, Patent-office Reports.) I was out in Kansas City after the last great cyclone they had there. It was a terrible cyclone. One-half of Kansas City was blown down, and three splendid churches have never returned. But I found the people all happy. Nothing makes a Kansas man feel bad. If they have grasshoppers "Got grassout there, they telegraph east: hoppers!" and then claim that their land is so rich that it raises two crops-grasshoppers and corn.

The next morning, after arriving at Kansas City, I went up on the hill with Deacon Wood. He was going to show me where his Not one brick was house had stood before. Trees blown out by the left upon another

roots.

Said I: "Deacon, you had an awful hurricane yesterday-did n't you?"

Well," he said, "there was a little draft." 'But, how hard did it blow?"

"Blow!" he said; "how hard did it blow? Why, it blew-it blew my cook-stove way over-blew it seventeen miles, and came back the next morning and got the griddles."

"Did it hurt anybody?" I asked.

"Well, to be frank with you, it did. There were some members of the Topeka Legislature over here. We told 'em to keep their mouths closed during the hurricane, but they were careless-left their mouths open, and the wind caught 'em in the mouth and turned 'em inside out."

"D' it kill them ?"

"No, it didn't kill 'em, but they were a good deal discouraged. Why, sir, it blew some of them thar legislators right against a stone wall-flattened them out as thin as wafers and-"

"Why, what did you do with them, Deacon?" I gasped.

"Well, we went out the next day, my son, with shovels and spades, and scraped them legislators off-scraped off three or four barrels of 'em and sent 'em to New York and sold 'em for liver-pads."

Eli Perkins (Inventor).

*This is a pure invention.

Advice to Young Housewives. THE first few months of married life usually are and certainly ought to be passed in a state of happiness as near perfect as can be attained in this world. During that period everything is at its brightest; there is the ennobling sense of the ownership of a home, the brilliant plans of the future that the hard hand of practicability has not yet touched, and, moreover, the inflated sense of importance and capability that is entailed by membership in a Mutual Admiration Society in which there are only two members, each of whom is constantly endeavoring to give the other the position of honor. In some instances, though very rare, the whole married life is a perpetual stream of happiness, and this is the object that should be striven for by all conscientious housewives.

The first real hardship that presents itself to the young wife is usually the care of her first offspring. Trials she will have previously had in plenty; but in no one of them have there been contained the elements of a truly happy household, or the reverse, than in the way the wonderful boy or girl is cared for during the first year or so.

Perhaps the most unfortunate young mother is she who was herself the youngest the "baby"—of a family, and who has had no practical experience with children. She is very apt to be inconsistent with her little charge, which, as a very natural result, very soon becomes the tyrannical ruler of the household in which the poor misguided mother is an abject slave.

A great and quite general mistake is to believe that an infant, if he be healthy, should be a perpetual sleeper. In vain attempts to influence this unreasonable result, the young mother worries herself to death in order to keep the house quiet. Papa comes home full of news from the city and is warned to "tread softly, baby's asleep!" He brings a friend, and the friend "enjoys his visit " by feeling as depressed as though he had been to see an invalid. No word must be spoken above a whisper; no joke must be told, as it might cause a laugh; no song must be sung, as it might remove the graveyard solemnity every and all things pleasant must be sacrificed at the shrine of the first baby.

All this is totally wrong. In the first place, it is nonsense to expect a baby to sleep twenty-four hours in a day; and in the second place if a child is brought up so that perfect quietude is the prime condition under which it will sleep the life of the mother will be a sad one. Rather let the child get used to every-day noises: let it become accustomed to

conversation, to laughter, to singing, and then the first sound link in the grand chain of its character has been forged. It is but a natural step from a tyrannical baby to a spoiled child, and yet what young mother would voluntarily spoil her boy.

Rocking or jouncing the infant in its cradle or on the lap are common practices that should be avoided. They do the child no good, and cause great annoyance and unnecessary trouble to the parents. The moment there is a stir in the cradle a furious rocking is begun, and continued until the poor little innocent is again whirled into unnatural slumber-land.

I remember some time time ago visiting at the home of a young couple, after the first baby had arrived: "There never was such a baby in the world before-so intelligent, so healthy, so fat and plump, so strong and energetic, so like both its parents." Yet with all these qualities in her offspring, the young mother wearied herself and worried her husband and friends. She was very irritable because the baby would not do what everyone else failed to do-sleep during the extremely warm nights. She thought it "the crossest baby ever born," and in answer to my questions made the frank avowal that she believed that if a baby was properly washed, clothed and fed it ought never to cry. She did not take into consideration that the poor little thing suffered from inconvenience as much, if not more, than older folks, and had no way other than by crying of making its suffering known.

One very warm night the same young mother, who will serve as a good specimen of thousands of others, was seated with her husband and a party of guests on the veranda. Baby was uncomfortably asleep in a warm room where the over-cautious mother had huddled it up with numberless flannels to prevent its taking cold. Flannels are very good in their place, but should be used with reason. Baby naturally soon began to cry, and in like a flash went the worried mother to try and rock it to sleep. But baby would cry, and after considerable coaxing, scolding and fretting the very tired mother called her husband to take care of "the cross little thing." He tried, but soon came to the very sensible conclusion that baby was too warm and could not sleep; so wrapping it in still another flannel he took it on the veranda for a change. The wife indignantly took the little monarch from him, saying, crossly, that she would take care of it herself, and immediately retired to the warm bedroom where she and her husband spent a long weary night with a cross baby.

Under such circumstances, friends, while they love and respect the young wife and mother, are apt to limit the number of their visits, as every pleasure is sacrificed to the whim and will of a mismanaged baby. Father and friend alike are politely asked to adjourn to another room while the weary mother endeavors to sing the poor little fellow to sleep. In the light of these examples it will be seen that the care of the first baby is the turning point towards success or failure in every household. Young wives should bear in mind the serious results that in the majority of instances follow the making of a home

miserable simply because there is a baby to care for. Their husband's comfort should find some consideration. After a hard day's work and worry it is very little incentive for him to go home and find his wife irritable, fretted and cross, and perhaps so out of sorts that she has not even made herself look neat. The average man will soon find a more congenial place to spend his evenings; and while the wife may grieve, she has only her own ignorance or want of common sense to thank for her troubles, for nothing in a household is more depressing than a fretful, long-faced Emily Corden.

woman.

Christ and the Poor.

CHRIST's fundamental thought with regard to the poor was their complete manhood, their possession of all human possibilities. Unlike materialism, socialism, and anarchism, Christianity does not look on the poor man as an organized appetite, as a mere fact of physiology. His body may be a holy temple for the indwelling of God Himself. His fundamental need is Christ, restoration to God, a new heart, a new hope, a disposition in accord with the divine mind. Having such a foundation you may build upon it securely, and any other foundation will crumble into moral chaos. The best friend which the poor men of England had in the last generation, the late Lord Shaftesbury, was not a man who believed that the great need of England's poor is the immediate supply of pressing physical wants, though his plans always included the feeding of the hungry and the furnishing of more favorable outward conditions. Of course this wise-hearted man was tremendously in earnest in changing bad laws and in carrying immediate comfort to the distressed, but above all things, he desired to build up Christian character, to strengthen the foundations of morality and plant new desires and aspirations in the hearts of the lowliest. He organized Boot-black Brigades, and built Ragged Schools and opened preaching stations, thereby showing that true remedies strike at the sources of human poverty, disease and suffering. These sources are largely intellectual and moral. I speak to rich men who were once poor. What helped you in the early days of your struggle? The gift of bread? No. The breaking up of other men's fortunes and the giving to you of your proportion? No. Any practical results from an unwise socialism? No. The lessening of the hours of labor? No, you gladly increased them. What helped you was the true food of the soul-courage, hope, inspiration and

high purpose and determination, a character which may have been partly an inheritance, but which you made your own by personal decision, by fidelity in little things. Ultimately it will be found that the forces which have entered into the building of your lifestructure were intellectual and moral, the product of the Word of God. When Abraham Lincoln was a poor farmer's son in his Hoosier cabin, what he needed was not a new suit of clothes, or a barrel of flour, or a chance to go to the theatre, or a house on Michigan Avenue. What he needed was what came to him: a love of the Bible, the reading of Bunyan and of Shakspeare, the reinforcing of his great natural powers by the immeasurable inspiration of God's Word, by the study of that masterpiece of prose fiction, "The Tinker's Allegory," which has pictured the pilgrim's journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial Jerusalem, and by that world of practical wisdom and wondrous imagination by which the English poet has made three centuries his debtors. God is wiser in the training of the world than the Socialist Proudhon, who supposed that the physical comforts of men are yet to be so multipled that, as he prophesies, the time will come when the oceans will be great reservoirs of lemonade for the thirsty nations. A boy's silly paradise which he enters every year when the circus comes around!

Heaven is not higher above hell, than is this death-hymn loftier than the "Long live anarchy," of the dying atheist ruffian. The spiritual influence and consolation which Christ has brought to the poor, are not greater, however, than the ennoblement which He has brought to our conceptions of man, in lifting us above our slavery to the formal and the external. The soul is sovereign over rank and dress, and the highest art finds passion and suffering love, and joy, as significant and sublime among the miners of Cornwall, and the huts of Ireland as among the draw

ing-rooms of London; amid the mountains of Tennessee as in the palaces of Fifth Avenue; amid the slave cabins of Louisiana as along the boulevards of Paris; in Millet's portraiture of the Norman peasantry, as in Paul Veronese's gorgeous picture of Venetian splendor.

There are solemn problems facing the Christian Church to-day, and remembering what the poor man of Nazareth has already effected in lifting us to higher thoughts of mankind and in bringing hostile interests and classes into oneness and harmony, I do not tremble with the least doubt lest He be unable to meet and conquer the perilous forces which are arraying one portion of the modern poor not only against the Church but against the very citadels of law and government. Christian wisdom and benevolence will lead us to apply all remedies which a desperate disease may require. The baleful agitations which have shocked our civilization and which led to the Haymarket tragedy, were born in part out of hatred to the Church as existing in European lands. The Church here, unhampered by the State, must continue to show with ampler evidence its practical and earnest sympathy with all human need. Every hospital that you build and endow, every kindergarten, mission school, industrial school or training school which you plant is a beneficent inroad into the ranks of anarchy. Knowing that ignorance and a misleading literature are at the root of much of our trouble, men of wealth will be forced to reach the misguided with some of the fundamental truths of political and social economy and of our republican institutions. Perceiving that above all other external causes, drunkenness and its accompanying waste and crime are the sources of pauperism and misery, the Church of Christ will not fail at the weakest point of the modern world. When the greatest of New England's orators had made his last speech in the Old South Church, a friend of mine, coming out with him, said, "If I had lived in those days of which you were speaking, I think that I too might have been heroic." Mr. Phillips answered, "No man would have been heroic then who is not heroic now. I love inexpressibly these streets of Boston, over which my mother held up my baby feet, and when I was young I made a vow that if God gave me time enough I would make them too pure for the footsteps of a slave. But look around to-day, and see these terrible houses of temptation and death on every side. If I were young again I would record another vow, that if God gave me time enough I would make these streets safe for the weakest brother that walks them;" and the Christian spirit spoke through these words. But Christianity has a grander and higher .nd more radical work than that. It is to

reform men, not through better conditions merely, but by bringing Christ Himself to the hearts of the neediest, and begetting within them the power of Christian manhood and the consolation of Christian hope. The best of all anti-poverty societies, as Mr. Chauncey M. Depew has said, is an anti-poverty society of one. Such societies were founded by the fathers of New England. True manhood in the individual is the Christian cure for the miseries of all men alike. The agitators of to-day act on the false theory that what the poor need in order to be happy is to step into the places of the rich. Henry George opens his wonderful book with the teaching that the marvelous physical progress of the last century ought to have swept crime, ignorance, poverty and class-hates all away, had there been a proper division among all of the world's growing material prosperity. There can be no greater delusion. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." The material leads to the material. Virtue, enlightenment, self-control, love, self-denial are not to be produced by telegraph-wires and locomotives, mowing machines and phonographs, any more than you can reform the character of certain well-known domestic animals by moving them into a cleaner stye. And Mr. George goes on to repeat the error that modern progress has made the rich richer and the poor poorer, whereas it has lifted the average well-being of all classes, leaving at the bottom of the social fabric a smaller proportion of degraded pauperism than you meet in studying earlier conditions of society And this benevolent and high-minded theorist completes his work by advocating as the cure for these inequalities, the holding of all land as public property, a theory now practiced in parts of Asia and Africa, where property has no security, where individual enterprise has no reward and where savagery is an inevitable result. Thank God there is no prospect whatever that our nation will return to the condition of things from which we are now trying to rescue the Indian tribes, raising them from the barbarism of tribal ownership of land, into the individual possession which helps towards self-reliant manhood. ("Natural Law in the Business World,” p. 218.) Every form of socialism is a step away from God's laws. Christianized individualism and not a heathenized communism is the world's chief need. Let there be a common ownership of property, and the worthless man becomes more worthless still, a parasite on the community; the man of energy and industry is robbed of his incentives to action, and the virtuous man who is forced to share his goods with others, loses all the virtue of voluntary benevolence and takes moral rank with the pauper whose furniture is knocked down at a sheriff's sale. Communism is an