eration will ever be permanently efficacious. The would-be reformer should be willing to disabuse himself of prejudices, and cultivate what is known as an open mind;" not so open, either, as to interfere with its capability for being violently closed as often as occasion demands.

When one strips the situation of phrases one is forced to acknowledge that there are a great many people who intend to do only what they find pleasure in doing, and who do not recognize any enjoyment in abstract goodness. "You say," they tell us in effect, "that to be good is to be happy. Prove it." We cannot prove it, at least in any concrete form, and there is no sensible reason why we should desire to prove it, but no doubt we shall go on making the statement until the end of time.

There is also an increasing number of individuals who, so far from finding recreation, or even comfort and peace in prayer - meetings, find them only irreprayer-meetings, deemably dull. If there is a steady decrease in the demand for prayer-meetings and a correspondingly steady increase in the appetite for say, toboggan-sliding, might there not be found, gradually, naturally, and not reprehensibly, some middle ground of interest through which more prayer-meetingers can be induced to consider the merits of tobogganing, and more tobogganers drawn into prayermeetings?

--

It is a tendency of mankind to go on looking at subjects from an established standpoint long after the conditions which created that standpoint have become a thing of the past; and this is especially true in regard to questions of morals. Many people feel at once that to be betrayed into any fresh theory or admission on moral subjects is an inevitable step toward immorality. "He holds liberal views," they say, and shake their pious heads with conscious joy in their own narrowness. Yet to hold liberal views may mean nothing more than to be possessed of a willingness to search for and accept truth. If a great many peo

ple who "want to be angels," or think they do, could have the privilege; if a good many more, who have no angelic leanings whatever, and never will have, could be removed to their appropriate destination; and if the remainder, being persons of penetrable epidermis, could read their titles clear to stripping moral questions of futilities and dealing with moral conditions as they are, what an immense amount of powder might be saved!

To say that prayer-meetings are dull is an irreverence, therefore one should never breathe the thought; to say that people demand excitement and recreation is to acknowledge the frivolity of the race, hence such a craving should never be put forward as representing a genuine need of human nature: yet many prayermeetings are dull, and a large proportion of mankind do insistently demand to be amused; and since these are self-evident facts, the practical question arises, What are we going to do about it?

Our forefathers were a church-going people, but it does not necessarily follow that they were more innately religious than our own generation. They lived in an age when the stern conditions of existence furnished a continuous undercurrent of excitement, and what was lacking in other ways was more than made up to them by the nerve-thrilling, soul-harrowing amenities of their creeds. They were believers in a tangible hell, and to go to church on Sunday and listen to a sermon which depicted each hearer as dangling over a genuine, red-hot, steam-fitted Inferno, just as a spider sways on a single filament of his web, offered an excitement outbalancing the tensest moment of a football game, or even of a crisis in the stock market.

The man who drove his plough over a hillside never so remote, meditating as he toiled on the doctrine that doomed a large proportion of the race to everlasting punishment, and made the election of those who should be saved an arbitrary one, dependent upon the whim of a Deity

whose caprices must never be criticised, - such a man carried in his lonely bosom a whole volume of intensities. The sombre atmosphere of a creed like that was lurid enough to color the most commonplace days and nights, and lend a fearful joy to the barrenest existence.

When the old-fashioned belief in a concrete Sheol was taken out of our theology, religion, whatever it may have gained, was shorn of its most fascinating risk. "Man," says Sabatier, "is incurably religious;" he is also incurably opposed to monotony, and the faith that gets any permanent hold alike his intellect and his emotions must be a broad and sane Christianity which, taking into account every rooted instinct of his nature, makes the tendencies of both body and soul enter into vigorous and sensible character-building.

upon

I do not believe that man's amusements will ever drive out his spiritual longings; I do not believe his spiritual longings will ever wholly root out the earthy ones. The mistake lies in the assumption that the two are necessarily inimical.

When we can succeed in developing a race of sane, sound, clean-natured, highminded men and women their amusements will take care of themselves, but until that millennial breed really appears to inherit the earth the demand of my buoyant friend for "something kind o' innocent and excitin' to amuse men like him is a matter for serious consideration.

There is a certain sectarian college whose fostering church sends every year an envoy to inquire into the welfare of the institution, and to keep a jealous watch over its interests and those of the denomination. One might imagine such a messenger inquiring earnestly: Is this college educating men and women in the broadest sense of the word? Is it qualifying them to become good citizens, wise heads of families? Are they clean, trustworthy, trained to high thoughts? Have they gained spiritual common sense as well as

Yet if it is easy to be narrow, it is also easy to grant too much latitude. He needs must be a wise man, and a philosopher into the bargain, who knows just when to be wide as the universe, and when to stand like a wall. In a world made up of wheels within wheels and ramifications within ramifications, where everything depends on some other thing and the other thing depends on everything else, the difficulty of maintaining a just balance must be acknowledged; yet in this struggle for a just balance lies the salvation of the earth.

We live-to sum up the situation - in a generation that has gone recreation-mad. Outdoor sports and indoor sports fill up our leisure moments, or, in some cases, all our moments. Athletics, golf, tennis, games of all manners and lacking manners, rise, flourish, and decay. The race horse, the bicycle, and the automobile pursue one another across the stage of action. We play at being intellectual, we play at being religious, we play at being "tough," and all three are merged and included in being men and women "of the world."

and we

our

Our best educated classes, flatter ourselves that we have the last word in the matter of education, wisest classes are not necessarily very wise in the matter of their recreations; our half-educated brethren and sisters ape the manners of their betters, and a degree lower down in the scale the struggling masses take what they can get in the way of amusement, and take it where they can get it. In all classes, high and low, veneered and unveneered, it is almost universally true that the founda

tions of appetite are too often laid in the struggle to "have a good time." The instrument of an occasional hilarity has an unfortunate tendency to develop into the minister to a quenchless thirst.

I am always willing to ask questions which I cannot answer, therefore I frankly confess that I do not know just how the balance between the prayer-meeting and the toboggan slide is to be reached; probably the chasm between the two would seem to me much less abysmal than to some of my stricter brethren. It

is a chasm that will never be bridged by prohibitions alone, by persuasions alone, by sacrifice alone. Since in the last resort every thinking creature must work out his own salvation with fear and trembling, to harden him for the contest, to teach him how to grow to the full stature of a man, is the burden of the human problem. It is a problem that will never be solved by demanding unnecessary sacrifices, by ignoring vital instincts, by allowing prejudice to usurp the functions of common sense.

I

LOUISA MAE hung a rusty dishpan against the outside of the warped summer kitchen, standing on her tiptoes to reach the nail under the sagging, disjointed eaves-spout. She wiped her hands on a piece of towel inside the door, and groped in the gathering dusk to find the hook again. Then she ran down the narrow path that led to the road. The hem of her scant calico dress brushed the tall dewcovered weeds in the yard, and her long black braid of hair flopped against a row of white china buttons. The air was warm, and the dust thick and heavy, curling up in little puffs at each step. The trees and bushes along the roadside appeared blurred and indistinct, and Louisa Mae walked briskly past the thick clump where the tree toads wailed their rasping song, and the katydids disputed. Down in the slough, where the crickets chipped their harsh chorus, she broke into a run again.

Across the road, a little farther beyond, she swung open a white picket gate. Then she hurried around the cinder walk to the back door, where a light shone out on a vine-covered porch. Louisa Mae stopped and listened. A song, in a high, tuneless voice, came floating out, and as she climbed the steps, she saw, through the open doorway, a plump woman in a gray dress moving an iron ladle round and round. She slipped noiselessly in, and sank into a wooden rocker by the spacious wood-box. The chorus was coming out in jerks, and the words "rolling on, rolling

The broad shoulders gave a perceptible start, and a round face, filled with placid surprise, confronted her.

"My! Louisa Mae, but you did give me a scare."

"We've rolled on and rolled on all our lives, just like it tells us to."

"What can be the matter?" Mrs. Sawen shoved a large crock to the side of the table, and gazed down at Louisa Mae from above her big glasses.

"Pa's got the moving fever again, and Hank's catching it." The brown rocker moved jerkily over the uneven floor.

"Why, you have n't been here more than a couple of months!"

"I know it. I kind of thought they might be contented. I've seen it coming on, though."

"Maybe it'll blow over."

"No 't won't. When it comes it sticks."

"Where do they want to move to?" Mrs. Sawen was sifting the creamy flour into the crock before her.

Louisa Mae's brown fingers clasped the splintered handles of the rocker tightly.

"Out to Green County. Pa's just always been set on Green County. When we were up in Dakota he said it was Green County he ought to have gone to, and when we were down in Oklahoma he said it was Green County he ought to have gone to, and now we're here he says it's Green County he ought to have kept on to." Louisa Mae sank back into the cretonne cushions with the red roses and the brown leaves.

"Green County is n't any better than Taylor County, Louisa Mae," Mrs. Sawen responded promptly, a ring of loyalty in her easy tone.

The boards beneath the clumsy rockers squeaked again. Then it ceased abruptly. "I can't bear to leave this place." The

light in Louisa Mae's

eyes softened. 'And so I've come to ask you if you - if you would n't get Mr. Sawen to talk to pa. He might make him stay. Tell him to tell pa Green County ain't got enough to keep a person alive. He's always stayed shy of such places. And tell him there's blizzards in winter, pa ain't got no more use for Dakota, - and a man has to work all day for just starvation wages." "I'll see that Thomas does all he can for you." Mrs. Sawen set the crock on the back corner of the table. "Here's a little milk I saved for you." She brought a thick white pitcher from the corner cupboard. "Did you have good luck with your cookies this morning?"

It was one of those little country stores whose half-dozen departments or so are compressed to a single small floor. At one side were the shelves of dry goods and shoe-boxes, at the other the groceries and post office. The hardware and clothing departments were at the rear, while the surplus stock, as far as was possible, hung suspended from the ceiling.

It was six o'clock, and trade had slackened for the day. Mr. Sawen sat tilted back in an armchair, his square-toed shoes crossed on the top of a round rusty stove, and his bald head glistening above the edge of the extended evening paper.

The flies buzzed loudly, darting here and there with undisputed freedom. Suddenly a heavy step sounded outside, and the armchair rested with a thump on the floor. A lank man, with a stubby gray beard, and thick clumsy boots, entered.

"L'weezy Mae sent me down after salt. L'weezy Mae's al'ays getting out of something," he complained, his voice weak and drawling.

Mr. Sawen took a dust-covered bag from the shelf behind him, and set it down on the counter.

"Nice weather we're having, Mr. Todd." Mr. Sawen had a brisk tone with an "eye to business" air.

"Getting pretty hot to work," he responded, producing a nickel and five pennies.

"Finding you like this place pretty well, eh?" The money rattled into a wooden drawer beneath the counter.

"Well, now, I'll tell you." Mr. Todd folded his arms and leaned up against the wooden partition setting off the "post office." "If it wa'n't for Green County I don't know but what I'd as lieve stay here as most anywhere."

"Green County? What part of Green County?"

"I kind of calculated on settling round Prairie Centre."

"Got folks there?"

"Not exactly, only my sister-in-law's husband Levi Dobson. He's dead now. He came from near there."

"Prairie Centre is n't one bit better than this place," answered Mr. Sawen shortly, tapping the streaked show case with his pencil.

"Now that's just 'cording to how one thinks." Mr. Todd leisurely unfolded his arms. "I've al'ays kind of hankered after Green County. I'd orter gone there in the beginning, but I got to hearing so much about Dakota land I concluded to take up a claim out there. Then when we just got settled down Oklahoma opened up, and I was afraid to miss that chance. And all that time I was feeling it was Green County we'd orter be in." He