and upsets ordinary calculation. With grown-up people the mixture is dangerous. The stupid see only the praise, the sensitive only the blame. Sensitive people, again, are very apt to be a little suspicious, and pure praise may easily come to lose its wholesome force if the recipient has learned to look for adulteration.

The odd thing is that the kind people who hate to find fault are by no means those who do it the most judiciously or who most consistently avoid superfluous pain. One reason, we suppose, is that they have little practice in censuring, and little experience of its result; while perhaps another reason is that they do not speak at all till loss of temper gives them courage. A man who is habitually courteous, who seldom loses his temper and seldom finds fault, is apt on the rare occasions when he speaks his anger to be very cutting. Sarcasm is as a rule simply the venthole of a clever and self-controlled man's temper. Sometimes the pent-up steam produces a corrosive acid, and a man may find, to his genuine horror. that he has done more injury with an epigram than he could have done with a dozen oaths. In spite of the excellent advice which he gives on the subject of courteous censure, Mr. Hardy is wonderfully attracted by sharp sayings in civil form said with a view to correction. He quotes some the familiarity of which disguises their brutality, and some the newness and humor of which tempt one to forget it. The story of the Duchess and "the nobleman with the bald head" might surely now go out of print. On the other hand, the sentence of the master who in giving a character to his coachman remarked, "I have seen him soThe Spectator.

ber," is well worth preserving. We wonder whether Mr. Hardy knows the story of a consequential Bishop traveling in Switzerland, who apologized for bringing much luggage to a high place on the ground of his valet's stupidity, to whom a witty young man suggested that the servant had made the mistake of packing the mitre. Our raconteur is not squeamish about roughness. Like most humorists, he can forgive much and forgo little for the sake of a laugh; witness the following story:-"How dreadful it is when you bring a lady into dinner who cannot or will not say a word! In this predicament I have remarked: 'I do not mind being ugly, do you?' and this brought the painfully silent one to speech, if not to her senses." Of course we are not so simple as to believe that this genial and common-sensical humorist ever said anything so astoundingly and brutally rude. No doubt the false ascription is part of the joke.

After all, we believe that the real way to reprove effectually, yet spare the feelings of the reproved, is not by too much striving after courtesy, nor too subtle combinations of praise and blame, nor any assumption of affectionate interest, but simply by taking refuge in officialism. We may easily exaggerate the extent to which our subordinates desire personal relations with ourselves. If they belong to a circle which is not ours, they have their own world of personal relationships.

If,

on the other hand, we "know one another at home," as the schoolboys say, there are moments when it is well to forget it. An official rebuke gives the minimum of personal pain, and creates as a rule a maximum renewal of effort.

A TRAGEDY IN HIGH LIFE

I.

From the copy paper of Harold Pippett, only reporter for "The Easterham Herald."

Inquiries which have been made by one of our representatives yield the gratifying tidings that Kildin Hall, the superb Tudor residence vacated a year or so ago by Lord Glossthorpe, is again let. The new tenant, who will be a valued addition to the neighborhood, is Mr. Michael Stirring, a retired banker.

II.

From The Easterham Herald," Sept. 2. Inquiries which have been made by one of our representatives yield the gratifying tidings that Kildin Hall, the superb Tudor residence vacated a year or so ago by Lord Glossthorpe, is again let. The new tenant, who will be a valued addition to the neighborhood. is Mr. Michael Stirring, a retired baker.

III.

Mr. Guy Lander, Estate Agent, to the Editor of "The Easterham Herald." Dear Ted,-There's a fearful bloomer in your paper this week which you must put right as soon as you can. Mr. Stirring, who has taken Kildin, is not a baker, but a banker. Yours, G. L.

IV.

The Editor of "The Easterham Herald" to Mr. Guy Lander.

My dear Guy,-Of course it's only a misprint. Pippett wrote "banker" right enough, and the ass of a compositor dropped out the "n." I'll put it right next week. No sensible person would mind. Yours, Edward 'Robb.

V.

a very serious misstatement in your paper for Saturday last. It is there stated that my husband, Mr. Michael Stirring. who has taken Kildin Hall, is a retired baker. This is absolutely false. Mr. Stirring is a retired banker, than which nothing could be much more different. Mr. Stirring is at this moment too ill to read the papers, and the libel will therefore be kept from him a little longer, but what the consequences will be when he learns it I tremble to think. Kindly assure me that you will give the denial as much publicity as the falsehood.

Yours faithfully.
Augusta Stirring.

VI.

The Editor of "The Easterham Herald" to Mrs. Michael Stirring.

The Editor of The Easterham Herald presents his compliments to Mrs. Stirring and begs to express his profound regret that the misprint of which she complains should have crept into his paper. That it was a misprint and not an intentional misstatement he has

the reporter's copy to prove. He will, of course, insert in the next issue of The Easterham Herald a paragraph correcting the error, but he would point out to Mrs. Stirring that it was stated in the paragraph that Mr. Stirring would be a valued addition to the neighborhood.

VII.

Mrs. Stirring to the Editor of "The Easterham Herald."

Sir,-Whatever the cause of the slander, whether malice or misadventure, the fact remains that you have done a very cruel thing. I enclose a cutting from the London Press, sent me by a

"The Easterham Herald.”

Sir,-My attention has been called to

calumny is becoming widely spread. Mr. Stirring is so weak and dispirited

that we fear he may have got some inkling of it. Your position if he knows the worst will be terrible.

I am, Yours faithfully,
Augusta Stirring.

VIII. (The Enclosure.)

From "The Morning Star."

Signs of the Times.

We get the new movement in a nutshell in the report from Easterham that Lord Glossthorpe has let his house to a retired baker named Stirring, etc., etc.

IX.

From "The Easterham Herald," Sept. 9. Erratum.-In our issue last week an unfortunate misprint made us state that the new tenant of Kildin Hall was a retired baker. The word was of course banker.

X.

Messrs. Greenery and Bills. Steam Bakery, Dumbridge.

Dear Sir,-After the offensive way in which you refer to bakers in the current number of your paper we feel that we have no other course but to withdraw our advertisement; so please discontinue it from this date.

Yours faithfully,
Greenery and Bills.

XII.

Mrs. Stirring to the Editor of "The Easterham Herald,"

Sir, I fear you have not done your best to check the progress of your slanderous paragraph, since only this inorning I received the enclosed. You will probably not be surprised to learn that through your efforts the old-world paradise of Kildin, in which we hoped to end our days, has been closed to us. Yours truly, Augusta Stirring.

XIII. (The Enclosure.)

From "The Daily Leader." The Triumph of the Democracy. After lying empty for nearly two years Lord Glossthorpe's country seat has been let to a retired baker named Stirring, etc., etc.

XIV.

Mrs. Michael Stirring to Mr. Guy

Lander.

Dear Sir,-After the way that the good name and fame of my husband and myself have been poisoned both in the local and the London Press, we cannot think further of coming to live at Kildin Hall. Every post brings from one or other of my friends some paragraph perpetuating the lie. Kindly therefore consider the negotiations completely at an end. I am,

Yours faithfully.

XVI.

which that mistake has caused, and

to Mrs. Stirring.

The Editor of The Easterham Herald presents his compliments to Mrs. Stirring for the last time, and again assures her that the whole trouble grew from the natural carelessness of an overworked and underpaid compositor. He regrets sincerely the unhappiness

Punch.

bakers and retired bankers will be considered as equally valuable additions to a neighborhood. In retirement, as in the grave, he likes to think of all men as equal. With renewed apologies for the foul aspersion which he cast upon Mr. and Mrs. Stirring, he begs to conclude.

A situation is developing in American politics that is full of interest and significance. Under the pressure of new social forces and new economic problems the historic parties, slowly but definitely, are beginning to disintegrate. For many years past they have been parties only in name. They have lacked everything that might be called a political religion. Since the immediate problems raised by the Civil War were settled, there has been no such thing as a distinctively Republican or a distinctively Democratic policy. On seven issues out of ten the two huge guilds of politicians have been substantially at one. On the other three issues the alignment of each party has been purely arbitrary and fortuitous, dictated not by convictions or first principles, but simply by a sense of electioneering needs and possibilities. Up to the moment of Mr. Bryan's first nomination in 1896, American politics had no reality whatever. In that year Radicalism first showed itself as something more than a local and sporadic force, and succeeded in capturing the Democratic party. It was a Radicalism mixed with much folly, ignorance. and crudeness, but it had its roots in a sincere and justifiable conviction that organized wealth had reached a perilous height of political and economic power. After a passionate contest the

American people rejected Bryanism in 1896, and again in 1900. The Republicans accepted their victory as a national permission to ensconce themselves once more behind the ramparts of the money-power. Plutocracy has rarely been more completely in possession of a nominally self-governing State than it was in America under the auspices of Mr. McKinley and Mr. Hanna. Then, through the accident of an accident, came Mr. Roosevelt. He sat from the first with conspicuous looseness in the party saddle. Where his predecessor had obeyed the Trusts or cozened them, Mr. Roosevelt attacked them. He saw that a party of the Haves, by the mere force of reflex action, brings ultimately into being a party of the Have-nots, and that reaction at one end of the political scale means sooner or later a powerful revolutionary movement at the other.

To head off any such development became the supreme object of his policy. He was alive to social and economic equalities. He perceived that the time had come when the plutocracy to preserve anything must surrender something. His policy of the "square deal" cut clean across the traditional lines of party division. It fitted in with none of the old formulæ and catchwords. It was a national and not in any sense a factional policy, not a

The first

movement of Republicans against Democrats but of the people against the plutocracy. Mr. Roosevelt initiated two campaigns against the American money-power. One was aimed at capital, the other at capitalists. campaign, by an unsparing investigation of the Trusts, by an increasing strictness of Federal supervision over their conduct, and by the systematic preservation of the natural resources of the country, essayed to bring under public control whatever was excessive and against the common weal in the powers of organized wealth, and to prevent the promoter and the financier from profiting excessively at the expense of the community. The second campaign dealt rather with the millionaire as a private citizen, and was designed to extract from him by income and inheritance taxes a fair return for the wealth he had been enabled to amass. Those who opposed these policies did so not as Republicans or Democrats but simply as Conservatives speaking the universal language of Conservatism. Those who favored them did so as Radicals sans phrase. Mr. Roosevelt, in short, stripped Bryanism of its heresies and made it practicable. He was the means of launching issues that appealed more to men's fundamental opinions about society and economics than to their party affiliations; and though the stubborn opposition of the Conservative leaders of his party prevented him from writing more than one or two of his policies on the Statute-book, he was entirely successful in winning for them an enormous measure of popular devotion.

It would have been difficult for any man to step into Mr. Roosevelt's shoes. It was doubly difficult for Mr. Taft because both the Conservatives and the Radicals claimed him as their especial friend and sympathizer. The former were confident that a President of his judicial temperament and poise would

do nothing to alarm the worlds of business and finance. The latter, remembering the part he had taken in formulating the Roosevelt policies, remembering too that he was Mr. Roosevelt's own choice for the Presidency, were equally confident that the attack on the various strongholds of privilege would be firmly pressed home. But so far it has to be said that Mr. Taft has won considerably more approval among the Conservatives than among the Radicals. The Payne Tariff Act for instance was a virtually complete triumph for the reactionaries. President Taft did what he could to modify it and make it square with his own and his party's election pledges; but his efforts were successful only within the narrowest limits, and the measure that he finally signed was felt by all the Radicals in the country. and especially by the Radical Republicans of the Middle West, where Mr. Roosevelt found his strongest support, to be little less than a betrayal. Several other incidents, moreover, have tended to confirm the suspicion that President Taft, taking warning by his predecessor's fate, regards harmony between the White House and the Conservative Republican leaders as the first condition of success, and that it is not a part of his policy to attempt to coerce them by appealing over their heads to the Radical rank and file or to the people at large.

This suspicion has been rather strengthened than weakened by the President's message. It has exhilarated the Conservatives and disheartened the Radicals. It vetoes any further canvassing of the Tariff problem, and it leaves over for further discussion most of the questions that really interest the people. The average American cares next to nothing for issues that merely involve Nicaragua, or the Congo, or the Far East; but he is deeply interested in the relations between the Federal