A MORNING SONG.

You saw my window open wide,
And woke me early, sister day!
You came in all your lovely pride,
With laughing looks that I adore,
With wings of blue and gray
With sunshine skirts that swept the
floor,

With songs to drive night's dreams away,

You called me out to play. And so I took you by the hand, And found the way to fairyland. With such impatient feet I climb The ladders of delight!

For well I know that ruthless time Turns morning moods to tears and night.

The Academy.

Olive Douglas.

MICHAELMAS DAISIES.

'Tis more than mid-October, yet along the narrow garden

The daisies loved of Michaelmas keep sturdily in flower; For, though the evenings sharply fall, they find a way to harden The crop of comely blossoming that makes for me a bower.

The honey-hunters, diligent, are searching them for sweetness;

A pair of handsome blue-tits flash their colors on a stem (Exponents of the art of standing upside-down with neatness) While two entranced Red Admirals astonished gaze at them.

The rose has faded bedward, there to

dream of scarlet duty

When June is kissing England at the flowertide of the year; The gladiolus in his bulb considers plans for beauty

To flame along the border when his miracle is clear.

Yet Autumn wears an apron, and the apron's sweet with lendings

Of colors matched with comeliness of blossom and of leaf;

And daisies dear to Michaelmas, with dancings and with bendings,

I. A CONTINENT OF PIONEERS.

I promised to write you, from time to time, impressions from America, on the understanding that they should be impressions, not judgments, and should reflect my mood and feeling at the moment without pretending to be final conclusions. One does not, if one is prudent, form conclusions about a continent from a brief visit. But one forms provisional opinions; and I should like to send you mine, when I am in the mood, if only to make clear to myself what they are. Here, then, is the first of them: America is a continent of pioneers. Much that surprises or shocks Europeans in the American character is to be explained, I believe, by this fact. Among pioneers the individual is everything and the society nothing. Every man relies on himself and on his personal relations. He is a friend, and an enemy; he is never a citizen.. Justice, order, respect for law are to him mere abstract terms; what is real is intelligence and force, the service done or the injury inflicted, the direct emotional reaction to persons and deeds. And still, as it seems to the foreign observer, even in the long-settled east, still more in the west, this attitude prevails. To the American politician or business man, that a thing is right or wrong, legal or illegal, seems a pale and irrelevant consideration. The real question is, will it pay? Will it please Theophilus P. Polk or vex Harriman Q. Kunz? If it is illegal, will it be detected? If detected, will it be prosecuted? What are our resources for evading or defeating the law? And all this, with good temper and good conscience. What stands in the way, says the pioneer, must be swept out of it; no matter whether it be the moral

or the civil law, a public authority or a rival in business. "The strong business man" has no use for scruples. Public or social considerations do not appeal to him. Or, if they do present themselves, he satisfies himself with the belief that from activities so strenuous and remarkable as his, good must result to the community. If he break the law, that is the fault of the law for being stupid and obstructive; if he break individuals, that is their fault for being weak. Væ victis! Never has that principle, or rather instinct, ruled more paramount than it does in America.

To say this is to say that American society is the most individualistic in the modern world. This follows naturally from the whole situation of the country. The pioneer has no object save to get rich; the government of pioneers has no object save to develop the country quickly. To this object everything is sacrificed, including the interests of future generations. All new countries have taken the most obvious and easy course. They have given away for nothing, or for a song, the whole of their natural resources to anybody who will undertake to exploit them. And those who have received them have judged them to be theirs by a kind of natural right. "These farms, mines, forests-of course they are ours. Did not we discover them? Did not we squat upon them? Have we not 'mixed our labor' with them?" If pressed as to the claims of later comers they would probably reply that there remains "as much and as good" for others. And this, of course, is true for a time; but for a very short time, even when it is a continent that is being divided up. Practically the whole of the States is now in private ownership. Still, the Owners have

Ar

But this is only a phase; and inevitably, by the logic of events, there supervenes upon it another on which, it would appear, America is just now entering. With all her natural resources distributed among individuals or corporations, and with the tide of immigration unchecked, she begins to feel the first stress of the situation of which the tension in Europe has already become almost intolerable. It is the situation which cannot fail to result from the system of private property and inheritance established throughout the western world. Opportunities diminish, classes segregate. There arises a caste of wage-earners never to be anything but wage-earners, a caste of property-owners, handing on their property to their descendants; and substantially, after all deductions have been made for exaggeration and simplification, a division of society into capitalists and proletariat. American society is beginning to crystallize out into the forms of European society. For, once more, America is nothing new; she is a repetition of the old on a larger scale. And, curiously, she is less "new" than the other new countries. Australia and New Zealand for years past have been trying experiments in social policy; they are determined to do what they can to prevent the recurrence there of the European situation. But in America there is hardly a sign of such tendencies. The political and social philosophy of the United States

ualists. And no doubt there are adequate causes, if not good reasons, for this. The immense wealth and size of the country, the huge agricultural population, the proportionally smaller aggregation in cities has maintained in the mass of the people what I have called the "pioneer" attitude. Opportunity has been, and still is, more open than in any other country; and, in consequence, there has hardly emerged a definite "working class" wtih a class consciousness. There is not, so far as I know, in any legislature in the country, or on any municipal body, a "labor party." This, however, is a condition that cannot be expected to continue. America will develop on the lines of Europe, because she has European institutions; and "labor" will assert itself more and more as an independent factor in politics.

Whether it will assert itself successfully is another matter. At present, as is notorious, American politics are controlled by wealth, more completely, perhaps, than those of any other country, even of England. The "corporations" make it a main part of their business to capture Congress, the Legislatures, the courts and the city governments; and they are eminently successful. The smallest country towu has its "boss," in the employ of the railway; the Public Service Corporations control the cities; and the protected interests dominate the Senate. Business governs America; and business does not include labor. In no civilized country is labor-legislation so undeveloped as in the States; in none is capital so uncontrolled; in none is justice so openly prostituted to wealth. America is the paradise of plutocracy; for the rich there enjoy not only a real power but a social prestige such as can hardly have been accorded to them even in the worst days of the Roman Empire. Great fortunes and their

owners are regarded with a respect as naive and as intense as has ever been conceded to birth in Europe. Few American youths of ambition, I am told, leave college with any less or greater purpose in their hearts than than that of emulating Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller. And, on the other hand, it must be conceded, rich men feel an obligation to dispose of their wealth for public purposes to a degree quite unknown in Europe. By their lavish gifts the people are dazzled. They feel that the millionaire has paid his ransom, and are ready to forgive irregularities in the process of acquiring wealth when they are atoned for by such splendid penance. Thus the rich man in America comes to assume the position of a kind of popular dictator. He is admired on account of his prowess and forgiven on account of his beneficence. And, since every one feels that one day he may have the chance of imitating him, no one judges him too severely. He is regarded not as the "exploiter," the man grown fat on the labor of others. Rather he is the type, the genius of the American people; and they point to him with pride as "one of our strong men," "one of our conservative men of business."

Individualism, then, is stronger and deeper rooted in America than elsewhere. And, it must be added, Socialism is weaker. It is an imported article, and it does not thrive on the new soil. The formulæ of Marx are even less congenial to the American than to the English mind; and American conditions have not yet given rise to a native socialism, based on local conditions and adapted to local habits of thought. Such a native socialism, I believe, is bound to come before long, perhaps is arising even now. But I would not hazard the assertion that it is likely to prevail. America, it would seem, stands at the parting of the ways. Either she may develop on

democratic lines-and Democracy, as I think, demonstrably implies some kind of socialism-or she may fossilize in the form of her present Plutocracy, and realize that new feudalism of industry which was dreamt of by Saint Simon, by Comte, and by Carlyle. It would be a strange consummation, but stranger things have happened; and it seems more probable that this should happen in America than that it should happen in any European country. It is an error to think of America as democratic; her Democracy is all on the surface. But in Europe Democracy is penetrating deeper and deeper. And, in particular, there can be no doubt that England is now far more democratic than the United States. Witness the recent Budget, a phenomenon inconceivable on the other side of the Atlantic!

Walking alone in the mountains today I came suddenly upon the railway. There was a little shanty of a station 8000 feet above the sea; and, beyond, the great expanse of the plains. It was beginning to sleet, and I determined to take shelter. The click of a telegraph operator told me that there was some one inside the shed. I knocked, and knocked again, in vain; and it was a quarter of an hour before the door was opened by a thin, yellow-faced youth chewing gum, who looked at me without a sign of recognition or a nod of greeting. I have learnt by this time that absence of manners in an American is intended to signify not surliness but independence, so I asked to be allowed to enter. He admitted me, and resumed his operations. I listened to the clicking, while the sleet fell faster and the evening began to close in. What messages were they, I wondered, that were passing across the mountains. I connected them, idly enough, with the corner in wheat a famous specula