but swinish, wallowing in putrid filth-and he sees floating in the air, like the blurred black spots of a bilious headache, the faces and names of a dozen such-names better unmentioned on these pure pages; writers who, if they had eyes to see themselves, would feel as Keawe did, in Louis Stevenson's story of The Bottle Imp, when, on the night after his betrothal to Kokua, he sat on the edge of the marble bath in his Bright House, and "spied upon his flesh a patch like a patch of lichen on a rock," and knew that the proper place for him was on the north coast of Molokai, at Kalaupapa, between the huge cliffs and the sea breakers, where the pallid lepers dry up and rot away and drop piecemeal into the grave. Realists these writers call themselves, and of them Lowell said:

"The so-called realist sometimes raises doubts in my mind when he assures me that he, and he alone, gives me the facts of life. All I can say is that, if these are the facts, I do not want them. The police reports give me all that I call for every day. But are they the facts? The real and abiding facts are those that are recognized as such by the soul when it is in that upper chamber of our being which is farthest removed from the senses."

It rained the other day, and not every place has dried up. The man going down the road stops to look at a flock of butterflies sitting on the mud in the broad ditch, opening and shutting their yellow wings. Why do such clean-looking creatures prefer a mud puddle to a clover field? The butterfly once had a good reputation. It used to sit on Psyche's arm and be the emblem of immortality. A poet called it "a flower with a soul in it." Of late it is less respectable, having become a synonym for light-headed foolishness and fickleness. And just now it, or rather the male of the species, is brought by the naturalists into special disrepute; for it is said that he is a guzzling tippler, who idles around and will get drunk whenever any intoxicant is accessible, while the lady butterfly, like an exemplary housewife, occupies her time in laying eggs and otherwise attending soberly to business. One minister confesses that he has not been able to be wholly comfortable in the presence of these diurnal lepidoptera since reading Kipling's verse:

"The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes.
A butterfly upon the road

Preaches contentment to that toad."

In which verse the butterfly appears as a preacher tossing off easy

exhortations in a flippant way, flitting lightly over sufferers who writhe in agony with lacerated vitals; an unfeeling preacher offering cheap advice to those who are deep in the bitterness of trials he does not take the trouble to know anything about. One minister fears that he must sometimes have seemed to people in dire trouble like an uncomprehending or unsympathizing butterfly, preaching patience to one whose flesh was torn and bones were broken under the harrow. It is a pastor's business to hold himself so close against the sufferings and sorrows of his people that the iron of their agony shall in some degree enter into his own soul, so that when he speaks to them it shall be quiveringly and with tears in his voice. Unsympathetic advice, dropped by prosperous and comfortable butterflies flitting over, is exasperating to the sufferer. Some thoughtful day some literary socialist will frame Kipling's verse and hang it on the walls of his clubroom. Similar words already answer back from the submerged tenth to the glib admonitions and prescriptions let fall upon them by dainty visitors from the superincumbent nine tenths floating airily above their deep and dreadful misery. The toad under the harrow would like to exchange places with the butterfly, but does not thank him for his fluent and flippant advice.

A little further down the road up limps, with feigned or exaggerated infirmity, the professional beggar, known as such by his brazen face and artificial whine, as also by the doggerel appeal for alms, printed on a soiled card which he unblushingly presents. The falsehood on which this particular lazy liar travels is that he has scrofulous sores in obscure places, and is collecting money to go to the Hot Springs of Arkansas. Here, unabashed, though shamed by diligent bees, by busy self-supporting birds, by provident squirrels, and even by black tumblebugs which work on the road and roll their big ball along with commendable push and persistency, this indolent fellow begs. He too should be put to work on the road, and so lifted toward the level of the industrious tumblebug's respectability. He belongs to the preying band.

A dead snake on the road makes the pedestrian wonder how it is that the most astute of animals, the serpent, which in some times and places has figured as the symbol of wisdom, so often manages to cross the highway just in the nick of time to be run over by a passing vehicle or to have his head bruised by the woman's seed, between whom and himself there abides, in biblical fulfillment, an accentuated and implacable enmity; under whose heel his jaws gape

open and his impotent forked tongue protrudes, flickering as if trying to say, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?”

A shadow passes suddenly over the stroller's spirit at sight of a long black vehicle, slow, sedate, and somber, approaching from the distance the chariot of the dead; not a shining city equipage with urns, fringes, tassels, and plate-glass sides, but a rusty-looking, shabby-genteel affair which has been kept in a barn, where the chickens roosted on it. It is known that a landscape takes on a more picturesque appearance if one views it from a reclining position, lying on his side; but a hearse has no use for windows, for the horizontal passenger inside rides on his back and has lost interest in earthly scenery. This particular death-cart carries now the body of a young man who gradually died by coughing himself away at a camp on one of the islands in the lake-a "camper" and a "lunger," as pulmonary patients are colloquially named by the dwellers among these mountains. He came too late to nature's great sanitarium of the North Woods, which has saved many lives of those who came early enough; he has finished life too early; and now the portable remnant of him is riding to take the night train for home, going as baggage in the baggage car because of what it is, yet traveling on a passenger ticket in memory of its former dignity; going to be met with love and tears, and to be laid to rest prematurely under the astonished grass of some far-off family burial plot.

The westering sun and cooling air give notice that "it is toward evening, and the day is far spent." The man turns about near a cluster of humble homes and retraces his steps. Soon he hears swift footsteps behind him, and in a moment a comely young woman from one of the little houses passes him on a run to meet a young man coming along the road, upon whom she flings herself with her arms around his neck and a resounding kiss upon his lips, careless of the proximity of the stranger, who feels that he has witnessed a sacred and typical scene in this hearty welcome, at the day's end, of the working man by the waiting woman. Instantly he remembers another summer evening when, walking with a friend past the Portuguese settlement at Martha's Vineyard, he heard the explosive and ecstatic shout of a sunburned five-year-old, "Poppy! Poppy!" and saw the India-rubber boy spring from the doorstep and bounce off the ground like a ball into the muscular arms of his stalwart father. Such scenes are typical, enacted daily at millions of thresholds. Widespread over the civilized earth is the eager and blessed happiness which leaps in

honest homes when wife and children give loyal welcome to the breadwinner home-arriving from his day's toil, with his work done and, let us hope, his labor prosperous and his wages righteous and sure.

Among the home-comers whom the man meets on the road is one of the guides who carry tourists in their light Adirondack boats through the lakes. The guide recognizes the man, and says, "I saw you in church last Sunday." "Yes; how many churches have you in the village?" "We've got four." "And which is the strongest?" "Well, it's nip and tuck, which and t'other; 'twixt Methodist and Catholic. You see, the difference is this: the Catholics git aout; they git aout. They calc'late to git there every Sunday. Now, with other folks, they let every little thing keep 'em from meetin'; and sometimes they're there, and sometimes they ain't. That's how it is."

The man reapproaching his stopping place sees standing on the porch a round chub of a girl, exactly eight years old, with crinkly brown hair snugly braided in two short plaits between her plump shoulders, with pink-and-white cheeks like a peach; good to look at and pleasant to be smiled on by; a cool and self-possessed little maid, not likely, if she saw a mouse or even a snake, to do as Freedom did when Kosciusko fell. In the mind of one guest, who does not know her real name, she goes by the name of "Little Allee Samee," ever since a day when he witnessed a brief disciplinary episode in which she played the principal part. Eight-years-old, for some good reason, wanted wee Three-years-old, of whom for the moment she had charge, to go with her around the corner of the house, and he would not. He shook his willful, or won't-ful, curly head and said, "No!" Then, as a mother cat might lug a kitten, though not with her teeth, Eightyears-old promptly picked up that rebellious man-child and carried him, struggling and squealing, whither she would, despite the fact that he would not, cheerily saying, as she triumphantly swung him along, "But you're going, allee samee, mister, whether you want to or not." It is encouraging to think that there is likely to be wholesome family government in one home when "Allee Samee" grows up, and one good woman who will probably show herself a well-poised and competent domestic disciplinarian.

THE ARENA

THE ROMAN CHURCH AND BIBLICAL CRITICISM

During the last years of the Pontificate of Leo X a Biblical Commission was appointed to consider the many questions raised by Higher Criticism concerning the authorship of the Pentateuch. That Commission which was composed of some of the most eminent scholars in the Roman Church has now made its report and it has been given out under the seal of Pius X. The original text of the report and its authorized translation is as follows:

TEXT

Propositis sequentibus dubiis Consilium Pontificium pro studiis de re biblica provehendis respondendum censuit prout sequitur:

1. Utrum, argumenta a criticis congesta ad impugnandam authentiam Mosaicam sacrorum Librorum, qui Pentateuchi nomine designantur, tanti sint ponderis ut posthabitis quampluribus testimoniis utriusque Testamenti collective sumptis, perpetua consensione populi Iudaici, Ecclesiae quoque constanti traditione nec non indiciis internis quae ex ipso textu eruuntur, ius tribuant affirmandi hos libros non Moysen habere auctorem, sed ex fontibus maxima ex parte aetate Mosaica posterioribus fuisse confectos?

Resp. Negative.

II. Utrum, Mosaica authentia Pentateuchi talem necessario postulet redactionem totius operis, ut prorsus tenendum sit Moysen omnia et singula manu sua scripsisse vel amanuensibus dictasse; an etiam eorum hypothesis permitti possit qui existimant eum opus ipsum a se sub divinae inspirationis afflatu conceptum alteri vel pluribus scribendum commisisse, ita tamen ut sensa sua fideliter redderent, nihil contra suam voluntatem scriberent, nihil omitterent; ac tandem opus hac ratione confectum ad eodem Moyse principe inspiratoque auctore probatum, ipsiusmet nomine vulgaretur?

Resp. Negative ad primam partem, affirmative ad secundam.

III. Utrum, absque praeiudicio Mosaicae authentiae Pentateuchi concedi possit Moysen ad suum conficiendum opus fontes adhibuisse, scripta videlicet documenta vel orales traditiones, ex quibus, secundum peculiarem scopum sibi propositum et sub divinae inspirationis afflatu, nonnulla hauserit eaque ad verbum vel quoad sententiam, contracta vel amplificata, ipsi operi inseruerit?

Resp. Affirmative.

IV. Utrum, salva substantialiter Mosaica authentia et integritate Pentateuchi, admitti possit tam longo saeculorum decursu nonnullas ei modifica. tiones obvenisse, uti: additamenta post Moysi mortem vel ab auctore inspirato apposita, vel glossas et explicationes textui interiectas; vocabula