off. The most valuable of them are the twenty-six long black or gray feathers obtained from each wing.

After the plucking the feathers are carefully sorted. Many of them are of little value, but the good ones are carefully matched, after which they are washed and dried by running the hand quickly and repeatedly from the large end to the tip until all moisture has disappeared.

"If ladies would always remember," observed Mr. Bentley, "to treat their plumes or boas in this way when they chance to get wet, they would preserve the floss, which otherwise is early ruined."

The clean feathers are made into plumes in the following manner: Only perfect feathers are selected, and the different ones required for the plume must of course be of exactly the same length. The under side of the feather that is to be the top of the plume is next trimmed down very near to the floss and scraped with bone or glass to make the surface perfectly smooth and flat. Both the upper and the under sides of the other feathers, excepting the last one used in making the plume, are similarly treated, while the last feather is only trimmed and scraped on the upper side. By this process the feathers are so thinned and flattened that when they are laid one on the other, three to five deep, they resemble a single thick plume. They are next stitched together, after which the plume is curled by means of a stiff dull blade.

The food of the ostrich consists chiefly of grain and such green food as horses and cattle eat. In the absence of fresh grass, hay and alfalfa are chopped up and given to them. They like all cereals that are eaten by cattle, but will not touch meat or any cooked food.

The female bird is never dangerous, but the male is easily angered and can quickly kill a man with his claw-mailed foot, which is thrust forward with terrific force. While at Mr. Bentley's farm I saw an old male bird strike a post and the heavy cross-bar of the fence with such force as to make deep indentations in the hard wood.

It is a curious fact that the bird whose magnificent plumage

is in such universal demand throughout the civilized world is one of the most unsightly, not to say repulsive, of the feathered family. Its great ungainly legs are entirely nude, and its long, rope-like neck is likewise devoid of a suggestion of a feather. Its eyes, however, are mild and beautiful—the one redeeming feature of an otherwise uncouth creature.

The success that has attended ostrich farming in this country, where it has been attempted under favorable circumstances and by men acquainted with the work, has been so positive that there is no longer any doubt that this new industry will soon furnish a large proportion of the plumes worn in North America. B. O. FLOWER.

Boston, Mass.

THE

LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY.

HE law of progress parallels the law of human freedom until they converge in the legislation that makes for the liberty of the individual. In other words, all the expressions of civilization-art, literature, science, and invention-realize their fullest development in pure democracy. "We owe our uncivilizedness to our inequality," said Matthew Arnold; and if there was one thing which the great critic most strenuously taught it was that those nations which attain a high degree of civilization do so in proportion to the extent in which equality prevails.

To say that literature can flourish at its best only in a pure democracy is merely another way of stating that literature must reflect the prevailing social ideals. But to avoid misunderstanding it is necessary to discriminate between relative and absolute democracy. Literature is closely related to the whole movement of life. The old conception of literature as an art having no relation to the common life was long ago dispelled. The familiar conception of democracy must also be discarded. "Few people," said Lowell, "take the trouble to find out what democracy is ;" and indeed the many misconceptions as to what constitutes democracy are the fons et origo of most of the current errors of opinion on this subject.

There is something almost pitiable in the pride with which Southern manuals of literature parade the names of the merest nonentities in imaginative achievement-conscious, with all their vainglory, of the insignificance of the numerically imposing array of utterly forgotten worthies. How does the slavery section compare in this respect with democratic New England -with its Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, and Thoreau? Is there not here a relation of cause and effect? Could the soil of Alabama have given us an Emerson or a Channing? Can you conceive of Lowell writing the "Bigelow Papers" in

Charleston? Why is it that in Georgia, the most progressive of the Southern States, we must seek for the highest literary manifestation in the pro-slavery South-and indeed since? Georgia was long known as the "Southern Yankee land." There, more than in any other of the Southern States, was an awakening of the democratic spirit. Is the higher literary manifestation in Georgia accidental too?

In literary history there are no accidents. A work is projected out of a certain state of society, and the individual mind is whirled like a mote of dust in the general movement. Few indeed are the works that do not possess the atmosphere, the coloring, the soul of the social ideals that prevail. Now and then, but not often, there are seeming exceptions to this rule in which a writer of strong individuality casts from him the social mantle and stands forth in the naked originality of genius.

It may be granted that every social phase has its dangers. as well as its advantages to art. The influence of even our modern pseudo-democracy upon literature is something about which much may be said on both sides. It is not to be denied that aristocracies have produced literary works of enduring quality, but the sequestration of this literature has given to much of it an extreme narrowness. Nor will it be questioned that the encouragement of the State in the Florentine and Athenian republics was helpful. It is true, too, that democracy may injure its great ones by flattery; the Demos may spoil even as Kings may. But literary individuality may be stifled almost as certainly by fear as by flattery. And it is not to be supposed that the great authors in a democracy will write to please it; they will write, as they have nearly always done, to please themselves. A great writer cannot serve the State, even if he would; he must serve mankind.

The assumption has always been that for the highest development of art among a people we need a leisure class, because leisure is necessary for the prolonged execution of any great work. But this is largely because at all times and everywhere (and it must be remembered that we are still far enough

from a pure democracy) such writers must address themselves to a very limited circle. But this is even more true of aristocracies, which restrict their advantages, intellectual as well as material, to the few. And these are the shackles in which the literature of an aristocracy must stagger.

The advantages to literature of democracy are manifold. First is the immense stimulus coming from the opportunity of a wider appeal, and second its influence upon style. That it makes for clearness and lucidity is indisputable. These are the chief attributes of Howells, our greatest novelist, and the one whom democracy has most profoundly impressed. It has disenthralled the language, given to it homely touches, made it less unbending, torn from it its ruffles and conventionalities. It has enormously reduced the average bulk while improving its general quality, destroyed its folios, and banished its Scuderis. It has done all this, it is true, at the expense of form, for the literature of an aristocracy is apt to pay more attention to manners and propriety and less to matter and truth.

It is not a little significant that nearly all of the Englishspeaking writers who have been the product of our late democracy have been social rebels-Carlyle, Emerson, Ruskin, Arnold, Morris. The new note has been one of freedom; the preceding years of an aristocratic literature produced nothing like it. How far it is from the social and political ideals, constantly reacting upon their art, of Gibbon with his stately periods, and of Macaulay with his lapidary's skill! In this new literature there is soul; the breath of much of it (omitting Arnold, whose intellect was a bit of cold and polished steel) is hot with fire. The revolution in the social and political world has been followed by a revolution in the world of thought. For the good of literature one might wish for a revolution every fifty years. For out of some passionate, throbbing social energy, some fierce-blazing fire among the people, your literary masterpiece is born. There is a largeness, a universality in the literary thought that comes from this new relation to democracy.

It is true that we are just now experiencing signs of a return