I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. He cannot give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, " Take it yourself!

To-night this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled Number Nine boot.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose workinghours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it; nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner-pail and worked for day's wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know

there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but delivering it; who never gets "laid off," nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. His kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village — in every office, shop, store and factory.

The world cries out for such; he is needed, and needed badly the man who can carry A Message to Garcia.

STRADIVARIUS

GEORGE ELIOT

YOUR soul was lifted by the wings to-day

Hearing the master of the violin:

You praised him, praised the great Sebastian too
Who made that fine Chaconne; but did you think
Of old Antonio Stradivari? - him

Who a good century and half ago

Put his true work in that brown instrument
And by the nice adjustment of its frame
Gave it responsive life, continuous
With the master's finger-tips and perfected
Like them by delicate rectitude of use.
Not Bach alone, helped by fine precedent
Of genius gone before, nor Joachim
Who holds the strain afresh incorporate
By inward hearing and notation strict
Of nerve and muscle, made our joy to-day:
Another soul was living in the air
And swaying it to true deliverance

Of high invention and responsive skill:
That plain white-aproned man who stood at work
Patient and accurate full fourscore years,
Cherished his sight and touch by temperance,
And since keen sense is love of perfectness
Made perfect violins, the needed paths
For inspiration and high mastery.

No simpler man than he: he never cried,
Why was I born to this monotonous task
Of making violins?" or flung them down
To suit with hurling act a well-hurled curse
At labor on such perishable stuff.
Hence neighbors in Cremona held him dull,
Called him a slave, a mill-horse, a machine,
Begged him to tell his motives or to lend
A few gold pieces to a loftier mind.
Yet he had pithy words full fed by fact;
For Fact, well-trusted, reasons and persuades,

Is gnomic, cutting, or ironical,
Draws tears, or is a tocsin to arouse
Can hold all figures of the orator

In one plain sentence; has her pauses too -
Eloquent silence at the chasm abrupt

Where knowledge ceases. Thus Antonio

Made answers as Fact willed, and made them strong.

Naldo, a painter of eclectic school,

Taking his dicers, candlelight and grins
From Caravaggio, and in holier groups
Combining Flemish flesh with martyrdom.
Knowing all tricks of style at thirty-one,
And weary of them, while Antonio
At sixty-nine wrought placidly his best
Making the violin you heard to-day-

Naldo would tease him oft to tell his aims.

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Perhaps thou hast some pleasant vice to feed

The love of louis d'ors in heaps of four,

Each violin a heap - I've nought to blame;

My vices waste such heaps. But then, why work
With painful nicety? Since fame once earned
By luck or merit-oftenest by luck

(Else why do I put Bonifazio's name

To work that 'pinxit Naldo' would not sell?)
Is welcome index to the wealthy mob

Where they should pay their gold, and where they pay

There they find merit- take your tow for flax,

And hold the flax unlabelled with your name,
Too coarse for sufferance."

"I like the gold

Antonio then:

well, yes but not for meals.

And as my stomach, so my eye and hand,
And inward sense that works alone with both,
Have hunger that can never feed on coin.
Who draws a line and satisfies his soul,
Making it crooked where it should be straight?
An idiot with an oyster-shell may draw
His lines along the sand, all wavering,
Fixing no point or pathway to a point;
An idiot one remove may choose his line,
Straggle and be content; but God be praised,
Antonio Stradivari has an eye

That winces at false work and loves the true,
With hand and arm that play upon the tool
As willingly as any singing bird

Sets him to sing his morning roundelay,
Because he likes to sing and likes the song."

Then Naldo: ""Tis a petty kind of fame
At best, that comes of making violins;
And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go
To purgatory none the less."

But he:

" "Twere purgatory here to make them ill; And for my fame when any master holds

"Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine, He will be glad that Stradivari lived,

Made violins, and made them of the best.

The masters only know whose work is good:

They will choose mine, and while God gives them skill