been the great counterforce to the tendencies that I have been describing; not infrequently attention is called in the South to the advantages which negro youth are enjoying, by reason of it, over the white youth of some of the states where there are few trade schools. Yet an incident once occurred at Tuskegee itself which is a sharp reminder of the labor unions' discrimination against colored workmen. The school had a contract in tinsmithing which required that the work should be done in a shorter time than it was possible for the students to do it alone. The manager of the tin-shop sent to Montgomery for tinsmiths. They came, but when they found that they would have to work with the colored students, who had already begun the job, they declined, explaining that the rule of their union forbade their work ing with colored men. The manager firmly declared that they must work with the students or not at all. They had spent their money to come to Tuskegee, and they were indignant that they were bound by such a rule; but fearing the subsequent resentment of their fellow craftsmen at Mont gomery, they passed the day in idleness, and at night went home. The union offered no obstacles to their working for a colored man's money. The men personally, in this instance, had no feeling against the students. There was no race antipathy shown by the incident; it was simply the ancient idea of exclusion, of obstruction, asserting itself through the union with perfect, and in this case disastrous consistency. From "The Labor Unions and the Negro." By John Stephen Durham.

From The Bookman. AUSTIN DOBSON.

Mr. Austin Dobson reached his fortyeighth year on January 18th. Few writers of our day have so rooted an objection to the intrusion of their personality in any public form as Mr. Dobson, and only a few weeks ago he could say that he had never been interviewed. During a recent Saturday afternoon

talk with a contributor to The Bookman he spoke of this reticence, and said that in writing he has never been preoccupied by anything more than the desire to produce good work, though there are many subjects which he should instinctively refrain from treating at all. "If, as a whole, what I have done does not make for harmless pleasure, sympathy with humanity and things honest and of good report, it has missed its meaning. This is what I have tried to express in 'In After Days.'" Among the few personal pieces in the whole of his "Collected Poems," recently issued in England, are the dedication, the stanzas "To One Who Bids me Sing," and the concluding rondeau, "In After Days." This new collected edition may be accepted now as practically final if we take the poet's word for it. "After five and forty," he says, "a writer of familiar verse usually feels that he has said about all he can well say in that form, and in my judgment, unless he strike out an altogether new line, he had far better be silent. No doubt I shall still write pieces occasionally, but certainly the bulk of my verse is done."

The record of Mr. Dobson's life, so far as it is of public interest, must be sought in his work. For the last thirty-one years he has spent his days at the Board of Trade, and for nearly thirty of them has devoted his evenings to literary work. On returning from Whitehall, his usual habit after dinner is to read or listen to music until about ten o'clock, when he retires to his study and works until midnight. A government office is not precisely a bed of roses and he regards his literary work as recreation. One would imagine, from Mr. Dobson's poetry, that such prosaic work as that of the Board of Trade would be altogether foreign to his taste, and on inquiring whether he had never been tempted to relinquish his position there and devote himself entirely to literature he responded: "No; the one occupation balances the other in a very satisfactory and agreeable manner. Business habits are useful-even to a literary man."

It was in Temple Bar that Mr. Dobson made his first appearance as a poet.

banjo, not played by Marion Talbot's accomplished fingers, sounded up from the kitchen into the drawing-room. It was no light, pleasing tinkle, either, but the solid, deliberate, two-toned plunkings of an instrument with untuned strings swept by unaccustomed fingers. I was Maria. Maria had bought a banjo and was practising o' nights; moreover, Maria was asking to go out once a week to take a lesson of a "professor." Mr. Talbot laughed and advised compromise, but Mrs. Talbot and Miss Talbot were firm. Banjo playing by the housemaid was not compatible with the dignity of the family. Maria's services were quite perfect, without including any knowledge of musical instruments. "I play the banjo myself," cried Miss Talbot, hotly, "and, besides, how ridiculous we should become in everybody's eyes if we were continually kept explaining to our friends that we had a superior kind of housemaid whom we allowed to play the banjo in the evening!"

Mrs. Talbot interviewed Maria; then wept the tears of one who feels herself to be indeed the plaything of fate, for it was aut banjo, aut nullus with Maria. By much saving and self-denial (she supported a mother and two sisters out of her wages) she had at last accomplished the dearest hope of her life, and was in no mind to be thwarted now. So Maria went, dangling the banjo-case respectfully but firmly. And the Talbots became as the rest of us once more.

It is only women who are capable of upholding principles by such heroic sacrifices as these. I suspect, too, it is only women who are able to discern the existence of a principle inimical to society in such a situation; for while Mrs. Talbot and Marion were unanimous and unequivocal in their resentment, Mr. Talbot was openly perplexed, and betrayed secret sympathies with Maria. He seemed to catch an occasional sniff of a principle somewhere, latent but violated, and it made him uneasy. "There is something wrong," he declared, “when a girl, simply because she engages to do certain duties in a house, is not allowed the gratification

of her single impulse toward an elevation of mind or taste. I should like to see myself setting up a rule to prevent my men playing the banjo after mill hours-or the jews-harp, either." "Then," asked Mrs. Talbot, loftily, "do I understand that you would accept the organization of a brass band among our domestics, for evening rehearsals in the kitchen?" Men are notoriously averse to the argumentum ad hominem, therefore the controversy languished once. It was a great pity, because undoubtedly Mr. Talbot's intellect, progressing toward the next step of the proposition, would have hit upon what seems to me the kernel of the whole difficulty in this seemingly hopeless, inextricable, delicately complicated problem-the labor question in our kitchen.

at

For that is what it really is, call it what you will-"the housekeeping problem," "domestic service," or "the servant question." It is no special and peculiar problem which attends naturally upon the existence of a home, as fungi spring up in a favorable soil. It is an integral part of that great labor question which is going to remain with us, "until we have shaken off the dead hand of feudalism which still presses with crushing weight upon the people through almost all the forms and institutions of the present day society." And it is more hopeless and distressing at the present day than any other form of the labor problem, because it conforms least to the natural laws which are allowed to regulate, more or less freely, labor outside the home. From "The Unquiet Sex-Fourth Paper." By Helen Watterson Moody.

From The Review of Reviews. WISCONSIN TRAVELING LIBRARIES. Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, and one or two other States have followed in New York's footsteps in establishing State systems of traveling libraries, but the most interesting developments in this direction, because the most spontaneous, have been in Wisconsin. There

After the sixteen livraries needed to form the first consignment had been made up they were packed in strong cases, each of which had double doors, with lock, shelves, and a full equip ment for the librarian in the way of record books, blanks, etc. By the time the little libraries were ready to start on their journeys from Mr. Stout's home city of Menomonie, there were sixteen associations of farmers and villagers scattered through the country which has complied with the simple requirements announced as the conditions precedent to obtaining the use of the books. That is to say, they had each elected a secretary and a librarian, had promised to have the books well cared for and kept in a convenient place, freely accessible to every resident using them carefully, and had paid a fee of one dollar. Mr. Stout, on his part, promised to exchange the libraries when the majority of the members of an association had read as many of the books as they wished, to pay all transportation expenses for the first library and all the expenses of furnishing the libraries and repairing the books when worn. This was certainly a generous proposition, and it seems to have met with an appreciative response from the country people. It was in May, 1896, that the first libraries went out from Menomonie, and by May, 1897, Mr. Stout had been compelled to put a full score of additional libraries "on the road," in order to supply the active demand.

That the books so liberally provided by Mr. Stout actually get into the

were intended there can be no doubt. The rural and village population in which they circulate numbers about sixteen thousand. A special effort was made to induce the location of library "stations" in the very poorest and most destitute portions of the country. The cross-roads, rather than the villages, were sought as centres of influence, and it was found that in those places the libraries were quite as highly valued as in the more populous neighborhoods. All but five of the thirty-four stations from which reports were received in 1897 were in farmhouses, and of these farmhouses seven served also as postoffices. Four of the remaining library stations were in small stores (in two of which were post-offices) and one was in a railroad station. These thirty-four stations are circulating more than ten thousand volumes annually. In the first ten libraries sent out each book was drawn twelve times on an average during the first year, and it was reported that a loaned book was often read by from two to five persons before it was returned.

Mr. Frank A. Hutchins, secretary of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission, to whose recent pamphlet on the subject we are indebted for the facts here presented, relates an incident which well illustrates the real eagerness of the people for the libraries, and the willingness of even rough men to acknowledge the value of good books. At a hamlet where he inquired about a neighboring four corners he was told, "It is useless to go there, for it's a regular hell-hole." He visited it, however, and found it included a store, saloon, railroad station, blacksmith shop, and a dozen houses. The farmers about were poor and some of them coarse and rough. The storekeeper had received a scant education, but he was a prompt, reliable business man and after a time talked quite freely. He said: "My mother died when I was quite young, my father was a drunkard, and I had a hard time when I was a boy. I had a chance for a few years to get books from a public library, and they furnished me the pleasantest hours I had. I have been pretty rough and our place