of the human frame to ashes and absorption of all the gaseous elements, carried on inside a fireclay retort, three feet in diameter and seven in length. An eye-witness describes the process as follows: "As the door of the retort is opened the inrushing air cools it from white to red heat, and the whole interior is filled with a beautiful rosy light that is fascinating to the eye. The body, decently clad as for burial, is laid in a crib, which is covered with a clean white sheet soaked in alum. The crib is then put into the retort. The sheet retains its original position and conceals the form until nothing but the bones are left, and these gently crumble into dust as under the mystic touch of an invisible agent. There is nothing repulsive or painful about it; nothing which need shock the most refined tastes, nor offend the most delicate sensibilities." This ancient as well as modern method of disposing of the dead is treated of in the article on Cremation, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. VI., page 567.

Admiral Makarof of the Russian navy has invented a species of ice-plough capable of breaking through ice from 12 to even 20 inches thick. The experiments have proved so satisfactory that the government has given orders for the immediate construction of two vessels of 10,000 horse-power each, armed with these ploughs, by means of which it is expected to keep not only the River Neva, but also the various Muscovite ports, open to navigation throughout the winter. The majority of Russia's ports and naval arsenals are ice-bound during more than four months of the year.

The longest bridge in the world, says the Scientific American, is that over the Tay, in Scotland, which is 3,200 metres=9,696 feet long; and the next longest is also in Great Britain, being that over the Firth of Forth, 2,394 metres=5,552 feet in length. The following table gives, in metres and in feet, the lengths of the principal bridges in various countries:

The greatest single span of the Forth Bridge is 521 metres= 1,725 feet; of the Elbe Bridge, 420 metres 1,378 feet; of the East River Bridge, 488 metres 1,601 feet between the towers; total length, 6,537 feet.

The Buffalo street car companies, says The Industrial World, are now receiving 5,000 horsepower daily of electricity from Niagara Falls, and it is said to work effectively, at a cost of $36 per horse-power a year. The company at Niagara Falls is doubling its plant, and by the Ist of October next will be ready to supply 30,ooo horse-power in addition to its present capacity. The wires are already being strung for the purpose of transmitting this power to Buffalo for commercial purposes, and the company is already making contracts to supply manufactories, printing offices, hotels and other patrons with both power and light. While the price is not yet permanently fixed, it is expected that the cost will be $50 per horse-power a year

in large quantities, and $60 in small quantities. This is claimed to be about two-thirds of the cost of ordinary steam with coal fuel, and only about one-half as much as it costs to generate electricity from an ordinary plant.

An authority (Prof. A. R. Elliot) has recently been highly commending the uses of fruit at table. Among these uses he enumerates the following: 1. To furnish variety to the diet. 2. To relieve thirst and introduce water into the system. 3. To furnish nutriment. 4. To supply organic salts essential to proper nutrition. 5. To stimulate the kidneys, increase the flow of urine and lower its acidity. 6. To act as laxatives. 7. To stimulate and improve appetite and digestion. 8. To act as anti-scorbutics. Concerning the mode of preparation, ripe fruits as a rule do not need to be cooked, and are much more palatable and equally nutritious in the uncooked state. The time to eat fruits is proper either at the beginning of the meal or between meals, when they aid digestion and exert the greater laxative effect. Taken at the completion of a meal, they dilute the gastric juice and tend to embarrass digestion.

The population of the city of New York, according to the police census of 1895, is 1,851,060. The population of Brooklyn, according to estimates based upon the State census of 1892, is 1,142,728. The population of the future borough of Queens, as estimated in 1896, is 46,502 for Long Island City, 22,500 for Flushing, 24,500 for Jamaica, 25,000 for Newtown, and 8,200 for part of the town of Hempstead, or about 127,000 in all. The population of Staten Island was estimated at 65,000 in 1896. The aggregate population of Greater New York is therefore substantially 3,165,000.

66

The crop report of the Department of Agriculture says: The estimates by States and Territories of the area, product and value of the principal cereal crops of the United States for 1896, made by the statistician of the Department of Agriculture, are as follows: Corn area, 8,627,000; product, 2,283,875,000; value, $491,007,000; yield per acre, 28 2 bushels; farm price per bushel, 215c. Winter wheat area, 22,794,ooo; product, 267,934,000; yield per acre, 118 bushels. Spring wheat area, 11,825,000; product, 159,750,000; yield per acre, 13.5 bushels. Total wheat area, 34,619,000; product, 437,684,000; value, $310,603,000; yield per acre, 12'4 bushels; farm price per bushel, 72'6c. Oats area, 27,566,000; product, 707,346,000; value, $132,485,000; yield per acre, 25 7 bushels; farm price per bushel, 18.7c. Rye area, 1,831,000; product, 24,369,000; value, $9,961,000; yield per acre, 133 bushels; farm price per bushel, 40 9c. Barley area, 2,951,000; product, 69,695,000; value, $22,491,000; yield per acre, 236 bushels; farm price per bushel 32.3c. Buckwheat area, 755,000; product, 14,090,000; value. $5,522,000; yield per acre, 187 bushels; farm price per bushel, 39°2c. Potatoes, area, 2,767,000; product, 252,235,000; value, $72,182,000; yield per acre, 91'1 bushels; farm price per bushel, 28.6c. Hay area, 43,260,000; product, 59,282,000 tons; value, $388,146,000; yield per acre, 137 tons; farm price, $6.55 per ton. Tobacco area, 595,000 acres; product, 403,004,ooo pounds; value, $24,258,000; yield per acre, 678 pounds; farm price, 6c. per pound.”

Mark Twain's Reverses of Fortune

The myriad readers of the type of American humor associated with the pen-name of Mark Twain and we hardly know the writer by any other designation - will learn with unfeigned regret that this prince of humorists has, through business misfortune and domestic calamity, of late fallen upon evil days. Recently, death robbed him of a favorite daughter, and this following upon the wreck of his fortune, through the failure of a business house in New York which he financially assisted, has darkened his life with a great sorrow. When business troubles, for which, we believe, he was himself in no way responsible, came upon him, he bravely set forth on a tour of the world to pick up material for a new book by which he hoped, in some measure, to retrieve his fortunes. The tour completed, he is now in London, hard at work in the preparation of "The Surviving Innocent Abroad "- but meantime the once joyous pen, by reason of the mental strain on the writer, jibes and halts, and the book, we believe, does not get on without more or less forced effort.

The pathos of the situation, as was the case with Sir Walter Scott after the failure of the Ballantynes, is increased by the fact that the necessity for the effort on Mark Twain's part is to relieve himself of embarrassing obligations to his creditors in this country, and by the further fact that work has now to be done under the stress of broken health and advancing age. So sore are the straits in which the great humorist finds himself that, though he has himself, with natural delicacy, withheld from the world any knowledge of his affairs, he has permitted himself to be interviewed in regard to them, and suffered a public appeal to be made on his behalf, through the instrumentality of the New York "Herald." That journal, in its issue of the 13th ult., makes public announcement of the opening of a subscription at its European and New York offices, and it generously heads the list with the donation of its proprietor to the extent of one thousand dollars.

It is now many years since the author of "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" began his serious work in life, in the printing office of the Hannibal Courier, or, later in pursuing piloting on the Mississippi for a livelihood. Since then he has done a good deal of "roughing it," seeing and portraying life in many and real phases, and, on lecture or on world-exploring tours, been at once a tramp at

home and "a tramp abroad." What wealth of experience he has gathered in his vagabond life, and how inimitably and with such genuine and infectious humor he has set it forth in his books, we all know. But we can little know the toil undergone or the many vicissitudes in his career, still less the ache of mind and heart in pursuing the craft of letters-so real at all times is his mirth and hearty and jocund his mood. And yet to do the work he has done, considering the disadvantages from humble beginnings he has ever been at, must have cost effort of no slight kind; while to draw the characters he has limned and set them with such keen insight and side-splitting humor before the reader as studies of the crude civilization amid which his life has for the most part been spent, must have heavily taxed his powers of imagination and made large drafts upon his ingenious capacity for portraying the droll side of life. If his humor, at times, is a trifle coarse, and in one notable instance irreverent, we are compensated by its quaintness and drawn to him by his large humanity and close kinship with the people. Nor are his own true-heartedness, honest manliness, and hatred of shams and cant, the least real of the causes of our liking and attachment for the writer. These, no less than his pervasive and ever-bubbling humor, are the abiding charms of the man, and must bring him, more especially at such a time as this, into the inner recesses and closest folds of our hearts.

The English

and French Fur Traders

Few chapters in the unwritten history of the continent are more full of romance than those relating to the fur trade, and especially to the race rivalries of the two great companies that a century ago held sway in the arctic solitudes of North America. Browsing in an ample library the other day, we chanced to come across a French-Canadian work—"Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest," par M. Masson (Montreal and Toronto), our interest was revived in the volume-for we had previously become acquainted with it- since we found it full of entertaining matter in connection with the operations of the Montreal Fur Company, composed of Scotch and French Canadians, of which Washington Irving has left us some account in his "Astoria." From the work we also gleaned a good deal about the great English company of the "Hudson Bays," the vast area of its operations, and of some of its hardy

factors and traders who distinguished themselves by their explorations in the region long known to geographers as Prince Rupert's Land. Amid the vicissitudes of nations this chartered company held the territory for two hundred years, until it passed to the British crown and subsequently to the Canadian Dominion. Till the close of that period colonization knocked in vain at every gateway of the region. For a hundred years the Hudson Bay Company did little to open the country, contenting itself with establishing a few trading-posts on James Bay, to which the Indians of the Athabasca and Saskatchewan region resorted for trade. Meanwhile the great plains of the Canadian Northwest had been explored by way of Ottawa and Lake Superior, first by the adventurous French, and, after the conquest of Quebec, by the equally adventurous Scotch of Montreal and Quebec.

The result of this probing of the Northern continent by the waterways of the St. Lawrence system was the speedy diversion of the peltry trade from the routes it had been wont to follow, and the awakening of the Hudson Bay Company to the active rivalry of Montreal. In 1784, the latter organized themselves into a trading corporation, known as the North-West Company, the history of which has been given by M. Masson. The story told in his pages comprises the dramatic incidents in the career of the company, from its organization (in 1784) to its amalgamation with the Hudson Bays in 1821. It is a story of almost continuous strife, peril and bloodshed. The ill-starred relations of Lord Selkirk and his Red River colony with the Hudson Bays, and the long and bitter contest between the settlers and the wintering partners and employees of the North-West Company, are the chief incidents of the story. In narrating them, the author shows a manifest animus against the Hudson Bay Company and the philanthropic nobleman who sought to found a colony on the Red River, now the Canadian province of Manitoba.

So partisan is M. Masson in dealing with this portion of his work that the reader will have to seek elsewhere for the materials of a soberer judgment. The chapters dealing with exploration in the region we take to be more trustworthy, and they are certainly very entertaining. Pleasant also is the account given us of the magnates of the Montreal Company, and of the lordly hospitality in which they indulged at the annual gatherings of the partners at Fort William. Very welcome, to the wintering partners at least, must have been those times of cheer, for desolate indeed was the life of the early furtraders in posts remote not only from civiliza

tion but from contact with their kind. Inter

esting matter will be found in the latter half of the book, which deals with Alexander Mackenzie's expeditions to the Arctic and the Pacific oceans, with Simon Fraser's voyage from the Rocky Mountains to the coast, with an exploratory tour with Captain (afterwards Sir John) Franklin, and with various trading ventures among the Missouri Indians. The author has derived the materials for these interesting narratives from the hitherto unpublished journals of servants of the fur companies. The work, as a whole, is a valuable addition to the literature of the era of the fur trade, especially in the region long known as New France.

An inspiring, optimistic volume reaches us, under the title of "A Man's Value to Society," from the press of Fleming H. Revell Co., New York and Chicago. Its author is Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, a popular clergyman of Chicago, who is well fitted to address young men on such studies as self-culture and character, since he is not only a man of wide reading and large experience, but is alive in thought and feeling, and knows thoroughly how to reach and impress the minds of his readers. His work is full of wise thought and counsel, brightly presented, and with no exaggeration or suspicion of cant. Here are some of his subjects: The Revelators of Character, Aspirations and Ideals, The Physical Basis of Character, The Mind and the Duty of Right Thinking, The Science of Living with Men, The Uses of Books and Reading, Making the Most of One's Self.

As an example of the author's style we extract the following on "the misfits of life," from the chapter on The Elements of Worth in the Individual. The successful man grasps the handle of his being. He moves in the line of least resistance. That one accomplishes most, whose heart sings while his hand works. Like animals, men have varied uses. The lark sings, the ox bears burdens, the horse is for strength and speed. But men who are wise towards beasts are often foolish towards themselves. . . The school is to help the boy unpack what intellectual tools he has; education does not change, but puts temper into these tools. No man can alter his temperament, though, trying to, he can break his heart. How pathetic the wrecks of men who have chosen the wrong occupation. The driver bathes the raw shoulder of a horse whose collar does not fit; but when men make their misfits, and the heart is sore, society does not soothe, but with whips it scourges the man to his fruitless task. John Stuart Mill placed the industrial mismatings among the heavier losses of society." G. M. A.

ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION

E

OR some years our educational systems have happily been shaped in accordance with the conviction that our mother tongue ought to have the first claim upon the teacher in the training of youth. Unfortunately, in the teaching of our mother tongue, educational effort has, in a great measure, been dissipated in grammatical analysis and other purely mechanical details, while the step beyond, facility in the writing of good English, has been little taught or acquired. Years have been spent by the pupil in putting up the scaffolding, but the building itself has rarely been got under way. We are far, of course, from implying that any fair measure of success in the writing of English can, as a rule, be attained without much drill in syntax. Yet it is well known that many journalists and literary men acquire even great skill in this art who are destitute of any technical knowledge of the language. In their case a correct ear, familiarity with good literary models, and contact with people who habitually speak good English, supply the place of text-books, and even of unimpeachable school drill in grammar. It may be said, indeed, that it has been their good fortune to be spared the dulling effects of much grammatical study; and that relief from this has given them the ready power of writing clearly their own thoughts and of quickly apprehending thoughts of others. However this may be, there can be no question that the ability to write clear and correct English is in these days the educational need of our youth, with such a knowledge of the language as will discipline the mind rather than burden the memory. With the writing of good English will come the power of appreciating its noble literature, and of stimulating faculties that too often lie dormant or run to waste.

the

How the writing of English can best be acquired is a question not easily answered. Text-books and intelligent training will do something; but practice and the study of good models, will, admittedly, do more. The first step (we are here specially addressing the teacher) is to train the pupil to think. If at first,

which is likely to be the case, the pupil cannot use his reflective powers so as to provide himself with material for a theme in Composition, he may, with advantage, be referred to some pregnant passage occurring in the works of a good writer. He should be asked to gather the substance of the writer's argument in the passage, and to translate it into his own words. The paraphrase he may then commit to paper. Varied practice of this sort, with the corrections and counsel of a good teacher, will do more to impart facility in writing than any number of rules, or a lengthy course of grammatical exposition, however good. In English Composition, as in other branches of education, much more may be attained by oral than by text-book teaching. are a few hints, however, that may be useful to the pupil, which we here venture to set forth, with the remark that, in this as in other studies, little can be done without the pupil's exercise of his own mental powers, or without taste in the selection and assiduity, as we have said, in the reading of good literary models.

There

Before beginning a practical course of English Composition, the teacher will do well to impress upon the pupil's mind the following requisites to success in the writing of English, mastery of which, in his exercises and practice, the learner should endeavor to gain: (1) Familiarity with the subject to be written about; (2) Some notion of method in the arrangement of topics, and natural sequence of ideas in treating of them; (3) A fair English vocabulary (the simpler the better); (4) An accurate knowledge of the meanings of words and phrases; (5) Some degree of taste and sense of propriety in the language used; (6) Such an acquaintance with the rules of grammar as will keep one from violating syntax; and (7) "A ready perception of the beauties of language and of those things. that tend to make it most effective for its purpose."

With these general ideas impressed upon the mind of the pupil, and with preliminary practice in sentence-building, including exercises in variations of its structure, phraseology, and sequence,

he may go on to the composition of the paragraph, and to the analysis of its properties-unity, consecutiveness, and variety. From these he may proceed to exercises on theme-writing, and to lessons on the qualities of style, particularly in its essentials of perspicuity and strength. In the exercises on the analysis of style, the utmost care should be taken to make criticism on the mere mechanism of the language subordinate to the all-important consideration of the thought and aim of the writer, which form the essence of every literary work. While a student of literature, it should not be forgotten that the pupil is also a student of the world; that he is being prepared to enter upon a life of thought and action for himself; and that the pedantry which makes so much of school work in the grammatical construction of the language is a poor substitute, as a means of training, for those impressive lessons, both of principle and sentiment, which happily abound in English literature, and are its most distinguished characteristic. Nor should it be forgotten that over-attention to the minutia of criticism prevents the pupil from forming just or adequate conceptions of an author's work, and, in the case of a masterpiece of literature, limits his vision of its large and general aspects.

In proceeding to theme-writing, the teacher's care, after he has seen to the grammatical purity of the pupil's compositions, should be chiefly directed to the supervision of their rhetorical qualities. A heavy hand will here be needed, as the tendency of imaginative youth is to run riot among the flowers of the language. The first requisites he should exact are Simplicity and Clearness; after that may come Strength. Perhaps no better rules can be given, as directions to the pupil in attaining these requisites, than the old and simple ones of Lindley Murray, which we fear are, in these modern days, not so familiar as they ought to be, and hence may here be quoted:

1. "Avoid," says Lindley Murray, "all such words and phrases as are not adapted to the ideas you mean to communicate, or which are less significant than others of those ideas.

2. During the course of the sentence the scene should be changed as little as possible, i. e. [do not let the mind be hurried by sudden transitions from person to person, or from subject to subject].

3. Never crowd into one sentence things which have so little connection that they could

bear to be divided into two or three sentences; and keep clear of all unnecessary parentheses.

4. For promoting the strength of a sentence, prune it of all redundant words and members: much force is added to a sentence by brevity.

5. Attend particularly to the use of copulatives, relatives, and all the particles employed

for transition and connection.

6. Dispose of the capital word, or words, so that they may make the greatest impression; and, when the subject admits of it, attend to the climax of a sentence.

7. A weaker assertion or proposition should never come after a stronger; when a sentence consists of two members, the longer should generally be the concluding one.

8. Avoid concluding a sentence with an adverb, a preposition, or any inconsiderable word; and be careful not to misplace an adverb.

[There is no word in the English language, says a modern authority in grammar, which is so frequently misplaced as only. Hence, it is important to lay down the rule with regard to it: Only limits the word or words immediately following it; Alone, limits the word or words immediately preceding it.]

9. In the members of a sentence, where two another, whether either a resemblance or an opthings are compared or contrasted with one position is intended to be expressed, some resemblance in the language and construction should be preserved. When the things themexpect to find a similar correspondence in the selves correspond to each other, we naturally

words.

10. Attend to the harmony and easy flow of the words and members.

II. The same word should not be repeated too often in the same sentence or paragraph, though the sense should not be sacrificed to avoid repetition.

12. Long and short sentences should be agreeably interspersed in a paragraph; the ear tires of a number of sentences of similar construction following each other with monotonous regularity."

In setting themes for composition the teacher will do well at first to avoid subjects that make unusual demands upon the pupil's powers of reflection, unless they are familiar to him. Narrative composition, on some incident or story; on some familiar object or feature of local interest; or on some character in, or event of, history, will be found much more suitable. At first a skeleton, or scheme of arrangement in the topics, should be supplied, such as the following:

In Biography: 1, Place and circumstances of birth; 2, Youth and education; 3, Occupation of life, and circumstances determining that occupation; 4, Progress in life-work; 5, Death and attendant circumstances; and 6, Reflections on the character, and lessons drawn from the life, passed under review.

In History: 1, The event itself; 2, Cause of occasion of it; 3, The time and place; 4, The manner of its happening and attendant circumstances; and 5, The result: what it produced or effected.