and towards subdivision (the Department Club) and re-concentration (States Federation).

In philanthropy the desire to promote the best interests of their fellowwomen was directed to the best methods of achieving that end. A mutual bond was created between women of leisure and women of labor, the former finding their pleasure in securing for the latter lunch, reading and rest rooms, with social opportunities, hitherto undreamt of. In education, the pure enjoyment of intellectual contact, of systematic reading and study, of an interest in current events, of the discussion of special authors and special writings, of a specific preparation for intelligent travel, of an artistic and social atmosphere, quickly assumed a bent towards individual research, the principles of education, the extension of University privileges, the establishment of fellowships in colleges, and of public and private libraries. In domestic science, mothers' clubs could not long content themselves with scientific food and cookery, dress, home hygiene, nursing, sewing, laundry-work and the economies of general household arts. Home-making is raised to a science. The professions and trades which effect the home and the conditions of domestic life were examined. Child study was introduced, followed by all its problems of school laws, architecture, plans, lighting, heating, ventilation, hours, studies, recess, play, playgrounds and vacations. Co-operation with teachers' associations is devoted to secure industrial manual training for children, and art in schoolhousesin short, the application of philosophy, art and science to the home.

A very large proportion of the clubs of American women have developed a special interest in municipal matters, and in the reform of municipal legislation bearing upon women and children. Their platform is good citizenship, eduVOL. VII. 380

LIVING AGZ.

cation on municipal questions, the duty of promoting civic interests, and the adoption of more uniform and effective methods to influence legislation. These women acquaint themselves with existing economic conditions. They invite expert and practical workers to lecture to them. Already they have secured better factory laws, female inspectors in factories that employ women and children, police matrons in women's jails, a large measure of tenement-house reform, and improvement of public parks and playgrounds; in addition much has been done to raise the general standard, to. remedy abuses and to relieve the hardships of industrial life.

The industrial enthusiasm, almost amounting to a mania, in the United States has created an enormous number of clubs with platforms adapted to their specific clients. This activity, especially among women and children, is a surprise to those who first meet it. It is breathed with the air. Selfreliance is packed into every household pie. Independence is the watchword of the Constitution. The selfmade man is the hero of the day. He is more spoken of, written about, lectured upon than any other commercial commodity in a very commercial country. The peculiar success of the millionaire supplies the best spice to a press which prides itself on its spiciness. From Log Cabin to White House is the only journey in the United States for which there is no return ticket. Every Yankee boy sets out deliberately with the determination of buying the ticket. It is an infectious thing. His sisters won't be left at home. Free from old-world traditions, they reverse the old order. It is no shame to work. It is a shame to be idle. The United States is the working woman's country. The American woman has made this the Woman's Day and Woman's Century. Even an

occasional hothouse growth in the shape of a publisher, an estate agent, a stockbroker, a doctor, a lawyer, a preacher, and a mayor crops up. In some quarters it is believed that the high-water mark has been reached, and that the tide shows a decided tendency to turn. In railways, banks, Post Office and Government departments, and in many commercial houses, 8,000 women have been written off within the last three months, and men put in their places. Still the numbers of nicely-dressed, prettily-mannefed women who, in cities like New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Minneapolis, stream over the bridges, along the streets, in and out of ferries, up and down the elevated railway (the L. Roads), day in and day out, at 7 A. M. and back at 6, run away up among the millions; an industrial activity not confined to young women, nor even to widows, but which is largely participated in by women who have husbands to support them.

The average American woman impresses you with her distinct individuality, her complete self-satisfied and self-contained capacity. As you "size her up" she is returning the compliment, but in a kindly patronizing fashion. If you do not worship the Stars and Stripes, she will grant you absolution by performing your share as well as hers. Her clubs are an expression of herself. She measures them by no one else. She sets out with an aim, and makes straight for it. She has her Emerson, her Hawthorne, her Holmes and her Lowell Club; her Shakespeare and Beethoven Circle; her Conversational Literary Round Table, Literary Explorers, Woman's Book Review, Fin de Siècle, Interrogation, Dilettante, Novelists, Authors, Daughters of Twentieth Century, Parlor Lecture, Friends in Council, Current Events, High School and College Almanack

Clubs; her Old Maid's Social and her Married Woman's Reading Club. All that is easy. It may be accomplished anywhere, even without her breezy Prairies and inspiring Rockies. But you must, I believe, renounce something of inherited prejudice before you enroll as member of the What-to-Know Club, the Looking Forward, the Far and Near, the Tourists and Travellers, the Fortnightly Jaunts, the Domestic Science and Afternoon Cooking Clubs, or the Over the Tea-Cup, Entre-nous, No Name, What's in a Name, Parchment, Thimble, Pow-wow, Mustard Seed, Acorn, October, Sunshine, Child Culture, Great Expectations, Lend-aHand, Rocking Chair, Peregrinators, or the Bachelor Maid's Club; while you must go further and become acclimatized, almost naturalized, before you will understand special women's clubs, for Physicians, Nurses, Artists and Tradespeople; the Park Memorial Free Association, the District Colored Women's League, the Women's Board of Trade Association, Daughters of Ceres (for mothers, wives and daughters of farmers), the Business Woman's Club, Professional Woman's League, National Association of Woman Stenographers, Noon-Day Rest Club, Wageearner's Self-Culture Club (membership 5,000), Woman's Parliament of Southern California, Women's Aid Loan Association, Free-Bath and Sanitary League, Laundry Workers and Improvement Club, Woman's Municipal League, Masters' Assistants Club, and an out-and-out Woman's Board of Trade.

These organizations are the outgrowth of circumstances peculiar to the continent. Large numbers of them have working-women members, many of them exclusively so; while some have club auxiliaries of workingwomen with two sessions, one in the afternoon and the other in the evening, when the identical program is re

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peated, both main and auxiliary working in perfect harmony. Most of them possess their own buildings. All are self-supporting, self-governing, co-operative and voluntary. Large manufacturing and departmental corporations, employing many women, have their own club machinery, now a recognized factor in their industrial life. Most of them have set out with a specific sphere, which, however, they have quickly outgrown. As the horizon. broadens our American sisters take up measure after measure, and, by a sagacious utilization of existing means, achieve pretty much what they undertake. In Cook County a group of clubs, with aims and platforms almost at variance with each other, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Catholic Women's National League, the Union of Liberal Religions, and the Clubs of Chicago and its Suburbs, have united, or federated, for the specific purpose of "furthering the interests of Cook County, public schools and county institutions, watching legislation for women and children, and caring for delinquent, dependent, and neglected children." All along the line we meet with the same broad tolerance and concentrated effort. Existing societies are stimulated. The duplication of measures and means is avoided. Sentiment is aroused. Public opinion is moulded. Be it a problem of crowded city, of isolated farm, or of distant mines, of flowers from the Sunny South, or of fruits from the Golden West, it is individually diagnosed, attacked with skill and solved.

It is claimed by this organization of 150,000 American women that they have systematized existing charities, taught school children civic duties, improved city streets and country roads, renovated town and village marketplaces, and promoted better tram facilities; that they have founded children's penny savings banks, training

schools, jubilee halls, libraries, reading rooms, gymnasiums, art galleries, Sunday afternoon concerts, and scholarships in American colleges and in European colleges for American women; that they have erected historical monuments and public drinking fountains, planted trees in streets, and built music stands in public squares, and that they have secured for working girls tenement-house inspection, model lodging houses, holiday and convalescent homes, inexpensive lunch and rest rooms, club rooms, funds for aid in sickness, and legal counsel which, in 1896, was able to settle out of court 83 per cent. of cases.

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As a sample of a club whose membership is open to all, the Women's Educational and Industrial Union of Boston may be quoted. It combines practical and educational work, both bearing directly on social economics, and is the centre of a very native social life. Started in 1877, and incorporated in 1880, it now owns a very handsome building in an expensive street. Its ground floor is used as a woman's exchange and lunch-room, the lunch being prepared by classes in housekeeping. On the next floor are the offices of the Union, parlors, reception rooms, reading rooms, and library. Class rooms and gymnasium, with lodgings for women, which bring high prices, occupy the floor above. An extensive educational work in all womanly arts is carried on. The cooking department does an outside trade to the extent of 11,000 dollars. their housekeeping department, employers and employees study together the science of home-making, the course of which consists of four months, and entitles the pupil to a diploma.

In

The Woman's Century Club, of Dayton, Ohio, is an illustration of another class, namely a club whose membership is limited to the employees of a large industrial corporation. It set out

with 200 members, and meets twice a month in a beautiful hall furnished by the employers. The meeting lasts an hour, thirty minutes of which are given at the expense of the company. Once a month the members entertain their outside friends, when officers of the company and their wives grace the The Nineteenth Century.

evenings. A musical and literary program is enjoyed, which is followed by dancing and refreshments. Experience has proved in this, and in all other similar clubs, that the mental and social relaxation is a distinct economic gain.

Margaret Polson Murray (Montreal),

Hon. Mem. Gen. Federation of Women's Clubs.

I.

Exactly at noon on the day before that fixed for the marriage of Queen Theresa of Nerumbia to her second cousin, Ernest, Hereditary Prince of Landberg, Captain Klunst, the chief of police of the capital city of Rosenstadt, was ushered into the private apartment of Count von Schönstein, the Queen's Principal Minister of State. He had come to Schönstein's residence in the Birnenstrasse by appointment; and the Count, though his furrowed countenance wore a look of deep gloom, received him graciously, and motioned him to a chair. Klunst sat down in silence, and waited with some impatience till the Minister, having carefully tied the papers on the table in front of him into a neat bundle, at length commenced the conversation.

"Well, I have seen the Queen," he began, in a low tone.

"Yes, your Lordship?"

"And it is useless trying to move her, worse than useless. She has thoroughly made up her mind, and is even prepared to accept my resignation if I persist in my refusal to have the monstrous decree I spoke to you about yesterday in readiness for her signature immediately after tomorrow's ceremony."

"But," said the other, "it is madness -sheer madness."

"So I represented to Her Majesty, Klunst, though not, of course, in those words. I pointed out that many of the prisoners she is so anxious to release are members of secret revolutionary societies-men and women who aim at the subversion of the constitution and the overthrow of the throne, whose freedom would even place Her Majesty in personal danger." "It is true, my Lord."

The Count shrugged his shoulders. "The Queen thinks not," he said, grimly.

"But what arguments did Her Majesty put forward?"

"None. She is a woman, and she does not argue. It almost makes one wish Nerumbia had adopted the Salic Law. I'll tell you what she did say, though. She hinted that my ideas are old-fashioned, and stated pretty plainly that, in her opinion, most of our political prisoners, as she pleases to call them, are the victims of police plots." "Monstrous!" "Just so."

"How can Her Majesty entertain such a notion?"

"I don't know, unless it is that she has been reading some of the French newspapers. But the origin of the evil

is of no consequence. She dismissed me with an instruction to draft the decree, and to commence it with a preamble to the effect that Queen Theresa is-is-really, I can hardly bring myself to speak the terrible words-is determined that her marriage shall inaugurate a new era."

"A new era?"

"Yes, an era of-mark this, Klunstabsolute liberty to every one of her subjects."

"Absolute liberty-in Nerumbia!" The captain laughed ironically.

Schönstein leaned back in his chair. "I have explained the situation," he said, "and, so far as I can see, only a miracle can avert us from disaster."

"Ah!" Klunst drew a long breath, then he remarked, slowly: "I have something startling to reveal to you, my Lord Count-something that perhaps-though not a miracle-may, after all, lead Her Majesty to reconsider the position."

"What do you mean?" asked the Minister, eagerly.

"I mean, your Lordship, that we have discovered the existence of the most diabolical plot ever conceived."

"Yes, yes. What is it? Speak manspeak." Schönstein half rose in his excitement.

"It is a plot to murder-"
"Not the Queen?"

"No; but the Prince, the bridegroom, tomorrow."

"The Prince. Good Heavens! Where? How?"

"In the Cathedral, at the commencement of the marriage service."

Malville, who is supposed to be a member of the French nobility."

"Yes; I recollect the name. She obtained her ticket through one of Her Majesty's ladies-in-waiting."

"Whom we need not speak of, your Lordship, for she is merely an innocent dupe. She knows nothing of the supposed Duchesse's true character and antecedents."

"You, Klunst, are better informed?" "Yes," said the other, simply. "This woman, whose real name is Adèle Lèront, is an anarchist of the most dangerous type, young, fascinating,` and-worst of all-sincere. She is utterly careless of her life, and is, no doubt, gratified at having been chosen by her fellows for the deadly work projected for tomorrow."

"When was she so chosen, Klunst?" "At a meeting held last night, a meeting at which the police were represented. The scheme of the crime was then discussed; and, to put the matter shortly, it was decided that, as the wedding party walked up the central aisle, the woman should spring forward and stab Prince Ernest to the heart."

The Count received all these particulars with the utmost calmness, giving no further sign of emotion than an occasional bite of his iron-gray moustache. Now he merely asked meditatively:

"Why should they wish to assassinate the Prince rather than the Queen?"

"I cannot say, your Lordship, unless it is that the clothes worn by a man afford less protection to the heart than those of a woman. Or it may be that they think an attack on the Prince is less likely to be anticipated than one on the Queen."

"Ah! well; in any case the effect would be the same. Theirs is, of course, an international organization, and it is only the rank of the victim they care about. The Prince is a ruler of a larger country than ours, and his