CRITICISM recently published in the Overland Monthly opens with the statement: "If Christian Science means anything, it means that by taking an attitude of faith toward God we will be cured of our sins and bodily diseases." Doubtless this statement represents what is by some supposed to be a doctrine of this Science, but it is not correct. What Christian Science does teach is that by an attitude of understanding "toward God we will be cured of our sins and diseases." The difference between faith and understanding is in this instance vital, for blind belief or credulous trust can have no place in science, while the principles of a true science can only be comprehended and used through the attainment of understanding. Any one who has has studied Christian Science sufficiently to apply it even in the least degree, must recognize the distinction here drawn, for however fully a man may believe a principle to be true, his ability to practically conform to its laws will only be in proportion to his understanding. No teaching could more faithfully inculcate respect for and understanding of law. No such doctrine as that of the "irregular intervention of the supernatural" could find a place in the science which takes as its fundamental postulates the all-embracing power and eternal continuity of divine law. Were it otherwise, Christian Science would indeed be a "movement backward."

Because a science deals with laws which are such as are not evident to the material senses, it is none the less true; and because it discerns the principle governing life it is none the less scientific. In Mr. Medina's article, to which we refer, it is admitted that without "the idea of mind,"

matter and its relations cannot be correctly explained. To this statement we agree, but Christian Science pursues the question further, and holds that without the recognition of Divine Mind, or God, no consciousness can be explained. Either matter rules all or Divine Mind rules all. If mind is necessary to explain even the evanescent substance of dreams, how much more is it necessary to admit a primal Intelligence in order that we may interpret the phenomena discerned by waking thought? To those who claim that to admit God, or a Supreme Intelligence, is to make an unwarranted assumption, we may point out that while Life is too deep, too wonderful and too eternal for human thought to comprehend its full significance, yet we may even now grasp enough to lead us harmoniously on from one experience to another in an ever broadening consciousness of the perfection, continunity and grandeur of the laws of being.

From a purely material standpoint, however, how far can progress be made toward an understanding of life? Matter is not conscious, and mind must be admitted even before the simplest sensation can be explained. Taking God as the starting point (as does the Bible), and reasoning deductively from this perfect premise, the Christian Scientist has to assume no more, and puts less strain on credulity than the man who predicates matter as the basis of all reality; for the materialist is at once confronted with the astonishing hypothesis that the stream shall rise higher than its source-that matter shall evolve mind, and that this mind shall reach up toward the moral and spiritual. Where do the mental and spiritual come from if matter is assumed to be the only creator? The philosophy of Christian Science leads to no such dilemma as that suggested by this question. It never "mixes the natural with

the supernatural," but clearly defines the good and the real as expressions of principle, and therefore eternal, but the evil and the unreal as failures to express principle, and therefore powerless and transient. It should be noted that the Christian Scientist seeks no abrogation of law for the healing of sickness, but on the contrary holds that it is a failure to recognize moral and spiritual law which induces a sense of sin and suffering, and that this sense can be healed only through regeneration and obedience. From this standpoint, one sees, in what have been called the "miracles" of Jesus, no setting aside of law, but a masterly recognition of and obedience to, law more powerful, because more truly expressive of principle, than that which men had supposed to be law. Likewise with the healing of sin and sickness today, this work is founded upon a clear recognition of the Principle of man's being, which we call God. Many try to explain the beneficial results of Christian Science treatment by assuming that they are due to human suggestion or will-power, acting independently of the Divine Mind or Divine Law. But since human thought did not create itself, and cannot explain even its own intelligence except by reference to a higher, why not at once acknowledge this higher Intelligence as the only and universal power?

As regarding sin, we agree with our critic that the world would be better off without it. He defines sin as "immorality," and states that "it is a creation of man, not of the Creator." Can man create what God cannot? And does not the answer to this query suggest the Christian

Science teaching that sin is a mistake of human thought, not a real or eternal thing of God's creating, and that it is merely a terrible mistake on the part of the erring human mind, from which mortals suffer so long as they believe and practice it, but which may be corrected and destroyed through a right understanding of God and man's real relation to Him and His universe?

Again we desire to explain that "calling for the intervention of the supernatural" is not the Christian Science conception of prayer, which is clearly defined in the opening chapter of Mrs. Eddy's work, Science and Health, as bringing man into harmony with God, not God into harmony with man.

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Hence the natural deduction that the only practical pathway for human progress lies through active exercise thought and deed of all that is moral and true, and the elimination of all that tends to cloud one's vision of the ideal.

In conclusion, since it has been shown that Christian Science is not the superstitious belief it was supposed to be, and since it brings man into conformity to the Principle of good, is not this quite in harmony with what our critic means when he says, "the world is to be saved morally by exercising the higher feelings?" for how can we judge feelings to be "higher" or lower except by admitting that there is an ideal standard or principle of good? Since Christian Science shows a logical and practical means by which to reach this standard, should it not, from our critic's own reasoning, be accounted in the forefront of progress?

A

IS CUSTOMARY,

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among and a few other peoples, to make a spectacle of persons undergoing punishment for crimes, but the more advanced nations abandoned the practice many years ago. At the famous summer resort of Coronado, in Southern California, there is still in use a cell or "calaboose" which is strongly suggestive of the methods of primitive nations. It is made of boileriron, securely riveted, with wooden floor and roof, and an open front strongly grated with massive iron bars. Here the corporation of Coronado confines those who disturb its peace, chiefly "drunk and disorderly" visitors from the near-by cities.

The term of imprisonment is usually only one night, and next morning the inmates are released and gladly bid adieu to its hospitable but inflexible walls.

This unique prison cell was built by a blacksmith for the old town of San Diego almost exactly fifty years ago, at a cost of three hundred dollars. California had not long been a part of the United States, and being a small frontier town near the international boundary, rough characters from both countries gave the San Diego authorities much trouble. The country was undeveloped, and there was much difficulty in arranging a suitable place of confinement for prisoners. After spending a large sum for a cement-and-cobblestone jail, which proved worthless, and resorting to various other expedients, the San Diegans planned and built this cell, and

never had any more trouble with escaping prisoners. It gave good service for thirteen years or more, keeping many desperate men safe behind its bars, and was then removed, with other appurtenances of the county seat, to the new town of San Diego, three miles farther south, where the present city had begun to grow up. There it stood for several years in the court-house yard behind the brick jail, and was then acquired by the town of Coronado, moved across the bay, and put to its present use. Today it stands in the back yard of the Coronado Beach Company's warehouse, in the midst of the "Tent City," where thousands of pleasure seekers come each summer to camp on the sandy shore of the bay and ocean. It is hidden by a high board fence and probably few of these summer visitors ever saw it, or, if they did, knew its history.

This cell is feet 4 inches long, 6 feet wide, and 7 feet 3 inches high. Prisoners are given a cot and a chair; the cell is light, dry and airy, and they have room enough and are perfectly comfortable. In the mild, dry climate of San Diego, the open grating is conducive to comfort, rather than a source of hardship. The pains with which they have hidden it away leads to the inference that possibly the Coronado authorities desire to avoid sentimental accusations of inhumanity to prisoners. But the woodwork is rotting, the rust-eaten iron plates giving way, and the usefulness of the old cell almost at an end; and the question will soon be eliminated from the field of all except historical discussion. Perhaps at Coronado when a prison cell is not a modern need?

D

ID ANY OF yuh woolies ever see the Senorita Christobel Sebastian over there at the old Don's hacienda on the other side of the river ?"

The speaker, foreman of the L O 7 Outfit, addressed the question to a group of a dozen or more punchers who were setting cross-legged upon the ground while they were eating the evening meal.

He gazed about inquiringly at the assembled men; three or four nodded an emphatic affirmative to the question, while one of the group-Gilbert Stinson, popularly known among his comrades as "Forty-Five Ninety" paused in strenuous effort of replenishing the inner man long enough to comment on the personal charms of the young lady in question.

"Did we ever see her? Well, I guess yes; leastwise your Uncle Ezra Fuller did, anyhow; she are shure a hum-dandy looker, alright, alright; a regular peacherino for fair an' no mistake. She was a kind of funny hue, though, for a fullblooded Spaniard; always seemed to me as though she was a little off-color among all them smoke-colored relatives, considerin' them big velvet eyes, snow an' roses complexion an' a head of yellow hair that was as shiny as Sonora gold; she was about as much out of place as a fairy in Coonville."

"I hain't been over there for a month of Sundays," he continued, "an' I think I'll just climb into my glad rags about next Sunday an' make a few number ten tracks over in that neck of the woods. I've got a kind of a hankerin' to see how her clothes 'd look if they was packed in my trunk."

"Yuh can just spare yourself the trip, Old Timer, 'cause she has gone and packed her clothes in some one else's trunk already," said the Foreman, "an' that ain't all, either-she hooked up to an American."

"The hell she did!" Stinson exploded. "What kind of a yap did she git spliced with ?"

The foreman grinned at the tone of mixed astonishment and chagrin with which the lengthy puncher asked the question.

"Well, yuh see, it's a pritty considerable of a yarn," he said, as he knocked the burnt ashes from his pipe, carefully filled and relit it with an ember from the camp-fire. "Yuh all know old man Havers has got a mania for importin' all them college-bred sap-heads out here that he can get his grab-hooks onto, an' workin' 'em over into cow-punchers. Well, about ninety per cent of them get all their romantic notions knocked into the middle of next week before they've been out here three months, an' they'll vamoose for the tall timber.

"About a year ago he got a young chap out here from New York State by the name of Terwilliger-the boys used to call him 'Whistle-Trigger' fer short. His old man was a rich old duck; seems like he run some kind of a manufacturing layout back there somewhere, but he wanted the kid to get out and get a little of the side of life where the rough places ain't all knocked off, havin' an idea, I guess, that it'd make a man out of him.

"Well, Terwilliger wasn't like most of them tenderheels the old man sent out there; he had the stuff that men are made of in his carcass, an' it didn't take us woolies long to find it out, either. He hadn't been there a week until one or two of the most quarrelsome punchers in the

outfit thought they'd see if he had any sand in his craw, an' they was considerably wiser purty pronto, 'cause he wiped up the earth with their frames for about forty feet square.

"Well, it was surprisin' how quick he learned to ride an' rope an' the way he picked up all the little fandangles of the puncher's trade.

"He'd been there about six months when a bunch of them Greaser rustlers run about forty-leven head of the SlashBar-D dougies across the Rio Grande.

"The Old Man stood right up on his hind legs and howled when he found it out the next mornin', an' he swore by the 'Seven-Little-Wooden-Gods' he'd have

them dougies back if he had to follow the Greasers clean across the Staked Plains, an' he fired fourteen of us across the river the next mornin' with instructions not to come back until we got the cattle back or captured the rustlers.

"We oiled the machinery of our sixhandled-white-shooters, filled up our belts with cartridges, an' put a couple of extra boxes of shells for our Winchesters in our pockets, took our cayuses an' a leadhorse apiece, an' hiked across the river on the trail of the greasers.

"Young Terwilliger was with us, an' he was sure hot to come up with the gents we were after, in spite of the fact that we all assured him plain that they'd be something dangerous a-doin' when we did.

"We pulled into Old Don Sebastian's hacienda about noon. You all know that the Don's as full of old-time Spanish hospitality as a dog is of fleas, an' he would not have anything else but our consent to take the casa as a present and stay for dinner; the rustlers had passed along the road right in front of his house, as bold as brass, the night before. We didn't need much coaxin', as all hands had an appetite like a she-bear with a whole raft of cubs.

"When we got inside, the Don gave all the new woolies in our bunch that wasn't acquainted with the family a knock-down. to the Dona an' the Senorita Christobell Sebastian.

"Well, young Terwilliger was knocked clean off the Christmas tree by her beauty an' he like to rubbered his head off all the time we was eatin' dinner, although

he took particular pains not to let her catch him at it. I noticed, though, that she kept castin' sheep's eyes in his direction, an' I made up my mind right there that he'd made a hit with the Senorita, an' I can't say that I blamed her any, for he was sure a fine-lookin' kid, an' no mistake.

"There happened to be a half-breed Spaniard there that day, by the name of Juan Capaldo, that it seems had been tryin' for about a year to get the Senorita to bake his tortillas for him, but she had been handin' him out big chunks of the marble heart right along a fact which didn't make him feel none too goodnatured an' bein' naturally as jealous as an old hen with only one chick, he noticed the first rattle out of the box the big hit they'd made with each other, an' his face got as black as your hat, an' I could see him grind his teeth every little bit while he watched Terwilliger like a cat does a mouse. I made up my mind that I'd tell the Kid to keep purty close cases on the dark complexioned gent, 'cause if he didn't, I was pritty middlin' sure that he'd wake up some mornin' an' find himself a corpse with a Spanish stiletto stickin' between his ribs, 'cause I could see it was a case of the Senorita, with him, or none, an' I knew that be'n the case, it wouldn't be his last trip to the wickieup of the old Don, by a long shot.

"After dinner we took up the trail again and that night, just at dusk, we came up with the beef-stealers up in the Punto Hills."

"They put up a devil of a scrap for about fifteen minutes, an' the ornery skunks got two of our crowd an' put young Terwilliger out of business-for the time bein' with a perforation in the bellows; we put five of their bunch to the bad, an the rest took to the tall weeds.

"Well, after the set-to was over, I took a look at Terwilliger's wound, an, although I could see he was still worth more than a dozen dead men, it was plain that it wouldn't do to try to take him all the way back to the ranch, 'cause it was a cinch he'd never stand the trip.

"Well, I was up in the air for a while until I happened to think of old Don Sebastian's hacienda; I didn't much like to leave him there, either, because I was