where he can intelligently make up his own mind as to the probability of the doctrine. If that probability seems to incline so strongly in favor of Evolution as to amount almost to certainty, that result is the fair outcome of an impartial consideration of the subject, and is the same result that all but one or two of those most competent to form an opinion have also reached.

One more word as to the opponents of the doctrine. It is not strange that those who can read Genesis in no other light than a literal interpretation of the letter of it, find it hard to make it agree with Evolution, and, holding as they do to the word of God, that they think it necessary to make God true, and every man a liar. Their position is a perfectly intelligible one, and from their

standpoint, no other course than unrelenting opposition is open to them. Neither is this opposition altogether hurtful to the cause of truth; for it has forced the Evolutionists to be very cautious, to test their arguments severely, and to make their progress a sure one. Thus it has taken twenty-five years to bring the discussion to its legitimate conclusion, but now that the conclusion is fairly reached, it is one on which the more confidence can be placed. Ultimate truth is not for finite minds; absolute truth is impossible in such a question. But no fair consideration, based on a due knowledge of the data, can leave much room for reasonable doubt as to the verity of Organic Evolution.

PRESIDENT HOLDEN's annual report to the Regents of the University contains a good deal that is of interest to all intelligent members of the community, as well as to the special friends of the University. This is especially true of the analysis of the teaching of mathematics in the public schools; and of the suggestion that the churches should affiliate their theological seminaries with the University. It would be impossible for the State, under the Constitution, to spend any money upon religious instruction; and the justice of this is obvious, for Jews, Catholics, Agnostics, and Protestants, all our own citizens, pay taxes, and support the government, and each would have a right to complain if the public money was spent for the benefit of the others' tenets. But no sect would have a right to complain if another raised the money to support, in connection with the University, a theological school of its own; for it would be at perfect liberty to do the thing same itself.

THE strikes now in progress in this city, have not received any impartial investigation so far, and it is impossible for any right-minded person to have an opinion as to how far they are justifiable

or well advised. In some cities, the best news papers act as volunteer counsel for the public in such cases, investigating the actual facts with a good deal of impartiality, through reporters whose work is understood to be largely that of investigation. So far has this been carried that some of these reporting forces have a good deal of the quality of a detective corps, and have been known to discover and bring into the hands of the law, criminals who were baffling the professional detectives. Contemptible as this function of the press becomes when applied to private affairs, it is perhaps, the most legitimate one there can be when used about public matters, in the public interest. Its value has been great in the battle against corruption in New York City; and this, not only through its public revelations, but perhaps, even more, we have reason to think, through the private use of information to arouse and direct the forces of law. Our own papers are more apt, in such matters as strikes, to occupy the position of bystanders, commenting sympathetically or unsympathetically, as the case may be, and reporting merely the external incidents. We shall probably

have few data to judge as to the right or wrong of the original strike, until the Labor Commissioner makes his report. But one thing, which would have been considered a truism a few years ago, is certainly true of this, and of every strike. That is, that every man has a right to quit work, and al men have a right to combine to quit work; but none to interfere with any other man's right to take the work he has left, nor to attack or injure the employer's property. This simple and fundamental principle, not only of American liberty, but of civilized society, seems sometimes in danger of being forgotten by the commenting philanthropist, as well as by the excited striker. The involuntarily unemployed, who spring to take vacant places, certainly are men and brethren, as much as the voluntarily unemployed who were dissatisfied with the conditions of the place.

The Lesson of the Alvarado Factory. TO THE EDITOR OF THE OVERLAND MONTHLY:

In a most interesting article upon "The Beet-sugar Industry in California," in your December issue, Professor Hilgard 'says: "A better case in favor of home industry against unlimited free trade could hardly be imagined [than the case of the factory at Alvarado]. Abolish the Hawaiian treaty, and the beet-sugar industry will, under the genial skies of California, take a development such as, for lack of similar natural advantages, it has not taken and cannot take, anywhere else."

It seems to me that the "sturdily struggling little factory at Alvarado" is a very important lesson to the contrary. It seems to me it is a living proof that when government coddling is withheld, an industry can and will root itself, in the teeth of competition, where natural advantages decree that such an industry ought to exist, and where brains and energy and business qualities are bent to the task Professor Hilgard's whole article implies that the Alvarado factory has developed peculiar skill and care in the selection of seed, in supervising the growing of the beets, in studying enlightened methods and processes, because it had to, in order to exist in the face of obstacles. "The principle of the survival of the fittest has had a remarkable exemplification," he says, in the experience of this factory.

Is it not greatly to be desired for the prosperity of the country that the fittest should be the ones to survive? Is it to be wished that, a certain profit being assured by government help, the Alvarado factory had been free to use slovenly methods, to neglect the quality of its beets, the selection of seed, etc.? had been released from the inspiring spur of

knowing that to economize and improve to the utmost was the price of success? had been divorced from Necessity, the mother of Invention? "It has been exposed," says Professor Hilgard, "to adverse conditions to the fullest extent, in the most direct competition with the cheap product of plantation labor, imported free of all duty." And yet-it has succeeded. Evidently the effect of this free competition has been to force the infant industry of sugarmaking on this Coast to choose the most favorable localities, to fall into the hands of the fittest men, to develop traits of enterprise, economy, and good judgment in combination, such as will secure to it a sound, thoroughly healthy, and unspeculative development in future, none the worse for being slower than if government bounty suddenly attracted a great deal of capital to it.

But one consideration, per contra, is to be mentioned here. It must not be forgotten that this "infant industry" has not been on a purely natural basis. It has not merely been deprived of the coddling of a government tax levied in its behalf, and thereby compelled-fortunately, as I think—to develop its own muscle and stand on its own feet but it has been in addition subjected to an actual tax for the support of industries now sturdy "infants" of a century's growth, but not yet, like itself, on their own feet, nor seeming to have any expectation of getting on them. It has had to pay tax upon its machinery, and I do not know how much else. To say that it is good for an enterprise to establish itself without artificial help from government is not saying that it ought to be burdened with artificial hindrance. Respectfully,

If my Verses had Wings.

(After Victor Hugo.)

D. H.

If my verses had wings like a bird,
To thy garden of perfume and light,
They would flutter with timid delight,-
If my verses had wings like a bird.

If my verses like fairies had wings,
To thy fireside at eve they would fly,
To sparkle and gleam in thine eye,-
If my verses like fairies had wings.

Pure pinions around and above,

All day would rustle and gleam, And whisper at night to thy dream,If my verses were wingéd like Love.

E. L. Huggins.

Recent Verse.

Nearly a score of books of verse are before us, waiting review, not one absolutely worthless, and perhaps not one containing a single original poem that will ever be kept among the lasting treasures of literature. The impression. made upon the reader by this flood of verse-a little of it good, a great deal fairly pretty, a little barely passable— is inexpressibly dreary. The uselessness of having written most of it—or, if the writing was a pleasure, and a comfort, and a refining influence to the writer, then at all events, the uselessness of having published it; the futility of the ambitions it represents; the smallness of the number who will ever read the verses, and the light and transitory impression they will leave on the minds of such as do; these things must sometimes come to the mind of every critic with a "realizing sense" that makes the copious rhyming capacity and rhyming desire of the American public seem little less than a misfortune. Yet it is worth while to remember that very young people, unjaded in their literary appetites, uncritical as yet, transforming the dull or mediocre song with the light of their own fresh and tender feelings, do find much imaginative and emotional stimulus, and many suggestions to thought, in such “fair to middling" poetry, without any predjudice whatever to the due influence upon them of the greater poets. Boys and girls have admiration and sympathy enough to go around and to spare.

Yet these hundreds of songs that fill these neatlybound volumes are, many of them, pretty enough to be quite worth anyone's reading, at least once. One or two names among the writers rank far above those of mere rhymers. Celia Thaxter is not to be considered as included in the general depreciation with which we have been commenting upon the poets of the season. Her recent book, The Cruise of the Mystery, and Other Poems' does not, we think, contradict the surmise of our opening sentence, that not one of these poems would be held among the real treasures of literature; but when we say this of her, we must be understood to speak according to a serious and high standard. There are no poems in the book as likely to live as some of Mrs. Thaxter's own earlier ones; but they all possess her characteristic qualities, and when she The Cruise of the Mystery and Other Poems. By Celia Thaxter. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

speaks of sea or shore or flowers or wind, the sea or shore or flowers or wind, are really in the poem. And this reality is attained with so much simplicity, such absence of apparent means, that it commands admiration no less than it baffles analysis. But in this last collection of her verses, Mrs. Thaxter has to a great extent deserted her old subject of the outdoor seaside world, and writes chiefly of love. She writes with sweetness and tenderness, if perhaps a little less than fervor; but in this new field she loses in freshness and characteristic quality. We find one poem in which a touch or two of her older out-door description comes into a poem whose chief subject is affection; so that it constitutes an admirably epitomized illustration of the whole book.

Oh, Tell me not of Heavenly Halls.

Oh, tell me not of heavenly halls,
Of streets of pearl and gates of gold,
Where angel unto angel calls

'Mid splendors of the sky untold;
My homesick heart would backward turn
To find this dear familiar earth,
To watch its sacred hearth-fires burn,
To catch its songs of joy or mirth.
I'd lean from out the heavenly choir

To hear once more the red cock crow, What time the morning's rosy fire O'er hill and field began to glow. To hear the ripple of the rain, The summer waves at ocean's brim, To hear the sparrow sing again, I'd quit the wide-eyed cherubim!

one of the best poems in the magazines bears the signature; and everything that bears it is at least serious and sincere in poetic motive, possessed of dignity and taste. The poems collected in Ariel and Caliban' are of something the type, or school, of W. W. Story's, though of considerably less poetic merit. There is a great deal of meditation, and a great deal of pleasant description of nature, a little of love-song, and a great many "tributes" to friends. Of brief songs, such as we quote below, there are only two or three; but almost all the rest of the poems are diffuse, and to quote from some of the more fairly illustrative ones would therefore be difficult.

Old and Young.

They soon grow old who grope for gold
In marts where all is bought and sold;
Who live for self, and on some shelf
In darkened vaults hoard up their pelf,
Cankered and crusted o'er with mould.
For them their youth itself is old.

They ne'er grow old who gather gold Where spring awakes and flowers unfold; Where suns arise in joyous skies, And fill the soul within their eyes. For them the immortal bards have sung, For them old age itself is young. Elizabeth Akers, whose varied signatures, beginning as the "Florence Percy" of "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother," are a trifle confusing, has written a good many little poems of real feeling and much grace, and quite different in manner from the popular early poem by which she will always be most widely known. An expression not great, yet sympathetic, of the human affections, and a pretty touch in speaking of outdoor nature, are the two qualities to be noted in her present book The Silver Bridge, and Other Poems2; and two extracts will illustrate these at their best :

4

Berries of the Brier3, by Arlo Bates, In the King's Garden, by the late James Berry Bensel, With Reed and Lyres, by Clinton Scollard, all by writers whose names are somewhat familiar to the readers of magazine verse, and Summer Haven Songs", by Herbert Morse and A Life in Song, by George Lan

3 Berries of the Brier. By Arlo Bates. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

In the King's Garden. By James Berry Bensel. Bos. ton: D. Lothrop & Co. 1886.

5 With Reed and Lyre. By Clinton Scollard. Boston: D Lothrop & Co. 1886.

6Summer Haven Songs. By James Herbert Morse. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Strickland & Pierson.

7A Life in Song. By George Lansing Raymond. York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1886.

New

sing Raymond, are of a good deal the same quality, and contain among them some really good bits and a great deal of mediocrity. Berries of the Brier affords half a dozen of these good bits; they are curiously above the average of the book, which may be fairly enough inferred from the following stanza picked up at random :

I kiss the rosebud which you wore,

Yet know not why I love it so; 'Twas but a simple flower before

It blushed against thy breast of snow.

In this nineteenth century, with the world's accumulations of written matter behind us, it is of course the merest waste of time to write and print such platitudes; but these were worth saying:

If there were a thousand years

Between my life and me,

And as in an age-dim tome

I might its story see,

How mystic, and sweet, and strange,
Like some old tale, would be

The anguish that now I know,

In my hopeless love for thee!

Lover and mistress, sleeping side by side, Death smote at once; and in the outer air, Amazedly confronted, each to each,

Their spirits stood, of all disguises bare. With sudden loathing stung, one spirit fled, Crying: "Love turns to hate if this be thou!" "Ah, stay!" the other wailed, in swift pursuit;

"Thee I have never truly loved till now!"

The collection of the late Mr. Bensel's poems contains nothing as entirely trivial as much of the "Berries of the Brier;" but there is a good deal that is over-subtle, deficient in simplicity and directness, introversive. The best is very good, and had he lived and developed according to its promise, Mr. Bensel would have come to a high place among the magazine poets of the day. poems are scarcely brief enough for quotation in full, but a few stanzas may be detached:

The

Oh, life is love, and love is life, be sure!
And once loved, always must that love
be strong;
Through every wave of strife it will endure,
From every bitter battle come more pure,
And stand in right or wrong.

Death only, as in pity, throws a veil,

Across the burning of its mighty flame; Death only makes the crimson strength grow pale;

Before death only love will ever quail,

And not for grief or shame.

The Wife of Attila Died:

So the wife of Attila died, and behold there was mourning in Hunia;

And into the stream, which curved like a bow about the crescent-shaped headland,

They cast green leaves from the nut-trees, that the current might bear them downward,

And the maidens of other nations who filled their pitchers and vases,

And the warriors who brought their horses to quench their thirst in the river

Seeing the blue-gray bosom of the stream covered thick with the leaflets,

Should know that some one beloved of all had died in the land of the Huns.

And on the day counting third from the day of her dying, they laid her

Straight on the short, sweet grass, with her white, dead face turned upward,

They made her a bed in the ground and folded a coverlet over

Cut from the greenest of turf, and on it they planted a rose-bush,

Whose blossoms and leaves should gather all that the world gave voice to,

And whose roots, running down, might tell her all that was passing in Hunia.

And there they left her alone, for into her grave could go nothing

Of husband and children but love, and that love was her portion forever,

So long as the breath of life was in Attila or his descendants.

This volume is a second edition-the first one having been brought out just before the author's death; a touching preface, prefixed by a friend, in a few words tells much of the sadness of his life, which is, indeed, more than hinted in the poems themselves.

Clinton Scollard's verses have been noticed before in the OVERLAND; and some of them have been published in our pages. They are very characteristic of the day-light, neat, somewhat artificial, and testifying to a hand well-skilled in the technicalities of the poetic art. Ballads rondeaus, villanelles, and the whole list of such confectionery, "impressions" of a scene or place, society verse, love at its airiest, and an occasional " mood," make up the most of his rhymes. But the present book, With Reed and Lyre, gives evidence of more serious intent. The graver poems are, however, scarcely as good of their kind as some of the lighter ones, and in neither of these is the author as good as