"Well, it seems that Shelton had been making love to her in a desultory fashion, on and off, all through the summer; and this fellow Lopez, the horse thief, who was an old flame, grew tremendously jealous. She was ambitious, it seems, but she still loved the Mexican-and to satisfy him, and still retain her hold upon the rich American, she consented to a secret marriage. This bit of girlish diplomacy, of course, was well calculated to untangle the snarl into which her love and her desire for wealth had led her. This went on for some time-about a month, I believe-and poor Shelton, who was dying, got it into his head that the girl cared for him more than was good for her peace of mind.

There is no doubt that she did nurse him very tenderly-but I do not believe that he thought very much of her at first; no more, at any rate, than, one always admires a clever, handsome woman of that sort. She is said to be very beautiful. I cannot say as to that, never having seen her. You were admitted to her presence, and so are better qualified to speak?" "She is the most perfectly beautiful woman who ever lived, I think. But I am eager to hear the rest of your story."

"You shall hear it, then, forthwith-but allow me to say that you are a remarkably handsome woman yourself, my dear, and a remarkably generous one, too. The upshot. of poor Shelton's cogitations on the subject was that he proposed marriage to EduardaI believe that is what they call her. She did not accept him—she had not fallen quite low enough for that, yet-but neither did she reject him. She temporized-and he, knowing himself dying, and wishing to pro

vide well for her future, urged the matter more and more. Then, just as she was about to consent, came the killing of the horse-thieves, the finding of the marriage certificate, and a grand expose. She confessed her duplicity to poor Shelton, I believe-although Newman's narrative is a trifle cloudy at this point. Anyway, it is certain that Shelton knew it, and still desired to marry her. To this, however, she would. not consent. She is a Roman Catholic, you know, and they have peculiar notions about such things. The fret and worry of the whole thing threw her into a brain fever -the condition in which we found herbut the Newmans, who seem to have been good people, despite their lack of polish, spared poor Shelton a knowledge of that fact. I believe they told him that she was visiting friends, but am not certain. At any rate, her absence during the last few days was plausibly accounted for. There was one thing, however, that Shelton could and did do. He made a will leaving her all his property, and died in the firm belief that she had before her a brilliant future. His idea was that we should take her East with us and introduce her among our people. This idea he expressed in a letter left for me--for personally he did not mention her to me and of course I should have been pleased to comply with his request; only there was an obstacle.'

"And that obstacle ?"

"Was the girl herself. She refused utterly to leave California."

"Do you know what she proposes doing?'

I saw Newman in town to-day, and he told me that he had brought his niece up

with him. She will enter the convent here, and, after the proper time has elapsed, will take the vail. Would you have believed it ?" "I do not know. Roman Catholics do strange things at times. What becomes of the money?"

educated back East, when he is old enough. She designs him for one of the learned professions, I believe, and has made me trustee of his fortune."

"Rather a responsibility, is it not?"

"Yes, but I will accept it, for poor Jack's sake. He was fond of the little fellow, it seems."

"What sort of a boy is it?"

"Oh, a fine, manly little chap enough. A little given to freshness-but he will mend of that. Certainly he has a brilliant future, for Shelton must have left very nearly a hundred thousand."

66

Quite too much for any one person to have, too."

Softly, my dear. You have nearly as much yourself and I am but a trifle behind. you. And now," raising his hat, "if you will excuse me, I am due at the nunnery at half past two. There are, you know, certain preliminaries to my trusteeship."

Bowing to her with punctilious courtesy, he walked down the piazza again and out into the rare summer sunshine of Santa Barbara.

How few, alas, how very few married men are courteous to the wives of their bosoms. S. N. Sheridan, Jr.

THE progress of the doctrine of Evolution well illustrates the usual course through which a scientific truth must pass. Hints of the idea, guesses that struck close to it, are found occasionally in ancient writers, but they lacked the data to enable them to make a clear generalization. The progress of knowledge in geology, zoology, and in embryology, gradually furnished the materials of the Evolutionist, till at the beginning of the century Lamarck formulated the doctrine in a logical shape, and offered in explanation of it his theory of Conscious Effort, which has recently been revised and is held by men eminent in science. Lamarck's statement of Evolution, however, met with no welcome, even in the scientific world. Who was this Lamarck, that he should dispute the authority of the great Cuvier in his special territory? Thus a sneer was Lamarck's only reward, and he died unrecognized and in poverty. Research, however, continued, and the seed of Evolu

tion, once sown, had life in it. Darwin and Wallace, working independently, arrived at the same point of acceptance of the theory; and when the Origin of Species was published in 1859, it satisfied scientific men that it opened the most important discussion that they had known since the days of Newton. It is impossible to give here any outline of that discussion, and it would be unnecessary, if possible; for it is the whole history of science for the last twenty-five years. All positions regarding the hypothesis have been taken, and great names are found on every side. Men have sounded the depths of the sea for bathybius; others have climbed the Alps to conduct experiments regarding spontaneous generation. The whole earth has been searched, and all sciences have been laid under contribution. No such discussion has ever been possible before, and it is hard to see how a wider one can be possible hereafter.

The general reading public, meanwhile,

has been deeply stirred. That portion of it that likes to be considered "advanced," took up Evolution eagerly in extreme forms, holding it as established fact, while even its defenders claimed it only as a theory to be tested. The great mass of the world, however, looked upon it with suspicion. The Bible was brought out, and when read in its preconceived interpretations, was found to be antagonistic to the new hypothesis. All the weight of the pulpit and religious press was at once arrayed in opposition, heaping the odium theologicum on the heads of the innovators. Men versed in science so little as to know nothing of its methods and its standpoints attacked the idea with such weapons as they had-distortion, mis-quotation, ridicule, and appeals to prejudice. It was represented that if the doctrine were true, the Church must fall, and man be left without hope.

But as the day continued to dawn, it became evident that some concesssion must be made, and it was discovered that even if the doctrine were established, there would yet be room for religion. The Bible was re-read to see how it might be interpreted so as to include the new thought. A shoal of books offering various methods of harmonizing religion and science appeared. This change of public sentiment has followed the scientific discussion; for it was seen that the tide was following constantly in one direction, till at the present time scientific men are no longer engaged in discussing whether or no species were evolved from a common stock, but the question now is how were species evolved from their common stock. As the most distinguished scientist on this Coast, Professor Joseph Le Conte, puts it, "there is no longer a school of Evolutionists among scientific men, any more than there is a school of Gravitationists." cannot be said that there is common consent as yet on the limits of the doctrine. It is held in the thorough-going form of making the whole universe to have been

It

evolved from primal chaos, and counting all life, including man, body and soul, with all his works, as but products of the process, which is to continue to its highest point, when a period of dissolution, its converse, is to set in till chaos returns and the cycle begins anew. It is held in the strictly limited form of granting that all species of animals and plants were produced by its means from a life germ specially placed on the earth in the fullness of time by the Creator, but denying that man, or at least the spiritual man, is anything other than the immediate creation of God.

In this statement, Darwinism is not to be confounded with Evolution. Evolution is held by all scientists of note in the world, excepting perhaps Principal Dawson, but Darwinism is denied by all but a limited number, and is not strictly insisted upon by Darwin himself. Organic Evolution is the doctrine that differing species are derived. by modification from common ancestors. Darwinism is an explanation of this doctrine by teaching that the chief means of this modification have been the Struggle for Existence, which preserves the favorable points of chance variation; or Natural Selection, as the process is called. It is believed by most scientists that this explanation is inadequate, and needs to be supplemented largely in order to account for the facts. Isolation, Neo-Lamarckianism, or the theory of Effort, and a better understanding of the variation of offspring by exploring the laws of Heredity-these are the directions from which help is expected.

Still from the pulpit and from the public generally, come traces of the old opposition to Evolution, but the old taunts have lost their freshness and their force, the old ridicule falls flat. Some examples of its survival are found in the books that are the immediate cause of this article.

One of them is the publication of the The World and the Logos. By Hugh Miller Thompson. S. T. D., LL. D.. Assistant Bishop of Mississippi. New York: G. P. Putnam's Son's. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Strickland and Pierson,

Bedell Lectures delivered by the Assistant Bishop of Mississippi on Founder's Day at Gambier, the seat of the Ohio Theological Seminary, and of Kenyon College. Of course the worthy bishop is bent on "justifying the ways of God to man," and he imports into what should be, if undertaken at all, a calm, impartial argument, a warmth of feeling and a loyalty to his understanding of the interests of the Church that do credit to his heart. It is impossible to follow the course of his argument here. He is very sure that "Survival of the Fittest' has nothing to do with creation of species. Indeed, its operation, if one examine, would be to render mutation of species impossible." "What enables the dog to sur

vive on the principle must be that he becomes in some direction more of a dog." And the good prelate does not see that here he has conceded the argument, and that, of course, if the dog is becoming more of a dog and has been becoming more of a dog, there must have been a time when he was something very different from a dog. Again, the story is told of the head of a child's china doll, found twenty-five feet below the surface of the ground in New Orleans, in strata calculated by geologists to be from fifty thousand to a hundred thousand years old. From this the dictum is drawn: "There is nothing so uncertain as scientific theories, except scientific facts." Thus, all the evidence of geology goes for naught! It will be seen that the book is not worth much as a contribution to scientific literature.

Of a little higher grade in this respect is the book of Rev. George D. Armstrong, Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Norfork, Virginia, Ex-professor of Chemistry and Geology in Washington and Lee University. Evolution is given a somewhat fairer statement in this book, but the attitude of the author is that of stating but to refute;

The two Books of Nature and Revelation Collated. By Geo. D. Armstrong, D. D. New York: Funk and Wagnals. 1886.

and in the permanence of species, which he establishes to his own satisfaction, he finds a fatal objection to the doctrine. The book is controversial in its tone, which is sufficient condemnation of a book of this kind. None the less, it is an improvement on Bishop Thompson's book.

It will be noticed that both of these books are from Southern pens, and it is true that in that part of our country public sentiment is far behind that of the North on this question, as is proved by these books and the recent trial of Professor Woodrow for heresy in believing in Evolution, by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. South. There may still be heard the ancient gibe, "Darwin may be descended from a monkey, but I'm not." In the North, people and pulpit have arrived at a different frame of mind. Witness the following from a book of sermons, by a clergyman preaching to an orthodox church. 'No hymn of praise is more enkindling to devout rapture than the Nebular Hypothesis; and to a religious mind, there is no more religious book than The Origin of Species." "Is the Scripture to blame that when it points us back into the past eternity, or ever there were signs and seasons, or days, or years, we have had no more apprehension of the nature of the subject than to try to time creation by an eight-day clock?" And yet Mr. Bacon is sufficiently severe on the "atheist religion," wherein is "no soul, no sin, no Savior, and no God but incandescent hydrogen, and great is gas!" He works out a somewhat ingenious corollary of Evolution to this effect: If consciousness, will, and benevolence in man are simply forms of matter or modes of motion, as they must be in the materialist's view, then there may, and if may, then must, have been in past eternity a time when all the matter and motion in the universe was in the form of Consciousness, Will, and Love. "There can be no

2 The Simplicity that is in Christ. Sermons byLeonard Woolsey Bacon, New York: Funk and Wag nals 1886.

bridge from the material over to the spiritual that is not, in every sense, just as much a bridge from the spiritual over to the material." The sermons in this book that are on other subjects than Evolution are well worth reading, and would be worth noticing here, if other books did not claim attention.

The books so far treated have been by reverend hands. Here is one from that of a physician, Evolution versus Involution. 'The polemical form of the title does not belie the contents of the book which is devoted to a refutation of Herbert Spencer and all other agnostics, pantheists, and atheists. All of these Dr. Rred insists on putting in the same category, despite any protest they may make on the point. He He makes the discovery that nothing can be evolved (that is unrolled) that was not involved or included in the previous condition. In this view evolution means simplification, or outward expression of hidden tendencies, while Spencer's increasing complexity must be obtained by a process of involution. The chicken, Dr. Rred explains, is far less complex than the formless protoplasm in the germ of the egg, because that protoplasm contained somehow in itself all the laws by which the chicken was formed. Since, however, Dr. Rred's chicken produces further eggs, it will be seen that his doctrine lends a new interest to the ancient question as to which existed first, chicken or egg. Dr. Rred's mental attitude is hardly that of the seeker for truth. Indeed he admits that so sure is he, on the grounds of its practical bearing, that Theism is truer than Atheism, that should reason lean to the other side, he would doubt the value of the reasoning faculty. It is somewhat refreshing in a skeptical age, to find a man so thoroughly grounded in the faith. Doubt seems to be no part of this author's make up. The confident tone of his mind may be seen from the calm way in which he assumes as a scientific fact that the government of the

1 Evolution versus Involution. By Arze Z. Rred. New York: James Pott & Co. 1885.

United States is the topmost reach of civilization. Of England he cheerfully remarks: "In England the government has outgrown its name, and a republic might now be established without the shedding of a drop of blood. The chrysalis still remains attached to the fully developed insect, but these slender threads will soon be sundered and the new republic will rise on its glittering wings to higher regions of development. The abolition of primogeniture and all titles. would result in a natural collapse of the privileged class, and this would lead by easy steps to the setting aside of the throne, without confusion or turmoil of any kind. The present incumbent will, no doubt, be premitted to retain the shadow of royalty, but her grandson will never, in any probability, sit upon an English throne." Dr. Rred, it remains to be told, is as confident that Evolution is the mode by which the Creator works, as he is of all his other positions.

The one valuable book' of all at hand that treat on Evolution, is that by Dr. Conn, Instructor of Biology at Wesleyan University. Its value lies in this, that here is a good example of the true attitude of mind in which scientific questions should be approached. Doctor Conn, it is to be supposed, has his private convictions, and doubtless they are as strong and as orthodox as those of any of the writers that have just been considered; but his object in writing this book is not to enforce his convictions on religion, or even on Evolution, but to set before the reader the doctrine of Evolution and all its bearings, in full light. The arguments in its favor are developed, and the objections are fairly stated, with the explanations them that are offered from any source. The presentations are so fair, and the style so lucid, that the reader feels when he finishes the book that he has been put in a position

of

2 Evolution of To-day. By H. W. Conn, Ph. D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Strickland & Pierson,