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lecture. Huxley was at his best. His note was one of restrained, well warranted triumph. One pregnant suggestion in the lecture was that "if the doctrine of evolution had not existed, palæontology must have invented it." And the same remark applies to morphology and embryology. Huxley's closing words were congratulations to Darwin that "he had lived long enough to outlast detraction and opposition and to see that the stone that the builders rejected had become the head stone of the corner." Indeed it had. On the twenty-sixth of April, 1882, Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey.

In the world which he left "old things had passed away, all things were become new." Theologians of the liberal school, from bishops to curates, accept the proof supplied by an ever increasing number of discoveries that man was not specially created. In their attempts to save the church from shipwreck they have jettisoned nearly all the cargo of beliefs which were held to be "essential to salvation." The courageous Dean Inge represents a growing body of clergymen who have "relegated miracles to the sphere of pious opinion" and who accept "the development of life from the non-living as a fact." How much further they will go in rejection of the remaining "essentials" it will be interesting to see.

Huxley had never been physically a strong man, and the last of a series of breakdowns compelled his retirement from all official appointments in 1885. But the ten years of life which remained to him were full of activity. What subject most attracted him is shown in this extract from a letter to

me.

"My wiry constitution has unexpectedly weathered the storm and I have every reason to believe that with renunciation of the Devil and all his works, that is, public speaking, dining and being dined etc., my faculties may be unimpaired, for a good spell yet. And whether my lease is long or short I mean to devote them to the work I began in the paper on the Evolution of Theology. You will see in the next Nineteenth a paper on the evidence of miracles which I think will be to your mind."

Mr. Smalley tells a story bearing on Huxley's strenuousness. When they were in New York, Huxley one morning stood watching the tug-boats tearing up and down the harbor, when he said, "If I were not a man, I should like to be a tug."

From the nature of the subjects on which he worked during his closing years polemics could not be excluded. He agreed that "they are always more or less an evil." But to fold hands when error and obscurantism pursue their baneful course is a greater evil. Hence the succession of controversies in which Huxley was involved, chiefly with Dean Wace and Gladstone. They need not be touched on here. Two years before Huxley's death he revisited Oxford, the "adorable dreamer, home of lost causes," to deliver the Romanes Lecture, whose subject was evolution and ethics. His thesis was that the bitter struggle which runs throughout nature is, for the time being, checked by an ethic which has its roots in sympathy begotten of knowledge.

Describing Huxley as memory recalls the outer man, he was somewhat above the medium height, broadshouldered, of swarthy complexion,

due perhaps to the dash of Iberian mixture of which he speaks. Nose and forehead were alike broad; lips and chin close shaven; whiskers straggling; the long hair was brushed back; the eyes were keen and dark under eaves of eyebrows to match. The general expression would be described as leonine. Such was the fighter who tells us that he had made it a paramount duty "to smite all humbugs, to give a nobler tone to science; to set an example of abstinence from petty personal controversies; and toleration of everything but lying; to be indifferent as to whether the work is recognized as mine or not so long as it is done." Among the "counterfeit presentments" of him there is one bordering on the comic in Mr. Tuckwell's "Reminiscences of Oxford" which was taken at the time of his famous duel with Bishop Wilberforce.

He is dressed in a well creased frock-coat, with light waistcoat and trousers to match, a white necktie tied in a large bow, a silk top-hat in one hand, and an umbrella in the other, looking for all the world like a street preacher. Needless to add, the clothes belied the man.

His home life was ideal. Here I cannot refrain from touching on one of the most, if not the most, privileged times of my life. Until 1880 I had met Huxley only casually, chiefly at the house of Professor Clifford, the gifted mathematician and philosopher who died before the rich promise of his genius had full fruitage. It was not until I had ventured to send Huxley my book entitled "Jesus of Nazareth" that I came to know him with some degree of intimacy. In acknowledging it he said, "It was one that I had been longing to see, because in spirit matter and form it appears to me to be exactly

what people like myself have been wanting." Then, to my joy, he said: "We have a way of making Sunday evenings pleasant by seeing friends who come in without ceremony to 'tall tea' at half past six. It will give my wife and myself great pleasure if at any time you will join us." time you will join us." Needless to say that not many Sundays passed before I made quick steps to Number 4, Marlborough Place. A warm greeting from "Patter," as he was called by the youngsters, and Mrs. Huxley soon put me at ease. There beamed from them a welcome to a household whose note was freedom and simplicity. It was, as Huxley said to me, "a republic tempered by epigram." From time to time I met people there who represented the intellectual life of London. To name them would be to compile an index. All that one could wish to recall was what they talked about, but there was no "chiel's amang ye takin' notes" to "prent" them.

Of Huxley himself enough has been said. As for his wife, I recall his remark that, but for the demands of a large family, she would have made a name in literature. I treasure a privately printed copy of her "Poems," with her manuscript insertions. At Huxley's special request, the last three lines from her poem on "Browning's Grave" were inscribed on his tombstone:

"Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that

weep,

For God still giveth his beloved sleep, And if an endless sleep he wills-so best."

I will add this final word. It was well worth being born to have known Huxley.

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The Little-Landers

A Romantic Economic Adventure

BY GERTRUDE MATHEWS SHELBY

N the way to the forest farm

colony of Alderwood Manor, Washington, a head-line in the local paper caught my eye. "Mr. and Mrs. Rob Dawson, Little-Landers, Parents of Fine Twin Boys."

In that land of high and intensive productivity human young arriving in pairs seemed but logically to follow the example of the vegetable kingdom, in which two blades replacing the single spear is no mere figure of speech. Yet the significant thing was the phrase, "little-landers." While a much bemoaned and well advertised exodus from farms has steadily gathered headway for twenty years, here was a small, but sturdy, movement out to the land.

Since in the year 1923 alone a million people left our farms, it seemed eminently important to find out in what circumstances people could remain upon them. Will that million be replaced by tenants, larger farms, and more machines? Can machines and tenants be satisfactorily substituted for intelligent, land-loving owners? Our nation has been built chiefly by farm-bred people, sturdy, sincere, independent, competent. In this never-ending exodus not only the poor and thriftless farmers have joined, but far too large a proportion of the

very American type which has contributed the finest values to rural life.

In the face of a national problem, therefore, it was interesting, if true, that at Alderwood, in North Carolina, and also in California, well tested means had been found which, if introduced generally, might have prevented no small part of the migration.

Sixteen miles from Seattle we emerged from a grim, ghostly, cut-over forest into a great clearing, to see a serene, pretty, lively community, literally a ready-made, planted farm village. Here was no farm isolation, but a well centered colony. Fifteen hundred little-landers, hospitable, kindly, averaging young, and invariably busy, lived in tasteful bungalows on five- or ten-acre plots. Numerous go-carts bespoke the hostages they had given to fortune, not invariably in pairs.

The country-side itself was white with immense flocks of snowy Leghorns whose plumage contrasted pleasantly with glowing emerald patches, almost rhythmically repeated, of thousands of headed kale. For we had come to "Seattle's egg basket," where poultry, highly specialized, is the chief industry.

Alderwood Manor lies within a veritable empire of 340,000 acres

belonging to the vastly wealthy Puget Mill Company, which operates forty businesses. Once a superlatively lovely fir forest, decades ago this land was logged off, leaving a bleak, desolate stumpage. The bases of giant Douglas firs, unlike the disintegrating cypress of our Southern swamps, stand as though petrified. Clearing is costly and difficult. Lone-handed pioneers cannot clear and make a living simultaneously.

Mere possession of an unproductive kingdom tends to force economic statesmanship. That huge domain particularly interested one of the company officials, W. A. Irwin. He developed a conviction that the solution was to take the pioneering out of homesteading, to colonize not only to make possible a city life in the country, but to start and standardize an industry under good business organization, and sell people not mere acreage, but a business all ready to set going.

Soil experts said that most of this cut-over land was suitable only for limited uses. They recommended chicken-raising, berry- and nut-culture. Why not, Mr. Irwin planned, make poultry the year-round industry, produce only the best, and work up a steady market? He proposed to put in good roads, water, electricity, drainage, a school, and a community center before a single settler was sought.

Under his persuasion the company intelligently set aside ten millions for the job, and started the first colony midway between Everett and Seattle on a fast electric line. They believed they could earn six per cent. on their investment, that the increment on land values would yield a handsome profit, and that opening up territory now idle must inevitably add propor

tionate prosperity to their other enterprises, since the people brought in would need their products. If this was successful, a method of developing their vast land-holdings was found.

Farmstead engineers laid out a fine demonstration farm, and subdivided the tract suitably into small holdings. Men with rigs for clearing, economical to use, but too costly for settlers to buy, blasted the stumps from one acre at least of every plot to provide the prospective little-lander with enough space for house, garden, and chickenyard for the first year or two. A competent architect drew good plans for low-cost small houses. A standard, inexpensive poultry-house was designed on a unit plan easily added to. Experts on berries, nuts, and chickens advised concerning the suitable varieties. One hundred miles of good roads were made, later presented to the State. A small inn and community club-house were built. A year of gestation, and the baby village was born.

Little houses appeared like a rash. As the big barn of the Middle West is a sign of prosperity, so in Alderwood is more chicken-house than dwelling. Would-be settlers, without sufficient cash, deposited fifty dollars on a plot worth, for example, $1850, and paid instalments until a thousand stood to their credit on the books. The company maintains a building fund. When this point was reached, the purchaser could have a loan from the company sufficient to put up a tiny bungalow. Lumber and materials were sold at reasonable prices. Both men and women often kept their jobs in the city until thoroughly established in the new business.

The heart of the colony is the great demonstration farm, with its suitable,

trim white buildings and its feathered hosts, also white, showily disporting themselves in the chicken-runs, which are made doubly useful by rows of slender, prim filbert-trees that bear by the third year. These trees, spaced to a hair's-breadth, beguile the eye by neat checking. Through their latticed pattern move the flocks in creamy clouds.

Here, not from books, but from birds, all comers learn up-to-date poultry culture from experts. Settlers with previous experience on the land are preferred, but the beginner has the best of help at hand. Chicken clinics are held, courses with demonstrations by living creatures. Enormous incubators, scientific brooders, trap-nests, pens, and every modern equipment is used. Beginning at daybreak the day after the chicks come out of the 55,000-egg incubator, and every day thereafter for six weeks, the little-lander students get practical experience in the actual care of baby chicks. The company regards it as part of its job to teach the settler the art of making an income from his investment.

The great demonstration flocks wear party-colored, polyandrous weddingrings around their lemon-yellow ankles. Hens are not pets at Alderwood. Ticketed, mated, trap-nested, fed with green food the year round, any hen with ability to scratch another morsel or produce another egg lacks no encouragement. Both the central farm and little-landers aid nature by installing electric light in the poultry lairs, thus lengthening the working hours of the whole brood.

"Babe Ruth, the hen that makes a home run every day," was produced at Alderwood. She broke all records by

laying 326 eggs in one year. The methods at the farm have been brilliantly successful. Flock exploits with twelve hundred birds show results more remarkable than Babe Ruth's individual achievement. Little-landers buy from the farm sturdy chicks with breeding that relates directly to egg-production and their owners' pocket-books. Settings of special eggs, also nut trees, feed, and certain supplies are furnished at reasonable prices.

$2

Do the settlers earn a living? According to their ability, the price they paid for the land, and their measure of good fortune, little-landers have profited. Few have failed, yet there is no guaranty of success. Numerous early settlers arrived at their third year owning from 1000 to 1500 birds, which brought in from $1000 to $3000 a year. A Seattle stenographer made $2500 in her second year, and could leave her job. A man of seventy-eight paid for his five acres in two years out of his income. Exceptional poultrymen, by working day and night, have made real money. One had the third year a gross income of $1400, the fourth year $22,000, more than half net profit. But later comers, who have increasingly paid more for their land, face a greater handicap.

These settlers tell you that income is not the whole story, that the advantages of the wholesome life make in contentment. A beautiful school, an accessible high school, churches, a three-story, brick Masonic hall, amusement-places, and the genuinely charming community club offer occupation for leisure. Neighborliness marks the social life. Ambitious thrift, team

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