distance. That quick call note of recognition is ever to be heard, that "tweet-tweet," so unlike what one would expect from the greatest whistler of them all.

Compare the cardinals with the robins. The robin-redbreast plucked a thorn from Christ's crown, was stained by His blood, and thus won protection; but our robins, unfortunately, are not included in this benefit. Still, they are fond of us. They are like affectionate but diffident children, pleased to be with us as long as we do not notice them too directly. Pay no attention to them and they hop along contentedly not ten feet from you; speak to them and they promptly run away.

And then once more, there are the wrens and the catbirds. The wrens love the thrill of experimenting, of playing at danger. They will fly through a group on the porch and even, for a second, perch on the back of a chair. And the catbirds, when you are working in the shrubbery, will come almost within arm's length. They are really the most friendly of them all, but they, too, are discriminating; they will first test you, and then, if you are found worthy, they will give you their full confidence. The other day one was with me, entertaining me with song, when I happened to get rather too near to his nest. He suddenly broke off and called to his mate, who was setting, with a sharp little "Anhh! Anhh!" as much as to say, "Keep your eye open!”—and then he went on with his music.

Does this caution deny friendship? Not a bit of it! I am well satisfied. I give these morsels of flying life all my affection, and they repay me a

thousand times, if only with their songs; so brief, so intensely beautiful, that even repetition long continued does not cloy. Mr. G. J. Nathan says that "one of our most persistent legends is that the noises of birds are musical." Well, then that is a good legend. These latter-day critics are most amusing in their effort to shock, and, also, in their childlike belief that their contradictions and naughtiness must be admired-even when condemned. Such bad children they are! When I read their articles I seem to hear always a loud noise, a shrill whistling and catcalling and a banging of desk lids; I see blackboards covered with spitballs and with caricatures of "Tee-cher."

But, forgetting Mr. Nathan, how lucky we are that the birds do not pick up the popular airs. Suppose one had to listen all day to bits from the musical comedies, or possibly, again, to some old crow trying to recall "Beautiful Lady" or "Sweet Marie." Edmund Kean's great grandfather, Henry Carey, wrote "God Save the King" and then hanged himself. Suppose the English sparrows should whistle this now. Or suppose that this catbird, trying experiments outside of my window, should break out with the "Star Spangled Banner”— up I should have to get and judging from his present resolution I might be kept standing for long.

I wonder if blue jays sing. One passed through here the other day and caused much excitement. The whole bird population was out to get him off the premises. And yet for myself I should have been glad to have had a chat with the invader. There is surely a greatness of soul in this ruthless bird. It was most ad

mirable the calmness with which he sat on the edge of the bird-bath, the angry imprecations from the neighboring trees all unheeded. Here was an Attila maybe, but certainly no Nero. It was on a Saturday, too, and every one knows that blue jays spend Friday with the Devil-he could have given me the very latest news of a most interesting region. What a good-looking chap he was, and what a beautiful coat. He reminded me of the Duchess of Bedford, in honor of whose riding-habit George II changed the color of the naval officers' uniform from scarlet to blue.

But, as I am reminded just now by a clamor of protests in the distance, we do not have to wait for blue jays to stir us. We have degenerate neighbors who go in for cats. Listen to those robins-"Help! Help! Come quickly, come quickly!" How instantly do these birds recognize their enemy. Even in the woods, where there is a concealing carpet of spreading May-apple leaves, they do not have to look twice. The rabbits, for example, do not give them even a scare, the birds seem perfectly at home with them, and yet these cottontails room with us only-we have no vegetable garden, they take all of their meals out. I get fooled myself sometimes, but the birds, never.

Of course, a cat may be all right in its place say as an Egyptian mummy-but I have gone back to

my boyhood and have constructed a sling-shot. I am pretty good with a sling-shot. But why are cats, anyway? When I find a little heap of feathers under a bush, I could demolish the whole feline race. And why, oh why, was a cat ever given nine lives? A tailor, they say, is but the ninth of a man-Queen Elizabeth, you will remember, once received a deputation of eighteen tailors with the greeting, "Good morrow, gentlemen both." But consider a moment. Counting one man as one life, if it takes nine tailors to make one man, and a cat has nine lives, what then is the relative insurance risk of a tailor and a cat? Is a cat equal to eighteen tailors or to eighty-one? I do not seem to be able to figure that out. But why should a cat be given any advantage— surely a tailor is more useful? The ways of nature are strange.

A

HUNDRED and fifty years ago the farmers, frontiersmen and tenants who composed ninetyeight per cent of the population of the North American wilderness, engaged in one of the great idealistic movements of history and, after unimagined toils, freed themselves and their posterity from the cramping British commercial system of the late eighteenth century. But the cost of the struggle represented in State and confederate debts was so great that no man dreamed that they could be paid in full; yet without payment the second estate of the thirteen colonies was apt to be worse than the first. To pay a part of the debt and to prevent anarchy, the representatives of the farmers who had urged revolution and of other farmers who had held back and warned men against independence, formulated and adopted one of the model constitutions of modern times. It was a farmer's constitution, a farmer's republic-ideas of social and economic equality instinct in the thought and habits of most of the three million men and women who supported or acquiesced in the régime set up in 1789. A crushing debt was about to be fixed upon the doubting community. Washington took upon himself the presidency of what the world

called the wild and dangerous American democracy, gathering about him a few hesitating advisers. How might a debt of a hundred millions, greater then than a hundred billions would now be, be discharged by a people whose exports did not amount to the interest due each year, England and the continent of Europe slow to open their markets?

At that moment the French people entered upon their great revolution, their wheat harvest so poor that famine threatened the excited country; a year or two later the nations of Europe became engaged in the twenty-year conflict which ended only in the overthrow of Napoleon in 1815: a war that involved the whole of Europe and consumed the goods of two generations.

American farmers began at once to supply the foodstuffs. The very first year of Washington's administration showed a remarkable increase of American exports; the fourth year the volume of exports surpassed anything ever dreamed of, thirty million dollars worth a year or six times as much as had ever been known before! And the farmers bought in return more than thirty million dollars worth of imports a year. Was it a miracle?

Alexander Hamilton easily ar

ranged his financial system. He laid a gentle tariff upon the returning imports and promptly found his treasury filled with good money. He funded a national debt of eighty millions and the States funded or paid in lands debts amounting to half as much more. With wheat and beef and pork selling at unheard-of prices, the insatiable European market ever calling for more, there was greater wealth in the thirteen States than men knew what to do with. It was then that Hamilton talked of having smitten upon the rock of the national resources; and Washington more modestly declared: "The earth has yielded her fruits bountifully. No city, town, village or farm but exhibits increasing wealth and prosperity." It was warring Europe that started the great republic with flying colors. The toil of three million farmer folk, the fertile fields of a new country did the rest, though politicians were not bound to make public declaration of the facts. It was not a miracle, but a world war.

23

In June, 1815 the Napoleonic wars came to an end. After a moment of dazed prosperity, the prices of American farm products began to fall. Cotton that had sold for thirty-one cents a pound in 1814, sold for fifteen cents in 1821 and nine cents in 1829. Flour in wartime had brought twelve dollars a barrel. In 1821, it sold at four dollars and was only a little higher in 1829. Tobacco had been worth seven dollars a hundred pounds in 1814; in 1821 it was worth only five dollars a hundred, the price in 1829 hardly better. Beef and pork and forest products were even lower

in value. Nor were the returns of industry and finance much better. In 1819 the Bank of the United States failed, nearly all other banks closing their doors at the same time. The price of flannels fell from ninetythree cents a yard in 1814 to thirtyseven cents in 1829; shoes that sold in wartime for $1.56, sold in 1829 for $1.42; and cotton sheetings fell from fifty-eight cents to fifteen cents a yard. It was a period of unprecedented distress, business and industrial men suffering somewhat less than the others.

Farmers were in despair. Half the population of some counties in western Massachusetts emigrated to the wilderness beyond the Alleghenies, leaving homes, fences and cleared lands unoccupied or in the possession of old men or unambitious remnants of the people. In eastern Virginia a farm sold for the price of a year's rent-masters and slaves alike trekking to the free lands of the southwest. A little after Jefferson's death his beautiful estate of Monticello which had cost $25,000 sold at $2800. Farmers accustomed to prosperity through nearly a generation suddenly found themselves reduced to the necessity of trying their fortunes with the Indians and the wild life of the great woods. It was deflation.

But the story of industry for the period is different. Investments that had been made in wartime stood idle for a while, European goods crowding American goods off the market. There was loud clamor for public relief, for stopping the importation of cheap goods from England, the recent enemy. The mill owners went to Washington; they asked Congress

to guarantee protection to their investments. They organized associations and set up newspapers in their interest. James Monroe, the Virginia farmer, with all his lands under mortgage, liked to talk of his clothes made in American mills. John C. Calhoun, South Carolina farmer, urged national assistance to his distressed friends in New England; Andrew Jackson, a farmer-general, would protect American industrialists in order that the country might be self-sufficing in "the next war"; and Henry Clay would protect industry in order to thwart wicked Englishmen, create a home market for farmers and then build a road to the market. Everybody would help industrial men; and a protective tariff of some twenty per cent ad valorem was cheerfully laid; the proceeds were expected to pay the cost of the last war and build roads into the wilderness where the farmers had gone. It was the first governmental relief to business, a privilege to one class of citizens to be paid for by the rest of the community through higher prices for goods not made on the farms.

A guarantee to business almost always demands renewal. In this case, the comparative prosperity of industrial concerns led at once to the setting up of many new plants, and in ten years there was distress both because there were so many industrial goods and because the British had, as usual, found a way to increase their imports into the United States. Industrial men renewed their appeals to Congress in 1824, 1826 and 1828, supported by loud demands in the press and an unprecedented propaganda. Relief was granted in the form of a protec

tive tariff of fifty per cent ad valorem on imports; and the American market became a monopoly for the manufacturers, great sums of money being prematurely invested in mills, water powers and machinery, towns growing quickly into cities. Abbot Lawrence, a noble business man of Massachusetts, wrote Daniel Webster when the latter had changed from a free-trader to a protectionist: "This bill, if adopted as amended, will keep the South and the West in debt to New England the next hundred years."

In debt for the next hundred years! The young republic was too young to permit the great privilege now granted to the East, the millowners, to stand unchallenged. Calhoun had changed from a protectionist to a free-trader and with him every other Southern representative in Congress but four. Ominous, particularly as the Southerners had exacted guarantee of their privilege of holding slaves when the Constitution was written. And from 1828 to 1846 there was a violent conflict at every session of the national legislature. ture. The privilege of the East presented a solid front to the privilege of the South; and the West began its great rôle of umpire. The Southerners by the help of the farmers of the West won in 1846, and the protective policy was abandoned in principle if not in practice, the East restive, the South always a little afraid of its allies beyond the Alleghanies. But there was prosperity almost unparalleled-broken only with the beginning of the next great war: a struggle of the South versus the East, Westerners taking the part of the East, doubtfully.