THE HOMES OF CLUBS. at a Southern Sunday-school convention, a committee was appointed to find the best place in the South for an annual Sunday-school assembly. Mr. Moffat presented the claims of Monteagle, and, after visiting North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia, the committee chose this place. This assembly has now a national reputation. There are one hundred and twenty-six buildings on the assembly grounds and new ones are added each year. In August, '96, there were nearly two thousand people here. The Monteagle Assembly has been called "The Thought Exchange of the South." It is non-sectarian, non-sectional, without money endowment, self-supporting. To the original idea has been added a Normal Teachers' Institute, summer schools of science, art, music, language, literature, oratory, and physical culture. In 1893 Monteagle Reading Clubs were formed and a course of reading suggested. A part of the program is devoted to lectures interesting to 35 club readers. The C. L. S. C. has a representative here. The village has a resident population of about eight hundred. There is a good public school and three churches. One of the first pastors (Congregational) was the Rev. Read Roseboro', father of the authoress, Miss Viola Roseboro'. Rev. W. P. Du Bose, D.D., Dean of the Theological Department of the "University of the South," has been for twenty years the pastor of the Episcopal congregation. "The Church of the Holy Comforter " (Episcopal), though small, is one of the most beautiful in the state. Monteagle Assembly," "Fairmount School for Girls," and the "University of the South" at Sewanee, the three representative institutions on this mountain top, are enjoying now the most prosperous conditions in their history. Everything looks hopeful for the little community whose club has come into the federation of HomeCulture Clubs. 66 J. Weir. THOUGHTS AND VIEWS. 0 UR modern day does not favor circulated first among certain reading salutatories. In this eager land, clubs and later to a general public. where there are not only many From this it has grown to be a bunch magazines but many scores of them, of letters, a symposium. Its design, with "lovely fighting [or writing] all however, is still to offer all its uses in along the line," and where a spirit of entertainment, even of fesExit and the perishing make their exits tivity, the spirit of those symposia at without valedictories, proba- which Socrates and his friends, reclinbly the best salutatory is simply to fall ing on their elbows, ate, drank, and to work. intellectually discoursed. Enter. ners Yet, on the other hand, the day of sincere courtesies is surely not gone by. What is rightly done for "manis always something besides mere manners, finer than mere manners; and when, as now, a periodical of even such modest pretentions as THE LETTER henceforth THE SYMPOSIUM-without warning changes its name, shape, bulk, type, and Coverdesign, it certainly owes a word or two, at least of thanks, to the friends it made in the days-or the fifteen months—when it was an infant in their arms. If so, let one of those words be this: that our monthly has not changed hands, nor its purposes, nor its standards. It has greatly enlarged its field, but it has not left one field and gone into another. It is still in the field of its first choice and proposes there to stay. Its standards are the highest, its purposes are clear, and it has this well approved promise of a successful career, that its field is its own, hitherto unoccupied. At those feasts only men were guests. But that was only the difference of the times. This SYMPOSIUM is of and for the Home. Yet not for the home shut, but for the open, the wide-open home; for the home of the open door, the home which is itself a good neighbor; and for the home of the open window, the window which looks out with keen and healthy interest upon the whole world with all its activities and strifes, errors and achievements; a world worth while, and which counts itself worth while, only as it is a world of homes. Another word: THE SYMPOSIUM is for all the refinements and enlargements, artistic, scientific, literary, social, or religious, on their inexpensive side. It is for making them inexpensive. And especially it is for them as they broaden and strengthen the spirit of neighborship in the kindest, widest, biggest sense of the term. Furthermore, wherever readers are seeking, either solitarily, in family groups, or in social clubs, by reading. systematically in standard and classic THE SYMPOSIUM is accurately named, whether the word be taken books as well as in the literature of the in its modern or its ancient signifi- day and hour, to make reading for cance. THE LETTER was literally entertainment as profitable, and readand only a letter, an open letter ing for profit as entertaining, as they THOUGHTS AND VIEWS. may, THE SYMPOSIUM proposes to make itself a feast of reason, a guide to ordered thought, and a good investment of its every reader's time. And a last word: THE SYMPOSIUM does not propose to address itself to a certain type of home, either urban, suburban, or rural, only; not to the poor man's home alone, nor alone to the rich man's; not to the sumptuous, the refined, the uncultured, or the naked and barren home only; but to the home of any and every sort; and to do this in such a way as at the same moment to be entertaining to the untrained without being rude or illiterate, and interesting to the learned without being academical. And what THE SYMPOSIUM would have you wish for it, is what it would seek for you and your home; the wish uttered by Felix Adler when he planted a hemlock-spruce for its editor: "Vivat, crescat, floreat;" may it live, may it grow, may it flourish. Or as Sol Smith Russell said while he planted a linden hard by it: "Here's to your health and the health of all your families; may you "—and so forth. W E ENTER the field of editorial speculation at a moment when the air is throbbing with the din of a presidential campaign. We need not enter into the discussion of opposing policies but we should like to occupy a line or two with a certain quiet, fireside speculaCaldron. tive query by no means new, In the but which this vast commotion makes appropriate to the hour. Of what use are these ever recurring four-yearly struggles, with their great suspensions of commerce and credit? How came such a system to be conceived, and why should it continue? Every four years the answers to this are in order and worth while. First, the system was conceived by as wise and noble a company of patriots 37 as the world, after unnumbered experiments in every other possible direction, ever saw convened. Read their story! The money-question and the tariff-question seem to us exceptionally intricate and perplexing, even to highly trained minds. But when the founders of our government established this political system wherein it became obligatory to make, as it were, our whole government over again every fourth year, the facts upon which they based their action were as unsettled and as "burning" as any that vexes our great nation to-day. Men and communities, however friendly, are dangerous to one another the moment they begin to let their political relations go adrift. If this was true of old times and slow times how much more is it true of our own to-day! In the second place every four years brings into their first enjoyment of the suffrage a host of the nation's rising youth, and another host of immigrants, a great majority of whom, after all is said, have come to our land desiring to be good citizens. To these the recurrence of a presidential election every four years is not only an invaluable education, but a sacred right. Again, the quadrennial return of universal political struggle is a gigantic referendum. By it the nation is summoned to meet and grasp its responsibilities as a self-governing people, a vast, free democracy; not merely a myriad army of manufacturers, farmers, traders, and bankers, bent on material gains, but the sovereign custodians of their own lives, liberty, and happiness. The And once more; this "interruption. to business" has its good side. "interruption" is not nearly as destructive as it seems. Beyond question the chances to-day of a disastrous political outcome in November are already largely discounted. In these times our financial and political barks span the waves of fretful change and pitch and roll but little in their swell. The source of the present suspense is not panic, but prudence; it is not disaster, To be too impatient of them is to it is economy. In a word, the fre- begrudge ourselves a safe and prosperquency of these huge overturnings ous future. All of which we trust is has its foundations in the wisest recog- wholly consistent with a cordial admisnition of what society and human sion that we shall "all be glad when nature are in their saddest shortcom- this one is over." ings and in their finest possibilities. George W. Cable. IN THE READING WORLD. UST at this time of year when form- a reading-guide lies in the full list of al writing and speaking abound in authorities given at the head of each ness with which the world is returning to winter work, it is pleasant to find people planning or already started upon certain winter occupations with no preliminary word-flourish. This is the business-like way in which many who are in correspondence with the SYMPOSIUM, both individually and as united circles, are beginning their season of systematic reading. No small number of such have been active all summer. One group, for instance, reports a study of botany; another, general reading; and a third, the "Progressive Club" of Doniphan, Nebraska, has continued a course in English history, begun in the spring. The purpose of this club to carry the subject still further, and the almost simultaneous requests from a number of other correspondents for courses in English history have led to the preparation of the following outlines of these closely related subjects. They are wise who plan to take the subjects together, as neither can bestow its full measure of pleasure and profit without the other. Green's Short History of the English People is the most satisfactory guide in the history course. Gardiner's Student's History of England is also very serviceable in the same capacity. One special value of Green's history as |