"Well, ye see, it was so burnt that 'e thought it could niver be got right agin; so 'e 'ad a Lunnon man down to see it an' make another jest like it was. They say it cost him fifteen pound, and no one could have told the difference."

"And what became of the old one?" "E 'ad it mended so as to stand up all right, an' I painted it, an' it stood in the garden agin the tennis lawn where ye see it now-that's what become of it. I don't expect it'll fetch much now."

This was news. Giving the old fellow half-a-crown for "baccy" money, we retraced our steps more hastily than we had come.

Could this really be true? No, surely it could not. Still, we would at least have a look at the garden seat. A sharp walk brought us once more to the scene of the sale. The gate at the carriage entrance was open, and the purchases of the day were being removed. We passed in and walked round the house. There, against the tennis lawn, sure enough was a painted seat, its outlines curiously like the Sheraton settee sold that afternoon. A close inspection convinced us both that the old gardener was quite correct, and we determined to purchase it the next day when the garden and outdoor effects were to be offered. Accordingly, the next morning found The Pall Mall Magazine.

us quite excited at the outdoor sale. The seat went for five shillings and was duly conveyed to our hotel, where in an outhouse we both fell to, busily scraping off the paint from the legs. The old gardener had done his work well. Some four coats of paint, put on with no sparing hand, completely filled up the carving and covered the delicate lines of the wood-work; but it soon became apparent that this was indeed the genuine settee, and the other, the much-sold and muchknocked-out, sold on its known history and reputation, was the modern copy!

We afterwards heard that the "gang" knocked out a further sum of twenty pounds before finishing their tea, the "chairman" being the purchaser. In the London train, the "countrymen" having been got rid of, he and a solitary companion had a duel for it on the way to town, its final price running well into the hundreds!

Fortunately the damage to the settee was not so great as it might have been, and with a little professional attendance it was made to look presentable once more, though it had perforce to stand upon one artificial leg and support one artificial arm. Still, a Sheraton settee is a Sheraton settee, and it is not the least prized of Errington's possessions.

Godfrey J. Franks,

publican and Democratic parties formally acknowledge the urgency of the task, but in neither do party traditions and composition favor its execution. The problem is for the control of licentious capitalism, but the chief sinners sit as Republican Senators, or are active and munificent supporters of the Republican machine; the problem is for the extension of Federal power, but the "States rights" sentiments still dominate the majority of the Democratic party. Before both ancient parties stands the dread of the swift emergence of a Labor-Socialist movement, revolutionary in its aims and methods, a possibility always lurking in the near background of American politics.

The instinctive popular craving for a strong savior has given Mr. Roosevelt an opportunity, which he has seized and worked with marvellous energy and fertility of resource. Americans take any interesting man at his own valuation, and Mr. Roosevelt has convinced them, for the time, that he is a man sent by heaven to restore liberty. Recent events have furnished an heroic atmosphere for his "labors" in strangling hydras, bludgeoning giants, and cleansing stables. For the rapid succession of scandals, implicating the insurance business, the meat trade, the Standard Oil Trust, and railroad finance, and revealing in each instance most sinister relations between economic potentates and the machinery of government, focuses the whole attention of the nation upon the legislative efforts he inspired in the Congress which has just come to its end. His technical achievements in the legislative field have been considerable. His main attack was directed at the railroads, whose unchecked financial and industrial power stands out as the most conspicuous peril. The Railway Rate Act confers upon the Inter-State Commission the right to impose "rea

sonable" rates, subject to an appeal to the courts, and places restrictions upon the growing tendency of railroads to enter into mining, manufacturing, and commercial businesses. The Meat Inspection Bill and the Pure Food Bill were the direct outcome of the disclosure of monstrous abuses in the meat-packing and the drugs trades, and are otherwise significant as Federal developments of dubious constitutional validity. These and other acts in the sphere of domestic and foreign politics are adduced by Mr. Roosevelt's lieutenants as substantial fruits of statecraft, and evidences of his undiminished influence over the Legislature.

But there is another side. The rejection by the Senate of the Ship Subsidy Bill, and the failure of Congress to furnish protection for Child Labor— two measures strongly urged by the President-serve as illustrations of limits, political or constitutional, which the strongest President since Lincoln cannot transgress. Again, the solution of the California-Japan difficulty is very far from being the triumphant vindication of Federal authority it has sometimes been represented. For it seems tolerably clear that the formal submission of the Californian school authorities in consenting to admit Japanese children to equal educational facilities with Europeans, has been purchased by a provision inscribed in the Immigration Law, to be utilized for the exclusion of Japanese labor from the Pacific coast.

Even the legislation we have described, extending the industrial control of the central Government is of somewhat questionable efficacy. For, in order to secure the acceptance of his pièce de résistance, the Railway Rate Bill, Mr. Roosevelt had to concede an appeal to the law-courts which will certainly reduce, if it does not entirely destroy, the substance of the reforms.

Indeed, the great lesson of this Congress has been the clear exhibition of the possibility of strong businesses and rich men to evade and disobey Federal laws with almost complete impunity. Slowly but surely this is bringing to the front of politics that grave necessity of a constitutional reform essential to equip the Government at Washington with the power to do what every other civilized State is doing for the safety of its citizens, and the legitimate control of industry. To stretch the Inter-State commerce clause of the Federal Constitution, as Mr. Roosevelt and his ingenious lawyers essay to do, so as to hang upon it the right to impose all sorts of prohibitions and restrictions on industries conducted within the limits of the several States under the pretext that they use the railroads in the course of their business, is a very hazardous and unsatisfactory method of Federal development. Yet this, apparently, is the path preferred to the more honest, if more difficult, way of working for such amendment of the Constitution as shall confer upon the central Government the clear possession of the powers it needs. The task of obtaining the three-fourths majority of the States requisite to pass constitutional amendments may well damp the heart of the stoutest reformer. Yet many quiet, thoughtful Americans are becoming convinced that some such formal release from the hard Hamiltonian restraints set upon Federal competency will soon present itself as the only alternative to a violent disruption of the social order of America. Not the least significant of the newer features is the greater willingness of the Radical Democrats represented by Mr. Bryan to concede to the central Government the increased powers, which their great prophet, Jefferson, begrudged, and to aim at bestowing them by orderly process of constitu

tional amendment rather than by the alternative method of "packing" the Supreme Court with lawyers known to favor "elasticity" of interpretation.

While the old clear-cut principles and policies of both parties are thus fading before the exigencies of modern issues, the approach of another Presidential contest imparts new confusion into politics. In the present temper of the nation, fed by the energy of its President, it seems hardly conceivable that a conservative can be nominated next year by the Republican Convention with any prospect of success. If, on the other hand, Mr. Roosevelt, or his "favorite," Mr. Taft, accepts nomination, the Republicans next winter must "play up" to the Radical platform of more railroad and anti-Trust legislation, together with the proposals for income and inheritance taxation with which the President has been whetting the public appetite-measures violently reprobated by the powerful conservative section of their party. On the other hand, the Democrats are faced with difficulties of choice almost as great. Mr. Bryan is by far their strongest personality; he is willing to stand, and has purged himself of his "money" heresies, so far as practical politics are concerned. He has been moving towards a larger and more "Socialistic" Radicalism than even Mr. Roosevelt dare profess, and is apparently prepared to combine a direct demand for Federal and State ownership of railways with trust-killing legislation, and Tariff Reform more drastic than it would be safe for any Republican candidate to foreshadow. Should Mr. Roosevelt make a precedent, and brave the charge of Cæsarism by accepting the nomination for a third term of office, the dramatic proprieties, which are a sort of instinct in America, will demand Mr. Bryan for his antagonist as the only personality big enough to "fill the bill."

But it is idle to ignore the fact that, among the great masses of the laboring population, who hear of the prosperity of America but do not share it, sullen discontent is growing. Though the wealth of the nation advances by leaps and bounds, the real wages of the mass of workers are smaller than they were ten years ago. Rightly or wrongly, the workers charge their evil case against the great corporations which control the transport, the manufactures, and the monetary system, and which, alike in their capacity of employers and vendors of commodities, bear heavily upon the weaker classes. This tide of popular discontent is beginning to surge against the barriers of party politics, and to demand something more solid and satisfying than the glittering sword-play and braggadoccio of a fac

The Nation.

tion fight between two bands of professional gladiators. The question which is struggling towards definite expression in the popular mind is this, "Can Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Bryan get and keep so firm and real a hold upon the party machinery which lifts them into power, as to secure effective legislation and administration, opposed to the economic interests of the rich and able men who furnish the funds that serve to keep in repair and operate the two machines?" This is the present, practical issue of American democracy. Or the same question may be put conversely, "Does the general will of the American people possess enough present coherent power of intelligent purpose to enforce the supremacy of political democracy over industrial oligarchy?"

On the exposed windy coast of West Cornwall, that treeless land of rock and furze, one scarcely expects to find either an abundant or varied bird life; nevertheless in this unpromising place, and in winter, I had a very pleasant time with the feathered people. The sea and its color in fine weather drew me to the cliffs, and the rocky headlands were my houses, which I shared with the fox and rabbit; where, sitting on a crag, I could watch those glorious fishers, the gannets, by the hour; where there were cormorants, looking ugly and reptilian when fishing in the water; but, standing motionless, airing their spread wings, they had a noble and decorative appearance, like carved birds on the jagged black dripping rocks amidst the green and white tumultuous sea; and there were gulls and daws for ever floating and wheeling about the prom

ontory, a black and white company with hoarse, laugh-like cries, never free from anxiety while I was therenever wholly convinced of my pacific intentions. But of all the birds I found there the most irreconcilable was the raven. There was a spot on the cliffs I used often to visit and invariably a solitary raven turned up to shadow me. He would fly up and down, then settle on a rock a hundred yards away or more and watch me, occasionally emitting his deep humanlike croak; but it failed to scare me away or put me in a passion, for I was not a native. The Cornishman who hears that sound mocks the bird: "Corpse! corpse! curse you! I'd give you corpse if I had a gun!" and so on. After mid-winter the guillemots, razorbills and puffins begin to appear, and as the days and weeks go by they become more and more abundant; they

are seen travelling north, following the trend of the coast, but well out, for ever passing in little companies of half a dozen to forty, or fifty, and some. times more, flying very steadily and close to the surface. More interesting in appearance were those duskywinged swifts of the ocean, the shearwaters, that go not in flocks but singly, or in twos or threes, wide apart, moving swiftly over the surface in a series of curves, looking like shadows of birds in the sky. And sometimes it seemed to me that they were no material beings at all, but the ghosts of those pelagic birds which had recently died in all the seas which flow round the world, travelling by some known way to their ultimate bourne in the far north where, beyond the illimitable fields of ice, they go to dwell in that Paradise of Birds imagined by Courthope.

When the weather was too bad for the cliffs the gulls were driven inland. Gannets and cormorants could endure it; the sea was their true home and they were not to be torn from it; but the vagrant, unsettled and somewhat unballasted gulls would not or could not stay, and were like froth of the breakers which is caught up and whirled inland by the blast. On such days (and they were many) the gulls were all over the land, wandering about in their usual aimless manner, or in flocks seen resting on the grass in the shelter of a stone wall, or mixing loosely with companies of daws, rooks, peewits, and other skilful worm and grub hunters, waiting idly for the chance of snatching a morsel from their neighbor's beak.

There is a good deal of rough weather but little frost in this district; behind the cliffs, sheltered by stone hedges and thickets of furze, the green field is the chief feeding-ground of the birds; there with the rooks and daws and gulls and peewits you find field

fares and missel-thrushes in flocks, and the gray-bird, as the song-thrush is called, and blackbird, and small troops of wintering larks. Most abundant is the starling, a winter visitor too, for he does not breed in this part of Cornwall. You will find a flock in every little field, and the sight of your head above the stone wall sends them off with a rush, emitting the low guttural alarm note which sounds like running water. Another bird you constantly meet is the magpie. He flies up almost vertically and hovers a moment to get a good look at you, then hastens away on rapidly-beating wings and slopes off into the furze bushes, displaying his open graduated tail. He haunts the homestead and is frequently to be seen associating with the poultry; there are no pheasants here and no gamekeepers to shoot him, and, as in Ireland, the people do not like to injure though they do not love him.

If you chance to hear a bird note or phrase that is new to you in this place you may be sure the magpie is its author. Like the jay he is an inventor of new sounds and has a somewhat different language for every part of the country. The loud brisk chatter, his alarm note, which resembles the tremulous bleat of a goat, is always, the same; but his ordinary language, used in conversation, when he is with his mate or a small party of friends, is curiously varied and full of surprises. It was one of my amusements in genial days in winter when a confabulation was in progress to steal as near as I could and sit down among the bushes to listen.

On one such occasion, where the furze was very thick and high, I discovered that the bushes teemed with minute, shadowy-looking bird-forms silently hopping and flitting about. They were golden-crested wrens wintering in this treeless place in considerable numbers. Some of the small