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ployment is ever going to be dealt with seriously, the first step must be to find out not only where hands are wanted at the moment, but where hands will be wanted in the immediate and the proximate future, so that men, instead of remaining in districts where there is no opening for them, and increasing the congestion in markets already overfilled, may have every inducement to draft themselves to places where their labor is required. Few people realize to what an extent labor is "fluid"; how it flows, quickly and quietly, to meet the demand for it, when the demand is known. Not only unmarried men, but men with families, move in vast numbers annually to take up work in fresh fields. But at present there is too much drifting without intelligent direction; for example, from the villages to the towns, where people vaguely hope to obtain work at better wages. What is needed is that employers should be required by statute to supply to the Board of Trade, as a confidential document, a statement of their probable absorption of labor for a fixed period; they know whether their order books are full or not, and what the probable shrinkage or expansion of employment is likely to be in their case. The broad results of this information, without any divulging of particulars as to individual firms, should be made accessible through the Board of Trade, so that labor might be directed to the right channels; and there should be local bureaus to which workmen could write and obtain any further details that could be given without violation of confidence.

It is said that this would be a dangerous attack on the proper privacy of enterprise, and that damaging information would be supplied as to the status and intentions of firms and the conditions of industries. This argument seems to me to ignore facts. Income

tax payers have to divulge the extent and character of their means to collectors of taxes, and personal and domestic details to the census officials. What detriment do they suffer? The information is treated as secret, though the summarized statisics are published; and a complaint as to breach of confidence is hardly ever heard. But in any case the welfare of the State is the highest law, and it is better that a few employers should run the risk of having some particulars divulged which they prefer to conceal than that thousands of capable working men should be dragged into the last straits of poverty, rendered a burden upon charity or rates, and demoralized to the perdition of their families as well as themselves. This is the worst possible system.

In the matter of State-aided works, these should not be "Relief Works" pure and simple-a means of providing an outlet for labor, and that only. The establishment of even such works is better than the creation of a great class of idle, dole-supported unemployed. But many works could be undertaken which, though infructuous at the time of construction and completion, would be of immense future utility and put this country in a position of muchneeded advantage in the struggle with commercial rivals. There are great works which no industrial company would be found to undertake because the return upon outlay must be long deferred, and the initial expenditure heavy; but the State, which is a trustee for the nation's future as well as guardian of its present interests, could accomplish them, and the burden, distributed over the whole country, would hardly be perceptible. Some of our shrewdest rivals have shown themselves alive to these considerations. Our harbors and estuaries at once suggest themselves as places where such works could be usefully commenced;

and as the labor would, for the most part, be rough and heavy, there would be no danger of supplying loafers with a "soft job," or, on the other hand, of drawing away from private enterprise the labor which it needs, by an offer of superior attractions.

It is satisfactory to note that in recent years every class in the community has awakened to the truth that the problem of the unemployed must be The Gentleman's Magazine.

faced and solved. And one thing is certain-whatever solution the nation may ultimately prefer, nothing satisfactory will be accomplished by doles, however well-intentioned the givers may be, and nothing satisfactory will be accomplished short of organizing employment at a living wage for every man who is willing to do a fair day's work.

Will Crooks.

THE ROMANCE OF A BOOKSELLER.

Fame had most unexpectedly, and at the ninth or tenth hour, found out Mr. R., the little bookseller. His Clorinda was the talk of the town. From the homely little Queen down to Miss in the country parsonage, everything of sensibility was weeping over Clorinda. The beaux had left off making wagers about the fashionable beauties and their prospective marriages, with matters less delicate, for speculation as to whether Clorinda, in the next instalment of the delicious story, would or would not subjugate Sir Bellamour. The tears that were shed over the imaginary heroine were enough to cause a flood in the river if they had been all diverted one way.

Carriages stood all day at the narrow entrance to Essex Court, where the Great Man was to be seen, not yet so great as to be above selling a secondhand book over the counter. Through the cobwebbed panes of the window and the low-browed door Beauty and Fashion peeped to catch a sight of the little ruddy-cheeked man in the shabby wig and dusty snuff-brown coat who had set them all to weeping. Some of the boldest even invaded the little dark shop, although it was an adventure for the ladies to enter the door with their hooped petticoats. There they would

bring their essences, and the brightness of their eyes, and the rustling of their stiff silks and many-colored furbelows, as fine as goddesses in a pink cloud painted by Mr. Cipriani on a ceiling.

They would languish and ogle and smile on the little snuff-brown man, and pay him such compliments as have seldom fallen to the lot of genius. It was quite true that the town had taken Clorinda seriously. When it seemed that her idyl was about to end sadly, a score fine ladies took to their beds with bottles of hysterical water and Miss-in-her-Teens, and wept into their pillows, to the destruction of their eyes and complexions.

No one could blame the little man for becoming a bit entêté, as our French neighbors say. Indeed it said much for the strength of his head that he kept it so well, for it was not only the fine ladies and gentlemen who were belauding him, but also the men of genius and of affairs. Garrick took off his hat to him; Sir Joshua came to the little bookshop and discussed the next instalment of the story, holding his ear-trumpet seriously for the answers; Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, who, Mr. R. had the wit to see, was a bigger man than he both in heart and mind, paid him simple

heartfelt compliments; it was even said that Dr. Johnson had expressed an interest in the fate of Clorinda, still characteristically describing her as a hussy. Statesmen and soldiers were falling over each other in order to obtain the latest chapter of Clorinda and her fortunes. It was perhaps to Mr. R.'s credit that, all things considered, he kept his head so well.

He would still make the journey between Essex Court and his country cottage at Hammersmith, a somewhat dangerous journey for any one who might be suspected to be worth robbing, for the Hammersmith Road was infested by footpads, who let the author of Clorinda pass by, a tribute as much to their own qualities of head and heart as to the writer of the famous romance: he could still make the journey with that irresistible if unfelt attraction which draws us all home.

He was yet quite satisfied that his two handsome blowsy daughters were the finest wenches in Christendom. He had not yet discovered that the color in their mother's cheeks had run, that she had grown ungainly in size and waddled in walking; that her speech was homely cockney and her ideas confined to cooking and housekeeping. He was not dissatisfied with his daughters' lovers, a couple of smart young cits, the one a silk-draper in St. Paul's Churchyard, the other a goldsmith by Temple Bar. Still the sweetbriar hedge which bounded his demesne held the world that mattered for him. It was good on summer evenings and summer Sundays to sit in an arbor wreathed in woodbine, listening to the songs of the birds, the tinkle of the sheep-bells beyond the hedge, and the lowing of the milking cows in the fields towards Fulham. This was what really concerned him. The fine ladies were no nearer to him than the fullbosomed goddesses who leaned from

the pink cloud on Mr. Cipriani's ceilings. He had no desire to visit Mr. Selwyn in Gloucestershire or my Lord March in Scotland. He was lonely if he went further from the city than Hammersmith, and although he might have been at home with the great folk he was afraid of their lackeys. No: on the whole he kept his head better than could have been expected, neither neglecting his business nor finding the plain atmosphere of his own home and surroundings uncongenial to him.

Until one day he opened a letter in his shop one of those which reached him in such numbers that he often barely glanced at their contents, which were always couched in terms of the same fulsome adulation. But this; this was different. It was written on rose-colored satin paper with a gilt edge, and as he opened it and stood holding it in his hand he could have sworn that the scent and color of apple-blossom filled the shop. His orchard at Hammersmith was bowery with it at this moment. If the orchard could have been transplanted by a miracle into Essex Court, the illusion could not have been more complete. He stood with half-closed eyes, the rosecolored sheet, with the little gold shell and the letter D in the top left-hand corner, seeming to suffuse his brain with rose-colored visions. After a second or two he began to read, holding the delicious thing to the dim pane the better to see it.

Honored Sir, it began: 'Tis an honest country lover that ventures to approach you, to intercede with you for the matchless Clorinda. Our parson-he is an honest man and of good familybrought it to us Friday se'nnight, that it was London talk that she should yield at last to the fascinating Bellamour and by him be cast aside when he had won her an hour. Sir, you would not break an honest country heart by making it so. Sir, you will not so wrong the sweet thing you have

created, and the Power that dwells on high to Protect Innocence, and the kindness which muşt lie in Bellamour's heart, by such a turn as this. Oh, sir, pause before you cast down in sorrow not only a multitude who hang upon the woes of Clorinda, but one heart which you have moved so that she thinks at times Clorinda is she and she Clorinda. She cannot sleep; she cannot eat; she cannot live till she knows that even at the last moment you have changed your design. Sir, the cause of Clorinda is the cause of virtue. If you cast her down Vice triumphs and Virtue falls. Waiting upon your will as one waits upon the will of Heaven, Your humble admirer,

Dulcinea.

There was no reason why the letter should have moved him as it did. He had received epistles of the same sort, if few as artless. The others had not moved him, however highly placed were those who penned them. He had foreseen the end of Clorinda, the one inevitable, possible end. Was he going to alter it to please a country girl, even though the sweetness of apple-blossom was in her letter? He was certain he would do no such thing.

He wrote to Dulcinea a paternally kind letter, pointing out to her that art had its imperious demands no less than sentiment. That evening, as he jogged down to Hammersmith on his old pony, every breath of wind that blew the apple-orchards in his face seemed to bring him the presence of Dulcinea. For the first time that evening he noticed that Bessie, his wife, was growing old, that the red had run in streaks on her cheeks. that her nose was as shapeless as her figure. For the first time he was perturbed at the good soul's manner of eating. Her voice fretted him. He noticed that her slippers were down at heel and that there was a rent in her sacque. daughters disturbed him too with chatter which he perceived for the first

His

time to be vulgar. Even the cottage. which had seemed a Paradise to him for long, vexed him in this new touchiness of his. There was a commonness about the little low rooms. His wife had spoilt them by having them decorated in blue and gold. Unconsciously, he was calling his belongings before the tribunal of Dulcinea and hearing them condemned.

After supper he retired in a mood of moroseness to the little orchard which was beyond sight and hearing of the house. He had no mind to hear his elder daughter play upon the spinet, an art she had acquired painfully. which had given him simple pleasure many an evening. For the first time he discovered that her fingers were clumsy and she put no soul in the music. His wife's voice followed him as he retired along the path by the beds of herbs to the orchard. "La. girls," it said; "be not vexed with your father. Some of those fine languishing hussies of his have got their affairs all twisted, and he must straighten them out again."

The speech irritated him. Somewhere at the back of his mind he perceived dimly that Clorinda was a hussy, although the fine folk had made him forget it for a while. Only that morning he had had a meeting with the man he detested of all others, Mr. F., the writer of fresh, breezy, virile books, who had had as yet no success to speak of.

"And how goes the baggage, Clorinda?" Mr. F. had asked him with a devil in his eye. "My friend, what melting tenderness! what sensibility! I offer you my respectful homage!"

It had annoyed the bookseller extremely, although he had forgotten the annoyance since the receipt of the apple blossom letter. Now it recurred to him. He leaned across the gate which led from the little orchard into the paddock, and the scent of the

apple-blossoms was all about him. The
little gnarled trees, each in a rosy
gown, were bent to the earth under the

weight of bloom. The stillness and the
scents of the evening quieted his vexa-
tion. Dobbin, his old pony, came and
thrust a long white nose into his hand
for
a caress. Absent-mindedly he
smoothed the kindly, fondling nose.
The orchard in all its pink bloom
seemed to him like an exquisite woman.
The woman whose letter smelt of ap-
ple-bloom; the orchard, in a pink gown
like a lovely woman. They seemed
somehow one and indivisible.

A letter from Dulcinea reached him as soon as it was possible to receive one. It was gentle; it was resigned: to be sure she had been "too owdacious" in pressing her thoughts and prayers upon the author of Clorinda. Since he willed Clorinda's story to end in gloom it must be best so, although for Dulcinea's part she must never cease to grieve for the fate of that matchless lady. The letter was so touching in its childlike gentleness that it brought tears to the eyes of Clorinda's maker. A couple of letters more from the charmer and he resolved to do what he had vowed not to do: that is to say, to make Clorinda happy in the possession of her Bellamour. After all, as the fair unknown had suggested, it would be the triumph of virtue over vice, with a coronet for Virtue's brows in the background. Whereas, if he had carried out his original intention, Vice would have triumphed and poor Virtue been sent packing out-of-doors to die in the cold.

He announced his capitulation to Dulcinea in a letter which still survives:

Beautiful and Incomparable Lady, he wrote: You remember the story of the man in the fable who, when the wind and the rain would fain have made him relinquish his cloak, but clung to it the tighter. But the gentle sun, warming him with its rays, did soon

bring about what the others by violence had failed to accomplish. So the gentleness of your nature, suffusing mine, compels me to cast off my cloak of self-will and to do as you desire. I will make Clorinda happy for your sake. If you would make your servant happy in return will you not let him a likeness of yourself, so that what he has long dreamt on in secret may possess for him something of a living reality?

see

Dulcinea replied to him in a trembling rapture of gratitude. Henceforth she was without sorrow, since the exquisite Clorinda was to be blessed by the gaining of Bellamour's heart and hand. There was nothing she would not do in return for Strephon. They were Dulcinea and Strephon to each other by this time. But, she had no picture of herself worthy to offer him. Perhaps when she came to town in the autumn she might sit for a miniature. Meanwhile would Strephon imagine a person of middle height, brown but not uncomely? Brown eyes, brown hair, with an inclination to chestnut in both. Lips indifferent red, and white teeth. A form plump but not too much so. Hands plump, passable white, and dimpled at the knuckles. Small feet. A cheerful person withal and very ready to laugh; somewhat kind, honest and true. And ever and ever devoted to the author of the adorable Clorinda.

As he returned the letter to the packet something fell from it, which, when he took it up, proved to be a curl of hair. It was of a bronze color, only with more sunlight in its depths than anything not living could have. As he seized upon it with reverential tenderness it curled about his fingers lightly, and it was as though some delicate invisible thing had laid hold of He him and would not let him go. stooped and brushed it with his thin, precise lips. Then he put it away in a secret place.

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