which has been fired with much ceremony, and some trepidation, every Fourth of July since 1775. That memorable year it was not used. When the levies were called out its owner had shouldered it, only to have it refused by the colonel as too oldfashioned and dangerous to be carried against the enemy. The valuable old flint-lock had, indeed, been imported in 1689. At the present day, every “Fourth," as it recurs, is expected to be its last. It is given a very small charge, and the trigger is pulled by a string from a safe distance; but year by year it flashes out its defiance of British tyranny, consoling itself may-be for the forced inactivity of the actual war years.

When this formidable weapon had been duly discharged the last "stunt" of the day was over, and the firing-party retired to the meadow to cool off. The stars sparkled in the clear sky, and the fireflies flashed about the bushes, when one of the group embarrassed the Britisher by asking, "What are your national holidays?" It was terribly humiliating to have to confess that we had none; that Bank Holidays had no patriotic associations; that the King's Birthday was purely a matter for "the Services," and that well-meant efforts to introduce Empire Day celebrations met with callous indifference even where they did not encounter active opposition. The faint expression of astonished incredulity on the face of the inquirer, coming after the varied impressions of the day, brought home once more, to the Britisher, the conviction that John Bull and Cousin Jonathan have grown very far apart from each other during their two-and-a-half centuries of independent life. It is so natural to Jonathan to seize the psychological significance of a commemoration, and to run its social and ethical opportunities for all they are worth; nor does he feel ashamed to express his emotions, or to call upon his fellows to share them. In his vast country, where the enormous distances and new conditions, make for untrammelled individualism, he delights in association of all sorts and for all purposes. He rejoices in objectifying latent forces and inspirations. Students are initiated into "Fraternities" with secret rites, and hold high festival at stated intervals. Aristocratic tendencies embody themselves in the Society of Colonial Dames; Democratic, in that of the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution. The Civil War works out its inner meaning through the League of the Grand Army of

the Republic. The birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, the Father and the Saviour of their country, keep before the whole school population the things those heroes stood for.

With John the case is very different. If he does happen really to experience an emotion, he is very unwilling to express it in public, and he is very apt to pretend that he does not see anything to make a fuss about.

Perhaps, forced to live at such close quarters, the individual finds his only safeguard in resenting all attempts at close social action. Perhaps, again, the past has been too full to admit of the selection of national heroes or national events which should really sway the sentiment of the whole people. There are enthusiasts who place wreaths on certain monuments on special days, but the crowd takes no notice, or passes with a grin.

On the whole the balance of advantage seems to lie on the side of the festival. It was a true and deep instinct which preserved the Hebrew Passover and set the Hebrew children. asking generation after generation, generation, "What mean ye by this service?" Reserve and economy of emotional expression is good, but emotions which never find expression are not likely to become strong sentiments, the motive power of heroic action.

To American thought the festival lends a desirable charm and significance to life, and is specially valuable in its educational influence upon the young. In the public schools, Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, Arbor Day, Memorial Day and Thanksgiving are widely commemorated. Their gaiety and associations are not excluded even from the reformatories. "It is by these commemorations," says Mr. Percival Chubb of the New York Society for Ethical Culture," as by nothing else, that we can feed in the young those emotions of admiration, reverence, and love which are the fundamental forces in education as in life. It is thus that we can develop-unconsciously, of course—that underlying consciousness of kind, of human solidarity, of co-operative unity, which may offset the crude and narrow individualism that everywhere menaces us."

Of all national holidays none is more distinctively and delightfully American than Thanksgiving Day. It was the first spontaneous social expression of the feeling of the whole community, and such to a great extent it still remains. Christmas

Day was one of the Popish superstitions put down by Puritanism and has only taken its place once more in Protestant Churches as the old fear and hatred of Rome have subsided. The associations of the English Harvest Home were not such as the Pilgrims would wish to preserve. In the middle of November, when the crops have been gathered in, a national commemoration combines the home and family note, characteristic of the Old-World Christmas, with the religious aspect of the Harvest Festival; raised now, by the President's message, from a merely local and agricultural to a national significance. In the third week of November, a Proclamation is issued jointly by the President and the State Governor, calling on all citizens to return thanks for the mercies vouchsafed to the nation during the past year. The Roman Church alone, it is said, holds aloof from any public recognition by some form of Divine Service, and in every home, absent members and lonely neighbours gather round the festive board. Even the "stranger within the gates" will surely find some hospitable acquaintance who will not suffer him to be all alone on Thanksgiving. The continuous celebration since that first terrible autumn, when only the discovery of an abandoned Indian store of grain had saved the community from starvation, renders it instinct with historical association. The roast turkey and cranberry sauce speak of the freshly exploited resources of the new home. The pies-mince, apple and pumpkin-recall the festal fare of the old country. Conversation flows naturally in the direction of the past. Some one in the party is sure to have had a Pilgrim ancestor or to be descended from the last survivor of an Indian massacre. Local legends and history carry thought back to the first days of farm or township. Stories of the Civil War and the Coloured People and the Immigrant raise national problems and surmisings as to what may take place before next Thanksgiving.

In church the preacher will base his discourse on the Presidential Proclamation. To American ears it may read as a "noble and modest utterance," but the "stranger within the gates" may perchance smile at this description when he gets hold of the day's paper, and finds that the nation is represented by the man in the parable to whom ten talents were entrusted. The President might have his misgivings on some points, but on that, at least,

he would lay his bottom dollar. On second thoughts even the stranger may come to the conclusion that simple downright recognition of facts is better than a false modesty which blushes to state the convictions it cherishes most firmly.

There is, after all, something very striking and attractive about these truly national holidays, bringing the same message to the smallest shanty as to the White House itself, initiating the child and the newly arrived immigrant into the fuller knowledge and appreciation of their glorious heritage.

It may be impossible to evolve, to order, fit occasions for the expression and deepening of the national self-consciousness. Christmas and Good Friday, where still observed, have lost their religious significance for those for whom they are merely holidays, and it would seem undesirable to most of those for whom they are still "holy-days" to confuse them with anything extraneous, even if of a national character. The Bank Holidays are mere cessations in the constant weary round of toil. They bring no message beyond that of rest and enjoyment. The associations they accumulate are purely individual. Perhaps an arbitrary and artificial selection of suitable turning-points in the nation's history, of certain of its noblest heroes, would have defeated its own object. But unquestionably the people are the losers. The saints in the old calendar led lives too remote to be the inspiration of the masses of the modern world. The great figures of our own nation remain unknown, and no national holidays keep in the public view the lessons of the great historical anniversaries which mark turning-points in man's advance along the centuries. In the glare of local interests and the clash of party strife there is little opportunity for rousing the thought of the nation as a whole, whilst those who speak of that wider nationalism, which must include overseas Britain if the Empire is ever to rise to its high destiny, remain voices crying in the wilderness.

A. GEORGETTE BOWDEN-SMITH.

THE LANCASHIRE OPERATIVE

WOMEN'S WORK IN THE FACTORY AND
THE HOME

So much has been done to improve the lives of the poorer classes in this country, to regulate industrial employment, to better the homes of the people and make their conditions of work more healthy and humane, that the average person is apt to think that very little remains to be done.

A little personal knowledge of the conditions of life of the workers in any one industrial centre in the country would bring home to the least observant the terrible existence which so many human beings live in England to-day. It is but necessary to study the lives of the Lancashire operatives at first hand, to go into the slums, to follow these people from the factory to the home, to see the terrible waste of life and health, the extravagance, thriftlessness, and immorality of the people, to realise the crying need for legislation, for combined municipal and individual effort.

It is not poverty that is at the root of the misery and squalor which abound in Lancashire; it is not lack of money which is responsible for the starved children, the infant deaths, the stunted physique and mental and moral degradation of the people, so much as ignorance, indifference, inherited slovenliness, and improvidence. The very men and women who have money to spend in drink and music-halls and roller-skating, who cannot do without their trips and outings, their annual holidays to Blackpool, the Isle of Man, or the Continent, are the parents of neglected half-starved children who have to be succoured by the State, of infants who die like flies from preventible causes.

The

average Lancashire operative is a well-paid person. When times are good, and especially when there are two or three wage-earners in the family, there is no scarcity of money. There are families