So they yelled at him in chorus, which he minded not a whit;

And the pelted him with cocoanuts, which didn't seem to hit.

And then they gave him reasons, which they thought of much avail,

To prove how his preposterous attempt was sure to fail.

Said the sages: "In the first place the thing can not be done!

And second, if it could be, it would not be any fun!

And third and most conclusive, and admitting no reply,

You would have to change your nature! We should like to see you try!"

They chuckled then triumphantly, those lean and hairy shapes;

For these things passed as arguments — with the Anthropoidal Apes!

III.

There was once a Neolithic Man, an enterprising wight,

Who made his simple implements unusually bright. Unusually clever he, unusually brave,

And he sketched delightful mammoths on the borders of his cave.

To his Neolithic neighbors, who were startled and surprised,

Said he: "My friends, in course of time, we shall be civilized!

We are going to live in cities and build churches and make laws!

We are going to eat three times a day without the natural cause!

We're going to turn life upside-down about a thing called gold!

We're going to want the earth and take as much as we can hold!

We're going to wear a pile of stuff outside our proper skins;

We are going to have Diseases! and Accomplishments!! and Sins!!!"

Then they all rose up in fury against their boastful friend;

For prehistoric patience comes quickly to an end. Said one: "This is chimerical! Utopian! Absurd!" Said another: "What a stupid life! Too dull, upon my word!"

Cried all: "Before such things can come, you idiotic child,

You must alter Human Nature!" and they all sat back and smiled.

Thought they: "An answer to that last it will be hard to find!"

It was a clinching argument -to the Neolithic

Mind!"

THE following interesting facts concerning the use which has been made of Longfellow's lyrics by the musical composers are communicated by Mr. T. G. La Moille of Valparaiso, Ind.:

"It was fitting that Longfellow, himself such a lover of music and song, should have many musicians among his personal friends. Perhaps the three modern poets who have most inspired English song-writers are Moore, Tennyson, and Long

fellow. Heine in relation to the German lied and Longfellow in relation to the English song may well be grouped together. Both in the simple song and the cantata form the works of Longfellow offer the composer opportunities which are not excelled among the poetical treasures offered in any land. British composers have used the lyrics of Longfellow even more than our American composers. A careful search through the issues of sixteen of the leading music-publishers of America and Europe, besides miscellaneous publications, reveals the fact that eighty-eight songs of Longfellow have been set to music, by scores of all sorts of composers, in two hundred and eighty-six settings. Of these, many in America are published by the Ditsons. In numerous instances the author's text has been, it must be said, shamefully and needlessly mutilated.

"The twenty-five of Longfellow's songs most in favor with the composers have had two hundred and four settings, and are by name and number, ranking downward, as follows: Stars of the Summer Night, 26; Beware! 24; The Rainy Day, 16; The Sea hath its Pearls, 14; Good night! Good' night, Beloved! 13; A Psalm of Life, 11; The Arrow and the Song, 10; Daybreak, 10; Excelsior, 9; It is not always May, 7; Curfew, 7; The Reaper and the Flowers, 6; The Wreck of the Hesperus, 6; The Bridge, 5; Footsteps of Angels, 5; The Old Clock on the Stairs, 5; The Village Blacksmith, 4; The Open Window, 4; Resignation, 4; The Day is Done, 3; Hymn to the Night, 3; The Happiest Land, 3; The Hemlock Tree, 3; The Angel and the Child, 3; Aftermath, 3.

"The twenty-five songs most popular with the publishers are by name and number, ranking downward, as follows: The Bridge, 22; The Arrow and the Song, 12; Good night! Good night, Beloved! 12; Excelsior, 11; Stars of the Summer Night, 11; The Day is Done, 8; The Sea hath its Pearls, 8; Curfew, 7; Daybreak, 7; The Reaper and the Flowers, 6; The Wreck of the Hesperus, 6; The Legend of the Crossbill, 5; The Village Blacksmith, 5; The Open Window, 5; It is not always May, 5; A Psalm of Life, 5; The Rainy Day, 5; The Singers, 4; Hymn to the Night, 4; Resignation, 4; The Old Clock on the Stairs, 4; Beware! 4; Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem, 3; The Angel and the Child, 3; Aftermath, 3.

"Among these many settings are solos, duets, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, and choruses, with and without accompaniments of various characters, in major and minor keys, of grades easy, medium, and difficult, with a great variety of key, compass, and effect."

WE Sometimes think that it would be an interesting thing to turn back to the files of the magazines of twenty years ago and make up the whole of one of our current numbers out of their contents. How many readers, one wonders, would ever know the difference! If we were to make up our next month's number in that way, we should throw into it, among the other good old things, the article which Robert Dale Owen wrote for Old and New twenty years ago, on "The Growth and Power of a Plant." That plant was cotton. It is just a hundred years since Samuel

Slater started his famous cotton factory at Pawtucket the first really famous cotton factory in New England. Pawtucket will be celebrating, the first of October, this cotton centennial, and the NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE will certainly do all it can to help in the celebration. If cotton growing has been peculiarly the work of the South, cotton manufacture has been peculiarly the work of New England. How great still is the "power of the plant" in New England, Lowell, Lawrence, Lewiston, Manchester, Fall River, New Bedford and the busy Blackstone River show.

THE question of New England farming, and especially the question of the future of the hill towns, is one of the questions that is continually forcing itself to the front. This time it is Senator Hoar and John E. Russell who have been discussing it. Mr. Hoar declares that, generally speaking, farming in Massachusetts is not declining, that the farmers have only gone down the hills into the valleys, and that the statistical returns disprove the alleged decline. Mr. Russell, who is much of a farmer himself and who was for seven years secretary of the Massachusetts state board of agriculture, says that the statistics on which Senator Hoar probably relied are misleading, because the products of gardens, orchards, and greenhouses near the cities were not generally included in the agricultural returns of 1865 and 1875, but in those of 1885 they appeared. The 1885 census shows an increase of agricultural products in the state, with a notable decline in the population of the farming towns. Boston, in 1885, had become in point of product the second agricultural place in the state. Hadley, which had been first in 1875, was sixth in 1885. The increase is in market-gardening and similar provinces.

Whatever the general statistics, the decline of vast numbers of the old hill towns is indisputable. We do not believe that this decline will go on forever. We do not believe that it will continue much longer. Social reasons and economical reasons alike point to the revival of the country towns. And nothing is more to be desired. The life of New England will be happier, saner, and greatly stronger when, under new conditions, the farms on the old hills, now often the summer homes of busy men of affairs in the great towns,

flourish again. The conditions were never so favorable or tempting as to-day for such busy men to turn their eyes to the hill farms for summer homes. Mr. Chadwick, the Brooklyn poet-preacher, has spent his summers for many years in the town of Chesterfield, Massachusetts, between the Connecticut and the Berkshire hills. He never tires of writing about the old town; and the other day he wrote as follows:

"Much as I drive, I always have a little pang in getting off and am always glad when I get back to our own Hill-Top.' For in truth, it is a wonderfully pleasant place. A more lovely outlook on the western hills could not be bought with money. That is an absurd way of putting it, for landscape beauty is a commodity which does not affect in any least degree the price of domiciles and farms in this vicinity. In a dozen, in a score of places hereabout I could buy a few acres 'beautiful for situation,' affording a view as lovely and entrancing as the heart of man could reasonably desire for $500, or $1000 at the most. Looking westward at this moment, across two intervening fields, for one of which I have a hankering that Henry George would not approve, I see a homestead, a nice, big old house with all sorts and conditions of barns, and seventy acres of land, which can be bought for $2000 or a little more. A few miles off, there is the loveliest meadow in the country round, with nearly two hundred acres of pasture and woodland, the house and barns standing on one of those old river-banks which are always so pretty,- all this for $2000. And the meadow yields $300 worth of hay this very year! I wonder what the bearing of these facts is on the land-theories of Mr. George, if they have any. There would seem to be land enough and to spare, if that is all that is required to herald the millennial dawn. I wonder more that men of moderate means, who can afford only three or four hundred dollars for the family summer, do not come and buy these deserted houses, of which there are scores in Hampshire County that sadden every road by which we go abroad."

It is indeed to be wondered at. And this Hampshire County picture is a picture repeated in a dozen counties in New Hampshire and Vermont. We do not believe that this state of things can last; and we believe that few crusades are better worth preaching in New England to-day than the crusade in behalf of the old hill towns.