This is the Wreck and bodies torn,

That's caused by the Engineer (?), whose sight

Is never reached by the feeble Light

That blinks in the Tunnel, black as night,
That shuts in the Road that Vander built.

These are the Mourners, all forlorn, .
Who weep for the Wreck and the bodies torn,
That's caused by the Engineer (?), whose sight

Is never reached by the feeble Light

That blinks in the Tunnel, black as night,

That shuts in the Road that Vander built.

This is The Board that smiles in scorn
Because of the Mourners, all forlorn,

Who weep for the Wreck and the bodies torn,
That's caused by the Engineer (?), whose sight
Is never reached by the feeble Light
That blinks in the Tunnel, black as night,
That shuts in the Road that Vander built.

This is The Public, shaven and shorn
By the self-same Board that smiles in scorn
Because of the Mourners, all forlorn,

Who weep for the Wreck and the bodies torn,
That's caused by the Engineer (?), whose sight
Is never reached by the feeble Light

That blinks in the Tunnel, black as night,
That shuts in the Road that Vander built.

And this is the Dividend-paying Horn
Filled by The Public, shaven and shorn
By the self-same Board that smiles in scorn
Because of the Mourners, all forlorn,

Who weep for the Wreck and the bodies torn,
That's caused by the Engineer (?), whose sight
Is never reached by the feeble Light

That blinks in the Tunnel, black as night,
That shuts in the Road that Vander built.

FOR THE
DIRECTORS

ΙΟΙ

THE FOLLY OF BEING BORN POOR.

MAN is guilty of much that is incompetent and stupid and in bad taste. He is miserably unskillful in places where it would be reasonable to expect from him a certain measure of acuteness and prescience. But there is, perhaps, nothing in which he displays his folly to a greater extent than in being born poor.

He is apt to excuse himself for this lamentable weakness by asserting that it is not his fault, and by various axioms which he uses to bolster up his vanity. Poverty, he asserts, is no disgrace. The love of money is the root of all evil, and he assumes a respectful attitude toward the horny-handed son of toil, as if that individual were the most exalted of beings. Inwardly, however, he despises him. He longs for luxury, for that careless abandon that comes with moneyed ease, and there are moments when he hates himself for his own lack of forethought.

The worst of the matter is that those who permit themselves to be born poor are the very ones fitted by nature to enjoy wealth. They invariably have kind hearts and generous dispositions. They have self-control in an eminent degree. They deprecate money for its own sake, and only care for it for what it will bring. Undoubtedly they possess extraordinary qualifications for its proper dissemination. There is never a snob among them, nor one who, under any circumstance, could ever go back on his former friends. On the contrary, one of the principal uses they would make of their money-if they only had it-would be to have their friends. enjoy it.

It certainly seems a cruel perverseness of Fate that all these people should be cut off from that for which they are most eminently fitted.

On the other hand, with respect to those who are born wealthy, there can be no doubt that they are generally unfit, incapable beings, extremely undeserving of their lot. It would seem

as if, having expended all their genius upon being born rich, there was none left to help them make a proper use of their possessions. They are very likely to be snobbish; selfishness is with them more or less an art in itself—an art in which it is necessary to maintain the illusion that one is interested in others, when, in reality, one's own personal gratification is the only thing one is striving for. They are also likely to be dissipated, and somewhat cruel, and to betray a strange lack of sympathy.

These are the miscreants who, having seen to it that they were born rich, now rest upon their oars, while we, the real people, toil on, the galley-slaves of injustice, or our own folly.

We have made a fatal error, and we are now paying for it. And so, to those yet to come, we would give fair warning. See to it that the family you are born into, no matter what their natural unintelligence may be, is more than comfortably off. Only in this way can the race ever hope to reach its highest ideals.

MILLINERY.

A WOMAN will go into a milliner's, and by mistake pick up a

ten-dollar hat, and trying it on will think how well she looks in it, until the saleslady comes up and tells her that's an odd hat that was left over from last season, and then the woman will throw a silent fit, and with the remark that she was only looking around for something to wear to the market on rainy days, nod her head in a certain direction with unerring instinct, and say:

"Let me see that."

And the saleslady will thread her way through the orchard of nickel-plated trees, and taking down about eighty-five cents' worth of feathers and straw, aigrettes and beads and green basketwork and ostrich feathers and June roses, that's marked at fifty

dollars because it's fresh from France, she will lift it on to the woman's head, with the aid of a helper, and say:

"There, madame, that's our latest importation. It certainly does look stunning on you."

And all the mirrors in the place will begin to reflect the glories of that hat, and the woman will turn and twist, look at herself front and back and sideways, walk up and down, first on the starboard and then on the port tack, and hitch up her back hair and pat the sides, and concentrate her whole mind on the creation for as long as two minutes. And then she will say:

"No duplicates?"

And then the saleslady will draw herself up with an air of injured pride, and exclaim:

"Oh, dear, no.

There is nothing else like it, I assure you. It has only just arrived on the steamer. It conforms so nicely to the lines of your face. I don't think I have ever seen a toque that was so becoming."

And then the woman will sigh, and eventually size up her husband in the distance, and wonder if he can possibly stand it. And when at last she begins to hedge at the thought that, after all, there is a limit to Henry's endurance, she will say, with a voice of careless indifference:

"You might send it home on approval."

Which will evoke from the saleslady a pathetic but forbidding smile.

"I am afraid we cannot do that, madame, with this hat. I should like to oblige you, but it is entirely new, and we expect it to be sold before the day is over."

"Very well. Show me something else.”

Every tree in the milliner's orchard is thereupon stripped of its foliage, and in the course of about an hour and thirty minutes the woman decides. All the mirrors settle back with groans of relief. The saleslady assures her that she has a great bargain.