heart to become active workers in an organization whose weapon of offense and defense is cowardly calumny. We could scarce expect people whose character is entitled to respect, to affiliate with editors who peddle obscene pictures, and renegade priests whose stock in trade is defamation of those pitying angels to whom the world turns in its day of darkness. There may be some honest people in the A. P. A.-the fools are confined to no religious cult of political creed; but I have yet to learn of one man possessing brains, good moral character and commercial credit becoming conspicuous in its councils. "Ye cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles."

***

THE COMMISSION CRAZE.

THIS country is in the throes of a commission craze for which there appears to be no cure. Everything, from an international complication to a grip epidemic, must be made the subject of a commission-inquirendo before the people are satisfied. By the time the inquiry is ended and a report got ready for some convenient pigeon-hole, the cause that brought the commission into being is forgotten; new investigations are in progress-one commission galling the kibe of its predecessor so fast they follow. A bill having the sanction of the labor organizations is now before a committee of the House of Representatives. It demands the creation of "a commission composed of five men representing labor, five representing capital, and five representing the different branches of agriculture, for the purpose of making an investigation and reporting legislation that will improve the condition of the agricultural and mechanical industries for the benefit of both the employers and the employed." Another bill, sanctioned by the Knights of Labor, proposes the creation of five commissions to de

termine what legislation is needed to make the entire people healthy, wealthy and wise. I am heartily in favor of any movement calculated to ameliorate the hard condition of labor and add to the general prosperity; but creating commissions will no more add pie to the workingman's dinner-pail than a dry shampoo will cure corns. If any of the commissions created by Congress during the past decade have been worth a coffer-dam the fact has avoided general observation. They have been for the most part, junketing parties at public expense. They have determined nothing beyond their own utter inutility. They have been unable to unanimously agree that water is wet. Their reports have not been read by the people, nor their recommendations appreciably influenced acts of Congress. "Great bodies move slowly," and a federal commission is ponderosity personified, while the world of commerce is an electric kaleidoscope. The commissions proposed by the Knights of Labor could not make an intelligent examination of the matters proposed in less than five years; hence their reports would be about as valuable as the census of 1890, which is expected to be completed by the time the child born to-day becomes a grandsire. We send several hundred men to Congress, pay them fat salaries, provide them with expensive clerks and expect them to guard the general welfare. If they are not well informed regarding the conditions and needs of the country then we have made a mistake at the ballot-box. If a handful of men appointed by the President be wiser than the Federal Congress, then we had best send our high-priced public servants packing and install a "Commission" in the capitol. What is the use of keeping a front yard full of dogs and doing our own barking?

THE NEW POET LAUREATE.

Ar the last gasp Queen Victoria came to the succor of the British Empire-saved it by a daring coup d'etat. She has appointed what the Dallas News calls, in its moments of elephantine playfulness, a "poet lariat." The throne of Britain was permitted to go too long without the protection afforded by an official poet. And what was the result? The nations of the earth began to tie doublebow-knots in the tail of the royal beast. Since the appointment of Mr. Alfred Austin to be England's poet laureate the German Emperor has written to explain that he didn't mean it, the Boers have become quiescent and Josef Phewlitzer apologized for the bloodthirsty scream emitted by freedom's bird. "Grim-visaged war has smoothed her wrinkled front." We are perfectly willing to contend with "the men, the ships and the money, too," of Merrie England; but, "by jingo," even American valor hath its metes and bounds-must surrender unconditionally when Mr. Alfred Austin begins to pour into its serried ranks his heroic harmony. The eagle comes off its perch-England can have all of Venezuela, with Brazil thrown in as lagniappe, if she likes. Poets are said to be born, not made; but the truism doesn't apply to England. The Queen can make a poet as easily as Cleveland can make a mistake, and she can make it out of anything that happens to be handy. England can now laugh at her enemies. Even the heroes of Sedan and Gettysburg will not dare invade her while Mr. Alfred Austin stands on the steps of the throne, ready to be "played, an engine on the foe." He is a poet, because the Queen hath declared him so; still I fear that the laurel crown of Tennyson will slip over his head and hang down on his shoulders like the regalia of a nigger lodge following a brass band home from a funeral. Since

the death of the author of "Locksley Hall" and the "Lotus Eaters" England has been a trifle shy on poets. Sir Edwin Arnold blazed forth with more than oriental splendor in his “Light of Asia," but the poetic muse tarries not with old men. Swinburne has something akin to the poetic flux, and Dobson has struck one or two notes as if by accident; but the rest are mere rhymsters, such as, in our own America, sing the glories of C. I. Fairbank's soap. Among the latter Alfred Austin was discovered and, for some occult reason, elevated to the dignity of poet laureate, commissioned to warble for the crown. In ye olden times, the British monarch kept a poet to sing his praises and a fool to make him merry. Now the office is merely a sinecure, the occupant thereof being remunerated by the privilege of putting “Verse-Maker to Her Majesty” on his visiting cards. He could probably have done as much without a royal permit, for sometime since a tailor, not to be outdone by the green-grocers, haberdashers, etc., put up the sign," Breeches Maker to Her Majesty," and was permitted to live. The Queen will doubtless, in conformity with an old custom, send the new poet laureate a hogshead of canary wine once a year to enable him to steep his soul in harmony, and expect him to spill a little of his divine afflatus whenever one of her numerous progeny adds another olive branch to the coterie of royal beggars for the common people to support.

***

TALMAGE'S WAR TALK.

REV. T. DEWITT TALMAGE has opened his face and demanded a war of extermination against the unspeakable Turk. He wants to wade around in Moslem blood to his belly-band, and will never consent to sheathe the sword

until the palace of Abdul Hamid the Two Times is razed to the earth and the Ottoman Empire divided among the "Christian Powers." There is imminent danger that he will play Peter the Hermit, hoist the black flag and lead a new crusade against the awful Saracen. I thank God every day for having created Talmage. He is to my riper years what old Dan Rice's single-ring circus was to my youth. He is facile princeps of funny things. From an anthropological standpoint he is the greatest show on earth. He would administer a coup de grace to the Sick Man of the East because that semi-barbarous potentate does not compel each of his subjects to respect the religious opinions of the others. That were a feat in theological thaumaturgy to which even the Constitution of the United States has thus far proven unequal. Talmage would have Uncle Sam don his fighting clothes because those Armenians who worship the same way are proselytizing with gunpowder. He tells us how many Christians have been relegated to the cold and silent tomb or chased into the mountains of Hepsidam with their coat-tails full of Kurdish arrows; but has never a word to say about the Moslem casualties inflicted by the Armenian church militant. It doesn't appear to have occurred to him that one party to the controversy got a mouthful while the other was enjoying a square meal. He has discovered a Moslem prayer which implores Allah to destroy the infidels and polytheists, and give all their possessions as booty to the Moslems, and argues from this that every Mussulman must be a professional marauder and a murderer. He considers that prayer prima facie evidence that the Moslem should not be allowed to live. If he will open the Christian Bible at the 13th chapter of Deuteronomy he will there find the faithful instructed not to wait for a special dispensation of Providence to remove dissenters, but to at