Our circulating media is unquestionably a ridiculous moon-calf. It represents various compromises effected between warring political factions and adverse interests. It should be reformed on common-sense lines; but the task should not be undertaken during a period of incipient panic. That were to invite disaster. Let us wait to swap equines until well out of the water. What we need just now is, not so much a new currency as a revival of confidence; and this can easily be attained if the calamity clackers of the Cleveland type will arrange to consume their own sound, and the politicians maintain a masterly inactivity. If the gold reserve is exhausted, a disastrous panic will probably ensue, simply and solely because Mr. Cleveland and his coterie of cuckoos and bond-clippers have educated the people to expect it. Under normal conditions-which would exist but for Cleveland and his kind-the national treasury might become as guiltless of gold as Hamlet of gall, without doing the slightest damage. Those who needed gold in considerable quantities for export-as they might need corn, cotton, or any other commodity-would have to look elsewhere for it and pay the commercial instead of the governmental price. Gold coin might go to a slight premium until it could again be had of the government; but the country would never suspect that it was passing through a crisis-the cart-wheel and paper dollar would continue to do their duty. The idea that any sane man holding for silver or paper bearing the signmanual of Uncle Sam, would have a financial jeminy fit because the government did not maintain a supply warehouse where exporters could, at all times, secure any commodity they choose to call for, is the veriest moonshine. Something of the kind might happen during a disastrous war, when the perpetuity of the government was seriously menaced, when its ability to ever meet its obligations was

in doubt; but to say that such a thing were probable in an era of profound peace-that commerce would contemptuously reject the I. O. U.'s of the wealthiest country in the world because it could not convert them into yellow coin at a moment's notice-were to concede that the American people have precious little confidence in the wisdom and honesty of those they have placed in charge of federal affairs.

Cleveland has increased the interest-bearing debt of the nation $262,000,000 in conformity with his peculiar ideas of finance, and now frankly confesses that his plan of salvation leads deeper into the Slough of Despond instead of to the Delectable Mountains; but announces a determination to persevere in his folly regardless of cost unless Congress will consent to become responsible for additional public burdens in time of peace, retire the greenbacks and rely upon the patriotism of national bankers to provide an antidote for this arbitrary contraction of the currency and the consequent decline in the price of commodities— the enhancement of all debts. Of course, the bankers will cheerfully come to the relief of their suffering countrythat's what they are here for! By making it possible for them to absolutely control the volume of currency, we place an Archimedean lever under every debtor and hoist him out of the hole! Having permitted the Morgan-Belmont syndicate to pull Uncle Sam's leg in a former bond deal to the extent of $8,418,757, the administration decided to make the last a "popular loan." It was urged in the former instance that the government was in dire straits and absolutely at the mercy of the bankers-those patriots who propose to see that we do not suffer because of a withdrawal of the greenbacks-and the president pompously avowed his responsibility for the shameful hold-up of the tax-paying public. The treasury is in worse condition

now than then; yet Mr. Morgan has been given his conge and a successful appeal made to the people. There may be nothing rotten in Denmark; but when a public official saves more than a million out of a salary aggregating less than $350,000, it is pretty safe to use disinfectants.

***

66 UNCLE WILLIAM" CAMERON. THE Apostle takes a day off to call the world's attention ́to Col. William Cameron of Waco, the commercial Colossus, the Napoleon of finance, the hub around which all great enterprises revolve. In the lexicon of public opinion we find the following entry: "Col. William Cameron, an upto-date daisy, but no dude." Having lifted himself, by his own bootstraps, out of the Serbonian bogs of poverty to the milliononic plane, it follows that Col. William Cameron knows a thing or two-is "dead onto " all the world's ways that are dark and tricks that are vain. At least we were wont to think so-to imagine our Bill sharper than a serpent's tooth, the very creme de la creme of the "hot stuff." We were sure of it when he put back the gubernatorial crown proffered by the Texas Republicans, nailed up his smokehouse, set a bear trap in the donjon-keep of his hennery and padlocked both the bung and the spigot of his "bar'l." But alack and alas! Our idol is broken, our Carian marble hath proven but common clay. We have worshipped what Old John Knox would call a “pented bredd "—a gilded stick-and bowed us to the earth before one of those Arabian images ridiculed by Mahomet, as "gods with flies on them."

Col. William Cameron-our Bill-recently strayed from home and was spotted by a brace of gold-brick mountebanks as "a dead easy mark." They actually

passed by Col. J. S. Hogg of the Link Line, with whom the Wall Street financiers have been having fun, and selected the representative citizen of Texas' educational center as their huckleberry-do, sized him up as the sucker most likely to fly at a piece o' red flannel! It was the old, old story; older than three-card monte and the shell game, older than the flim-flam of the circus ticket seller or the bank draft for 'steen thousand dollars worked off on the railway passenger from Posey county. A guileless youth with the flavor of the untamed West on his tongue, and the secret of the "Lost Mine" of Cortez and his Conquistadores concealed about his person, discovers that Col. Cameron is his long-lost "Uncle William " with the strawberry mark on his left arm and a forgotten goat-walk amid Arizona's wilds. Upon the latter was located the rediscovered El Dorado. Sudden joy sometimes kills; but, by exercising great self-control, Col. Cameron was able to safely pass the crisis, even to wonder in a vague way how much his new-found relative wanted. This appeared, like the "chill penury" of the poet, to freeze the genial current of the young man's soul, and he hastened to assure the man of millions that his nevvy was no homeless hobo in search of a handout. He even went so far as to doubt their consanguinity, while incidentally displaying slugs of yellow metal which he had clipped from Uncle William's Arizona mine. His Mexican body servant inspected Col. Cameron and declared him an interloper and an alien, possessing no right or title to the golden treasure protruding itself through Arizona's sacred soil. It looked for a moment as though Col. Cameron would be arrested for an attempt to swindle himself. The young man was much discouraged. He wept because he could not find his real Uncle William and pour into his lap all the gold of Ophir and all the treasures of Ind. He was only a poor illiterate boy,

brought up amid the cruel cactus and uncertain mescal of the uncouth West. Perhaps his companion would consent to manage the mine, to act as treasurer for this new and greater gold reserve; or, if not, he might be able to recommend some good honest man who would do so. It was truly touching, this innocent young man from Arizona, wandering among wolves like a blind orphan girl adown the midnight Bowery. Blood is thicker than water, and Col Cameron relented and found a snug corner for his nephew within his ample heart. He didn't care for any more money himself—a man with a million or two never does. Still, a few tons of gold would be a handy thing to have in the house in case Dick Bland forced the country to a silver basis. The spider had towed the fly into Houston and was doing the elegant. Among the young man's assets were two gold bricks, about the size of Iowa barns and assaying more than $20 to the ounce. These were but unconsidered trifles which he had brought with him, thinking he might need some small change. There were oodles of it down in Arizona-on Uncle William's ranch. Col. Cameron retired to the toilet room of the Hotel Lawlor and figured out that he was worth, at the lowest calculation, $927,000,000,000,000. The cold perspiration stood out on his forehead in half-pint drops. It would never do to throw this gold on the market at once- -Cleveland and Wall Street would encompass its demonetization on the plea that silver was the only honest money. England could take a billion, Continental Europe two billions and America almost as much by calling in and canceling the silver certificates and greenbacks; but this would scarce exhaust the top-crop. What would he do with the surplus? To turn it all loose at once would run gold down to less than a dollar a pound-would kill the goose that laid the auriferous egg-would make mining even less profitable