than dealing in long-leaf pine. Happy thought! He would make the streets of Waco the exact counterpart of those in the New Jerusalem-would pave 'em with gold bricks! That done, he could get out some extra large slugs Iwith which to dam the Brazos and rebuild the Cotton Palace. He had always wanted to do something handsome for Waco, and here was his opportunity. He would demonstrate the truth of the adage that fact is stranger than fiction by double-discounting the long-range lies of Marco Polo anent the golden roofs of far Cathay. He remembered having read in the ICONOCLAST that "the surface of the earth had been merely scratched-we know not what may be hidden in its dark depths. Our children may shoe their mules with yellow metal from King Solomon's mines." He remembered how he had slaved and saved for half a lifetime to pile up a paltry million or two, and felt sorry for himself. At this juncture his nephew called to say that a string had suddenly been discovered tied to the mine, the thither end of which was securely held by his Mexican servant. It would take a cold $25,000 to turn their El Dorado loose, and he had but $5,000. He would have to sell his gold bricks at a sacrifice to raise the remainder, unless- Here he looked wistfully at Uncle William. Yes, he would fix it; what was a miserable $20,000, when you could knock it out of the mine in a minute! But suddenly his Aladdin's lamp began to smoke and sputter. He remembered having heard somewhere that all is not gold that glitters. Uncle William actually smelt a rat-smelt it all by himself, and it was not labeled either. He was taking dinner with his nephew in the hotel dining-room when it suddenly occurred to him that not every ass wears four legs. He fixed a cold, search-warrant gaze on the young man who pretended to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and the latter wilted like a white rabbit beneath the

glance of a basilisk, or a sweet-potato vine frescoed with a hoar frost. Uncle William rose, pointed his soup-spoon at the cowering wretch and hissed through his teeth, as he once saw the hero do in a play: "You're a villain.” The iciness of his tone frapped the coffee in the kitchen, while the mercury dropped through the bottom of the tube. The young man fled and Uncle William joined in the chase, his napkin streaming on the breeze like a white plume of King Henry of Navarre. Those who saw the race will not soon forget it-the wicked wretch hoofing it up Washington 'Avenue, his face distorted with fear; Uncle William pursuing him with uplifted soup-spoon like an avenging Nemesis! Surely the path of the transgressor is hard.

Uncle William should come home. It is not safe for him to wander about in this wicked world. Somebody might steal him. First thing we know he'll purchase the philosopher's stone or the state right to saw sunbeams up into cypress shingles. Come home, Uncle William, before the bities get you! Alas! alas! that the leading citizen of Waco should be humbugged and hoodooed by an antediluvian fake that would not impose upon a country bumpkin from the Free State of Van Zandt! Oh, Uncle William, Uncle Willliam, when the grass grows green and the cowslips bloom in the meadow beware of the omnivorous calf.

***

PANACEAS FOR POVERTY.

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DIVES AND LAZARUS.

How to secure a more equal distribution of wealth” is a problem that has perplexed publicists since the dawn of civilization, the genesis of government. A thousand solu

tions have been proffered, all panaceas for poverty; but despite the fecundity of social therapeutics the evil grows ever greater; Fortune and Famine, Waste and Want continue to divide the world between them-the walls that separate their territories to reach higher and higher. Year by year the hoard of Dives is increased and the poverty of Lazarus made more poignant; ever does the dismal howl of the gaunt wolf draw nearer the cottage of Labor, retreat further from the mansion of the Capitalist; ever is it true that to him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.

Civilization, the introduction of machinery, the more minute division of labor, the concentration of capital, while multiplying the world's wealth-producing power, but serves to accentuate the division between Rich and Poor; to enable the former to demand a larger, to compel the latter to accept a lesser share of the joint product of Capital and Labor. It is an open question whether our

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progress of civilization," taken collectively, is a blessing or a curse. That Progress is the order established by the Infinite, natural and necessary, must be conceded. That it brings a curse rather than a blessing to the majority of men; that only the favored few reap its rich rewards, while the last state of the mass of mankind is worse than the first, must be due to individual greed and general ignorance rather than to evil inherent in the principle of Progress; that its car rolls over the heads of the millions instead of under their feet, crushing into Hell those it should bear into Heaven, setting the world ablaze instead of warming it into perennial summer, must be due to the fact that it is driven by a presumptuous Phaeton who cannot or will not properly manage it.

Many methods, almost as arbitrary and unnatural as that of Lycurgus, are still seriously proposed for securing financial equality, serving sometimes as artificial wings upon which aspiring politicians mount skyward until an iconoclastic sun precipitates them into Icarian seas. Of these catholicons, the communistic-under various brands and trade-marks-is the most common. It proposes to purge away" the primal eldest curse," to re-imparadise man, to inaugurate the millennium by fiat of the State.

Then there are more or less " conservative" plans for putting more pie in the dinner-pail of the poor man. One would save for him some two or three cents per diem by pulling the top rows of brick off the tariff wall; another would add as much to his daily stipend by building a wall some inches higher-and there you have a political issue; worthy labored disquisition by “able editors," statistical harangues by "prominent politicians "-the whole Nation groaning in an agony of excitement; parading itself in torch-light processions; electing representatives pledged to pry off or plaster on; constables and county commissioners who cannot get at the blessed tariff with either trowel or pick, but whose moral support this or the other tariff wall the toiler can rely upon. Another plan for pulling a few feathers from the Gessler-cap of a presumptuous Plutocracy and inserting them in the hat-band of the man with the hoe, is to get up more steam at the mints, to grind out more money-it being argued that the more coin there is in the country, the better chance the toiler will have to clutch some of it. Of course, it is "money" the shivering wretches need-but would not filling the stores and shops with cook-books and fashion-plates answer as well? Let the political issue-makers consider this. It is a Pegasus that if properly bridled and saddled may carry a skillful rider afar-perhaps to the White House and the distinc

tion of having a nation bawling under his windows while his babies are being born!

The "radical reformer " is not satisfied with saving less than the world; he would drag in a visual and tactual millennium broad enough to enfold the earth. The "conservative" is satisfied if he can save the particular portion of it in which he resides-and where a vote will avail him; proclaims more or less articularly that he cares not if the rest of it miss salvation and get quite the reverse-even rejoices that, bad off as his little dogkennel of a country may be, other countries are in infinitely worse condition, fuller far of woe and wail. Between the enthusiastic radical, with his impracticable Utopias, the cold-blooded conservative, with his impotent bread boluses, you can take your choice and dodge regret as best you may.

The fact is, Society is sick unto death; to such dire extremity have the doctors in their disagreements and experiments reduced their patient. If the radicals ever get an opportunity to give it one full dose of their horse-medicine even prayer cannot pull it through; the treatment of the conservatives is about as potent as rattling beans in a dried bladder to stop an eclipse of the sun-about as satisfactory as a drop of water to Dives after Death has transported him to the torrid regions of the damned.

Clearly something must be done, and that quickly-but what? It were as idle to attempt to complete extirpation of Poverty as to banish Sin from the world. "The poor ye have always with you;" there will ever be improvidents and unfortunates. But while we cannot relegate Poverty altogether to the Past, and, with perfumed airs, waft every human sail to happy havens in Fortunate Isles, it is certainly possible to circumscribe it somewhat; to reclaim a portion of that arid, monster-bearing desert in which