"I am glad she went with you, my child, very glad. Poverty and unhappiness, like disease, are effects. Wherever possible we must learn the cause, and remove it, in every grade of life. You can easily reach the lower strata, but there is another grade above made impregnable by false pride and sensitiveness. In my lectures I try to reach and teach this grade, but I find you are making greater progress than I, in your daily rounds giving practical lessons. You say the majority are eager to learn and are advancing. I find a greater dissatisfaction among those who do not want to learn. They see others prosper and believe it to be by more fortunate surroundings. They will not admit it to be by their self-abnegation, their foresight and thrift. They will not deny themselves a pleasure simply because somebody else does not, who, perhaps, is more able to gratify it. They have longings and desires that are natural, perhaps right, but they do not understand the true method of attaining what they seek, but in the wrong pursuit of them bring misery instead of peace upon themselves.

"In every clime, in every country, it is the same. But here in this great land with room and to spare for all, with wealth untold in prairie, mine, and forest, with an understanding of the true principles of life all could be so happy and so blessed.

"Extravagance is the curse of the American people. The very air they breathe is infected by this pestilence. It is transmitted from father to son, from mother to daughter, like cancer or consumption, and indeed might be called the great American epidemic. It effects all classes alike, in different degrees, and beginning in the parlor finds its way to the kitchen. In no other land can a laborer off the street earn five dollars per day putting coal into a cellar. In no other country would cooks and house girls be allowed to wear silk and plush and oftentimes sealskin. More money, higher wages, oppression, is the cry. Money! money! money to spend Money to waste! Money! Higher wages, less work, poorer work. They've drunk beer long enough, they aspire to wine and champagne. They have worn rhinestones too long, they must have diamonds. But no money for homes, no money to save; those who do save soon have their coffers full and overflowing from these poor diseased wretches who bring their money unsolicited and buy all the worthless things that moneyed people would not have.

"A young man earning a good salary must patronize the most fashionable tailor and pay double for goods no better than those sold by a less fashionable competitor. The

most expensive furnishing house gets his orders. If he gets over one hundred dollars per month-and many do the same on less salary-he patronizes livery stables to a marvellous degree. If he takes a young girl out he must go in a carriage, for my young lady is dressed more expensively than foreign princesses of her age, and wears diamonds before she is twenty. She expects so much of her escort that he is penniless at the end of the month. Perhaps the young girl is the daughter of a widow with no expectations, or her father may be a salesman in a dry-goods store. Maybe he has risen a little higher and therefore his daughter must dress in the same style as the partner's wife. If the young man gets one hundred and fifty dollars per month, he launches upon still deeper waters. Girls go out with these young men, expecting, hoping, some day to be their wives. Common sense should teach both that they can never afford to marry. Men should know that, in their few moments of calm thought when oppressed by debt and care, they realize they can't afford it.

"Why don't sensible girls say: 'No thank you, we will take a street car. Save your money, and when I believe you can afford it I will drive in a carriage with you.' Why don't the young man say frankly: 'I would like to take you in the most approved style, but upon my honor I can't afford it. I want to own a home some day, and a carriage too. To do that I must patronize street cars for several years to come."" "Then there are flowers and presents of all kinds, improper to give, improper to receive. When will it end? Where does it end? In wreck and ruin to both young men and young women, fear and distrust of each other; and yet on, on, blindly they go upon that intoxicating road of extravagance, down into the dark valley of poverty."

"Who has more right to ride in carriages than the honest breadwinner, or to wear diamonds than those whose hard earnings buy them?' said one indignant clergyman one day. Who? Who, indeed, but the man or woman who can afford it, being lifted above the possibility of want or oppression? Be honest with yourselves, is the lesson I try to teach them."

(To be continued.)

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

ETIDORHPA, OR THE END OF EARTH.*

BY JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL. D.

It would appear that Professor John Uri Lloyd, of Cincinnati, has won his laurel. He is not to be regarded as a candidate for literary honors, but rather as a wearer of them. His strange romance of "Etidorhpa: or The End of Earth," has come to us unexpectedly, and as it were out of the shadows. Of it we had not heard a word until the copy came with the author's compliments—an elegant example of the bookmaker's art, illustrated as if under the spell of an inspiration. To come directly to the matter, we are disposed to think "Etidorhpa" the most unique, original, and suggestive new book that we have seen in this the last decade of a not unfruitful century. We are all the more pleased with the work because it has come unannounced, because it is not formal, and not according to rule.

We confess that at first we did not know what to do with this literary apparition. We sat down with "Etidorhpa" incredulous, saying to ourself: "Etidorhpa? What is that? John Uri Lloyd? Who is he that thus obtrudes on the leisure of our reflective hour?" We had heard, not very definitely, of Mr. Lloyd as a man of science, a writer on pharmaceutical subjects, a chemist most expert in his art, a clever lecturer before scientific bodies; but reasoning dimly, in our dull manner, we had not supposed him skilful in literary art, and had not fancied him taking to flight; but had allowed him to remain imbedded in a poor deduction as one innocent-like most of the genus scientificum-of imagination and excursive power.

As to "Etidorhpa," we were not long in discovering that the word is simply an inversion of Aphrodite, name of the beautiful seaborn being of the Greeks. Moreover, we soon perceived that by a like inversion of method Aphrodite, or the Pure Love-passion of our race, lies hidden as the bottom principle and motif of this marvellous story. Let none read "Etidorhpa" without understanding that Etidorhpa is the End of Earth-not only in the author's theory of life, but to all of us forever. But of this we shall have something to say further on. "Etidorhpa" is a puzzle-a literary mystery. It puts criticism at fault. Criticism delights in something that is according to pro

"Etidorhpa: or The End of Earth. The Strange History of a Mysterious Being and the Account of a Remarkable Journey," as communicated in Manuscript to Llewellyn Drury, who promised to print the same, but finally evaded the responsibility, which was assumed by John Uri Lloyd. With many illustrations by J. Augustus Knapp. Author's Edition, limited. Published by John Uri Lloyd, Cincinnati, 1895.

gramme, and is not measurable with the ordinary reed of the critic. We do not recall another book the sense of which is so difficult to seize and to interpret. We do not mean that it is hidden in a cloud of mysticism, but it is surrounded with shadows and obfuscation. The author appears to have had the purpose of putting us at fault. The very title leads us astray. We get into doubt as to who wrote the book, and then into greater doubt as to what it signifies. We become interested in a given part, and still more interested in the whole. We first think the parts fragmentary, but presently find them coalescing. The imagination gets beguiled with the story. The scientific studies are set in a chasing of fiction so realistic that the mind loses all distinction between the thing that is, the thing that may be, and the thing that is not. The fragments of "Etidorhpa" are nearly all in some sense independent literary entities; but there is a beautiful astral body, unseen to the eye of sense, that binds them all together in an organic unity which is as ideal as a Buddhistic dream or a piece of Hellenic art. Finally, we remark this peculiarity about the book, or the story incorporated in the book; and that is, that it is a sort of torso or part, like that other immortal fragment, the Venus of Medici, which, lacking much of physical completeness, lacks nothing of spiritual perfection. The story in "Etidorhpa" comes on like a play, upon the rendition of which we enter twenty minutes after the curtain has risen; and it goes away like a bas-relief or the epos of the Greeks; the drama does not conclude in its final passages, but simply

ceases.

We know not whether to praise or to criticise Mr. Lloyd for his skill in leading us astray. In the prefatory part he makes up a fiction which to this hour we do not clearly apprehend. "Etidorhpa" pretends to be primarily the recital of a Mysterious Being called I-AmThe-Man. I-Am-The-Man is the myth of William Morgan redivirus; that is, of him whom the Masons were said to have abducted and destroyed in 1826 for his treason in publishing their secret lore. But he comes back again, vaguely, uncertainly, a man old and gray and venerable, a benevolent philosopher, a weird sage, who by some strange compulsion, as if under punishment, has made a remarkable journey, of which he has written and kept the history. On this journey he found, not indeed the end of the earth (reader, we pray you, read it not thus!) but the End of Earth; that is, the summation and final fact and principle of all that is to be sought for and desired in this human sphere; that is, I-Am-The-Man found Etidorhpa, the beautiful Spirit and Myth of Love.

All this I-Am-The-Man records, puts into a manuscript, and finally obtrudes it upon the attention of a certain eccentric and mythical chemist in the Cincinnati of the fifties. The name of this personage is Johannes Llewellyn Llongollyn Drury. I-Am-The-Man becomes the familiar of Drury, and haunts his study in the night. The sage reads

to him from the manuscript of the mysterious journey, and finally leaves the document with him to be published after thirty years. Llewellyn Drury is a fiction. The author says of the name: "The reader of these lines may regard this cognomen with" little favor. . . . "Still I liked it, and it was the favorite of my mother, who always used the name in full; the world, however, contracted Llewellyn to Lew, much to the distress of my dear mother, who felt aggrieved at the liberty. After her death I decided to move to a Western city, and also determined, out of respect to her memory, to select from and rearrange the letters of my several names, and construct therefrom three short, terse words, which would convey to myself only, the resemblance of my former name. Hence it is that the Cincinnati Directory does not record my self-selected name, which I have no reason to bring before the public. To the reader my name is Llewellyn Drury." Now John Uri Lloyd is, as the reader will perceive, an anagram of Johannes Llewellyn Llongollyn Drury. It is the "three short terse words" referred to. So we begin in "Etidorhpa" with a Mysterious Being, who is a myth; with his manuscript, which is a fiction; with a remarkable journey, which never occurred; with the invented Llewellyn Drury, who never existed; and we end with the evolution of John Uri Lloyd himself and the story of "Etidorhpa"! The fiction is as perplexing as it is ingenious-we had almost said, funny.

The body of "Etidorhpa" is the content of the manuscript read by I-Am-The-Man to Llewellyn Drury and left with him for publication. Drury, according to the fiction, evades the responsibility, which is assumed by John Uri Lloyd. Lloyd becomes the editor instead of Drury, and "Etidorhpa" is the result.

In the beginning, I-Am-The-Man gives an account of his search for knowledge; how he became involved with a secret brotherhood; how he wrote a confession, or revelation, in the Stone Tavern, in Western New York; and how he was kidnapped and borne away to a blockhouse, where he found himself prematurely aged. Afterwards he begins his journey in search for the End of Earth.

By this stage in the manuscript, science begins to be injected into the narrative. There are little jets of dissertation flaming up here and there. Presently we have an account of the punch-bowl region of Kentucky, and a map of the country of the Cumberland. Near the junction of that stream with the Ohio is the region of the Kentucky caverns. Into one of these near Smithland (a most circumstantial and Defoe-like fiction this!) I-Am-The-Man enters, or is about to enter, when he is confronted by a singular-looking being, first of the many original marvels created by the author of "Etidorhpa." The singular-looking being is an eyeless and noseless cave-man, stark naked, moist as a fish, slimy but clean, dripping with the wetness of his cavern life, chaste as he is nude, a pure intelligence become