chambers, which is announced to meet some time this year. The qualifications for membership in this Parliament and for the right to vote as electors have been most carefully defined, with the object, first, of excluding Young China, and secondly, of ensuring the election of men acceptable to Yuan Shih-k'ai and to his chief representatives at the provincial capitals. At the same time, the President's direct control over provincial affairs has been greatly strengthened by once more separating the military from the civil administration. Military authority became concentrated last June in the hands of provincial commanders, holding the old Manchu title of Chiang Chün, selected or approved by Yuan and more or less controlled from Peking by the Ministry of War. The old Taotai system of civil administration has been restored, with slight changes of names and symbols. Needless to say, the men selected to hold these important posts have been selected for their merits, chief of which is unswerving personal loyalty to the head of the State.

The first effects of Yuan's steadily increasing authority are now beginning to assume definite shape, and their general nature is such as to justify those who believe that only under a benevolent despotism can law and order be evolved out of the social and political conditions actually existing in China. During the period immediately following the abdication of the Manchus, before the Iron Hand in the Velvet Glove had had time to collect the men and money necessary for the restoration of the old machinery of government, the financial situation at Peking and in the provinces seemed almost hopeless. During the chaos of the revolution, the ancient fiscal relations between the capital and the provincial treasuries had perforce fallen into abeyance; the government's obligations

for the service of its foreign debts were rapidly increasing, while its revenues had greatly diminished. In the absence of any strong central authority, the disorganized mandarinate was busy making provision for itself on the time-honored principle of après nous le déluge, borrowing money recklessly, anywhere and everywhere, upon the last available securities of local revenues and concessions to foreigners. At the beginning of 1914 it had become perfectly evident that unless Yuan Shih-k'ai could speedily succeed in organizing a provincial administration under his own nominees, to collect and remit regular taxes and duties, through the old channels and upon an increased scale, China would be compelled to make default. The temporary expedient of short-term loans raised from foreign banks could not serve much longer to avert the longprophesied débacle. Those who remembered how, during the last decade of Manchu rule, failure had dogged all the government's efforts to increase the provinces' remittances to the Central Treasury saw little reason for hoping that, in the time at his disposal, Yuan would be able to overcome the formidable obstacles in his path. Skepticism as to the possibility of a successful reorganization of the salt gabelle revenues was justifiable, in view of Sir Robert Hart's confessed failure to reorganize the lekin collectorate as security for the loan of 1898.

But in this matter the revolution has proved a real blessing in disguise. Its great upheaval and slaughter removed, or seriously frightened, large numbers of the literati and gentry, who by prescriptive right battened and fattened on the provincial revenues; in many places it made a clean sweep of the locust swarm of Yamen-bred parasites and blood-suckers, 'expectant' officials and gentry, who preyed on every branch of productive industry. The

frock-coated politicians and khaki'd soldier-students, whose little hour of brief authority followed upon the dislocation of the old régime, possessed neither the materials nor the intelligence to organize a new fiscal administration. They lived on hand-to-mouth expedients and irregular levies. Meanwhile the old machinery, which for centuries had served to provide the Manchu Court and clans with funds sufficient for their needs, lay dislocated and discarded. It required the master hand of Yuan Shih-k'ai to restore it. This he has done, skillfully lubricating its clumsy creaking joints and sweeping from its cogwheels the immemorial dust of precedents outworn. In setting it to work again, under the direction of men of his own choosing, he has had good cause to bless the revolution, the results of which have enabled him to disregard many of those precedents, and have relieved him from the necessity of conciliating many ancient vested interests.

And, strange as it may appear, the war in Europe has also strengthened his hands, by removing from his entourage (and especially from the Ministry of Finance) all immediate prospect of raising new loans from foreign financiers. The practice of paying old debts by fresh borrowings is one which appeals to the Oriental mind, partly because of its extreme simplicity, and partly because there are usually pickings and perquisites to be found in the wake of foreign loans. Compelled to abandon all hope of making ends meet in this way, the Ministry of Finance and the President's adherents in the provinces have been led, in their own interest, to recognize the necessity of a systematic reform of the country's fiscal resources, on a basis of largely increased remittances to Peking. Had foreign loans continued to be available, it is extremely probable that Yuan

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Shih-k'ai and his advisers would have looked with a lenient eye on the perpetuation of many of the provincial 'squeezes' which, in the past, haveswallowed up so large a proportion of the revenues collected. Live and let live is a fundamental principle with the mandarin. But, confronted with the stern necessity of providing, entirely from internal resources, a revenue sufficient to meet the country's domestic needs and foreign obligations, Yuan Shih-k'ai has been able to bring to bear arguments that have evidently carried the required weight at Peking and in the provinces. The amounts now regularly remitted from the provincial treasuries to the capital have steadily increased during the past year; internal loans (nominally voluntary, but actually forced subscriptions levied upon business houses) have produced sums far larger than anything they were able to collect under this heading.

Finally, the reorganization of the salt gabelle, under the able direction of Sir Richard Dane, has proved conclusively that the President's statecraft is based on intimate knowledge of men and affairs. Most of his chosen lieutenants at the provincial capitals have been led to take something more than a local view of their responsibilities and to recognize the expediency, on national grounds, of loyally coöperating with Sir Richard Dane and his staff in their work of radical reform. Great credit must be given to this energetic and expert administrator for the changes that he has been able to introduce and for their surprising results; but to the revolution must be ascribed the allimportant fact that the vested interests of the provincial gentry and local officials no longer possess the power of passive resistance which was theirs, by sheer weight of tradition, under the Manchu dynasty. The work which Sir Richard Dane is doing proves (what

every one knew) that under an effectively centralized government, loyally supported by its officials in the provinces, China's visible revenues might easily be trebled, without adding anything to the taxes actually levied from the people, by the application of business methods and by reduction within reasonable limits of the hungry horde of place-seekers. And if the ancient citadels of the salt gabelle have thus been successfully stormed by the foreign-led forces of reform, if the paramount authority of the President-autocrat has thus been able to secure results which, in the opinion of all the best observers, are likely to give China financial stability, we may be justified in hoping that the same forces will in due time be able to effect equally important reforms, under expert foreign supervision, in respect to the currency, land-tax, and lekin collectorate.

For the present, it is sufficient to ob

serve that the great-man theory of government has once more been vindicated in China, and that, at a time when all the western world lies under heavy storm-clouds of war, the Celestial Republic shows. signs of successfully emerging from some of the most grievous troubles of its internal disorganization. Yuan Shih-k'ai's recent mandates are an intimation to the world in general, and to Young China in particular, that the ends of autocracy have justified its means, some of which have been undeniably frightful,' and that, political agitation being barred as a means of livelihood at Peking, benevolent despotism is in a position to protect the state from the dangers which have so long threatened it from within. Of those which threaten it from without, this is not the time or place to speak; but, given a solvent exchequer and a little luck, the Velvet Glove should be able to deal with them also.

I

SPRING was born that afternoon, just before evening began to come down. Three days and nights the Equinox had labored, darkening all the coasts and crying out with the agony of shattered waters; and now, suddenly, the thing was done; an inscrutable warm essence ran through the city streets, the smoke of chimneys and the pennons on the tall masts along the docks veered to the northeast, and out there where

the pennons pointed, the foggy dregs of the gale drained away to sea, leaving the islands clear crimson in the sunset. Nondescript people on ferryboats craned up at the sky, straightened cravats or flicked dust from their clothes without knowing why they did it, and looked forward to a medley of quite ordinary evenings with an extraordinary and unaccountable excitement. Dogs, back in the Fens, tugged unnaturally at their leashes. A thin young woman, who coughed behind her hand when

she was sure no one watched, stood outside the employees' exit of the 'Great White Store' on Washington Street, weighing a nickel in her palm. The nickel was carfare, or a 'movie.' Which? She raised her face to the soft, flaming sky. It was spring!

Down in the lower city, 'Notes' was practising a pair of dance-steps on the splintery planks at the end of the fish dock. 'Notes' was very young and enthusiastic, and one day, when he had time, he would write a novel something with color in it. That is why the city editor had sent him down to T Wharf to-day. Not a vessel had stirred out since the gale closed down, and not a vessel had come in through the smother. The docks had been dead for three days. It would be good for the young chap.

Every one had gone home at this hour except 'Notes' and the old lookout on the balcony of the Fish Commission; even the schooners, packed like matches in the basin, had a deserted look, for the new something in the air had sent their crews up into the city. The young fellow called up to the lookout, half in question,

'Nothing doing to-night?'

'Don't 'magine so, son.' The old fellow combed his whiskers with hard fingers. "The fleet'll be hidin' out 'nunder the Cape some'r's. Them as got fish'll be driftin' in in the mornin', I should n't wonder.'

'Well, I'll be running along.' 'Notes' lingered for one last rehearsal of the dance-steps. The lookout stopped combing his whiskers.

'By Godfrey, there's a lucky fool!' He turned and bawled down the dock. 'Hey there, son, might wait a second. 'Magine thet's somebody outside the island there, towin'.'

'Notes' ran up the stairs, bouncing unreasonably on account of the air. Together they watched the smoke-flower

of a tugboat come along the island's ridge, and behind it two slim, pink feathers, that were the after sails of a towing schooner. The two craft came along and debouched from the island's tip into the open fairway, the one dingy and active, the other luminous, unhurried, like a rosy argosy returning.

'By George!' The boy turned to the old man. 'What made him try it?'

'Jest to do it - nothin' in the world but to do it. He's a devil, thet Ginny there a plain, simple, square-rigged devil.'

'By jingo! Immense!'

'Mmmm!' The ancient flicked his whiskers with a gesture of impatient scorn. 'Holler, son, holler! I cal'late ye'd holler louder if ye hed an idee what them boys 've been through. Know what the bay outside there looks like? Eh? Looks like nothin'-because ye can't see it. Can't stand up; can't lay down. Decks awash an' ever'thing adrift below decks. Scud cuttin' the riggin' to pieces. All hands hangin' on fer dear life an' prayin' to them Ginny saints o' theirn. Holler, son!'

'Notes,' quite impervious to the other's irony, leaned on the railing and watched the luminous wanderer. The towboat had veered off now, and a soiled mannikin in its stern hauled in the line hand-over-hand, the water feathering pink at each successive jerk. The schooner, towering like a tranquil flame in the sun's death-glare, moved forward almost imperceptibly. A shadow from the high buildings beyond Atlantic Avenue came out, swallowed the hull and clambered up the masts, and she lay in the outer fringe of the basin, only the peak of her mainsail keeping the sun, a lofty, three-cornered beacon, like a flaming covenant with memory. Below that beacon was a havoc. Lines were adrift in the standing-gear; a tub, overturned in the scuppers aft, spewed out its trawl along the deck, sopping

and tangled like a witch's hair. The deck amidships looked curiously lopsided, because half the dories were gone from the starboard nest; their lashings, broken at the knots, writhed on the planks.

From his height above the field of decks, 'Notes' watched the crew making the vessel fast: small, far-away, tired figures, ragged, their heads all alike in shiny round oil-hats, one of them with his arm swathed and bound across his chest. 'Notes' wondered how long it was since they had slept, and even as he speculated, one of the tattered figures straightened up and gesticulated toward the city cliffs, where rows of lights began to twinkle in the dusk, with a feeling of exuberance and anticipation that carried clear to him across the basin. A blue smudge trailed up from the galley stove-pipe; a man stopped to spread his palms in it; and 'Notes,' because he was so young, could almost feel the warmth in his own palms.

'Say! Say!' He clapped the rail. "To come out of that' he waved both hands wildly toward the waning cloudwrack beyond the island-'to come out of that—into this! Why, man, it's a Fourth Act. They ought to live happy ever after, eh? Stunning!' He looked up at the sky. In the dying glow of the zenith one star appeared, so suddenly that it was like a dim explosion. “This,' said 'Notes,' 'is Romance. Just plain, sheer Romance.' He clapped his companion between the shoulder-blades. 'Well, be good. I've got to run. I want to write this thing while it's hot!'

He was halfway to the office, booming along in the tunnel, before he happened to think that he had neglected to ask the vessel's name, or her captain's. But after all-color! He had the color, all right. Warm crimson, with a shadow of angry, hard gray behind it. And the smoke curling up

from the galley stovepipe, blue and acrid. - Romance!

II

The last light drained out of the sky and a multitude of stars prickled through the masts in the crowded basin. Down in the forecastle of the Valerie, Justin Jason, the 'plain, simple, squarerigged devil' of the lookout's panegyric, was 'mugging up,' his elbows planted wide on the table, a triangle of pie in one hand and a saucer of tea in the other. He was a thick-set, swarthy fellow of forty, a sober man, with the flaring mustachio of a swashbuckler, the beginnings of a paunch under his belt, and a brace of sons, the younger of them almost half his own age.

The two were there now, fidgeting along the bench, drifting aimlessly in and out of the galley, staring out through the open square of the companionway and sniffing curiously at the air. Now and then they cast significant sidelong glances at each other and then back nervously at the silent man across the table. If he would only say something - no matter what. They had shifted to their 'shore-clothes,' their hard collars and hard hats; they were acutely aware that he had observed them doing it, yet he had said nothing. He continued to brood over his 'mug,' his brow puckered slightly.

'Aw, come on ashore, pa.' 'Hands,' the younger, had come to the end of his endurance.

Justin Jason raised his eyes slowly. ''Shore? Yes! Yaaas! What for? Huh?'

"Aw, have some fun.'

'Come on, pa.' John, the elder, rubbed the point of a russet shoe with one hand, avoiding his father's eyes. 'Come on, le's go up to the Swede's.'

'You make me tired, the both of you!' Justin Jason glowered at the pie in one