of life by having these of the best, one realizes that it is worth while to take a good deal of trouble, and if need be to sacrifice the superficial enjoyment of keeping in the front rank of the mad mob of sensation seekers whose only idea of literary merit is noise and novelty. It is a trivial and silly vanity which is unhappy because somebody—or because everybody-has read new books first.

13. David Starr Jordan (1851- ), until recently president of Leland Stanford University, California, is a scientist and a writer on a wide range of subjects. In his poems, stories, and essays he often shows the touch of the literary artist.

THE DEATH OF MCKINLEY

(From The Lessons of the Tragedy in The Voice of the Scholar)

The last words of Garfield were these: Strangulatus pro Republica (slain for the Republic). The feudal tyranny of the spoils system which had made republican administration a farce, has not had, since Garfield's time a defender. It has not vanished from our politics, but its place is where it belongs among the petty wrongs of maladministration.

Again a president is slain for the Republic-and the lesson is the homely one of peace and order, patience and justice, respect for ourselves through respect for law, for public welfare, and for public right.

For this country is passing through a time of storm and stress, a flurry of lawless sensationalism. The irresponsible journalism, the industrial wars, the display of hastily gotten wealth, the grasping of monopoly, the walking delegate, the vulgar cartoon, the foul-mouthed agitator, the sympathetic strike, the unsympathetic lockout, are all symptoms of a single disease—the loss of patriotism, the decay of the sense of justice. As in other cases, the symptoms feed the disease, as well as indicate it. The deed of violence breeds more deeds of violence; anarchy provokes hysteria, and hysteria makes anarchy. The unfounded scandal sets a hundred tongues to wagging, and the seepage from the gutter reaches a thousand homes. . .

The gospel of discontent has no place within our Republic. It is true, as has often been said, that discontent is the cause of human progress. It is truer still, as Mr. John P. Irish has lately pointed out, that discontent may be good or bad, according to its relation to the individual man. There is a noble discontent which a man turns against himself. It leads the man who fails, to examine his own weaknesses, to make the needed repairs in himself, then to take up the struggle again. There is a cowardly discontent which leads a man to blame all failure on his prosperous neighbor or on society at large, as if a social system existed apart from the men who make it. This is the sort of discontent to which the agitator appeals, that finds its stimulus in sensational journalism. It is that which feeds the frenzy of the assassin who would work revenge on society by destroying its accepted head.

The real Americans, trying to live their lives in their own way, saving a little of their earnings and turning the rest into education and enjoyment, have many grievances in these days of grasping trusts and lawless unions. But of such free Americans our country is made. They are the people, not the trusts or the unions, nor their sensational go-betweens. This is their government, and the government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth. This is the people's president -our president-who was killed, and it is ours to avenge him.

Not by lynch law on a large or small scale may we do it; not by anarchy or despotism; not by the destruction of all that call themselves anarchists, not by abridging freedom of the press nor by checking freedom of speech. Those who would wreak lawless vengeance on the anarchists are themselves anarchists and makers of anarchists.

We have laws enough already without making more for men to break. Let us get a little closer to the higher law. Let us respect our own rights and those of our neighbor a little better. Let us cease to tolerate sensational falsehood about our neighbor, or vulgar abuse of those in

power. If we have bad rulers, let us change them peacefully. Let us put an end to every form of intimidation, wherever practiced. The cause that depends upon hurling rocks or epithets, upon clubbing teamsters or derailing trains, cannot be a good cause.

We trust now that the worst has come, the foulest deed has been committed, that our civil wars may stop, not through the victory of one side over the other, the trusts or the unions now set off against each other, but in the victory over both of the American people, of the great body of men and women who must pay for all, and who' are the real sufferers in every phase of the struggle.

Strangulatus pro Republica slain for the Republic. The lesson is plain. It is for us to take it into our daily lives. It is the lesson of peace and good-will, the lesson of manliness and godliness. Let us take it to ourselves, and our neighbors will take it from us.

14. Brander Matthews (1852- ) is a professor of English at Columbia University, New York City, who has written many critical essays. His studies of the drama and the short story are his most notable contribution to American literature.

THE STORY OF "MY MARYLAND"

(From The Songs of the Civil War, in Pen and Ink)

A National hymn is one of the things which cannot be made to order. No man has ever yet sat him down and taken up his pen and said, "I will write a national hymn," and composed either words or music which a nation was willing to take for its own. The making of the song of the people is a happy accident, not to be accomplished by taking thought. It must be the result of fiery feeling long confined, and suddenly finding vent in burning words or moving strains. Sometimes the heat and the pressure of emotion have been fierce enough and intense enough to call forth at once both words and music, and to weld them together indissolubly once and for all. Almost always the maker of the song does not suspect the abiding value of

his work; he has wrought unconsciously, moved by a power within; he has written for immediate relief to himself, and with no thought of fame or the future; he has builded better than he knew. The great national lyric is the result of the conjunction of the hour and the man. Monarchs cannot command it, and even poets are often powerless to achieve it. No one of the great national hymns has been written by a great poet.

More than one enterprising poet, and more than one aspiring musician, has volunteered to take the contract to supply the deficiency; as yet no one has succeeded. 'Yankee Doodle' we got during the Revolution, and the 'Star-spangled Banner' was the gift of the War of 1812; from the Civil War we have received at least two war songs which, as war songs simply, are stronger and finer than either of these-John Brown's Body' and 'Marching Through Georgia.'

Of the lyrical outburst which the war called forth but little trace is now to be detected in literature except by special students. In most cases neither words nor music have had vitality enough to survive a quarter of a century. Chiefly, indeed, two things only survive, one Southern and the other Northern; one a war-cry in verse, the other a martial tune: one is the lyric 'My Maryland,' and the other is the marching song 'John Brown's Body.' The origin and development of the latter, the rude chant to which a million of the soldiers of the Union kept time, is uncertain and involved in dispute. The history of the former may be declared exactly, and by the courtesy of those who did the deed-for the making of a war song is of a truth a deed at arms-I am enabled to state fully the circumstances under which it was written, set to music, and first sung before the soldiers of the South.

'My Maryland' was written by Mr. James R. Randall, a native of Baltimore, and now residing in Augusta, Georgia. The poet was a professor of English literature and the classics in Poydras College at Pointe Coupée, on

the Fausse Rivière, in Louisiana, about seven miles from the Mississippi; and there in April, 1861, he read in the New Orleans Delta the news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore. "This account excited me greatly," Mr. Randall wrote in answer to my request for information; "I had long been absent from my native city, and the startling event there inflamed my mind. That night I could not sleep, for my nerves were all unstrung, and I could not dismiss what I had read in the paper from my mind. About midnight I rose, lit a candle, and went to my desk. Some powerful spirit appeared to possess me, and almost involuntarily I proceeded to write the song of 'My Maryland.' I remember that the idea appeared to first take shape as music in the brain-some wild air that I cannot now recall. The whole poem was dashed off rapidly when once begun. It was not composed in cold blood, but under what may be called a conflagration of the senses, if not an inspiration of the intellect. I was stirred to a desire for some way linking my name with that of my native State, if not 'with my land's language.' But I never expected to do this with one single, supreme effort, and no one was more surprised than I was at the widespread and instantaneous popularity of the lyric I had been so strongly stimulated to write." Mr. Randall read the poem the next morning to the college boys, and at their suggestion sent it to the Delta, in which it was first printed, and from which it was copied into nearly every Southern journal. "I did not concern myself much about it, but very soon, from all parts of the country, there was borne to me, in my remote place of residence, evidence that I had made a great hit, and that, whatever might be the fate of the Confederacy, the song would survive it."

Unlike the authors of the 'Star-spangled Banner' and the 'Marseillaise,' the author of 'My Maryland' had not written it to fit a tune already familiar. It was left for a lady of Baltimore to lend the lyric the musical wings it