tensifications of our mental throes and emotions that, really, the beasts at Ephesus become of as pathetically heroic mold as the martyrs, and the boy who lamented that one poor lion in the arena "didn't have any Christian to eat" was entirely in the line of the new relationship. Meantime, too, the gladness of the world becomes seriously eclipsed by it, and the taste for tragedy is receiving a new impulse in unwonted fields. A little lad who recently took one of Seton Thompson's exquisite books to his Quaker grandmother to read to him said sturdily, "Thee knows, grandmother, that the stories are all very sad"; and then the little tragedy lover sat down to let his heart bleed over the sorrows and wrongs of poor "Wabb" and his heroic journey into the poisonous valley of death. This, no doubt, is the effective side of the wonderful animal books that are bringing all living, creeping or crawling things into our closer sympathy, acquaintance and fellowship. But for the joy of that companionship, the gladsomeness of creatures that could charm us away from all the narrow lines of human society and relationship into the free, wide air of elemental being, this flinging of the weight of "man's mortality” and almost accountability upon beast and bird, is rather a dangerous experiment. And if it does not end in giving us br'er wolves and grizzly bears that lie awake at night and mourn for their sins, we may be very thankful. The truth is, too, that, with all the playfulness, fun and even humor that have been read into the lower animals by the genial Uncle Remuses and other authors who have claimed them, the half of it has not been told. Some one recently suggests that we may be more sport to the playful kitten than it can possibly be to us, and it seems very probable that all the kittenish things in creation have their own fun over our clumsy efforts to dance after or around themwitness, for instance, a sportive colt leading his master a coquettish chase over field or meadow, or a sly squirrel or rabbit darting from your path when he has tempted you within a hand's touch of him. Did you ever really try to put salt on a bird's tail, or clap your hand on the saucy minnow that flashed toward you in a secluded bathing place? Imagine the mirth of the tuneful mosquito when Swift's "forked straddling animal, with bandy legs," lunges vainly at him from his distracted couch, or the amusement of the myriad-eyed fly when the portly housewife tries to creep up behind it with the paper whacker. Consider the humor of the bee when he sees a small population of stately bipeds performing an impromptu clog dance before his tiny sting, or even the pleasure of the butterfly in carrying the urchin, with his upturned hat, an airy chase from flower to flower. Man is said to be the only animal that laughs, but what really is the dog about when he twists his countenance into such ungodly contortions to placate you when you try to dislodge him from some favorite corner? Even to get hilariously drunk is not the privilege of pleasure-loving man alone, for does not the sly prairie dog go out and "fill up" on the juice of an intoxicating weed and come home “half seas over" in the morning? Solely for this, says the naturalist, does he take the owl to house with him and guard his entrance, and the rattlesnake to make sure of his bed. What must be his contempt for the man who will "do the deed and regret it," or spoil the insane delight of it with the Keeley cure? Everything in all creation is free to the animal revelers, and they are the true "scientists" who live up to the belief that nothing in their maker's world can harm them. Shall man, then, encumber them in the weight of his conscious fears, and qualms, and stolen knowledge of good and evil? Shall he fill the happy creatures of the day and hour, the glad spirits of wood and sky, with his cankering hates and bitter memories, his long-cherished revenges and suicidal abuses of "restful death"? Nay, then, let Shelley tell him What objects are the fountains Of their happy strains. What fields, or waves, or mountains, What shapes of sky or plain, What love of their own kind, what ignorance of pain. It is enough for us poor mortals to worry through the golden years, cowards of conscience, slaves of fear, victims of idle tears and vain regrets, of deadly hates and passions. But let the birds and beasts be free to roam the wide creation and drink the intoxicating draught of life in ignorance of pain; and die at nature's close, aye, even fall at the hunter's dart, untouched by any thought of wrong or malevolence in all the universe. The sting of death is sin, we are told by the good book, and to these creatures, innocent of sin, death, even at each other's hands, may have no real terrors. Certainly, their joyous life and song in the constant presence of it would lead us to perceive, as the poet tells us, that They of death must deem It is to share their song, not burden them with our sighing, that the companionship of such free creatures should be sought. It is the heaviness of our souls, "the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin," that keeps us out of our best inheritance of strength or talent. Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world would listen then, as I am listening now, cries Shelley to his skylark, and it is as true as the subtlest truth of art. We never shall achieve our highest in life or labor till we catch the "clear, keen joyance" of the skylark's note. R PRACTICAL SIDE OF BROTHERLY LOVE ELIGION is not altruism, we are told; humanitarian ism can not save the soul. So there it is. Just when we had begun to hope that brotherly love should continue and the good deed done unto the least of the brethren was done unto the Master, it appears that the whole thing is wrong. It is settling up a human love for a divine love, and leaving the debt to the individual soul unpaid. Worse still, it is exalting materialism and creature comfort above that spirituality and triumph over the flesh which are supposed to go with bare feet and serge garments. And, above all, it is a cant and a hypocrisy on the very face of it, for no human being ever did or could love his brother as he loved himself, or really love him at all unless he developed a few qualities on his own account worth loving. Reduced to its last analysis, therefore, altruism pure and simple is nonexistent, and the people who are condemning it are passing judgment upon something which they have never seen a feat not unknown to solons of all ages. "We run about," says one writer, "without either worship or prayer, declaring noisily that we want to see everybody happy, and do not care what sacrifices we make to that end. But we make no sacrifices, fill no voids, console no wounded hearts and do nothing to knit men together for any end greater than conviviality." And on this sham image of human love and brotherhood the teachers are passing judgment, and declaring the long dream of the ages and the life principle of all religions, from Brahma to Jesus, which made men one in |