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DEMOCRATIZING ENGLAND.

her ability to hold county and municipal offices, including mayoralties) she yet is subject to certain real legal inequalities which she contends will be rectified only if she is placed in a position to wave the Damocletian sword of the ballot over the head of "mere man." She inaugurated her work with hole-in-a-corner meetings, and found she accomplished nothing. Then she began to interrupt public speakers, to ring Ministerial door bells and chain herself to the railings of their chaste areaways, to raise outcry in the very gallery of the Commons, to maul the Bobbies, cut wires, and even blow up houses. It has been a saddening downward path to watch, for the "militants" have overdone what they started out to accomplish. Their claim was that thus only could they attract attention to their needs, and awaken the traditional British sense of fair play, but they have set themselves elbow to elbow with mere disturbers of the peace. The opposition to the "Cause" has grown apace. Lord Curzon, Earl Cromer, Rudyard Kipling, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Lord Lister and Sir William Ramsay are but a few of the many notabilities who have come out with earnest speech and action to defeat the movement.

While it is possible that a majority of Englishmen are still opposed to Home Rule for Ireland, there yet does not now exist the antagonism of two decades ago. The intense hostility against the bare suggestion of autonomy for the neighboring island, which made so memorable the contests of '86 and '93, has noticeably lessened, albeit the feeling, however illogical when reduced to paper, has not wholly passed. At this writing there are substantial difficulties confronting the experiment, but the problem is being faced in a spirit noticeably different from that in which twice before it has been approached. The present day Bill, however, is distinctly reasonable in terms, maintaining beyond all question what Gladstone called "the indefeasible supremacy of the All-British Parliament," and probably Au

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gustine Birrell, Secretary of State for Ireland, predicts only a coming truth. in saying:

"Never in the history of the world. has the experiment of self-government failed. Why should it fail in the case of Ireland? Instead of her being a blot upon our escutcheon, she will become a real integral part of the United Kingdom."

In writing that the electorate at large regards the matter more tolerantly than ever before, one has in mind three separate causes. In the first place, the country has seen the healing power of self-government in South Africa, has approved the recent changes intended to facilitate selfgovernment in India, and has vindicated its own right of self-government against the House of Lords, while of not dissimilar influence come the growing demands for self-government in local matters from Scotland and from Wales. In the second place, happenings across the Channel giving rise to the belief that England would be stronger in the international councils with a contented Ireland beside her, and that prompt action should be taken to remove the one spot of real weakness in her body politic. Finally, the Emerald Isle's self was never more flourishing.

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The Opposition are entering upon. this threefold contest with an enthusiasm as keen as that of the members of the government itself, proclaiming everywhere that the Cabinet is sailing in shallow water and toward hidden rocks. In all the last thirteen by-elections, assert the Conservatives, the Liberal vote has steadily and noticeably diminished, with the Opposition gaining. Nor is it only by the measures now under debate, continue these critics, that the Liberals are being weakened, but by some of those already passed. Of the hundreds who are pointedly showing their dislike of the insurance Act,. for instance, the majority are working men and those not well-to-do; the very class on which the ministry most relies. All this being true, they conclude, it is a bold

government indeed to ask its followers to accept two such fundamental changes as the disruption of the United Kingdom (by which, of course, Home Rule for Ireland is meant) and the virtual doubling of the franchise. It is a bold government, however, that of Premier Asquith; that is the very point which both best explains past

successes and best forecasts future victories. In spite of difficulties such as long ago would have driven a less capable set of men from office, the Premier will almost certainly be able to hold his Parliamentary followers well together, carry his measures from debate to the royal signature, and retain the power for some years to come.

THE COUNTRY BORN

Three little children of long ago,

Brother and sisters, well we knew

The haunts of the cardinal and the crow,

And the fern-fringed brook where the elders grew.
Where the May-apple starred the luscious weeds
That crowded her close, and the sheltered spot,
Where the haw-tree told her coral beads

To the heedless winds that so soon forgot.

To three little children, eager-eyed,

Dame Nature offered her wilding best,
Bounty of berry and grape, deep-dyed

In sifted sunshine. Sweet-meats pressed
In the nut's brown shell. Springs crystal clear
Fragrant shelter the thicket spreads,
And for lullaby brook-song, birds'-song dear,
Violet pillows for sleepy heads.

How brave we went in our nodding plumes
Of the goldenrod and the tasseled maize,
In wreaths of the heart of the larkspur blooms,
In chains of the rose-hip's vivid blaze.
Lovers of earth, and air, and sky;

Friends of all small wild things that be;
And God in His Heaven fore'er close by
To Life's pageant of beauty and mystery.

"Noblesse oblige." With a lavish hand

Let us share the sunshine of dearer days,
With hands to help, heart to understand,

The ceaseless toil of the Trodden Ways,
That the souls of the Toilers still may grow
Truer and kinder, and yet more sweet,

For the royal rearing of long ago,

And the largesse flung at our childish feet.

ELEANOR DUNCAN WOOD.

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I

F ONLY our "city of seven hills" could boast an Augustus Hare, Jr., to set up guide-posts to be faithfully followed, as the fervid tourist steps in the footprints of his "Walks in Rome," how many interesting pilgrimages would the San Franciscan find, beginning right at his own door, on some of the golden winter or early spring days with which the gods have endowed us! How many San Franciscans have "explored" the fascinating waterfront with its ships from strange ports anchored off the Embarcadero, and seen unwritten romances of the sea, in hints of plots for a Stevenson or a London? How few, since 1906, have revisited that illtreated Gibraltar of ours-Telegraph Hill-still Hill still attractive, in spite of its despoiling by fire and the greed of man?

The North Beach Carnival of November, 1910, was an exemplar of our city's possibilities in cosmopolitan features, especially on the second day of the festa, when the bay was of the

deep blue of the sea in Guido's "Aurora," Mt. Tamalpais rising in purple grandeur across a bit of the channel, narrowed deceptively by the clear atmosphere, and Alcatraz, resembling not a little the historic rock of Castel del'Ovo off the Naples shore. Beautiful Italian flags floating from many of the houses, spread their silken folds freely to the breeze when not wrapping their effective red, white and green fraternally around the red, white and blue. The streets were gay with carnival banners and bunting, and that the American Thanksgiving festa was appreciated by the Latins of the Quarter was proved by a shield, displayed over the doorway of a home, bearing a lithographed, life-sized turkey, with the significant word "Welcome" printed above the luckless bird.

At the intersection of Union and Powell streets and Columbus avenue, in a triangular enclosure, an Old Man of the Fountain-Neptune or Tritoncrouches to drink from his shell, as coldly indifferent to the streams of

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hoi polloi constantly passing, as though he had been carved by a sculptor of the classic age and was set up in a city which vaunted the proud letters, S. P. Q. R. The sunshine threw a joyous rainbow on the spray of the fountain, while brown-eyed children, hatless and coatless in the warm sunshine, followed bare-headed Italian peasant mothers pushing their babies in up-to-date go-carts along the sidewalk sodden with the confetti of the carnival. These came from tenements, crowded, perhaps, but surrounded with pure, unbreathed air, fresh from the sea. The lavish hand of California was evidenced in these healthy children, happily far removed from the dreadful dwarfed cretins of Southern Italy-those deformed presentments of childhood which poverty draws in caricature.

Skirting the easier slopes of the hill on the northern side, we come to Grant avenue (old Dupont street), which at Chestnut falls toward the water, in its length embracing the most fashionable district, crowded with smartly gowned women and luxurious limousines; then,

narrowing in width and caste, carries a little empire of Oriental superstition from whose subjects Buddha and Confucius demand tribute.

The only home of any pretensions spared to Telegraph Hill by the fire is on the northern side, a veritable Italian villa on a Fiesole-like slope, with old gray olive trees in the garden. Set back among the luxuriant growth of its terrace, arbors and high, latticed fences, it bravely appears to look over the ragged edges of poverty and the squalid evidences of refugee life lying all around, to the placid blue waters beyond.

Passing these huts, on the steps of one of which huddled a human derelict-drugged by poppy-juice and the sun-the path led up the declivity, bristling with rocky points through the clay-Kearny street! But the breathless scramble to the summit is repaid when, from the somewhat decayed parapet of the park, spreads out a view second to none in diversity and picturesque beauty, a site worthy of the projected "Parthenon."

Calton Hill's wind-swept crest looks

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"HARE'S WALKS" IN SAN FRANCISCO.

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down on fine Princes street, and over at old Edinburgh Castle, with its historical and romantic memories, but it is pure Scotch, forbye! Telegraph Hill, on a golden morning, however, looks down on little colonies over which a Caesar would have vaunted himself as the conqueror of the nations. Classic buildings, even though of very recent structure, rear their Greek fronts, their Roman campaniles and Gothic roofs, fittingly crowned by the stately Fairmont Hotel overtopping all. In the nearer distance, from the roofs in the valley of tenements, at this festival season, floated streamers of vari-colored washing, rivaling in gayety the lines of carnival colors. And as ghostly reminders of the early fading of the colors of gayety, the towers of churches of varying creeds pierced the tangle of banners, one spired edifice bearing its special banner of welcome to a spiritual feast, enlightening the Latin passer, by printed placard, that in this form of church the Thanksgiving celebration was first instituted.

The empty shell of old St. Francis, before its rehabilitation had begun, viewed from the precipitous hillside, seemed trying to hide, with the mortification of infirmity, its still impressive walls and towers under the shedlike little chapel nestling on its other side.

Passing down the steep hillside to the region of flats, the women of Italy sat-hatless-in the sun, gossiping as they watched their offspring playing on the sidewalk below. But one fairhaired woman sat alone, in a sad aloofness, working on a large piece of crochet lace.

"Piacenza," she rather distantly replied, in answer to some hastily strung words of Italian summoned in a brief mental review from a "Tourist's Handbook." A blonde descendant of the conquering Goths! No wonder that this young North Italian Italian lace-maker resented the catechising which she could not know sprang from a love of Italy, its art, its beauty and its people.

"A middle-aged faun."

But, a few doors below, her countrywomen proved more approachable. We had stopped, spell-bound, by a vision of beauty, for here, playing on a common Telegraph Hill sidewalk, was for all intents and purposes, the veritable pink-girt little cherub in the Sassoferato group of Madonna and Child, with attendant saints and angels in the Church of Santa Sabina on the Aventine, Rome! Golden ringlets falling in angelic curves over pink and white skin, lovely brown eyes with the absolute guilelessness of an angel, albeit they looked out from under a little red cap, this beautiful boy really exceeded in beauty Sassoferato's floating cherub.

Conscious laughter from the high steps above us betrayed the mother anxious to claim Madonna-ship to the child.

"Come, my little angel," she called in liquid Italian, unwittingly concurring with our classification of the cherub.

The "angel," obediently submitting to the maternal summons, cheerfully left his playmates and gazed sweetly

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