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4 come? I thought you at Padua still. But said you not that I was sad?—indeed, Rinaldo, it was not so. I —I—only was thinking——"

"You were thinking, sweet love," he fondly interrupted her, "of the clouds that seem to lower around our fate,—God knows they are dark enough!" and then, as if his thoughts grew gloomier at the recollection, he added, "and I am at times almost minded to despair, and go as an adventurer after those rich lands which Christoph Colon has but lately discovered far, far away to the westward of the pillar of Hercules. The enmity of your step-father—his power in Venice and my own ruined fortunes, have tempted me a thousand times to leave Italy forever—for oh! Beatrice," he added fervently, "never, never will I make you the bride of a beggar, an outcast, or a proscribed man—and all these I will be if I continue much longer in Venice, braving the hate of the house of Vivaldo."

"Stop, stop, Rinaldo," eagerly said the maiden, "your fancy is now the father of your fears. Dark as our fates seem they will not always continue so. The night must break, and it is even now breaking, for the darkest hour is just before the dawn, and can our destiny be gloomier than now? Believe me," she added enthusiastically, "we shall see better times. The hate of my step-father though deadly cannot be eternal—even a councillor of Venice is not all powerful—your own house, though ruined in fortune now, has a gallant name, and may yet be restored to its former power and glory—in short, a thousand things may elapse before another twelvemonth which may change the whole current of our fate, and, and—"

"Give us to each other," interposed the lover, folding the blushing girl enthusiastically again to his bosom, the whole current of his feelings changing by her words—"You give me new life, Beatrice—I was but a child to despond as I have done. But it was only a momentary feeling—one of those clouds that will flit over the soul mysteriously at times, and which may or may not be presentiments of evil. But they have past. I feel nerved now for any act.

"Promise only to be mine if I come to claim you in a year, and nothing shall then check my career to glory. You have given me the clue to success—bless you for it!—and I will rebuild the fallen fortunes of our house. Then even a Vivaldo will not refuse me a daughter of his house. At Padua I have dreamed away too many precious hours, and though the verses I then wrote—do you remember them, Beatrice?—first won me your love; yet I fear me, since then, I have been wasting in literary studies the days and nights that should have been spent in the tented field. I have dreamed over Dante and Petrarch when I should have been leading squadrons to the charge," and as he ceased, the glow of his features, and the vivid brilliancy of his eye, showed that the spirit of the soldier was burning within the poet's bosom.

"But where will you go?—will you leave Italy? shall I not see you or hear from you for a whole year?" said Beatrice, her woman nature triumphing for a moment over every thing else. It was now the student's turn to be the comforter, and he replied,

"I know not yet scarcely where I shall go. There is good service to be had at Naples, and there are wars enough beyond the Alps to flesh all the swords in Christendom, to say nothing of a chance against the Moslem, which may yet turn up if the horizon in that quarter does not speedily brighten. Fear not, Beatrice —since I have made up my mind, all will go well. My absence may lead your persecutors to think that I have abandoned the pursuit of your hand, and they may therefore remit their tyranny over you. If God, and our patron of St. Mark smile on me, you shall hear from me before six months have gone. In a year, at most, I will be at your feet. Then you will be your own mistress, and can be mine in defiance of Vivaldo. When I left Padua, some such plan as this, was dimly floating through my mind, but your words have given it a shape, and I shall enter on its execution satisfied that I have the prayers of one of the brightest and best of women to go with me."

For some time the lovers conversed in a low tone. While they are thus engaged, we will briefly sketch so much of their former history as has not been shadowed forth in their conversation.

The lady Beatrice was the daughter of a noble Venetian house, which had become allied by marriage with the powerful family of the Vivaldo. From her youth she had been remarkable for her beauty,—and, at an early age, she was already sought for by more than one noble of Venice. But her step-father, in whose guardianship she was now placed, had destined her to be the bride of his nephew, a proud, fierce, but powerful noble, and the head of the Vivaldo house. The character of the suitor alone would have prevented Beatrice from loving him; but even at that early age she had been inspired with a passion for another. This person was no other than the author of some poems which at that time were the delight of Italy; but who the poet was no one knew. His writings were anonymously circulated in manuscript, and the most that could be discovered, by diligent enquiry, was, that the writer resided at the university of Padua, at that time one ofthe most renowned schools in Italy.

Chance, however, discovered the writer to Beatrice; for, one day, attending mass in the church of St. Mark, she noticed a noble looking young cavalier gazing intently on her. After the service was over, and she retired, she observed that the cavalier followed her cautiously and at a distance in his gondola. There was something


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pedometer told me that I was twenty-five; and, though it is a shocking thing to stop walking, I was so tired that I sat down on a milestone to rest. People outstripped me, jeering as they did so, but I was too apathetic to feel resentful, and even when Miss Eliza Dimbleby, the great educationist, swept past, exhorting me to persevere, I only smiled and raised my hat.

At first I thought I was going to be like my brother, whom I had had to leave by the road-side a year or two round the corner. He had wasted his breath on singing, and his strength on helping others. But I had travelled more wisely, and now it was only the monotony of the highway that oppressed me—dust under foot and brown crackling hedges on either side, ever since I could remember.

And I had already dropped several things

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Rh indeed, the road behind was strewn with the things we all had dropped; and the white dust was settling down on them, so that already they looked no better than stones. My muscles were so weary that I could not even bear the weight of those things I still carried. I slid off the milestone into the road, and lay there prostrate, with my face to the great parched hedge, praying that I might give up.

A little puff of air revived me. It seemed to come from the hedge; and, when I opened my eyes, there was a glint of light through the tangle of boughs and dead leaves. The hedge could not be as thick as usual. In my weak, morbid state, I longed to force my way in, and see what was on the other side. No one was in sight, or I should not have dared to try. For we of the road do not admit in conversation that there is another side at all.

I yielded to the temptation, saying to myself that I would come back in a minute. The thorns scratched my face, and I had to use my arms as a shield, depending on my feet alone to push me forward. Halfway through I would have gone back, for in the passage all the things I was carrying were scraped off me, and my clothes were torn. But I was so wedged that


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 If any one can suggest a better I shall be only too delighted, for it was laborious work, and these choice spots are anything but uncommon in West African rivers. Then I remember another steam lanch—the Dragon Fly. She had been built for coal, but there was no coal, so she had to burn wood. Wood, as my nautical friends would say, blows a ship out, and to store enough wood to go twenty miles you had to have wood billets everywhere; all over the deck, and on top of the sun-deck, &c., to such an extent that there was no room for you, and the gunwale was nearly awash. Then you always got on a sandbank, several sandbanks, so the wood got burnt right up before you got anywhere you wanted to, and you had to return by the current and the help of poles. If I had been bound to go on in her, we must have spent the greater part of our lives wood-chopping in wet forests; but I am of too nervous a disposition to penetrate the interior on the Dragon Fly with her dilapidated boiler.

Then there was a patent launch that progressed theoretically by the explosion of small quantities of gunpowder; but the trade powder we had did not suit her somehow, so she pursued a policy of masterly inactivity, making awesome noises in her works, and the quickest trip she ever did was to the bottom. And she certainly did make that on trade powder. I own I am prejudiced against launches. The heat of the West Coast climate is quite enough for me without having a large hot water bottle, in the shape of a boiler, to sit by. And a canoe is a craft you can take almost anywhere, and is therefore better for general work, unless you have a good deep channel large enough for you to have a steamer of a respectable size.

In addition to grass creeks and sandbanks, the obstacles to the navigation of side streams, on the Ogowé and its neighbouring rivers are swamps of papyrus, exceedingly lovely, but difficult to get through, and great floating masses of river lettuce (Pistia stratiotes). It is very like a nicely grown cabbage lettuce, and it is very charming when you look down a creek full of it, for the beautiful tender green makes a perfect picture against the dark forest that rises from the banks of the creek. If you are in a canoe, it gives you little


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Rh return was impossible, and I had to wriggle blindly forward, expecting every moment that my strength would fail me, and that I should perish in the undergrowth.

Suddenly cold water closed round my head, and I seemed sinking down for ever. I had fallen out of the hedge into a deep pool. I rose to the surface at last, crying for help, and I heard someone on the opposite bank laugh and say: "Another!" And then I was twitched out and laid panting on the dry ground.

Even when the water was out of my eyes, I was still dazed, for I had never been in so large a space, nor seen such grass and sunshine. The blue sky was no longer a strip, and beneath it the earth had risen grandly into hills—clean, bare buttresses, with beech trees in their folds, and meadows and clear pools at their feet. But the hills were not high, and there was in the landscape a sense of human occupation—so that one might have called it a park, or garden, if the words did not imply a certain triviality and constraint.

As soon as I got my breath, I turned to my rescuer and said:

"Where does this place lead to?"

"Nowhere, thank the Lord!" said he, and


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The Plover and the Clover can be told apart with ease, By paying close attention to the habits of the Bees, For En-to-molo-gists aver, the Bee can be in Clover, While Ety-molo-gists concur, there is no B in Plover.


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Rh laughed. He was a man of fifty or sixty—just the kind of age we mistrust on the road—but there was no anxiety in his manner, and his voice was that of a boy of eighteen.

"But it must lead somewhere!" I cried, too much surprised at his answer to thank him for saving my life.

"He wants to know where it leads!" he shouted to some men on the hill side, and they laughed back, and waved their caps.

I noticed then that the pool into which I had fallen was really a moat which bent round to the left and to the right, and that the hedge followed it continually. The hedge was green on this side—its roots showed through the clear water, and fish swam about in them—and it was wreathed over with dog-roses and Traveller's Joy. But it was a barrier, and in a moment I lost all pleasure in the grass, the sky, the trees, the happy men and women, and realized that the place was but a prison, for all its beauty and extent.

We moved away from the boundary, and then followed a path almost parallel to it, across the meadows. I found it difficult walking, for I was always trying to out-distance my companion, and there was no advantage in doing


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Rh this if the place led nowhere. I had never kept step with anyone since I left my brother.

I amused him by stopping suddenly and saying disconsolately, "This is perfectly terrible. One cannot advance: one cannot progress. Now we of the road"

"Yes. I know."

"I was going to say, we advance continually."

"I know."

"We are always learning, expanding, developing. Why, even in my short life I have seen a great deal of advance—the Transvaal War, the Fiscal Question, Christian Science, Radium. Here for example—"

I took out my pedometer, but it still marked twenty-five, not a degree more.

"Oh, it's stopped! I meant to show you. It should have registered all the time I was walking with you. But it makes me only twenty-five."

"Many things don't work in here," he said, "One day a man brought in a Lee-Metford, and that wouldn't work."

"The laws of science are universal in their application. It must be the water in the moat that has injured the machinery. In normal conditions everything works. Science and the


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Rh spirit of emulation—those are the forces that have made us what we are."

I had to break off and acknowledge the pleasant greetings of people whom we passed. Some of them were singing, some talking, some engaged in gardening, hay-making, or other rudimentary industries. They all seemed happy; and I might have been happy too, if I could have forgotten that the place led nowhere.

I was startled by a young man who came sprinting across our path, took a little fence in fine style, and went tearing over a ploughed field till he plunged into a lake, across which he began to swim. Here was true energy, and I exclaimed: "A cross-country race! Where are the others?"

"There are no others," my companion replied; and, later on, when we passed some long grass from which came the voice of a girl singing exquisitely to herself, he said again: "There are no others." I was bewildered at the waste in production, and murmured to myself, "What does it all mean?"

He said: "It means nothing but itself"—and he repeated the words slowly, as if I were a child.

"I understand," I said quietly, "but I do


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Of the fall of the Sparrow we often have heard, And I've here represented the fall of the bird: In the case of Asparagus though, I may mention, A fall such as this, is quite out of the question: For observe that Asparagus, fat and well fed, Spends all of his time in the 'sparagus bed.


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Rh not agree. Every achievement is worthless unless it is a link in the chain of development. And I must not trespass on your kindness any longer. I must get back somehow to the road, and have my pedometer mended."

"First, you must see the gates," he replied, "for we have gates, though we never use them."

I yielded politely, and before long we reached the moat again, at a point where it was spanned by a bridge. Over the bridge was a big gate, as white as ivory, which was fitted into a gap in the boundary hedge. The gate opened outwards, and I exclaimed in amazement, for from it ran a road—just such a road as I had left—dusty under foot, with brown crackling hedges on either side as far as the eye could reach.

"That's my road!" I cried.

He shut the gate and said: "But not your part of the road. It is through this gate that humanity went out countless ages ago, when it was first seized with the desire to walk."

I denied this, observing that the part of the road I myself had left was not more than two miles off. But with the obstinacy of his years he repeated: "It is the same road. This is the beginning, and though it seems to run straight away from us, it doubles so often, that it is


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 apprehension to know you have got to go through it, but if you are in a small steam launch, every atom of pleasure in its beauty goes, the moment you lay eye on the thing. You dash into it as hard as you can go, with a sort of geyser of lettuces flying up from the screw; but not for long, for this interesting vegetable grows after the manner of couch-grass.

I used to watch its method of getting on in life. Take a typical instance: a bed of river-lettuces growing in a creek become bold, and grow out into the current, which tears the outsider pioneer lettuce off from the mat. Down river that young thing goes, looking as innocent as a turtle-dove. If you pick it up as it comes by your canoe and look underneath, you see it has just got a stump. Roots? Oh dear no! What does a sweet green rose like that want roots for? It only wants to float about on the river and be happy; so you put the precious humbug back, and it drifts away with a smile and gets up some suitable quiet inlet and then sends out roots galore longitudinally, and at every joint on them buds


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Rh never far from our boundary and sometimes touches it." He stooped down by the moat, and traced on its moist margin an absurd figure like a maze. As we walked back through the meadows, I tried to convince him of his mistake.

"The road sometimes doubles, to be sure, but that is part of our discipline. Who can doubt that its general tendency is onward? To what goal we know not—it may be to some mountain where we shall touch the sky, it may be over precipices into the sea. But that it goes forward—who can doubt that? It is the thought of that that makes us strive to excel, each in his own way, and gives us an impetus which is lacking with you. Now that man who passed us—it's true that he ran well, and jumped well, and swam well; but we have men who can run better, and men who can jump better, and who can swim better. Specialization has produced results which would surprise you. Similarly, that girl"

Here I interrupted myself to exclaim: "Good gracious me! I could have sworn it was Miss Eliza Dimbleby over there, with her feet in the fountain!"

He believed that it was.

"Impossible! I left her on the road, and she


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Rh is due to lecture this evening at Tunbridge Wells. Why, her train leaves Cannon Street in—of course my watch has stopped like everything else. She is the last person to be here."

"People always are astonished at meeting each other. All kinds come through the hedge, and come at all times—when they are drawing ahead in the race, when they are lagging behind, when they are left for dead. I often stand near the boundary listening to the sounds of the road—you know what they are—and wonder if anyone will turn aside. It is my great happiness to help someone out of the moat, as I helped you. For our country fills up slowly, though it was meant for all mankind."

"Mankind have other aims," I said gently, for I thought him well-meaning; "and I must join them." I bade him good evening, for the sun was declining, and I wished to be on the road by nightfall. To my alarm, he caught hold of me, crying: "You are not to go yet!" I tried to shake him off, for we had no interests in common, and his civility was becoming irksome to me. But for all my struggles the tiresome old man would not let go; and, as wrestling is not my speciality, I was obliged to follow him.


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Rh It was true that I could have never found alone the place where I came in, and I hoped that, when I had seen the other sights about which he was worrying, he would take me back to it. But I was determined not to sleep in the country, for I mistrusted it, and the people too, for all their friendliness. Hungry though I was, I would not join them in their evening meals of milk and fruit, and, when they gave me flowers, I flung them away as soon as I could do so unobserved. Already they were lying down for the night like cattle—some out on the bare hillside, others in groups under the beeches. In the light of an orange sunset I hurried on with my unwelcome guide, dead tired, faint for want of food, but murmuring indomitably: "Give me life, with its struggles and victories, with its failures and hatreds, with its deep moral meaning and its unknown goal!"

At last we came to a place where the encircling moat was spanned by another bridge, and where another gate interrupted the line of the boundary hedge. It was different from the first gate; for it was half transparent like horn, and opened inwards. But through it, in the waning light, I saw again just such a road as I had left—monotonous, dusty, with brown crack-


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Rh ling hedges on either side, as far as the eye could reach.

I was strangely disquieted at the sight, which seemed to deprive me of all self-control. A man was passing us, returning for the night to the hills, with a scythe over his shoulder and a can of some liquid in his hand. I forgot the destiny of our race. I forgot the road that lay before my eyes, and I sprang at him, wrenched the can out of his hand, and began to drink.

It was nothing stronger than beer, but in my exhausted state it overcame me in a moment. As in a dream, I saw the old man shut the gate, and heard him say: "This is where your road ends, and through this gate humanity—all that is left of it—will come in to us."

Though my senses were sinking into oblivion, they seemed to expand ere they reached it. They perceived the magic song of nightingales, and the odour of invisible hay, and stars piercing the fading sky. The man whose beer I had stolen lowered me down gently to sleep off its effects, and, as he did so, I saw that he was my brother.


text: The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories/The Other Side of the Hedge


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 up another lettuce; and if you go up its creek eighteen months or so after, with a little launch, it goes and winds those roots round your propeller. The fierce current of the wet season, when the main river scours into the creeks, and the creeks start fierce currents of their own with their increased waters, play great havoc with these lettuce beds, and plots of them get cut off from the main bodies. These plots float off down river, and as soon as they get into a bit of slack water or hitch on a rising sandbank, they collect all other floating things that come their way and start as islands. The grass soon chokes off its companion the lettuce, and makes the island habitable for other plants; and so you have a floating island. These floating islands have a weird fascination, and I never saw so many of them in any river as in the Ogowé. To see a bit of seeming solid land, solemnly going past you down the river, as if it were out on business; or if it is in tidal ways and you on a fixed point, to see it coming up to you, hanging about, and then retiring, is unsettling to one's general ideas of the propriety of nature. One of the largest of these floating islands I saw, was in the Karkola River. It had got caught in an eddy made by another stream entering this river, and it kept swimming round and round slowly and quietly.

I have not here given an account of half the difficulties of navigating a tropical river in the forest-region, because they are so numerous, and so many of them not to be guarded against. Those logs which from their specific gravity float down just under water and strike you unexpectedly; and even those logs that float on the surface, are nasty things to meet on an ink-black night. I well remember the miscellaneous joys we happened on once when dropping down the Ogowé in the dark in a small canoe. Half the way it was a steeplechase for the canoe over floating logs. Sometimes she refused her fences point-blank and butted them; sometimes she would climb up them and fall over on the other side; and even my experienced native companion owned that it was difficult to tell, during the subsequent aquatic sports which her crew indulged in, which was the bottom of the canoe and which was the unsophisticated log. Sometimes she would clear her log-fence at a bound in a showy way, but then when she came down the other side, she went too deep and filled herself and


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. in the stranger’s mien which interested Beatrice in him, and she thought of him in her dreams throughout the livelong night. The next day the gondola of the cavalier shot by her window, and—but why need we protract the story? They met, often, daily, Some mysterious link seemed to unite the soul of Beatrice with that of the cavalier. There was in his earnest eye, in his eloquent tones, and in the constant play of his fine countenance a witchery which the heart of that imaginative young girl might not resist; and when she learned that the cavalier was none other than the poet over whose impassioned sonnets she had often wept, her bosom yielded, at once, and without a struggle to the delicious feelings which stole, like a dream, over her. She loved—loved for the first time—loved with all the intensity of a warm and innocent young heart.

There was one thing, however, which in their mutual transport the lovers had forgotten—and that was the well known determination of Vivaldo to wed Beatrice to his nephew. The young poet, though descended from a noble house, was but a poor scholar at Padua; and the haughty guardian of Beatrice would sooner have seen her in her grave than have wedded her to the penniless Signor Adanta, Alas! too soon were the lovers made aware of this. Betrayed by the maid of Beatrice, they were torn apart, and while Adanta was left wounded almost to the death, Beatrice was hurried off to her guardian’s summer house on the Brenta. Long months elapsed before the lovera heard of each other, during which time Beatrice suffered from a high fever, brought on by het ignorance of her lover's fate. Her lover too but slowly recovered from his wound. At length Adanta was able to leave his chamber. His first duty was to endeavor to see Beatrice, and in this endeavor, after surmounting incredible difficulties, he succeeded. Beatrice was pale with recent illness. In vain they essayed to form some plan by which to escape from their difficulties; for while they were yet conversing on the subject, the spies of Vivaldo discovered the lovers, and Adanta only escaped by the most determined bravery. From that hour every attempt at an interview betwixt the lovers had been foiled by the myrmidons of Beatrice’s guardian. Watched incessantly, she found it impossible even to open a communication with her lover. Meantime her guardian grew every day more pressing in his demand that she should marry his nephew. Beatrice, however, finally refused. Her love for Adanta only strengthened under persecution. And daily did those persecutions increase, until life became almost intolerable, and she sank into that state of pensive melancholy, feom which she was aroused by the unexpected appearance of her lover, as we have just narrated.

While we have been relating these facts, the two lovers had been engaged in telling each others history since they last met. But Beatrice only reveled half the persecutions she endured, fearful, if she told the whole truth, that her lover's fiery nature would break out in some act of signal revenge. Her judgment saw that the resolution to which he had come was the wisest for both; and she only prayed that he might set out in safety, trusting with all a woman's hopefulness that, at the end of the promised time, he might return to claim her for his bride,

“And now, dearest,” said her lover, “I must go. The shades of evening are already darkening the valley. Your absence from the house, if prolonged, will attract notice, The saints only know by what good fortune I made my way unobserved to this, your favorite retreat. Sancta Maria must smile on us, else we should have been seen ere now by some of Vivaldo’s myrmidons— God's curse be on them! Again, farewell!” and with these words, tearing himself from the weeping girl, he darted into the neighboring shrubbery, Pausing a moment, he waved his hand and said, “before a year— remember?" and then diving deeper into the underwood, was lost, the next moment, to the sight.

For many minutes after the form of her lover had disappeared, Beatrice stood gazing on the spot where he had last been seen. Then, heaving a deep sigh, she slowly left the chapel, and returned to the house. Had she seen the dark malicious expression of the eye of a dwarf, who, the next moment, stepped from behind a ruined arch of the chapel, she would have felt that her lover’s and her own conversation had been overheard, and that before an hour, Vivaldo would be in possession of all their plans.

The moon was yet scarcely above the tree-tops when the Duke Vivaldo entered the chamber where Beatrice sat musing on her late interview with her lover. She started at the sound of approaching footsteps, and rose to receive her guardian. He waved her sternly to be seated. Auguring from his manner the errand on which he came, the lady sank trembling into her seat. It was some moments before the Duke spoke, during which delay he kept his cold grey eye fixed sternly on the lady Beatrice, as if he would have read her very soul. At length he began,

“Lady,” he said, “I have sought you, at this unseasonable hour, in order to tell you to prepare to return to Venice in the morning. The waters of the Brenta,” he continued ironically, “methinks grow unhealthy, and such late hours as you have kept tonight do not agree with you. In Venice there will he no occasion to loiter in old ruins until after twilight.” And then suddenly dropping his sarcastic tone, he continued, “but I see you understand me, and I will speak plainly to you. Know then, that I am in possession of what passed at your stolen interview with your lover—''I know all your plans.'' You foolishly thought that you could meet unnoticed,—but I have spies on your every action.

�


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1. The upper side of a piece of paper lying flat upon a table is a plane surface, and so is the lower side which is in contact with the table.

2. The two surfaces are separated by the material of the paper. The material being very thin, the other sides of the paper do not present appreciably broad surfaces, and the edges of the paper are practically lines. The two surfaces though distinct are inseparable from each other.

3. Look at the irregularly shaped piece of paper shown in Fig. 3, and at this page which is rectangular. Let us try and shape the former paper like the latter.

44. [sic] Place the irregularly shaped piece of paper upon the table, and fold it flat upon itself. Let X' X be the crease thus formed. It is straight. Now pass a knife along the fold und separate the smaller piece. We thus obtain one straight edge.

5. Fold the paper again as before along BY, so that the edge X' X is doubled upon itself. Unfolding the paper, we see that the crease BY at right angles to the edge X' X. It is evident by superposition that


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2 the angle YBX' equals the angle XBY, and that each of these angles equals an angle of the page. Now pass

a knife as before along the second fold and remove the smaller piece.


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 foundered, and so the only thing was to pole the logs off. Some of those logs, by the by, had queer ways with them. One, on being poked on the end as it floated towards, us opened its front section and bit the pole with such a grip that the man using it let go all one time. Yes, I dare say it was a crocodile—still African vegetation is a queer thing.

You would naturally think that, in spite of sandbanks with cliff-edges down stream, of sections of the continent floating round, and of logs liable to bite and not liable to bite, you had at least one thing left to rely on—the bank. But that bank may be all right, and again, as the captain of the late ss. Sparrow would say, it mayn't. A friend of mine, for example, who got stuck in a launch up a river-creek on a sandbank, got a hawser out, and winding it round some mangroves on the bank, proceeded "to have her off in no time" with the steam winch. She did not budge an inch, but the African continent did: the whole bit of bank came away, and down on the boat came the trees with a swish, burying everything and everybody in branches and foliage. As he said, we were "like the babes in the wood after robins had been along, on a big scale"; and he also stated, as we climbed up on top of our arboreal superstructure, that "Africa was a rotten continent."


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Rh 6. Repeat the above process and obtain the edges CD and DA. It is evident by superposition that the angles at A, B, C, D, are right angles, equal to one another, and that the sides BC, CD are respectively

equal to DA, AB. This piece of paper (Fig. 3) is similar in shape to the page.

7. It can be made equal in size to the page by taking a larger piece of paper and measuring off AB and BC equal to the sides of the latter.


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soon as I returned to Glass I naturally went to discourse with Doctor Nassau on Fetish. We discoursed, I may mention, at length and to my advantage. In one of these talks the doctor mentioned that there were lakes in the centre of the Island of Corisco, and that in those lakes were quantities of fish, which fish were always and only fished by the resident ladies, at duly appointed seasons. Needless to say, I felt it a solemn duty to go and investigate personally; and equally needless to say, Doctor Nassau gave me every assistance, which took the form of lending me a small vessel called the Lafayette. She had been long in his possession, but of late years little used, still she was a fine seaworthy boat, so with a crew headed by the Doctor's factotum, Eveke, who was a native of the said island, together with a few friends of his, we set sail.

Left Libreville at 8 so as to get full advantage of wind and tide. Doctor Nassau kindly comes along the wharf to see us clear away. We then make for the guard-ship, to pass our papers, and do this in an unyachtsmanlike way, lowering our gaff too soon, hence have ignominiously to row alongside. The off-shore breeze blows strong this morning and the tide is running out like a mill-race, so the Lafayette flies seaward


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was afternoon. Havelaar came out of his room, and found his Tine in the front veranda, waiting with the tea. Mrs. Slotering came out of her house, and looked as if she were coming across to the Havelaars; but all at once she turned to the gate, and made violent signs to a man to go back, who had just that moment entered. She stood still until she was assured that he had gone back and was outside, after which she came along the grass-plot to Havelaar’s house.

“I am going for once and for all to find out the meaning of this!” said Havelaar, and after welcoming her, he asked in a jocular manner, so that she might not think that he begrudged her a little authority over grounds that formerly were hers:

“Well, Mrs. Slotering, I wish you would tell me why you are so determined to turn back the people who come into the grounds! Suppose now that man who came in a moment past had some chickens for sale, or something else that might be of use in the kitchen!”

There appeared on the face of Mrs. Slotering a pained expression which did not escape Havelaar’s attention.

“Oh,” she said, “there are so many bad people!”

“Certainly, that’s the case everywhere. But if one makes it so difficult for people to enter, the good ones will keep away too. Come now, Mrs. Slotering, do tell me quite frankly why you keep such a strict supervision over the grounds!”

Havelaar looked at her, and vainly tried to read the answer in her moist eyes. He pressed a little harder for an explanation the widow burst into tears, and said that her husband had been poisoned at the house of the District-Chief at Parang-Koodyang.


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All business men and economists admit that there are grave defects in the present working of our economic system. But they differ widely in their diagnosis. Many regard the present trouble as only a larger, more intense and widespread example of those trade depressions which recur periodically, natural and necessary fluctuations in the tide of industry. Important war and post-war disturbances in production, markets, finance, have made this depression worse and more wasteful than others—that is all. Others, however, find a unique economic character in this depression. Some trace this uniqueness to the rapid pace and unpredictable direction of recent advances in the technique of power-driven machinery and the organisation of production and markets, displacing obsolete methods and 'economising' labour. Unemployment they regard as an inevitable cost of economic progress. Others find the uniqueness in an insufficiency and a maldistribution of gold and of purchasing power which by its effect on prices has crippled the activity of business men and loaded industry with increased indebtedness to the 'rentier' class.

That these causes aggravate the situation it is not my intention to deny. But the prominence afforded to them helps to screen the great fundamental source of trouble, the lack of any conscious equitable government of industry. While the closest application of

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 “He wished to be just, Mr. Havelaar,” the poor woman went on, “he wished to put a stop to the ill-treatment under which the population groaned. He admonished and threatened the Chiefs, at meetings and in writing you must have found his letters in the archives!”

That was true. Havelaar had read those letters,

“Over and over again he talked with the Resident,” continued the widow, “but always to no purpose. For as it was universally known that the extortions took place on behalf and under protection of the Regent, whom the Resident did not wish to charge before the Government, all those interviews led to nothing but the ill-treatment of the complainants. Therefore my poor husband had said that, if there were no improvement before the end of the year, he would address the Governor-General himself. That was in November. Shortly after he set out on a tour of inspection, took dinner at the house of the Dhemang of Parang Koodyang, and was soon after brought home in a pitiable condition. He cried, pointing to his stomach: ‘Fire, fire!’ and a few hours later he was dead, he who had always been a picture of perfect health.”

“Did you send for the doctor from Serang?” asked Havelaar.

“Yes, but he only treated my husband a very short time, as the death took place soon after his arrival. I was afraid to tell the doctor my suspicion, as I foresaw, on account of my condition, that I should not be able to leave this place for some time, and I feared vengeance. I have heard that you, like my husband, are resisting the abuses that are prevalent here, and on this account I have not a peaceful moment. I had wished to conceal all this from you, in order not to alarm yourself and your wife, and therefore confined myself to watching the garden and grounds, so that no strangers should have access to the kitchen.”

Now it became clear to Tine why Mrs. Slotering had continued to carry on her own household, and had not even wished to make use of the kitchen, although it was so large.”

Havelaar sent for the Controller. Meanwhile he addressed a re-


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Until now most business men, industrialists, merchants, financiers, who looked outside the particular operations in which they were engaged, have believed in the existence of an economic system towards which their activities contributed and which, with some allowances for waste and friction, was reasonable, equitable, and efficient. Though there existed no direct and conscious unitary control, or government, of this economic system, certain laws of supply and demand, expressing the play of competitive selfinterest among buyers and sellers of goods and services, were believed to lead everyone, capitalist, worker, or landowner, to apply his productive power in ways most serviceable to society as a whole.

The plight in which the world finds itself to-day has destroyed this conception of an economic system with the complacency it engendered. I am not here concerned with Marxist or other schools of socialists, but with ordinary business men averse from rapid revolutionary changes, who are staggered in their minds by the failure of the system which they have always believed to work with ordinary efficiency. They were accustomed formerly to periodic depressions with a wastage that was relatively small, partial,

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10 passing, and believed to be essential to economic progress. The depression they see to-day is deeper, longer, wider, and blocks production in nearly all industries and all countries. An earlier disposition to regard this economic trouble as a by-product of the Great War no longer suffices as an explanation. For the ravages war made in the human and material resources of many countries, the collapse of monetary systems, the diversion of trade routes, the erection of high tariffs, and other forms of economic nationalism, should have shown some disposition to yield to 'time the healer.' Moreover, all these injuries must express themselves in a reduced productivity of the economic system, whereas the actual trouble that confronts us is the existence in almost all industries and all countries of a producing power that is excessive, in the sense that a large part of it—land, capital, and labour—stands idle because the goods it could produce cannot find a market at prices covering the bare costs of production.

Now this is a new situation in the history of capitalism, so dangerous that it has shattered the general belief in the existence of a rational economic system. The 'invisible hand,' which compelled men in serving themselves best to serve the public best, is quite evidently inoperative. For the first time there has arisen, outside the range of visionaries and utopians, among the ranks of plain practical men a

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 quest to the doctor at Serang for a statement of the symptoms observed at Slotering’s death. The answer he received to this request was not in accordance with the suspicions of the widow. According to the doctor Slotering had died from an “abscess in the liver.” I have not been able to obtain evidence as to whether such a complaint can show itself all of a sudden, and cause death in a few hours. I am of the opinion that here Mrs. Slotering’s declaration that her husband had until that occasion always been healthy demands serious attention. But if one attaches no importance to such a declaration, seeing that the conception as to what constitutes health, especially in the eyes of non-medical persons, is very subjective, yet the important question remains whether a person who dies to-day from an “abscess in the liver” could yesterday have mounted, with the intention of inspecting a mountainous region so extensive that in some parts its width would constitute a twenty hours’ journey. The doctor who treated Slotering may have been an able physician, and yet have been mistaken in his opinion as to the symptoms of the illness, unprepared as he was for the suspicion of crime.

However this may be, I cannot prove that Havelaar’s predecessor was poisoned, as the authorities did not leave Havelaar the necessary time to try successfully to throw light on the question. But I certainly can prove, and that they connected this suspicion with his desire to resist injustice.

Controller Verbrugge entered Havelaar’s room. The latter asked briefly:

“What did Mr. Slotering die of?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he poisoned?”

“I don’t know, but ”

“Speak plainly, Verbrugge!”

“He tried, like you, to resist the abuses, Mr. Havelaar, and and ”

“Well,go on!”


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Rh widely voiced demand for conscious planning in the business world so as to rescue it from anarchy.

Everywhere among thoughtful men the issue is that of economic government or anarchy. Though statesmen may try to shed their responsibility by treating the situation as a natural phenomenon, advising us to 'wait for the turn of the tide,' or 'for the sun to break through the clouds,' reasonable men and women in growing numbers hold that trade, industry, and finance are branches of human conduct, individual and collective, and that man's reasonable will should and can regulate this conduct. In other words, while natural phenomena, such as drought and pestilence, may and do affect the productivity of certain countries, they are of diminishing importance, owing to closer world communications and improved storage, and can shed no light upon the current situation with its excessive productivity. Quite evidently it is not nature but man that is to blame for the welter of unsaleable goods and the waste of unused capital and labour that attest the collapse of our 'economic system.'

The demand for rational order has first taken shape in a new attitude towards combines, cartels, and other trade organisations. Formerly it was only the business unit that was subject to a rational economy, each part or process being adjusted to the needs and utility of the business as a whole. Now this 'rationalisation' is being extended to national or even international industries as organic wholes. But the order or economy which such rationalisation seeks

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 “I am convinced that he would have been poisoned if he had been here longer.”

“Write that down!”

Verbrugge wrote those words down.

“Another thing. Is it true or not true that extortion is practised in Lebak?”

Verbrugge did not answer.

“Answer. Verbrugge!”

“I dare not.”

“Write it down, that you dare not!”

Verbrugge wrote it down:

“Now, yet another thing: you dare not answer the last question, but you said to me recently, when there was a question of, that you were the only support of your sister at Batavia, isn’t that so? Is that perhaps the cause of your fear, the root of what I always called halfness?”

“Yes!”

“Write that down.”

Verbrugge wrote it down:

“All right,” said Havelaar, “now I know enough.” And Verbrugge was allowed to go.

Havelaar went outside and played with little Max, whom he kissed with more tenderness even than usual. When Mrs. Slotering had gone, he sent the child away, and called Tine into his room.

“Dear Tine, I have to ask you a favour. I wish you to go to Batavia with Max: to-day I shall inform against the Regent.”

She put her arms around his neck, and for the first time refused to obey his wish; she cried sobbing:

“No, Max, no, Max, I won’t I won’t! We shall eat and drink

Had Havelaar been wrong, when he maintained that she was no more justified in blowing her nose than the women of Arles?

He wrote and sent off the letter of which I here give a copy.


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 conscious planning to the operations of each single business is everywhere recognised as essential to success, the extension of this process to the economic system as a whole has got no purchase on the business mind. Yet the adjustments between trade and trade in the national and world markets are as delicate as those between the departments in a single business and demand as much conscious care.

This refusal to apply reason to the conduct of the wider business life is closely related to the moral purblindness that accompanies all economic activities. Moralists have often exposed the selfish pursuit of personal gain as a degrading motive in the business life, but they have not shown its paralysing influence upon the production and enjoyment of wealth.

In this little book I seek to demonstrate how the determination of prices by economic force for personal gain operates through inequitable distribution of income and property to cause maladjustment in production and consumption with attendant unemployment, poverty, and waste. The blunting of moral perception and sensibility by the habitual acceptance of untrue notions about business operations is the chief obstacle to the reforms needed to secure the utilisation of modern productivity for the welfare of mankind, It is the moral basis of this reformation that I wish to lay in these chapters. With a brief indication of the desirable lines of reconstruction, I leave policy to those whom it concerns.

J. A. HOBSON

June 1931

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 to establish is not conceived or applied in the equitable interest of society as a whole, but for the more profitable exploitation of a particular industry in the interests of the owners of its share capital. The elimination of the waste of competition between the business units which form a cartel or other combination for the profitable working of a particular industry does not normally accrue to the advantage of the consumer, though the employees of this rationalised industry may sometimes share in higher wages the advantages of a price-fixing economy.

This partial application of the process of rationalisation is, however, perhaps the best approach towards a study of the several problems involved in a rational government of industry. For it affords an insight into the nature of the existing misrule.

We may tabulate the fundamental defects of this industrial misrule as follows, beginning with the narrower settings.

1. There exists no equitable criterion for the rates of pay, wages, or salaries, for manual or mental workers in the various processes of production of goods or services in this or any other country. Neither risk to life or health, physical or mental effort, skill, initiative or responsibility, utility or other quality of product, determines pay or other conditions of employment to any appreciable extent in most occupations. Again, needs or standard of living, except so far as supported by a strong organisation with bargaining power, do not regulate

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 payment on any intelligible scale beyond the bare subsistence rate. Neither from the side of cost of production nor of utility of consumption does our economic system work with equity, rationality, or economy. As between one class or grade of workers and another, wage-rates and salaries are determined by strength of 'pull.' A skilled farm labourer gets less than a dustman, a builder's labourer, or a postman; employees in the textile and metal trades, exposed to the full brunt of foreign competition, are worse paid than most grades of railwaymen or routine workers in the printing trades. Strength of organisation, shelter from foreign or other distant competition, command of markets in key industries—these conditions, severally or jointly, are the main direct determinants of wage-rates. A 'strong' trade union can force up wages, often paid not out of surplus profits but out of higher prices paid by other workers, i.e. by reducing the real wages of their 'comrades.' In a word, the term 'fair wages' has no ascertained meaning, and, if it had, the present 'system' affords no means of ensuring such a payment.

2. While the material capital (plant, raw material, etc.), managerial and technical ability in their various grades are essential co-factors in a business, the owners of the share capital are the sole legal owners of that business, which is operated with a single object of making dividends for them. If a business prospers, the whole measure of its prosperity usually goes in profits to the owners, though the activities of brain and hand of the employees, together with the

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 After having to some extent sketched the circumstances in which this document was written, I do not think it necessary to point out the resolute dutifulness to which it bears witness, nor yet the kindliness which moved Havelaar to try to protect the Regent from too severe a punishment. But it will not be equally superfluous to draw attention to his caution, which did not let him utter a word about the discovery just made, in order that the positive nature of his charge might not be weakened by uncertainty about an accusation undoubtedly most important, but as yet unproven. It was his intention to have the body of his predecessor disinterred and scientifically examined, as soon as the Regent should have been removed and his adherents rendered powerless for evil. But the opportunity was not to be given him.

In my copies of official documents—copies which in every essential correspond with the original—I think I may with advantage replace the senseless titles by simple pronouns. I expect from the good taste of my readers that they will be satisfied with this alteration.

“Rangkas-Betoong, 24th February, 1856.

“To the Resident of Bantam.

“Since I took up my duties here a month ago, I have chiefly been occupied with an inquiry into the manner in which the Native Chiefs discharge their obligations towards the population as regards master-service, poondoosan and similar matters.

“I very soon discovered that the Regent called up people, on his own authority and behalf, far in excess of the legally permitted number of pantjans and kemits.

“I wavered between the choice of reporting at once officially, and


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 favourable conditions of the market, are manifestly the operative causes of the prosperity. Nor is it a fair reply to say that the owners also bear the losses' in reduced value of their capital and lower dividends. For when a business ceases to pay, or makes a loss, though capital suffers, labour usually suffers more, either from wage-cuts which hurt the worker and his family more than loss of dividends the capitalist and his family, or from unemployment or short time, which mean destitution qualified by the 'dole.'

In other words, the sole ownership of a business by the owners of its share capital denotes an inequitable structure. For in reason and morals it equally belongs to the owners of the other active factors of production, the brain and hand workers who contribute to its product and depend for their livelihood upon its regular efficient working. There is a cleavage between the legal and the 'real' ownership that finds damaging expression in a constant bickering and occasional conflict between the capital and labour whose harmonious co-operation is essential to full efficiency. No reasonable rules for the pacific settlement of such conflicts exist, or for the apportionment of the income of a business between the several factors of production. Terms like 'fair wages' and 'reasonable rate of profit' have no clear ascertainable meaning, and there exists no criterion of a 'just price' for a Consumers' Council to apply.

3. Recent large and rapid fluctuations in monetary values, or price-levels, have disclosed another source

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 of unreason, injustice, and waste in the working of the economic system, by emphasising the conflict of interest between the passive and the active factors of industry. In the wild inflation of the war and post-war periods large masses of fixed interest payments in the shape of mortgages, debentures, pensions were cancelled or greatly reduced in many countries to the advantage of ordinary shareholders, and an era of 'profiteering' upon a hitherto unknown scale ensued. Some classes of wage-earners shared to a less extent in the gain from this cancelment of fixed charges upon industry.

Since the resumption of the gold standard in this and certain other countries, a reversal of this earlier unreason and inequity has been achieved through a deflationary fall of prices, which has greatly increased the burdens of war-indebtedness and of all other fixed charges, securing to the owners of such charges an increased share of the real income of the nation. This injury to the ordinary capitalist quite evidently cripples business enterprise, and no remedy is provided. under the current working of our economic system.

4. The apportionment of the national income and of the general income of the world between the stronger and the weaker industries in the several countries is based upon no sound principles of justice or economy. Economic force is the agent of distribution. Within each nation a certain number of sheltered or protected trades, often internally combined, with powers to restrict output and fix selling

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 prices, and handling goods or services that are of vital and indispensable importance to the community, are in a position to levy tribute upon other trades and the consuming public, taking a share of the national income which measures their economic strength, not their skill, efforts, or needs.

This seizure of an unearned surplus by organised economic force has, of course, a wider sphere of action than the nation. It is a marked and disconcerting feature of the world-economy. Almost everywhere the growers of foods and raw materials, wide-spread and ill-organised, are at the mercy of banks or local money-lenders, the owners of transport and storage, and the wholesale dealers who handle their product and often finance its production. This weakness of the farmer in most countries is a source of growing discontent. Many agricultural products are handled by wholesale agents and by retail local traders so as to apportion a small and diminishing proportion of the final retail price to the farmer.

There are other important cleavages of interest in the realms of industry and finance, sometimes within the national area, sometimes in the world markets. Wherever effective combination displaces or limits competition, in the national or international markets, that efficiency of combination means a higher price, usually achieved by an agreed restriction either of output or of market, or both. In an increasing number of commodities, many of them highly specialised articles, such as chemicals and the rarer metals, international cartels are in control, regulating

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 the desire of turning the Native Chief-officer from these practices by kindliness, or later even by threats, in order to attain the twofold object of stopping the abuse and at the same time avoiding too severe a treatment of the old Government-servant on the first occasion, especially in view of the bad examples which, I believe, have often been set him, and also in connection with the special circumstance that he was expecting a visit from two relatives, the Regents of Bandoong and of Tjanjor—at least for certain from the latter, who, I believe, is already on the way with a numerous retinue—so that more than otherwise he was tempted, and, on account of the straitened condition of his finances, as it were compelled, to provide by unlawful means for the requisite preparation for that visit.

“All this moved me to a lenient view with regard to things that already happened, but in no way to indulgence for the future.

“I insisted on an immediate cessation of every illegal practice.

“With my provisional attempt to bring the Regent by kindliness to his duty I have previously acquainted you.

“It has, however, become evident to me that he flouts me in every way with insolent shamelessness, and in accordance with my official oath I feel it my duty to inform you:

“In order that both indictments may be properly prepared by me, I take the liberty to propose that you instruct me:

“1º to send the Regent of Lebak post-haste to Serang, taking every care that neither before his departure nor during the journey he be given the opportunity to influence, by bribery or other means, the testimonies I shall obtain;

“2° provisionally to arrest the Dhemang of Parang Koodyang;


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 prices and raising costs of production in the various industries to which these articles are indispensable. Within Great Britain, during the years of this deep general depression, tobacco, drink, and a few other luxury trades have taken an increasing toll of the reduced real income of the nation.

Our 'economic system' does not pretend to furnish any remedy for these grave injustices or to place the claims of the different trades to their share of the general income upon any equitable basis.

5. Finally, we encounter the wastes and injustices involved in the economic application of the principle of national sovereignty, the claim that each nation is the absolute owner and controller of all the economic resources, natural and human, within its domains. This economic nationalism assumes two shapes in modern times. The first is the attempt by trade regulations to conserve the economic resources of the country for the exclusive advantage of the existing inhabitants thereof, by restricting the entry of foreign competing goods and labour, or by the limitation of exports. Protective tariffs and immigration restriction are chief instruments of this economic nationalism. But the need of advanced industrial nations for large and secure access to backward countries with weaker populations, in order to obtain upon favourable terms the foods and raw materials they cannot grow at home, and adequate markets for their surplus manufactures, has expanded economic nationalism into economic imperialism. This policy is organically connected with

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 a growth of overseas investment, needed on the one hand for the lucrative disposal of surplus capital beyond the requirements of home use, on the other for securing the development of the natural resources of backward lands for their exclusive or preferential use, and exclusive or preferential markets for their manufactured surplus.

As this economic imperialism, primarily a British policy, spread to a number of other industrially developed Western powers, the economic conflicts assumed more and more a political shape, each government being induced to use its diplomatic, and in the last resource its armed force for the protection or assertion of the interest of its own traders and investors.

Here is the widest area of economic conflict, qualified but slightly by trade treaties and other rudiments of an internationalism which as yet has been brought into no reliable adjustments with the dominant principle and practice of independent absolute sovereignty, extended to cover the colonies, protectorates, and spheres of interest which fall within the category of empire.

Thus, while it would be foolish to deny that the economic system contains elements of order in its industry and markets, it is manifestly failing to meet efficiently the requirements of modern civilisation. The very fact that everyone becomes increasingly dependent for the satisfaction of economic needs upon the successful adjustments of industry, trade, and finance, of a world-wide character, has

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 brought into stronger relief the failure of these adjustments. An era of confessed national impotence is setting in, and the feebleness of all present attempts at effective economic internationalism is the outstanding challenge to the reason and the will of man.

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 “3º to apply similar measures to such persons of a lesser rank as, belonging to the Regent’s family, may be expected to influence the rigour of the proposed inquiry;

“4º to hold this inquiry at once, and to report fully on the result.

“I further take the liberty to suggest for your consideration that the visit of the Regent of Tjanjor be countermanded.

“Finally I have the honour to give the assurance—no doubt superfluously for you, who know the Division of Lebak better than is as yet possible for me—that from a point of view a strictly just treatment of this matter can cause no danger, and that I should view with far greater apprehension the  to clear it up. For I have information to the effect that the people who, as a witness told me, are poossing with vexation, have long been looking for deliverance.

“I have partly drawn strength, for the difficult duty I am fulfilling in writing this letter, from the hope that I shall be permitted in due time to urge certain reasons in extenuation of the old Regent, with whose position, however much the result of his own actions, I nevertheless feel deep sympathy.

“The Assistant-Resident of Lebak,

“”

Next day he received a reply from the  Ah, no, from Mr. Slimering, in his  capacity!

This reply is a precious contribution to the knowledge of the manner in which Government is carried out in Netherlands India. Mr. Slimering complained that Havelaar had not first acquainted him orally with the matters dealt with in letter No. 88. Of course there would then have been a better chance of. And next that Havelaar

No doubt the man was occupied with an annual report on peaceful peace! I have his letter before me, and can scarcely trust my


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It is now widely recognised that if economic havoc and maladjustment attributable to the Great War were repaired, our major problems of waste and injustice would still remain unsolved. It may even be urged that, if the industrial and financial troubles due to the war were healed and the productive capacities of all the civilised peoples were liberated to take full advantage of the recent improvements in technique and organisation, the inability to utilise these enlarged productive powers would be even more conspicuous than it is. Up-to-date modern capitalism under such conditions would exhibit a far larger wastage than is represented by the idle labour and capital at the present time. While, therefore, the war injuries of high tariffs, war debts, reparations, expensive armaments, obstructed emigration, disordered finance, bulk large in the immediate foreground, their very presence has obscured the far more important need of an economic government capable of coping with the more permanent evils of a disordered economic system. The difficulty here is a state of mind incapable of understanding the nature of the problem, chiefly because it is unwilling to try to understand. It is unwilling because what it deems to be its personal and group interests block the way. "In the absence of

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 eyes. I re-read the letter of the Assistant-Resident of Lebak I place and the Resident of Bantam, Havelaar and Slimering, side by side

That Shawlman turns out to be a common blackguard! You must know, reader, that Bastians is again often absent from Office, as he has lumbago. Now as I make it a matter of conscientious scruple not to squander the funds of the firm—Last & Co.—for I am unshaken in my principles, I yesterday remembered that after all Shawlman writes a moderately good hand, and as he looks so shabby, and therefore no doubt could be got for a modest wage, I felt that it was my duty to the firm to provide in the cheapest manner possible for replacing Bastians. So I went to the Long-Leiden-Side-Street. The woman of the shop was in front, but did not seem to recognize me, although I had recently told her quite plainly that I was Mr. Drystubble, Coffee-broker, from the Laurier Canal. That trick of not recognizing a person has always something odious about it, but as it is a little less cold now, and as on the previous occasion I wore my fur coat, I attribute it in this case to that coat, and shall not worry about it I mean the insult. So I said once more that I was Mr. Drystubble, Coffee-broker, from the Laurier Canal, and asked her to go and see whether that Shawlman was at home, as I did not this time, as on the previous occasion, want to deal with his wife, who was always so discontented. But this second-hand shopwoman refused to go upstairs. She could not all day long be climbing stairs for that beggarly crew, she said; I had better go and see for myself. And then there was again a description of the stairs and portals, which I did not require at all, for I always recognize a place I have once visited, as I always take such notice of everything. That’s a habit I have acquired in business. So I climbed up the stairs, and knocked at the old door, which opened at my touch. I entered, and as I found no one in the room, I had a look round. Well, there wasn’t much to see. A pair of short pants with an embroidered strip was hanging on a chair why do


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 as the Angell ioyneth him by his owne will, the more perfectly to the apparant truth, that maye not be chaunged, as Gregory saith: Almightie God made the kinde of good Angells good, but mutable. So that they that woulde abide, might bée assured of grace, & by so much the more increase reward, in how much they setteled the effect of their will with studie, without chaunging in God: also Saint Gregorie sayth: Angell in the contemplation of his Creator is aboue the thing that may be chaunged, but in that he is a creature, he hath subiections of chaunging. Denis sayth, In Angells three things must bée had in consideration, Essencia, by the which they haue béeing: vertue by the which they haue might: and working, by the which they are exercised. The Essencia of them is simple and vnmateriall, pure, distinct, and discréet. This vertue of them is frée, vnderstanding, louing, and without ceasing. They haue might and power fréely to choose, to vnderstande, and to loue: and to God to be ioyned without chaunging: also they haue a vertue of working, for they doe all thing without abiding or tarrieng, they put of al aduersitie without withstanding, and without withsayeng: alway they be nigh vs, and serue vs without ceasing: and their working, is willing, sodeine, profitable, and honest.

For they serue GOD without constraining, and doe his heastes sodeinly and in an instaunt, and putte not off till on the morrowe: all good and profite they procure with greate héede taking: they bée occupied in lawfull déedes and honest, that bée without blame: then it is truth that in an Angell is three manner vertues, of knowing, of working, and of béeing. For hée knoweth God aboue himselfe, in a mirrour of euerlasting during, without any intermission. ''Hee seeth alway the face of the Father. Mathew. 18 Angels alwayes beholde the face of my Father which is in heauen. Psal. 10.'' He apprehendeth all things that is without himselfe, without anye collection, and holdeth in minde within himselfe, without forgetting, all that hée apprehendeth. Angells haue this vertue of working, mightely, swiftly, and profitably, and without ceasing: and they also haue vertue to be steadfast, in the simplicitie of their kinde. For they are not altered by deedly subiections, neyther they haue no contrariousnesse of passibilitie, neither bee lette with charge of flesh. They bée also in steadfastnesse of grace and of blisse. For they bée subiects to the lawes of God, and be not contrary therto by none affection nor deede.

They bée godly and not tormented with the pricke of enuie: and forasmuch as they be pure and cleane, they bee not defiled with anye affection: and they be steadfast in the dignitie of office. They are the substaunce of well minding, and therefore contrarye to euill dooing and they that bée Souereignes bée Princes ouer the other without tyrannie: also Angells kinde is ioyned nigh to the first lyght, that is God, and therefore it is full of more copious light: and so much the more déeper it draweth of the Well of lyfe, the more néere it ioyneth it selfe to the first light in beholding the minde: and it receiueth alway the more principall Theophanias, that is lyght and shining of GOD, insomuch as it tourneth it the more perfectlye to the highest good by loue, that chaungeth not: and so that light, that is euerlasting, first it commeth vppon Angells, and by Angells it commeth downe to vs• and therefore by Angells lawe came to men: and for that first shining commeth to Angelles from the Father of lyght. Denis calleth Angelles Algamatha, that is, most cléere myrrours, receiuing the lyght of GOD. ''Vnde in libro de diuinis nominibus. Chap 6. Denis'' sayth in this manner. An Angell is the Image of GOD, the shewing of hidde lyght, a myrrour pure and most bright, without spot, without wemme, or other defiling.

And if it were lawfull to saye, hée receyueth in himselfe all the fayrenesse of the well shape, godlye formitie

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 and self-interest man is not indisposed to justice." And when self or group interest is strongly realised, passion is always present and confuses thinking.

The doctrines and principles that emerge from passion-laden thinking are worth some consideration in any attempt at envisaging economic government. Two 'states of mind* prevalent in all classes are obstructive to any sound understanding of the economic situation.

The first is the state of mind towards personal rights of property, well expressed in letters admitted to The Times from well-to-do persons who deplore the confiscatory taxation to which their incomes and property are subjected for expenditure in social services for the benefit of other people. The assumption, often expressed with the utmost naïveté, is that they themselves, by their own skill, knowledge, enterprise, industry, and thrift, have made the fortunes which they possess, and that the claim of a government to take a large share of them by process of taxation for public purposes is an act of legalised robbery. Or if they have not made these fortunes themselves, their relatives have made them by the use of their personal activities and have exercised the 'right' to bequeath the property to them.

In either case it belongs to them by right of personal productivity, and for a government to take any part of it, without their consent, for the benefit of other people, is only little less immoral than if a mob took it by violent plunder.

Those who write these letters are perfectly sincere

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 and of pure declaration in himselfe, as it is possible to take and declare goodnesse that is hidde. He is named the Image of God, for lykenesse and shape in vnderstanding and readinesse: For lyke as God seeth all things without aduice and conference, so doeth Angells, for they see not by meane, neither apprehend by bodelye wit. Also hée is called the shewing of hidde lyght: for he taketh by influence the sight of the Godhead, that is in it selfe incomprehensible and hidde, and sendeth it foorth, and sheweth it to other, and maketh it knowen to them that are lower. And he is called a myrrour, for he is able to receiue the lyght of God, and is called a pure myrrour, for the kindly purenesse of his substaunce, for he hath no bodelye filth, he is immaculate, he hath no went of originall sinne, he is not defiled with contagion of deadlye sinne, he is without spot of veniall sinne. He is sayd receiuing fairenesse of the likenesse of the Godhead.

In a speciall manner of knowing, he is lyke to the Godhead, and also hee declareth to them that are lower the incomprehensible and hidde: swéetenesse of the goodnesse of God. For what hée taketh in contemplation and tasting by the gifte of God, he sendeth it forth, and maketh it knowen to them that are lower.

Damascene in his seconde Booke and third Chapter sayth, That Angells are lights intellectuall, hauing lyght of the first lyght, and they néede no tongue neither eares: but without words and voyce they vnderstande and know euery others thought and will. And they are not contayned in a bodelye place, not within walles neither cloyster bodelye inclosed, and be not bodelye long, neither broade, neither thicke, but they be intellectuallye nigh and present, and worke in euerye place where God biddeth them. Also they are spirites kindlye strong and swifte to doe Gods will: and they are sodainelye founde in euerye place, where God willeth and bethinketh, dispensing those things that be about vs, and helping vs after Gods owne will. They are aboue vs, and neuerthelesse about God. It were harde to mooue them to euill, for thereto they are contrarye: & that is of grace, though it be not of kinde.

And as it is possible, they bée in contemplation of God, and haue theyr delyght and lyking in him: and séeing they are spirituall and bodilesse, they néede neyther, wedding nor corporall ioyning.

¶How an Angell in bodely shape is painted. Chap. 3.
Also though Angelles kinde haue no matter neyther lyneations and shape of bodye, yet by a morall deuise, many things are imagined, as God lyke an olde man: euen so Angells bée paynted in bodely lykenesse, and Scripture maketh mention, that they haue diuers lymmes and shapes. But by denominations of lymmes that are séene, vnséene workings of heauenlye perseueraunces, are then thereby vnderstoode. For when Angells are paynted with long lockes and crispe haire, thereby is vnderstoode their cleane affections and ordinate thoughts. For the hayre of the head betokeneth thoughts and affections that doe spring out of the roote of thought and minde.

Men saye that they haue cares, because they receiue the inspiration of God, and that they knowe and vnderstande. Paynters make to them nosethrilles, and not without cause: For they voyde vices and: sinnes as it were stinking thinges: and they loue vertues, as it were swéete smelles. And they seperate trueth from falshood, making distinction betwéene cleane and vncleane, stinking and sweete smellyng.

Ofte men make mention that they haue mouthes, tongues, and lyppes, because they shewe, tu vs as it were in speaking the priuities of God: and they

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 both in the views they express and in their indignation. But while most of them belong to the conventionally 'educated' classes, it never enters their heads to question the validity of their prime assumption that they themselves or their fathers have 'made' these fortunes. A. is a successful industrialist who has built up and conducted a profitable business from which he draws a large income. This income is due to his enterprise, skill, and industry. Others, no doubt, have helped him to produce the goods upon the sale of which his profits depend. But he pays these others their market value in salaries and wages as he pays all other costs of production. The bulk of the money he receives from the sale of his product goes in defraying these costs. Any surplus, i.e. profit, belongs to him as entrepreneur and capitalist. If others are shareholders in his enterprise, part of the profit 'belongs' to them. They have made it by the use of their capital, or the skill of their investment. This is how the affair appears to him.

But the growing tendency in business is for the active entrepreneur to borrow most of the money capital he requires at fixed interest. On this basis it seems clearer than ever that the large income and fortune which a prospering business secures for him is of his own making. Indeed, he can often trace it to particular acts of skilled judgment and enterprise upon his part, and he is conscious that any error of judgment upon his part might have converted his profit into a loss.

What, then, is the fallacy in his conviction that his

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 are alwaye busie wayting and attending in the praysing of God.

And they be painted beardles: for to take consideration and héede, that they passe neuer the state of youth, neyther ware feeble in vertues, neither faile for age. Men saye that they haue téeth, because grace, that they receiue of God, they vse to part and deale it to other, as it were chewing and grinding, and therby their might and power is betokened. They haue armes and handes, for by theyr might in working they sustaine our infirmities. And cease not to holde vp and defende good men, that God hath chosen. Men saye, that they haue heartes and breastes, for because they haue life lyke to the lyfe of God, and worke openlye to helpe vs to receiue the grace of lyfe, and such lyfe as God hath. They haue ribbes and sides, for they haue safelye in themselues all the giftes of grace, and by kéeping of them all thing is sure and safe in good men. Men say, that they haue flankes and thighes, but hidde with clothing, for they haue within themselues, grace and vertue, hid from fleshly men. •éete they haue, but as it were alwaye bare, for the mouing of their affection to Godward is sequestred from all deadly lyking.

¶How Angells be described. Cap. 4.
Also Angelles be painted in manye manner shapes wonderfully altered, as Saint Denys toucheth in the end of the Angelicall Hierarchie. Truely they be paynted feathered and winged: for that they are of contrary cause & clenne from all earthlye cogitation. And they be lifted vp in effect and knowledge, and rauished to the innermost contemplation of the loue of God.

They are cloathed in fierie redde cloathes, for that they be wrapped in the lyght and mantell of the knowledge and loue of God. ''They bee cloathed with lyght as with a garment. Psal. 104.'' They are gyrde with golden girdles, for that they be so clipped with the habite of vertues, that they neuer slyde to vice neither to sinne. They beare in hande authorities and scepters, for after God they giue all rightfull iudgements, and rule and gouern rightfullye all that is in this worlde, that we knowe with vtter wittes. They beare in theyr handes swordes and speares: for by vertue that is giuen to them, they warre, and destroye the vproares and the enforcings of fiends, and of other that are rebellyous. They be séene to haue Trowells, and hanging plommets, and measures, and workemens tooles: For by prouision of Angells, God vseth to tourne euill men to good, and moueth them that they might bée made the habitation of the Holye ghost.

They haue in their handes, rule, lynes, and measures, for they diuide, meate, & weigh all mens works good & euill. And they are sayde to haue Phyals with swéet smelling things: for by dooing of them our wounds are brought to grace of health. And it is read, that they be girde as they were apparayled readye to goe and walke forth on their waye: for by their helpe and guyding, godlye disposed men be alwaye brought home into blysse! Also they be sayde to beare pennars and inke hornes, and other instrumentes of Writers: For that, that through theyr dooing, the priuitie of Gods will, is oftentimes reuealed and knowen.

They bée furnished in armes, and weapon of battayle and of warre: For that by helpe of them, good men are often succoured and defended, in warre and in battayle of bodye and of soule. And the• harpe: For that they that are worthye to bée comforted, by theyr helpe and prayers, fall not into sorrowe of despayre, and so to be without hope.

They beare Trumpettes in theyr handes, for that they call and comforte and excite vs to profite alwaye in goodnesse. Manye such manner things are written of the araye and doing of Angells, that betoken theyr meruaylous workes.

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14 miles in the hour, suddenly pulled up a few yards short of a fallen tree which blocked the line, it might reasonably have been supposed that some very singular development had taken place, quite transcending the confines of scientific engineering. Will it be believed, however, that though at first startled, yet after a few instances of a similar prescience on the part of their machines, the engineers were pleased to regard them as evidence of superior workmanship, and by shallow untenable arguments silence, though not convince, their own easily-satisfied minds and the credulous questionings of the public? But there are some subjects concerning which the truth is so disagreeable, nay, so terrible, that the world prefers to ignore or explain it away rather than face the reality, and this was a remarkable instance. So the inventing and perfecting of automatic machines went on as steadily if not as merrily as ever.

The deputy manager, Cornelius J. Hanap, who had the entire charge of the "loco" department, was a shrewd, hard-headed, middle-aged New Englander of the old Puritan stock, with all the valuable Puritan qualities except the Puritan creed. A hard worker


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No. 5.

MAY has come, with its flowers and sunny skies, and fields of sweet smelling incense. It brings with it fashions to suit the time. Summer hats and dresses begin to fill our promenades. Rarely have we seen a more airy taste than that which displays itself, this year, in the costumes of the fair.

Our plate of costumes for the month presents a walking, and two evening dresses, all of the latest and most approved styles.

Fig. 1. A WALKING DRESS.- Pale pink crêpe, trimmed round the bottom of the skirt, with two broad tucks of the same, and decorated with folds down each side of the front in the form of a robing; and having nœuds of ribbon gradually enlarging from the waist to the top of the second tuck, from which nœud depends three long ends; the body low and draped round the bust with deep folds of crape, attached in front with two small nœuds of ribbon; waist à point; sleeves long, but formed above the elbow by three folds decorated with a bow of ribbon.

Fig. 2. AN EVENING DRESS .- A l'Espagnol, composed of a rich pomona green satin; the skirt immensely full, and ornamented with three broad volants of white lace d'Angleterre, each volant being attached in the front with pretty cocardes of pale pink areophane; low body à pointe, trimmed with a rich lace berthe, attached in the front with cocardes similar to those on the skirt; the sleeves very short, consisting of a double fold, and edged with two rows of rather narrow lace, the folds attached in front of the arm with a small pink roseatte. Coiffure, composed of a guirlande of roses, the leaves in velvet.

Fig. 3. A BALL DRESS.-Dress white crêpe lise à double jupon, each jupe being trimmed round with a broad hem, through which is passed a broad pale pink satin ribbon, the under jupe being slightly raised on the left side, and caught with a bow of pink ribbon, the upper one also raised and attached with a splendid guirlande of shaded pink roses, the leaves of a beautiful pale green velvet, and gradually diminishing in size upward to the point of the waist; the top of the corsage ornamented all round with a double fold of the same, having a beautiful rose in the centre of the front; short sleeves decorated with reverse folds of the same, finished with a rose en suite; coiffure à Daphne, the back of the hair being nearly concealed with a cluster of roses panachées.

We annex descriptions of various styles of headdresses, evening dresses, &c.

CAPS are now being mostly made in lace; those in point lace are considered most récherché, trimmed with nœuds of grenat velvet; those in blonde are generally made in the following style: the cap is composed of a double barbe of blonde, the two ends being re-united on the left side by an agrafe of drooping roses; the laced edge of the blonde falling over the front, throws a becoming shade over the forehead. Another style of cap, less becoming, perhaps, but still of a most graceful form, having the front separated in two distinct parts, is also a great favorite with our élégantes; the one part, which passes over the forehead, is composed of a rouleau, upon which is placed a kind of wreath of very small flowers, the second part falling over the back part of the head in the Grecian style. The cap à la religieuse is also much worn, all in blonde or point de Venise.

EVENING DRESSES.-The most fashionable materials for evening dresses are the following: Brocart royal, satin Pompadour, and particularly des forêts vierges: the designs in silver, upon a ground of pink or blue. Nothing can be prettier than those dresses made in satin rayé, green and pink upon a white ground; the corsage plain, and à pointe, half high; the sleeves plain, and a pelerine cardinale, formed of five rows of English lace falling over the shoulders. We cannot omit mentioning also those dresses of satin, oreille d'ours and green; the one trimmed round the skirt with a broad flounce, surmounted by a second, which is slightly raised in the

VOL. I.- 17


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 fortune is of his own personal making? It is this. Let it be granted that his skill and judgment, in equipping his works with the best up-to-date plant and in organising production, markets, and finance in the best possible manner, enable him to enlarge his output of the goods he makes. Something else is necessary in order that he may make a large income out of the profitable sale of these goods. In the first place, if other industrialists in his line of business are as able as he is, they may be increasing the output of their plant as rapidly as he, in which case the enlargement of his total supply of these goods upon the market may lead to a large fall in prices and in profits. Thus the income he receives depends to a considerable extent not upon what he does, but upon what others are doing in his line of business. So much for the 'supply' side of the determination of his price and profit. But far more important is the fact that his real income, the command over the general body of goods and services which his money income represents, depends upon the productive operation of all the other industries throughout the world whose products come into comparison with his by means of money and market prices. For this real income, or profit, which he thinks to be of his exclusive 'making,' expands or contracts to an indefinite extent with the expansion or contraction of other goods which compose the 'demand' for the particular goods towards the supply of which he contributes.

Turning from income to property, the capitalised form of ownership, the absurdity of the contention

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 === ¶ How Angells be compared to materiall things. Cap. 5. ===

ALso they be likened to other things, that be taken & transumpt of naturalls For to signifie and declare theyr profound and secret workings: example. They be likened to windes, for they flye and passe sodainely, so their déedes and workes. They be called cloudes, for that they be rauished towarde God by very contemplation. They be lykened to fire, for that they be wholly inflamed with burning loue of God, and as fire they shine in knowledge, and burne in loue.

Now they are named golde; now siluer, and now latten, for they haue pure shining, as light, and be adorned with the wisedome of God. They be lykened to Carbuncles & Saphires, and to other precious stones that be sad and bright, for because they be firme in the grace of God, and confirmed in the blisse: and by their presence, all that is in heauen and in earth, is wonderfully beautified. They are called Lions, for that they be grisly and dreadfull against wicked spirites and to sinfull men: or els as the Commentor vpon the Hierarchie Angelicall saith, because when they aspire to the contemplation of God, that was knowen afore, is wiped out of minde: when cleerenesse that is desired, is openly knowen, to the soules that desireth: for a Lyon vseth to wype awaye his owne steppes with his tayle. They are called Oxen, for an Ore eareth the land, and maketh it able to beare fruite: So Angells make mens soules able to receiue graines of vertues and of gifts. They are called Eagles, for that they beholde strayght and stiffelye in God, that is the Sunne of righteousnesse, without dazelyng of theyr eyen. They are called Horses for by the Lawe of obedience, they be subiecte to God, that is Lorde aboue them. Sometime also they are called white Horses, for the bright and cléere knowing of God. And sometime blacke Horses, for they maye not comprehende the Maiestie of God at the ful: for blacknes is darke coulour and dimme. Sometime redde Horses, for they shewe dread of righteousnesse and equitie. And some time of diuers coulours, for the variable vse of power that they haue receyued. The vttermost coulours are mixed together, and by the perfect vertue of Angells, the first are ioyned and tourned to the seconde, and the seconde to the first, and be tourned either into others loue. And they be called firie Riuers, because they receiue streames or flowings of diuine grace, and they shedde out plenteouslye that neuer fayleth of fresh streames of Gods grace, and powre out to other in plentie of lyfe: and therefore they are lykened to a firie Riuer. Also they be called Chariots, for in a Charyot is manye things carried at once: For they bée by one assent borne vp, associate and coupled togethers, in the ioyfull companye of God.

They be also called Whéeles: For as a Whéele windeth and tourneth about, and mooueth alwaye about the selfe Center: so Angells are in contemplation, and mooue about that thing, that belongeth to God, as it were about the centre or poynt in the middes of a compasse intellectuall: for theyr desire maye not be quenched, and what they desire, passeth theyr •uit•e and might. And therefore also they are lykened to Chariots and firie wheeles. For that they come downe to subiectes, and illuminate them, and so goe vp agayne, and guiding euermore by contemplation. And they present to our Lorde, prayers and inwarde cogitations of good men: and bring dead mens soules into Abrahams bosome, and into the Countrey of blisse. And they are called Surgeons and Phisitions, because they cure and heale soules.

And they be also called Smithes, for that they prepare for vs ghostlye weapons.

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 that either personal or real property is personally or really made by its owner is not less apparent. Most modern property consists of shares, or bonds, or other pieces of paper, the value of which is based upon the estimated future earnings or profits of some industrial, commercial, or financial business. These values are liable to fluctuate with every change in the current market for the goods or services the business produces, or with the public confidence-in the future of the enterprise. Such property may be worth twice as much, or half as much, next year as it is now, without any action on the part of its owner. Yet the property owner, though aware of these changes due to the conduct of others, is apt to regard his stocks and shares as a fixed property, because the nominal value inscribed on the share certificates does not change, and he regards claims of taxing authorities as invasions upon his rightful ownership. He does not recognise the part played by the economic community in making and changing the amount of his property.

If, however, we regard, as we must, this economic system as 'social' in its operation, we come to the conclusion that A.'s income or fortune, which he imagines himself to have made, is in reality determined or made by the activities of the whole economic system operating through the machinery of markets.

This is, of course, an elementary lesson in economic science. But it has been necessary to set it out explicitly because it is almost universally ignored by members of the owning classes, who denounce alike

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