text:
Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2023-11

Trying to help myself by asking for yes or no answers.

 * 1) I am looking for the bot with which I can create the page: namespace pages. I looked at the list of users': bots, but I can't tell. Are there any general maintenance bots? I cannot do this manually, and my mouse+keyboard based macros no longer work in browsers. Is there such a script? Yes or No?
 * 2) When Tesseract finishes, would it be possible to terminate the cursor position in the top row of the 'text area'? - Can I, manage this from my .js file? Yes or No?
 * 3) Would it be also possible that at the termination of same process, to reset the image to the 'original size'? Yes or No?  — ineuw (talk) 00:56, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-45
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * In the Vector 2022 skin, the default font-size of a number of navigational elements (tagline, tools menu, navigational links, and more) has been increased slightly to match the font size used in page content.

Problems
 * Last week, there was a problem displaying some recent edits on a few wikis, for 1-6 hours. The edits were saved but not immediately shown. This was due to a database problem.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * The Growth team will reassign newcomers from former mentors to the currently active mentors. They have also changed the notification language to be more user-friendly.

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:05, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Automated creation of TOC from list
I'm using a list in Excel to produce a TOC, and also to fill out header templates for each chapter of a book in the main namespace. Excel is not the very best tool for the job. In the example of a TOC, it would be useful to create a Lua module that loops through a list to produce a TOC. Then others could utilize the template with their own lists. That raises a few questions: What namespace would the list be stored in? Is anyone using a similar programmic method? Am I reinventing the wheel? Heyzeuss (talk) 15:07, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

 * To answer your second question, I have done the same thing with the LibreOffice equivalent of Excel before, yes: it allowed me to do some simple addition and replacement easily. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:00, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

 * Unfortunately, technical limitations like this are why transcription is a tough thing. In an ideal world, proofreading templates, etc. could be more dynamic to the point where autogeneration of something like a TOC would be easy and native to our system. These are exactly the types of things I've been working tirelessly to find solutions to for my own projects, hoping that one day they can actually be integrated into our frontend, rather than having to do software workarounds through Pywikibot for basically every kind of useful edit.
 * I don't have code I can give you right at the moment, but if you're developing software for this (or even just proofreading generally), I would personally recommend to do the headers first, and then have your code dynamically generate a TOC based on the headers you've already created. That way, you can deal with the nuances of the TOC as they come up, with the headers already being perfect as is. So you only have to treat one page for your chapters, rather than thirty.
 * I could produce something if you need (given a little time though). I have messed with Excel spreadsheets in Python for quite a lot of projects professionally, albeit never for a wiki. But let's see if anyone else has a solution before I jump in too readily. PseudoSkull (talk) 20:56, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * After looking around, I found that there's a data namespace in Commons for .tab files in JSON format. Some templates that draw on JSON lists would be ideal for making TOCs and other things that draw on lists of chapters. Heyzeuss (talk) 21:20, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * That's not a bad idea, actually. Being able to construct tables of content from some markdown shorthand would be really helpful. We may want to propose this at the next community wishlist... —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:27, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm actually of the opinion that almost everything in Wikisource should be done in a markdown shorthand: that is, shorter than what MediaWiki can natively provide. Considering the absolute ocean of works that in theory need to be transcribed but are so far untouched, with each individual work taking quite a magnanimous effort in and of itself, that is what has separated Wikisource from the public eye up to this point. If you consider the vast amount of tasks that need to be done, minimizing clicking and typing in the transcription process in every possible place is necessary for the best outcomes. Centralize every bit of data, only enter the most necessary data once, and pull in as much as possible from external sources (don't do a bunch of typing that some librarian already did in the 1990s). And I'm saying all this, because I'm actively putting this philosophy to the test, and it's working exactly as hoped. PseudoSkull (talk) 02:07, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * We already have one: Module:TOCstyle, used by Template:TOCstyle. Supports a decent variety of table of contents styles, but for some reason I don't see it used often. Arcorann (talk) 06:56, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Beside the automatic generation, there are many templates already available for TOCs. It is likely that they already cover your needs and a per-work template is not needed. See Category:TOC templates. Mpaa (talk) 21:15, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

 * I'm happy to see that there are already templates for dotted TOCS.........😅 Heyzeuss (talk) 18:23, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Mostly dreadful things that should be avoided as they cause code bloat and not infrequently blow-out the template limit on transcluding more complex TOC and Indices. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 20:46, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Just to keep from making this topic insanely long with his HTML demonstration of how bad the dot templates are 😏... Let's suffice it to say the dot templates have some very notable flaws. Maybe use TOC row 2-1, or any of the templates in the same template family, that are listed starting at the "3-column tables" section of that template's documentation. Though these templates don't replicate the dotted nature of the TOC, the dots are not semantic anyway and therefore aren't strictly necessary to be included. The dots are insanely hard to replicate digitally and dynamically at the same time, so I'd say it's best to avoid trying. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:04, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * You know me too well… 😎
 * Also, let me take the opportunity to say that I generally recommend avoiding using any templates for tables. They can be a little easier for people to deal with before internalizing wikitext table syntax, but they also introduce a lot of complexity on their own. Most of the complexity of tables are inherent to the tables we're reproducing, and neither HTML nor MediaWiki supports our use case particularly well, so in my opinion it's better to bite the bullet and climb the (admittedly steep) learning curve for table wikimarkup. There are always exceptions of course, but as a rule of thumb… Xover (talk) 09:32, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * i concur that dotted templates are to be avoided - bloatware. the learning curve for tables is a chronic pain-point. VE helps a little, and the help is not very - with much trial and error. there is an old magnus tool excel to table - https://magnustools.toolforge.org/tab2wiki.php ; the expert editors rendering of tables in EB1911 is a marvel, and major improvement over gutenberg, but we should be happy with approximation. we could use more toc examples that new editors could cut and paste for future toc's. --Slowking4 ‽ digitaleffie's ghost 00:16, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-46
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Four new wikis have been created:
 * a Wikipedia in Moroccan Amazigh
 * a Wikipedia in Dagaare
 * a Wikipedia in Toba Batak
 * a Wikiquote in Banjar

Problems
 * Last week, users who previously visited Meta-Wiki or Wikimedia Commons and then became logged out on those wikis could not log in again. The problem is now resolved.
 * Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Reference Previews are coming to many wikis as a default feature. They are popups for references, similar to the PagePreviews feature. You can opt out of seeing them. If you are using the gadgets Reference Tooltips or Navigation Popups, you won’t see Reference Previews. Deployment is planned for November 22, 2023.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Canary (also known as heartbeat) events will be produced into Wikimedia event streams from December 11. Streams users are advised to filter out these events, by discarding all events where  . Updates to Pywikibot or wikimedia-streams will discard these events by default.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:52, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposal to decide whether replacing a broken URL with a Wayback Machine archive counts as an annotation per WS:ANN
I have been looking at some older works in our collection that were sourced from digital web pages (specifically this one), and I noticed that several of the URLs in the original publication are now broken. I think it would be beneficial to replace the links to point to an archived version on the Wayback Machine.

My question is: would this count as an annotation per WS:ANN? On the one hand, replacing the URL would no longer faithfully represent the original edition as written—but on the other hand, it would better represent the original edition as intended.

Thus, I propose that we decide whether changing the URL in a source text to point to the Wayback Machine counts as an annotation; and if not, that we update WS:ANN accordingly. Beleg Âlt (talk) 14:14, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

 * I personally allowing this replacement of URLs with archive links, and updating WS:ANN to exclude this as a type of annontation under the policy. — Beleg Âlt (talk) 14:17, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Link-rot has to be managed somehow and I don't see this as a true annotation. However, I suggest a small amendment to have the link-text showing as published with the updated link piped behind it. It is only acceptable to do this if the new link is to the Wayback Machine (or some similar future repository). We may need a new filter? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 17:25, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree that only the link destination should be changed, and not the text of the link, even when the text of the link is the original URL itself. I also agree that an archive of the original page is the only acceptable use of this, but I don't know how a filter would be able to make that distinction. —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 18:17, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * , a very useful and practical thing to do. Since it's getting around a technical limitation, being that the webpage no longer exists, it's pretty straightforward to say that if the text was written in the modern day, they would've included a valid link rather than an invalid one. And leaving the text of the original link in, but have it link to the archive, would be the best solution since it leaves in that bit of the historical context of the work. PseudoSkull (talk) 19:09, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I personally this update, along with linking to other persistent name repositories (like doi or purl) to handle internal moves. I personally am undecided in preference between linking to the wayback link vs. linking to the moved content via using something like doi / or a purl instead. MarkLSteadman (talk) 05:07, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

 * The works that we publish should always display the text of the published work. That does not mean that you cannot have a corrected url subsidiary to that text that points to an amended target. Easily accomplished with our works, and clearly not an annotation, just a wikilink per our accepted wikilink process. Whether you want to standardise it, and look to adopt the "url-status" components in things like w:en:Template:Cite news is a different conversation. I would say be wary of adding all that complexity for little benefit. — billinghurst  sDrewth  14:06, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I find it interesting that you think that amending the target of a link is "clearly not an annotation". I do agree with this of course, but since neither WS:ANN nor WS:Links allows for this, I think it does need to be formalized. Note also that our accepted wikilink process explicitly disallows adding links to non-Wikimedia pages where those links are absent in the original source. —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 14:33, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
 * . This preserves many useful links.--Jusjih (talk) 01:59, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Encyclopedias
What is today the best known way to present an old encyclopedia on the web? Wikisource has several examples in Category:Encyclopedias, created at different dates. Are the most recent additions better than those of 5, 10, 15 years ago? Among the earliest is The New Student's Reference Work, which I scanned in 2005, 18 years ago (see talk page for internal history.). If I started that project today, with 18 more years of collective experience, which path should I follow? Are there examples (of web presentations of old encyclopedias) outside of Wikisource that we admire and envy? -- LA2 (talk) 09:38, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

 * I don't think we have The One True Solution for this. The newer examples should generally be followed because the old ones are 1) made in a world that was very different in terms of tools etc. and 2) before those 18+ years of experience and 3) under different policies and guidelines. For example, the first encyclopedias were made as completely new presentations, but our standards have since shifted towards presenting works true to how they were actually published. In addition, to some degree each encyclopedia will have its own needs and quirks (because it has its own structure and approach as it was published), so I don't think we can mandate One True Way by fiat.All of which leads to my conclusion that we need to look at the specific encyclopedia and discuss a bit—at least among interested contributors, but maybe also broader in the community—how best to solve it. If it's a one or two volume work it's probably easier (just treat it like any other book), but if it's something on the order of EB1911 it's going to be much more complicated to find some way to balance all the different concerns. Xover (talk) 11:45, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

 * I'm intending next to scan Swedish encyclopedias from the 1950s. They are borderline copyright cases, meaning that I can get away with it, but can't grant a free license. Since these can't be hosted in Wikimedia Commons/Wikisource, I'll continue to use Project Runeberg as my base. So you don't need to limit your suggestions to what is currently possible in Wikisource and its ProofreadPage module.
 * The history is this: In 1992, I started Project Runeberg inspired by Project Gutenberg, just putting e-text online. In 1995, Project Gutenberg released volume I of EB11, and I thought that digitizing encyclopedias might be a nice idea, but it's a lot of work and the e-text routine (proofread first, then publish) was very slow. In 1998, I started to put facsimile scans + raw OCR text online, publishing first and proofreading later. In 2001, Wikipedia started and I started to scan an old Swedish encyclopedia, Nordisk familjebok. This was finished (scan + OCR) in 2003. In 2005, German Wikipedians wanted something similar for German books, and I suggested to use Wikisource for publishing scans + raw OCR instead of just e-text. The aforementioned The New Student's Reference Work was scanned by me as a proof of this concept. Originally, it used its own templates and categories. The ProofreadPage module was designed some years later.
 * Most likely, I will continue to use my existing method for scanning and presenting encyclopedias. But if radically new ideas are available, I will pick up what I can. --LA2 (talk) 12:26, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

I have probably done the most contribs and organisation and tidying to align collective works and the templates we have settled upon. For these sorts of works, we should be presenting each article independently and it should have wikidata that allows it to be referenced and linked to a main subject, volume, pp, contributor, language all captured data (think about how you can best scrape data and botify it into WD). Noting that the volumes of the work are not pertinent to the hierarchy, and just can be added to the header as detail. Contributors should be noted and we now use the contributor field which puts aligns with the section field. How to label articles and disambiguate is always a challenge and needs the early consideration, from there I use section labels that align with the article name to make transclusion easier and sensible when you have to pull multiple articles off a page (use of s1, s2, s3, ... names is ugh!) DjVu is still the best form, especially when these pages have columns. Look at how you want to internally link a work where it has internal references, and not overlink the rest of the work, let it be fairly self-contained. Set up your link templates early, and replicate what we already have in place with .../link / ... lkpl templates. Leverage Template:Collective work header to build the header for the work. Setting up a WikiProject is useful to bring together the editing information. There are many learnings and commentary. Keep it as simple as possible, and remember that this is about reproduction not replication, so leverage existing templates, and don't try to drill into highly specific and quirky templates that don't align with the community's existing editing style, it just makes tidying impossible. — billinghurst  sDrewth

 * If you want a permanent URL for each article, which is useful for Wikidata, the current design of the Page: namespace and the ProofreadPage extension forces us to create a page (a subpage like The New Student's Reference Work/Steam-Whistle) for each article, that contains a <pages index=... fromsection=... tosection=...>, that pulls the text from one or more proofread pages. It would be a lot easier if just adding the mark-up during proofreading could fix this automatically. --LA2 (talk) 23:52, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

 * editor effort centered on EB1911 and DNB based on the copy paste on wikipedia. some of the older scans text layers are not as clean as the more recent ones. converting to scan backed page view, does take some work. maybe a contest to spur clean-up interest will be necessary, to proofread. --Slowking4 ‽ digitaleffie's ghost 23:08, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Index:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu
This file needs to be moved to Wikisource, as it is still under copyright in the UK. It is a copyvio on Commons and marked for deletion. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:25, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

 * @EncycloPetey: ✅ Xover (talk) 07:11, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-47
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.
 * The Vector 2022 skin will have some minor visual changes to drop-down menus, column widths, and more. These changes were added to four Wikipedias last week. If no issues are found, these changes will proceed to all wikis this week. These changes will make it possible to add new menus for readability and dark mode. Learn more.

Future changes
 * There is an update on re-enabling the Graph Extension. To speed up the process, Vega 2 will not be supported and only some protocols will be available at launch. You can help by sharing what you think about the plan.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:55, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Old OCR gadgets and the newarticletext message
The text in MediaWiki:Newarticletext has (in part): which is now sort of out of date (although it still works) because of the OCR functionality being moved to the new toolbar button (at the right side of the toolbar). The reason I bring this up today is that I was helping a few people edit Wikisource at the WikiCon in Brisbane, and quite a few clicked on that 'OCR button' link and ended up on Gadgets where there are the two old OCR gadgets, and they got really confused about why we have three ways of doing much the same thing. So I'm wondering a) if there's anything about the old OCR gadgets that the new system doesn't handle yet; and b) whether we can remove that sentence from the newarticletext message. (This came up a couple of years ago, but it looks like it wasn't resolved then.) Sam Wilson 21:04, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

 * @Samwilson: Just updating the message to refer to current standard UI is sufficiently uncontroversial that I can do that on my own cognisance. Do you happen to have a good way for me to replicate the two relevant icons (the standard toolbar button to toggle the header, and the custom "Transcribe text" button) without having to futz about with screenshots and static images (cf. T346469)? Is there a ready-made SVG somewhere of the buttons including chrome that I could use (maybe something used in the docs already)?Regarding the two old Gadgets, there are some contributors that have strong preferences regarding their OCR Gadgets; and at least the phetools-backed Gadget is useful as an additional option to try on pages where the standard ones don't give great results. Is the old Google OCR Gadget still using a different Google API than the new OCR tool? It used to, but ISTR it was changed at some point; in which case we might be able to drop that one.Also, what's the state of exposed API for the new OCR backend? I think the UI and interaction model of the new tool is the main drawback for some contributors, so being able to build our own frontend in a Gadget might help with that. For my own part it takes too many clicks and awkward jumps to offsite web pages to do the things I want, so I'm instead relying on my own custom OCR tool (user script + WMCS backend) that also has performance optimizations that make it more or less instantaneous. I'm not really the target audience here, but those kinds of things are what drive the preferences for experienced users.It's also possible the users with strong preferences have mellowed on the point over time, but we'd need to poll pretty widely (watchlist notices++) to figure that out with any degree of certainty, and my assessment so far has been that it's not yet time for that. Of course, phetools is currently on borrowed time due to the Grid Engine to Jobs Framework migration, so unless I manage to find the time to port phetools at some point that part will resolve itself (to nobody's satisfaction, but it will at least be definitively resolved). Xover (talk) 10:54, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the great info, this is super useful. The new OCR icon is File:Wikisource OCR toolbar icon.svg which is probably good at about 20px: Wikisource OCR toolbar icon.svg. The header/footer icon is File:Header and footer toolbar button.svg, Header and footer toolbar button.svg which might be nicer a little shorter, say 18px.
 * The Phetools gadget is using Tesseract, so I'm assuming the differences are due to the options being passed to it (or maybe the fact that it's an old version of Tesseract?). I think that's fine to leave as-is, if it's useful (I'd love to dig into what the differences are and add them to the main tool, but I don't think I've got time — any spare OCR energy I've got I'm currently putting towards Transkribus stuff).
 * The Google gadget on the other hand is using ocr.wmcloud.org as the backed (because ws-google-ocr.toolforge.org redirects there), so I don't think it's providing any difference at all from the Wikisource-extension provided button (the URL parameters are designed to be an exact match, and I've not heard of any bugs with that in the last couple of years — not to say that there aren't any!).
 * The API for the new backend is documented at https://ocr.wmcloud.org/api/doc and I think the main missing things there are things like not being able to get the raw structured output from the various engines (e.g. hocr, or Google's response format.
 * Oh, and hopefully at some point soon we'll have Kraken as a fourth engine.
 * Thanks for helping with all this! :-) Sam Wilson 23:54, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @Samwilson: cf. the linked Phab, I was kinda hoping y'all had an image of the whole button. In MediaWiki:Newarticletext we should show the actual button with "Transcribe text" in addition to the icon or nobody'll find it.Since you confirm that the old Google OCR Gadget is using the same backend as the Google option in the new OCR tool I'm going to start the process for deprecating it. There are still ~400 people with it active so it may have to go through a period of watchlist notices and stuff for that.PS. Since you mention Kraken. Somebody might want to investigate TrOCR at some point (OCR based on a transformer model, like ChatGPT et al that have been creating so much fuss over the last year or so). Xover (talk) 07:00, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @Samwilson: Text updated in MediaWiki:Newarticletext, with a hacky faux button and all. Xover (talk) 07:29, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, and good point about the full button images. I've uploaded new screenshots of both buttons now, and suggest the following wikitext for the message (with a bit more line spacing so things don't overlap on narrower screens): Being careful about deprecating the Google OCR gadget sounds sensible. There's no great harm in having it, as long as it's not promoted to new users. Sam Wilson 02:22, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Updated accordingly (modulo tweaked alt text). Xover (talk) 07:08, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks! Looks good. Sam Wilson 11:07, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Google OCR
I have been experiencing some problems with the Google OCR since yesterday. When I press the button, the original OCR text reappears instead of being overwritten by the new OCR. Sometimes I have to press the button several times until I succeed, sometimes it does not work at all. Any ideas what might have gone wrong? -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 09:27, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

 * I just tested with a handful of random pages and it worked as expected. Does the problem go away when you use the new OCR tool (the "Transcribe text" button) with "Google OCR" selected as the engine? Since the two use the same backend service, if one works and the other does not that tells us the problem is not on the backend. If you're comfortable with your web browser's JavaScript Console you may also want to check there for any relevant error messages when the problems occur (any relevant error messages should be recognizable as related to the google OCR gadget; there's often a lot of unrelated noise in the console that can get kinda confusing). Xover (talk) 13:30, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

 * Unfortunately, the problem stays, no matter whether I use the old Google OCR button or whether I use the new OCR tool with Google OCR selected. The only difference is that with the old OCR button I receive the message:  undefined undefined, while with the new tool I receive the message: "Error from the OCR tool. The Google service returned an error. We can not access the URL currently. Please download the content and pass it in." I have already tried it on 3 different computers at 3 completely different and distant places, with the same problems. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 17:01, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @Jan.Kamenicek: If both tools fail that tends to indicate a backend problem (as do the error message: both suggest that the backend service is returning an error). However, if so it is very strange that I cannot reproduce it (I just tested again and it worked fine for me). The other option is that it is somehow related to your user account. When next you see this problem, could you try the same page again from a private browser window or from a different web browser where you are not logged in? Xover (talk) 17:41, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @Jan.Kamenicek: Nevermind, I was just able to reproduce this. It's an error somewhere in the backend. It looks like perhaps Google is having trouble downloading the page images from Commons, possibly due to rate-limiting or similar.It seems to be at least somewhat intermittent though, since I had trouble reproducing the problem. It is possible that this is a transient error, or simply caused by higher than normal load (e.g. if a bot is hammering the service).@Samwilson: Are you aware of any issues here? Xover (talk) 17:56, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It might be just coincidence, but the problems really seem to vanish when I log out… --Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:07, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * One more thing: it seems that the problems are not so big when I start working, but the longer I use the tool the worse it gets. Yesterday evening it finally stopped working completely. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:14, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * That sounds very annoying, sorry to hear it! I'm working on a patch that will react to that error and retry the image via direct upload. I'm not sure if that's a great idea, but we'll see how it goes! As for it slowing down over time, does that correlate to later pages in a long work? Does it still slow down if you close the browser tab say every ten pages and the continue in a new tab? I'll see if I can dig into what is going on. It could be related to the way we send an OCR request for the next page when one is loaded (to make it quicker when you end up on that page). Sam Wilson 11:06, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Today I started using the tool at about 13.00 and the problem reappeared at the first two pages, but afterwards it seems to have vanished. I do not know if something has been changed or fixed meanwhile, but now it works very well again. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 15:38, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh good, but yeah it sounds like it's down to the Google side being intermittently unable to get the images (either because of being rate limited or because the thumbnails don't generate quickly enough — although I still don't understand the latter because we're sending the same image URL that's displayed on the Page editing form). But yeah, hopefully we can improve it a bit, soon. Sam Wilson 01:10, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Louisa May Alcott works rediscovered
Please see details at Author talk:Louisa May Alcott. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:22, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

FYI: Celebrating 20 years of Wikisource and 3,000+ years of history
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/11/23/celebrating-20-years-of-wikisource-and-3000-years-of-history/ —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:11, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-48
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week.
 * Octicons-tools.svg MediaWiki's JavaScript system will now allow  / syntax in gadgets and user scripts. Gadget authors should remember that users' browsers may not support it, so it should be used appropriately.
 * The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:08, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Request to disable MediaWiki:Gadget-interwiki-transclusion
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Interviews: Tell us about your experiences using Wikidata in the Wikimedia sister projects
Hello, the Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects team at Wikimedia Deutschland is investigating the different ways Wikidata is being used in the Wikimedia projects. If you would like to speak with us about your experiences with integrating Wikidata in Wikimedia wikis, please sign up for an interview in this registration form. Please note that currently, we are only able to conduct interviews in English.

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Stale Requests for Comment
I see five Requests for Comment open right now. Here are the dates they were opened:

 * Requests for comment/Redirect policy - 15 November 2013
 * Requests for comment/Disclosure policy - 17 June 2014
 * Requests for comment/Annotation policy - 16 July 2014
 * Requests for comment/Wikilinking policy - 14 March 2021
 * Requests for comment/Universal Code of Conduct enforcement draft guidelines - 17 August 2021

Shouldn't these have been closed and/or actioned by now? Arcorann (talk) 07:31, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Some still have no consensus. Keep talking longer.--Jusjih (talk) 03:46, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

title: Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2023-11


text:
Page:The Next Naval War - Eardley-Wilmot - 1894.djvu/42

 on the side of the attack. The range and power of the electric light is so diminished by fog or mist as to make it practically useless at such a time. This is due to its deficiency of red rays, which are not absorbed by aqueous vapour to the same extent as the other components of white light. The smoke of guns is even more embarrassing, while the difficulty of hitting a small object moving at a speed of 20 knots had not hitherto been appreciated.

Two causes only could be relied upon to stop torpedo boats in an attack of this nature. One is a fixed obstacle, as a boom which cannot be jumped, and the other is to have a sufficient number of small craft with speed and power to grapple the boats before their object is reached. The former can only be used in certain places, and there would be difficulty in applying it to the entrance of Portsmouth Harbour, where the current is so swift. But there is nothing to prevent an effective patrol by guard boats. Unfortunately, hitherto little had been done in this direction. The military had seen the necessity as a protection to their mines, but had not the means for carrying it out, while the Navy, not having control of the local defence, did not consider it their province. Alive now to the risk of having no mobile defence, a few steam launches had been hastily equipped, and with one or two of the new catchers had been sent to patrol outside Spithead. Warned by the signals of the

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Page:The Next Naval War - Eardley-Wilmot - 1894.djvu/43

 Rattlesnake, these now made for the advancing boats.

But the French commander had calculated on such a contingency as likely to assist him in passing the forts. His plan was, if discovered, to get mixed up with the defenders, so that any fire directed on himself would be equally detrimental to the other side and lead to its bemg stopped. This actually occurred, for though at first a heavy cannonade was opened it soon ceased, as through the drizzling rain it was observed that all were coming in together too absorbed in their mutual endeavours to pay any attention to what was going on elsewhere. Had there been a dozen catchers like the Hornet not a single boat would have escaped. She, coming from the direction of Ryde— drawn there by the firing at the Needles—at a speed of 26 knots, steered for the flotilla. Her commander decided to ram, as she carried no torpedo tube in the stem, which had been specially strengthened for the purpose. The evolution is not easy, but the number of antagonists assisted his movements. Without a check he crashed into the engine-room compartment of the last torpedo boat. There was a momentary quiver, and shouts were heard from the unfortunate mechanics, then as the Hornet backed out the water poured into the aperture and the boat almost immediately sank. Another boat had been disabled in her machinery by a 6-pounder shell, and, being surrounded, had to surrender.


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Page:New Peterson magazine 1859 Vol. XXXV.pdf/151

 146

YON STREAM AND MILL. — THE STREAMLET.

received a tremendous injunction not to speak to his children or notice them in any way.’

Nonsense, Fred!” said his sister, turning red.

“I know it was nonsense, but you did it. You called him all sorts of names—a ‘ridiculous old goose,' a ‘grown-up baby,’ and I don’t know what not. Now here’s the same old fellow up te the same old trick; and oh! gracious, there never was suoh a beautiful, charming, delightful scene! Really I ought to write a poem on it— guess I will, and entitle it ‘Then and Now;or, J ‘The Fool Grows Wiser as he GrowB Richer;’ which would be the best, sis?”

“Hold your tongue!” snapped the lady.

Fred’s sarcasm was not misplaced.

What is called the poor man’s simplicity, is entitled the rich man’s sublimity. It was the same noble, tender, loving, great heart standing by the little ones in his coarse coat, jeered at and insulted with impunity by the rich, that now bent his fine broadcloth to the dust in order to be on a level with the little ones; but not to the neighbors! Poor! all his nobleness was but dross in their eyes. Rich! and his weaknesses would be heavenly lustres, since their offset was the almighty dollar.

YON STREAM AND MILL.

BY MRS. IANNY SPAKQEMBllO.

YON STREAM MRS. PARRY Tm! varied scenes of later years Have vanished from my dreaming mind, Wrapped in a vail of falling tears, I leave them all far, far behind: Forgetting all the present hours, My thoughts have wandered to the past, Those days of joy, enwreathed with ﬂow-rs, That fled away, aye, all too fast!

AND

MILL.

SPANGENBEBG.

The present, with its hopes and fears, Into the future seems beguiled, Forgetting all the lapse of years, I know myself again a child.

And gazing on the crystal wave, I lose all cares and sorrows too;

No sweeter draught the world e'er gave To cool my lips nor bless my view. The mill-wheel in its ceaseless round, Throwing the foam like feathery snow, Still echoes back the self-same sound 80 dear to me long, long ago.

I mind me well those halcyon days Of Summer, when I was a child, When roving through the forest ways, I, like the birds, was free and wild. Methinks I hear the murmur sweet Of that bright stream where oft I strayed, And list again the cinching beat 0f the old mill wherein I played.

Yon stream and milll You stream and milll Across the vale of Time ye come, And with your murmuring voices still Recall the wandering footsteps home; Breathing a lay all bright and fair Of other days and scenes as dear, Lighting the heart of half its care, Yet ﬁlling the eye with mein’ry’s tear!

What matters it to me that old And worn the time-stained mill doth seem— The spider’s webs like threads of gold, To my still partial fancy gleam? THE BY

Llr'ru streamlet, clear and bright, Sparkling, bubbling, singing fountain, Dancing in the quivering light, Flashing downward from the mountain. Like a vein of living light Ever onward thou art sweeping. Scattering gems o'er ﬂowers bright, As from rock to rock thou’rt leaping. Broader now the little stream,

And less musical its flowing, Winding through the meadows green, Life and loveliness bestowing. Little vessels gayly glide O’er the tiny, glancing billows,

STREAMLET. SARAH

8.

SOOWELL.

Stately vessels o’er it glide, With a light and graceful motion. Thus it is with human life, Childhood, with its sunny hours, Is the brook with gladness rife, Singing through the mountain bower-s. Youth, the softly murmuring stream, Still its onward journey urging, Flashing in the sunlight‘s gleam, In the mighty river merging. Manhood is the swelling tide, Sweeping t0 the boundless ocean, Losing there its strength and pride In the billows’ wild commotion.

Where, into the snnlit tide.

Sweep the drooping silver willows. Now it swells, a mighty tide,

Rolling onward to the ocean;

And the vast mysterious “a” Still to Heaven its anthem sending, Is that dim eternity To which man is ever tending.


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Page:The Next Naval War - Eardley-Wilmot - 1894.djvu/44

 The Havock, which had also arrived on the scene, was attacked by the two French guard boats. She had been unable to ram, having a bow torpedo tube, but did good execution with her machine guns. The four remaining boats had meanwhile shaken off their assailants and had passed the Spit Fort without serious injury. Following the example of their leader, they had diverged as little as possible from their course. They now entered the harbour at short intervals. Though several ships were alongside the dockyard, the Inflexible was lying at her buoy ready to leave the next day. She offered an excellent mark, and as the leading boat passed there was a plunge, and a torpedo charged with 200 lbs. of gun cotton sped on its way of destruction. From the explosion that followed there was no doubt of its accuracy or effect. No modification of internal construction could withstand such a blow. In five minutes the ship settled on to the mud, with only the superstructure showing above water. Further on, the dockyard jetties showed almost an unbroken line of ships that up to midnight had been taking in their stores. Some had not yet emptied the powder lighters that had only been placed alongside a few hours previously. Passing rapidly by these in succession, at a distance of not more than 100 yards, the boats discharged their torpedoes on that side with terrible effect. The Repulse, just commissioned, suffered the same fate as the Inflexible. A powder lightey alongside a second class cruiser was struck, and the charge of


text: Page:The New Centurion - Eastwick - 1895.pdf/1


text:
Page:California Digital Library (IA surnamesofchines00jone).pdf/6

 * CHINESE AND ENGLISH FIRST READER. By.
 * 144 Pages. Illustrated. Bound in Cloth. Price, 75 cents.
 * This is a very suitable book for Chinese, beginning English.

 * 華英通語
 * 此書一百四十四頁　有畫圖唐畨字
 * 極合宜於初學英語之華人　每本價銀七毫五

 * CHINESE AND ENGLISH DICTIONARY. By.
 * 134 Pages. Bound in Cloth. Price, 75 cents.
 * This Dictionary contains 6,000 of the most common words, and 1,500 simple sentences illustrating their use. Just the Dictionary for beginners.

 * 華英字典
 * 搜集英字六千餘　彙成字典　內又有千五百餘句
 * 為隨釋字中之意　最屬切要於習英文者　每本價七五

 * CHINESE AND ENGLISH READER & DICTIONARY COMBINED.
 * 278 Pages. In Cloth. Price. 1.25.
 * This is the two above combined in one.

 * 華英字典連通語
 * 此即將上列二書合而為一
 * 每部借銀一元二五

 * CHINESE AND ENGLISH SECOND READER. By.
 * 188 Pages. Illustrated. Bound in Cloth. Price, 1.00.
 * This contains many useful lessons in Geography and Science, with other valuable information. Suitable for one a little more advanced in English,

 * 華英通語第二卷
 * 此書一百八十八頁　有畫圖及許多大用
 * 學問　如地理格致等皆掠言之　極合宜於頗通英語之人　每本價銀一元

 * CHINESE AND ENGLISH LESSONS, By.
 * 188 Pages. Illustrated. Bound in Cloth. Price, 75 cents.

 * 華英初學
 * 此書一百八十八頁　甚宜於習英語之人
 * 每本價銀七毫五

 * CHINESE AND ENGLISH POCKET DICTIONARY.
 * 30,000 Words, Bound in Cloth. $1,00.

 * 華英字典
 * 此書有三万餘字　甚易收藏　可放在衫袋
 * 每本價銀一元

欲買此等書者　郵費在內　祈照價銀付至紐約尼掃街一佰五十號　波士頓布林非街五十四號　市卡咕嘩巴士街一百三十一號　大埠哥嗹街二十三號小書會


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Page:The New Centurion - Eastwick - 1895.pdf/8

Many years ago the writer of these pages first conceived the idea that, as the heavy guns of a modern ironclad were, and must ever be, her decisive weapons, the chief thing to be attended to was to increase their rate and precision of fire, and that the power requisite for this purpose could readily and economically be obtained from the guns' recoil. Further, it occurred to him that this might enable the crew to be withdrawn from the vicinity of the guns, and the weight of the necessary armour protection to be greatly reduced.

Ideas of this sort were taken up at intervals as the amusement of idle hours, but it was long before they assumed any definite shape, and longer still before any notion was entertained of bringing them to any serious or practical conclusion.

Meanwhile a great development took place in quick-firing guns of smaller calibre, a development which has not as yet been attended by any corresponding development in the means of protecting the men working them. The urgent need of some such protection was forcibly pointed out by Mr. Arnold Foster in his well-known work, 'In a Conning Tower'; but A 2


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4 he gave no indication of the direction in which this protection was to be sought. In reading that work it struck the writer that the requisite protection could not be obtained from armour without exceeding the available limit of weight, that the only means of affording it was to enable the sailor to find shelter in water as the soldier does in earth, and that this was an additional reason for the use of automatic artillery.

But when Mr. Arnold Foster wrote, the need of protection, though urgent, was as nothing to what it has since become. In 1891 'high explosives' were known indeed, but their poisonous effect was not appreciated; subsequently, it was recognised that the fumes of modern shell were at least as dangerous as the splinters, and indeed more so, for shields and casemates might afford some protection against the splinters, but would be useless against the fumes. Here, again, it seemed that the notion of the sheltertrench was the only adequate solution of the problem.

Still the writer hesitated to publish his views without first knowing that an automatic heavy gun was not only desirable but possible, and he probably would have kept his ideas to himself if they had not almost by accident been communicated to a professional friend, under whose guidance they quickly assumed a very different and far more practical shape.

As soon as the design was fairly complete, there was no longer any reason for silence, and accordingly an


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Page:The New Centurion - Eastwick - 1895.pdf/10

Rh article was published in the 'Contemporary Review' of last September, which evoked the not unnatural query what fighting with automatic weapons would be like. In order to answer this question, the first thing to be done was to put some limit on the inquiry; otherwise any attempt to answer it would be sure to end in describing one of those mythical contests between an unheard-of ironclad and an equally unheard-of enemy of which we have too many already, and from which nothing ever has been learnt or ever will be. And the best mode of confining the inquiry within some definite limits seemed to be to take some one modern ship of acknowledged excellence, to re-arm her with the proposed weapons, and then to imagine her engaged with other ships equally modern, but of various types. This method the writer has attempted to pursue in the following pages, which he puts forward in the hope that they may meet with the indulgence of the reader.

It only remains to apologise to all interested in the various ships mentioned for the liberties taken with their names, and above all to the captain and officers of H.M.S. Centurion and to the Chief Constructor by whom she was designed.


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text: The Surnames of the Chinese in America

title: The Surnames of the Chinese in America


text:
Author talk:A. J. Mackenzie

A J Mackenzie was elected curator of the Kanieri Lake Hatchery in Westland in 1901. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WCT19010424.2.30 West Coast Times, Issue 11883, 24 April 1901, Page 4 No further information yet found on his forenames. Noracrentiss (talk) 03:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

title: Author talk:A. J. Mackenzie


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Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/166

150 welcoming crowd. May I live to witness that welcome!

I have little more to add. William and Aurelia live with me, and I feel an old fellow when I take my little grandchildren on my knee and tell them stories of the old half-forgotten world. The girls were generally very severe upon Aurelia for rejecting a handsome brave young lover like Dana in favour of a grave student such as Gell, and have not forgiven her for being the cause of sending their beau out of the island. But the elder women and the men, who have more romance in them, appreciate and admire the constancy of those two whom nothing could separate, and the story of their loves promises to be the favourite myth of future generations of Jeffersonians. Now that my story is told I feel that I have dwelt too much on matters that are of personal interest to myself, but as my memory has dictated, so have I written it down, and will not now alter. The community thrives and multiplies. Whenever I am called away I feel that I shall leave a competent successor in my son-in-law, and shall depart in a spirit of thankfulness for the part I have been permitted to take in saving the


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Rh Wreck of a World from destruction, and of earnest prayer to the Author of all, that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us, for all generations.


text: The Surnames of the Chinese in America/Introduction


text: The Surnames of the Chinese in America/Surnames Spelled


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Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/158

142 "Ah!" groaned Richard.

"But you know as well as I do that I was engaged to him years ago, and do you really expect me to play the jilt and throw him over when after so long a separation we are once more united?"

"It is not exactly that, Aurelia, I quite recognise your honourable feeling, but the question is, does he now love you as ardently as I do? And do you love him in such a way that you feel the world would be blank without him? For that is how I love you, and if you could feel that you liked me as well as you like him, not all the engagements in the world would prevent me from doing my very utmost to win you, as without you I well know my life will he wasted, or shipwrecked."

"Richard," said Aurelia solemnly, "suppose that I had been engaged to you, and you loved me as warmly as you say, and some other man came and tried his best to steal my heart away from you, what should you do?"

"I should kill him," said Dana fiercely; "no man in the world should drag you away from me if you had once promised yourself to me."


text:
User:CalendulaAsteraceae/sandbox.js

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Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/160

144 Dana made a gesture of impatience.

"You would: I know you better than you know yourself. See, William's love has borne an absence of four years; you have not known me as many months. Would you respect me if I were to throw him over? You know you would not."

"But all that, Aurelia, is not quite the point. Supposing he does love you as much as I do, do you love him in the same way!? [sic] Do you feel you could only be happy with him, and not equally or more so with me? Will you answer me that?"

"You are pressing me hard, Richard, but the truest kindness is to tell you the truth. I do love William Gell, far, far more than I could ever love you. I do feel that my heart's life is wrapt up in him, and that if he died I should be a widow-maid all my days for his sake. And yet I love you too, Richard, you are my dear and only brother, and nothing shall ever make me love you less than that." And with moist eyes and kind looks she gave him her hand.

Dana bent and kissed it, and they walked on hand in hand like children.


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 placed on both sides of it, enclosed in a narrow valley, forms the village of Sakamoto.

The next part of the Nakasendo is very interesting; it ascends now rapidly, jinrikishas are out of the question, and if one does not wish to be tortured in a kago, nothing remains but to walk or to go on horseback. The scenery is fine, particularly in May when fuji and azaleas are in full flowers; at every step the view of the surrounding mountains and valleys changes, and especially that on the valley in which Sakamoto lies, is surprising. The highest point is reached at Togematshi, about 2 ri from Sakamoto. I estimate the height of this point, according to very roughly made barometric observations, at about 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) above the sea level. Here is the border between the provinces of Joshiu and ShhinanoShinano [sic], and at the same time the separation of the lands which drain into the Tonegawa. Pack-horses and female pilgrims form the bulk of the travellers on this part of the road.

From Togematshi the road descends rapidly to Karuisawa, a poor village on the extended plain, surrounded by mountains, on which the volcano of Asama-yama, is situated; over this plain the road is more interesting than beautiful; the place is covered with large blocks of lava, thrown up by the Asamayama, and has a very desolated aspect. Only the western, very smoothly ascending slope of the Asamayama, is very nice to look at; being covered here by a wood of matsu trees: the large and isolated mountain produces the impression of Gulliver with the Lilliputians. Smoke is always issuing from the crater of the Asamayama.

At Oïwake, situated at the foot of the mountain, the Niigata road leaves the Nakasendo; while the latter descends, the Niigata-road (called Hokkok’kaido), follows the table-land along the foot of the Asama-yama, and is practicable here for jinrikishas. The average breadth will be about 12 feet, some steep inclines are met with, but the way is generally well shaded; in the valleys rice is cultivated. 2$1⁄2$ ri from Oïwake is Komoru, a large town, situated on the Chikumagawa; it was formerly the

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 residence of a daimio, whose castle is now in a dilapidated condition. From here the road follows the right bank of the Chikumagawa down to Yasiro. The Chikumagawa is the same river as the Shinanogawa, which flows at Niigata into the Japan Sea. I believe the name is changed between the villages of Hakura and Miabara, where it enters the provinces of Echigo; but I cannot say this for a certainty; in the course of this paper some further data about the river will be given.

Generally speaking, the road between Komoru and Tanaka is in a bad condition, rugged and narrow, and in some parts with steep inclines and sharp curves; from Tanaka Oyeda can be reached by jinrikisha. Oyeda is the largest place which I had until now passed; it has an important trade, particularly in silk, both raw and manufactured. Numerous shops with European provisions are to be found in this ex-daimio’s seat, and an European modelled garrison patrols the streets of the beautifully situated town.

The general features of the Chikumagawa valley between Komoru and Yasiro are a picturesque scenery, the valley alternately widening and narrowing, while the broad river-bed in the depth is covered with white boulders, over which the blue water rapidly flows and forms numerous falls; the mountains on both sides covered with flowers and trees. (Every now and then a dirty village without a single comfortable looking house). At a little distance from the left bank rises the Bosha-yama, a haunted mountain, with which the following “romantic” story, as my interpreter styled it, is connected. “In former times during a war between two princes, the nurse of the infant son of one of them took refuge in the mountains with the child and kept it concealed there from the rapacity of the conquererconqueror [sic]. At length both nurse and child died, and now-a-days during the night, the nurse’s voice may at times be heard among the mountains, calling for the lost child!”

If all Japanese “romantic” stories were as romantic as

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 this one, the Japanese might really be called a naïvely innocent people.

After crossing the ChikamagawaChikumagawa [sic] from its right to its left bank, the Hokkok’kaido follows the left bank at a much greater distance, along the mountains, as far as Murei, where it separates from the Chikumagawa valley. At Tambajima the Saigawa (left tributary to the Chikumagawa) is crossed by a bridge of boats. Every boat of this bridge is moored to a heavy iron chain of Japanese manufacture, reaching from one bank of the river to the other. At both sides it runs over a windlass by which it may be stretched if the water in the river rises, while boats may be added when the river thereby considerably increases in breadth. For the rest, all these rivers have the same characteristics; they look like large stone fields, of which in summer time only a comparatively small portion serves for the flowing off of the water. But the Saigawa discharged even now a considerable volume, though the river was at a low level. Judging from the Japanese maps, it seems to be the principal tributary of the Shinanogawa.

One ri from the place where the Saigawa is this passed, lies Nagano, a large town with the renowned Buddha-temple, called Tenkoji, situated at the end of the long, broad and regularly ascending street, by which the place is entered. This is one of the finest temples I had yet seen; it is well kept, and is admired for its beautiful wood carvings. The site of the Temple is much like Asakusa at Yedo. It is surrounded by a great many ichitoros (stone lanterns) and by some very neat priestly dwellings with well arranged gardens.

In the mountains, at a distance of about 1 ri from Nagano, petroleum wells are found; they have only been worked for two years. The wells are about 120 to 150 feet in depth, and are entirely under Japanese management. The petroleum is twice purified, once on the spot, and afterwards in the town: it is by no means as white as the American oil, but the Japanese maintain that the light is

title: Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/64


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 splendid, which assertion, when compared with that of their andons, may well be true.

At Murei the road branches off in a W. direction, thus leaving the Chikumagawa Valley, and now runs to Furuana from whence it bends N. to Sekigawa, the frontier-place of Echigo. The prettiest spot on this part of the road is Nojiri-shuku, a place situated on the Fuyòkò lake, which is surrounded by low hills covered with thickets. What rendered this beautiful spot all the more impressive for the time at least, was a heavy thunderstorm, which overtook us here, and which formed a curious contrast with the snow-covered mountain tops we had been sighting since leaving Oyeda, in a N. W. direction.

The small Ichigawa river forms here the border between Shinano and Echigo; it is here but a mountain-stream, rushing forth with great velocity over rocks. Between its steep and densely grown high borders, it is crossed by a rustic bridge of singular construction.

Between Sekigawa and Sekiyama (3 ri) the road is entirely shut in by mountains, and when it rains heavily, it has sometimes more the appearance of a stream than of a road, with not even a footpath to be seen. It passes zigzag up hill and down hill, with very steep inclines, and is one of the most charming parts of the road between Yedo and Niigata. The slopes of the high hills are grown all over with azaleas and other flowering shrubs—one valley leads over the top of the hills into another, and when looking upwards from the bottom of those beautiful valleys with the blue and white, thundering and foaming streams, all hastening to the Sekigawa, one cannot help being moved deeply.

After Sekiyama the country becomes much flatter, but the road remains awfully bad, especially between the villages of Matsusaki (2 ri from Sekiyama) and Araï (1 ri before reaching Takada), where it is very rugged and full of holes. At Araï the road descends into the valley of the Arakawa, a left tributary of the Sekigawa; here the road becomes much better, smoother and shaded by a row of matsu trees on both sides.

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text: The Surnames of the Chinese in America/Certificate of Spelling


text: The Surnames of the Chinese in America/Name Spelling Co.


text:
Portal:Grant Richards

Published

 * Valmouth (1919) by Ronald Firbank

title: Portal:Grant Richards


text: The Surnames of the Chinese in America/General Regulations


text:
Author:Augustus Edwin John

As illustrator

 * Valmouth (1919) by Ronald Firbank

title: Author:Augustus Edwin John


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  and arrival of all Chinese at the port of departure, The burden of proof rests with the applicant claiming the right to enter or reside in the United States.

We are in the market to buy Chinese and Japanese curios. Save all the postage stamps you receive on your mail from foreign countries. We buy them. We also buy foreign coins of all kinds.

本店開張在金 山大埠孟衾馬 厘街門牌四百 二十九號專收 買華人日本人 古董玩器外國 錢銀寄士点 䓁物　　吉粦 卜士蔑公司啓

馬罕尼 [sic]律師辦事房在金山大埠 紐孟衿 [sic]馬厘街門牌八十三號與 八十五號哥羅士厘樓第五層五 百零六號房接理大小衙案并工 商部華人回唐返美登岸做紙等 事華友委辦格外周致此布

啓者本地保官之寫字房 在金山大埠孟衾馬厘街 三百二十三號專接代理 做紙給戳華人回唐護照 以及火燭海面保險宴梳 䓁事務華人惠顧委托格 外留心周致办事房話筒 緬五千九白貳十五號

占士亞利士謹啓

Largest Flour Manufacturers on the Pacific Coast—8,000 barrels daily.

Office at Hong Kong under management of W. S. Allen.

啓者士巴利麵粉公司 在美國金山大埠士巴 利街門牌一百三十三 號爲太平洋沿海一帶 最大之麵粉廠每日磨 出麵粉八千桶之多本 公司代理人阿連常在 香港料理一切生意事 務以便華商採辦


text: The Surnames of the Chinese in America/Advertisements


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text: Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714/Pocklington, William


text: Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714/Pocock, Abraham


text: Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714/Pococke, Charles


text: Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714/Pococke, Edward


text: Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714/Pocock, Edward (1)


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亞力山大也士公司開張在金 山大埠孖杰街門牌四百零一 號耑辦各欵鐵器利器機器等 器具以及一切工藝學之書籍 發售華人惠顧格外隆禮相待

話筒緬一千三百七十九號

本公司謹启


text: Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714/Pocoke, Edward


text: Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714/Pocock, Edward (2)


text: Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714/Pocock, Giles


text: Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714/Pococke, Giles


text: Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714/Pococke, Hugh


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   period of reform. What was really peculiar about the Republican energy was this, that it left behind it, not an ordinary reaction but a kind of dreary, drawn out and utterly unmeaning hope. The strong and evident idea of reform sank lower and lower until it became the timid and feeble idea of progress. Towards the end of the nineteenth century there appeared its two incredible figures; they were the pure Conservative and the pure Progressive; two figures which would have been overwhelmed with laughter by any other intellectual commonwealth of history. There was hardly a human generation which could not have seen the folly of merely going forward or merely standing still; of mere progressing or mere conserving. In the coarsest Greek Comedy we might have a joke about a man who wanted to keep what he had, whether it was yellow gold or yellow fever. In the dullest mediæval morality we might have a joke about a progressive gentleman who, having passed heaven and come to purgatory, decided to go further and fare worse. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were an age of quite impetuous progress; men made in one rush, roads, trades, synthetic philosophies, parliaments, university settlements, a law that could cover the world and such


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 Box Brands

Burning Brands

Cattle Brands

BRASS STENCILS

STENCIL PASTE and STENCIL BRUSHES

SEALS AND POOL CHECKS, ETC.

PHONE MAIN 5357

512 Montgomery St. San Francisco

Numbering Machines

and Steel Stamps

RUBBER STAMP INK

and INDELIBLE INK

THAT IS GUARANTEED

啓者本號專造唐番字粒巴圖章大小銅招牌 鐵印各款印色盒火漆印等俱全如蒙光顧依 期交付仰祈畱心是荷舖在金山大埠孟金街 五百一十二號　彬核謹啓

笠別士公 司開張在 金山大埠 尾愼街門 牌六百四 十一號六 百四十三 號接裝各 欵煤燈電 燈鐵管並 角色燈管 燈頭發客


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   spires as had never struck the sky. But they would not have said that they wanted progress, but that they wanted the road, the parliaments, and the spires. In the same way the time from Richelieu to the Revolution was upon the whole a time of conservation, often of harsh and hideous conservation; it preserved tortures, legal quibbles, and despotism. But if you had asked the rulers they would not have said that they wanted conservation; but that they wanted the torture and the despotism. The old reformers and the old despots alike desired definite things, powers, licenses, payments, vetoes, and permissions. Only the modern progressive and the modern conservative have been content with two words.

Other periods of active improvement have died by stiffening at last into some routine. Thus the Gothic gaiety of the thirteenth century stiffening into the mere Gothic ugliness of the fifteenth. Thus the mighty wave of the Renaissance, whose crest was lifted to heaven, was touched by a wintry witchery of classicism and frozen for ever before it fell. Alone of all such movements the democratic movement of the last two centuries has not frozen, but loosened and liquefied. Instead of becoming more pedantic in its old age, it has


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   grown more bewildered. By the analogy of healthy history we ought to have gone on worshipping the republic and calling each other citizen with increasing seriousness until some other part of the truth broke into our republican temple. But in fact we have turned the freedom of democracy into a mere scepticism, destructive of everything, including democracy itself. It is none the less destructive because it is, so to speak, an optimistic scepticism—or, as I have said, a dreary hope. It was none the better because the destroyers were always talking about the new vistas and enlightenments which their new negations opened to us. The republican temple, like any other strong building, rested on certain definite limits and supports. But the modern man inside it went on indefinitely knocking holes in his own house and saying that they were windows. The result is not hard to calculate: the moral world was pretty well all windows and no house by the time that Bernard Shaw arrived on the scene.

Then there entered into full swing that great game of which he soon became the greatest master. A progressive or advanced person was now to mean not a man who wanted democracy, but a man who wanted something


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   newer than democracy. A reformer was to be, not a man who wanted a parliament or a republic, but a man who wanted anything that he hadn't got. The emancipated man must cast a weird and suspicious eye round him at all the institutions of the world, wondering which of them was destined to die in the next few centuries. Each one of them was whispering to himself, "What can I alter?"

This quite vague and varied discontent probably did lead to the revelation of many incidental wrongs and to much humane hard work in certain holes and corners. It also gave birth to a great deal of quite futile and frantic speculation, which seemed destined to take away babies from women, or to give votes to tom-cats. But it had an evil in it much deeper and more psychologically poisonous than any superficial absurdities. There was in this thirst to be "progressive" a subtle sort of double-mindedness and falsity. A man was so eager to be in advance of his age that he pretended to be in advance of himself. Institutions that his wholesome nature and habit fully accepted he had to sneer at as old-fashioned, out of a servile and snobbish fear of the future. Out of the primal forests, through all the real progress of history, man had picked his way


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   obeying his human instinct, or (in the excellent phrase) following his nose. But now he was trying, by violent athletic exertions, to get in front of his nose.

Into this riot of all imaginary innovations Shaw brought the sharp edge of the Irishman and the concentration of the Puritan, and thoroughly thrashed all competitors in the difficult art of being at once modern and intelligent. In twenty twopenny controversies he took the revolutionary side, I fear in most cases because it was called revolutionary. But the other revolutionists were abruptly startled by the presentation of quite rational and ingenious arguments on their own side. The dreary thing about most new causes is that they are praised in such very old terms. Every new religion bores us with the same stale rhetoric about closer fellowship and the higher life. No one ever approximately equalled Bernard Shaw in the power of finding really fresh and personal arguments for these recent schemes and creeds. No one ever came within a mile of him in the knack of actually producing a new argument for a new philosophy. I give two instances to cover the kind of thing I mean. Bernard Shaw (being honestly eager to put himself on the modern side in every-


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Yosemite Falls

Courtesy of the Sunset Magazine

Overland

West

East

Sunset Ogden & Shasta Routes

啓者本公司火車往來東方及各處最 穩固快捷凡華人搭客車上工人額外 優禮相待本公司火車所經之路途甚 爲平正堅固無防崎嶇危險等弊如蒙 光顧請爲留心是荷

金山大埠稍頓怕思域火車公司啓


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   thing) put himself on the side of what is called the feminist movement; the proposal to give the two sexes not merely equal social privileges, but identical. To this it is often answered that women cannot be soldiers; and to this again the sensible feminists answer that women run their own kind of physical risk, while the silly feminists answer that war is an outworn barbaric thing which women would abolish. But Bernard Shaw took the line of saying that women had been soldiers, in all occasions of natural and unofficial war, as in the French Revolution. That has the great fighting value of being an unexpected argument; it takes the other pugilist's breath away for one important instant. To take the other case, Mr. Shaw has found himself, led by the same mad imp of modernity, on the side of the people who want to have phonetic spelling. The people who want phonetic spelling generally depress the world with tireless and tasteless explanations of how much easier it would be for children or foreign bagmen if "height" were spelt "hite." Now children would curse spelling whatever it was, and we are not going to permit foreign bagmen to improve Shakespeare. Bernard Shaw charged along quite a different line; he urged that Shake-


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   speare himself believed in phonetic spelling, since he spelt his own name in six different ways. According to Shaw, phonetic spelling is merely a return to the freedom and flexibility of Elizabethan literature. That, again, is exactly the kind of blow the old speller does not expect. As a matter of fact there is an answer to both the ingenuities I have quoted. When women have fought in revolutions they have generally shown that it was not natural to them, by their hysterical cruelty and insolence; it was the men who fought in the Revolution; it was the women who tortured the prisoners and mutilated the dead. And because Shakespeare could sing better than he could spell, it does not follow that his spelling and ours ought to be abruptly altered by a race that has lost all instinct for singing. But I do not wish to discuss these points; I only quote them as examples of the startling ability which really brought Shaw to the front; the ability to brighten even our modern movements with original and suggestive thoughts.

But while Bernard Shaw pleasantly surprised innumerable cranks and revolutionists by finding quite rational arguments for them, he surprised them unpleasantly also by discovering something else. He discovered a


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   turn of argument or trick of thought which has ever since been the plague of their lives, and given him in all assemblies of their kind, in the Fabian Society or in the whole Socialist movement, a fantastic but most formidable domination. This method may be approximately defined as that of revolutionising the revolutionists by turning their rationalism against their remaining sentimentalism. But definition leaves the matter dark unless we give one or two examples. Thus Bernard Shaw threw himself as thoroughly as any New Woman into the cause of the emancipation of women. But while the New Woman praised woman as a prophetess, the new man took the opportunity to curse her and kick her as a comrade. For the others sex equality meant the emancipation of women, which allowed them to be equal to men. For Shaw it mainly meant the emancipation of men, which allowed them to be rude to women. Indeed, almost every one of Bernard Shaw's earlier plays might be called an argument between a man and a woman, in which the woman is thumped and thrashed and outwitted until she admits that she is the equal of her conqueror. This is the first case of the Shavian trick of turning


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Rh of him was that of a man in admirable health), presented a problem which, with that curious insouciance of youth, I made no attempt to solve. It was an established fact, however, that he never went out of that house. I can-not vouch so confidently for the cobwebby legend which wove itself about him. It was to this effect: He had formerly been the master of a large merchantman running between New York and Calcutta; while still in his prime he had abruptly retired from the quarter-deck, and seated himself at that windowwhere the out-look must have been the reverse of exhilarating, for not ten persons passed in the course of the day, and the hurried jingle of the bells on Parry’s bakery-cart was the only sound that ever shattered the silence. Whether it was an amatory or financial disappointment that turned him into a hermit was left to ingenious conjecture. But there he sat, year in and year out, with his cheek so close to the Window that the nearest pane became permanently blurred with his breath; for after his demise the blur remained.

In this Arcadian era it was possible, in provincial places, for an undertaker to assume dimensions of a personage. There was a ton in Portsmouthhis name escapes me, but his attributes do notwhose impressiveness made him own brother to the massive architecture of the Stone Church. On every solemn occasion he was the striking figure, even to the eclipsing of the involuntary object the ceremony. His occasions, happily, were not exclusively solemn; he added to his other


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   on the romantic rationalists with their own rationalism. He said in substance, "If we are democrats, let us have votes for women; but if we are democrats, why on earth should we have respect for women?" I take one other example out of many. Bernard Shaw was thrown early into what may be called the cosmopolitan club of revolution. The Socialists of the S.D.F. call it "L'Internationale," but the club covers more than Socialists. It covers many who consider themselves the champions of oppressed nationalities—Poland, Finland, and even Ireland; and thus a strong nationalist tendency exists in the revolutionary movement. Against this nationalist tendency Shaw set himself with sudden violence. If the flag of England was a piece of piratical humbug, was not the flag of Poland a piece of piratical humbug too? If we hated the jingoism of the existing armies and frontiers, why should we bring into existence new jingo armies and new jingo frontiers? All the other revolutionists fell in instinctively with Home Rule for Ireland. Shaw urged, in effect, that Home Rule was as bad as Home Influences and Home Cooking, and all the other degrading domesticities that began with the word "Home." His ultimate


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50 public services that of furnishing ice cream for evening parties. I always thoughtperhaps it was the working of an unchastened imaginationthat he managed to throw into his ice cream a peculiar chill not attained by either Dunyon or Peduzziarcades ambothe rival confectioners.

Perhaps I should not say rival, for Mr. Dunyon kept a species of restaurant, while Mr. Peduzzi restricted himself to preparing confections to be discussed elsewhere than on his premises. Both gentlemen achieved great popularity in their respective lines, but neither offered to the juvenile population quite the charm of those prim, white-capped old ladies who presided over certain snuffy little shops, occurring unexpectedly in silent side-streets where the footfall of commerce seemed an in-congruous thing. These shops were never intended in nature. They had an impromptu and abnormal air about them. I do not recall one that was not located in a private residence, and was not evidently the despairing expedient of some pathetic financial crisis, similar to that which overtook Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon in "The House of the Seven Gables." The horizontally divided street-doorthe upper section left open in summerushered you, with a sudden jangle of bell that turned your heart over, into a strictly private hall, haunted by the delayed aroma of thousands of family dinners. Thence, through another door, you passed into what had formerly been the front parlor, but was now a shop, with a narrow, brown wooden counter, and several rows of


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   support of the South African war was largely created by his irritation against the other revolutionists for favouring a nationalist resistance. The ordinary Imperialists objected to Pro-Boers because they were anti-patriots. Bernard Shaw objected to Pro-Boers because they were pro-patriots.

But among these surprise attacks of G. B. S., these turnings of scepticism against the sceptics, there was one which has figured largely in his life; the most amusing and perhaps the most salutary of all these reactions. The "progressive" world being in revolt against religion had naturally felt itself allied to science; and against the authority of priests it would perpetually hurl the authority of scientific men. Shaw gazed for a few moments at this new authority, the veiled god of Huxley and Tyndall, and then with the greatest placidity and precision kicked it in the stomach. He declared to the astounded progressives around him that physical science was a mystical fake like sacerdotalism; that scientists, like priests, spoke with authority because they could not speak with proof or reason; that the very wonders of science were mostly lies, like the wonders of religion. "When astronomers tell me", he says somewhere, "that a star is so far


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52 by the neighborhoodas a matter of course, and involving no sense of dependency on her side. It is wonderful what an extension of vitality is given to an old gentlewoman in this condition!

I would like to write about several of those ancient dames, as they were affectionately called, and to materialize others of the shadows that stir in my recollection; but this would be to go outside the lines of my purpose, which is simply to indicate one of the various sorts of changes that have come over the vie intime of formerly secluded places like Portsmouththe obliteration of odd personalities, or, if not the obliteration, the general disregard of them. Everywhere in New England the impress of the past is fading out. The few old-fashioned men and womenquaint, shrewd, and racy of the soilwho linger in little, silvery-gray old homesteads strung along the New England roads and byways will shortly cease to exist as a class, save in the record of some such charming chronicler as Sarah Jewett or Mary Wilkins, on whose sympathetic pages they have already taken to themselves a remote air, an atmosphere of long-kept lavender and penny-royal.

Peculiarity of any kind requires encouragement in order to reach flower. The increased facilities of communication between points once isolated, the interchange of customs and modes of thought, make this encouragement more and more difficult each decade. The naturally inclined eccentric finds his sharp outlines rubbed off by unavoidable attrition


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   off that its light takes a thousand years to reach us, the magnitude of the lie seems to me inartistic." The paralysing impudence of such remarks left everyone quite breathless; and even to this day this particular part of Shaw's satiric war has been far less followed up than it deserves. For there was present in it an element very marked in Shaw's controversies; I mean that his apparent exaggerations are generally much better backed up by knowledge than would appear from their nature. He can lure his enemy on with fantasies and then overwhelm him with facts. Thus the man of science, when he read some wild passage in which Shaw compared Huxley to a tribal soothsayer grubbing in the entrails of animals, supposed the writer to be a mere fantastic whom science could crush with one finger. He would therefore engage in a controversy with Shaw about (let us say) vivisection, and discover to his horror that Shaw really knew a great deal about the subject, and could pelt him with expert witnesses and hospital reports. Among the many singular contradictions in a singular character, there is none more interesting than this combination of exactitude and industry in the detail of opinions with audacity and a certain wildness in their outline.


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Rh and irate adherent of the Stuarts says, in his history, looking with vengeance upon the accession of William of Orange to the throne of England, that the Puritan and the Hollander were shaken out of the same bag. And so they were. The same vigorous Northern stock came down to settle upon the marshes of Holland and in the fens of England. The stock that remained in England produced Pym and Hamp-den, and Sidney and Russell, with a cross of Swedish pirate or Northern conqueror; but the original stock which went to Holland fought off forever, during its whole existence, the power of the Roman Empire; fought off the hordes of barbarians who came down upon the ruins of the Roman Empire; fought off all the forces and powers of medieval chivalry, and won their grand victory when they took from the sea herself a land, that upon it they might govern themselves upon the principles of their own manhood and of civil and religious liberty. Those people were not a selfish people; but they liked to be by themselves and to govern themselves. Theirs was precisely the sentiment of the Hebrew speculator in Wall Street recently, who, when he had scooped everybody about him, gathered his co-conspirators around the festive board and said to them, "Now, shentlemen, we feel shust as if we were among ourselves."

Holland, at a time when there was no light for man elsewhere in the world, preserved the  principles of civil liberty. Holland, at a time when learning was crushed out or buried in the monasteries, had her asylums, her libraries,


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62 and her universities. Holland, at a time when the bigotry of the Church crushed out all expression of conscience and individual belief, had her toleration and religious liberty. For a century Holland was the safe-deposit company of the rights of man. For a century Holland was the electric light which illumined the world and saved mankind.

But, gentlemen, how did your forefathers repay my ancestors for all this kindness? Why, you came over to New York to teach school, and you got into the confiding Dutch families; you married their daughters; and then, as the able son-in-law, you administered upon the estate and you gave uswhat was left. Yet I am willing to admit that the Dutch-men never could have colonized this country or created this Republic. I am willing to admit that my ancestors were too pleasure-loving, comfort-loving, and home-loving. They needed just that strain which you have, which is never tired, never restful, never at peace; just that strain which, receiving sufficient capital to start with from my ancestors, went out and crossed the borders and built. up all these grand Western and Northwestern States, and carried civilization across the continent to the Pacific coast. You go into a territory, you organize the men of all nationalities and of all languages who are there into a territorial government; then you organize them into a State; then you take the governorships and the judgeships; then you found the capital at the place where you own all the town-lots; then you bring the territory into the Union, and the


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Rh glory and perfection of the federal principle is vindicated. But without you and just these incentives we never would have had an American Republic as great and glorious as it is.

But with all your selfishness, with all your desire for profit, for pelf, for gain, there is this underlying principle in the Yankee: in every community which he founds, in every State which he builds, he carries with him the church; he carries with him the school-house. He may want money, and he will get it if he can; he may want property, and he will get it if he can; but, first and foremost, he must have liberty of conscience, liberty of thought, liberty of speechall of liberty that belongs to a man, consonant with the liberty of others; and he must have that same liberty for every man beside himself.


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   businesslike benevolence that herded men like beasts rather than that exquisite art which isolated them like devils; give me even the suppression of "Zæo" rather than the triumph of "Salome." And if I feel such a confession to be due to those Fabians who could hardly have been anything but experts in any society, such as Mr. Sidney Webb or Mr. Edward Pease, it is due yet more strongly to the greatest of the Fabians. Here was a man who could have enjoyed art among the artists, who could have been the wittiest of all the flâneurs; who could have made epigrams like diamonds and drunk music like wine. He has instead laboured in a mill of statistics and crammed his mind with all the most dreary and the most filthy details, so that he can argue on spur of the moment about sewing-machines or sewage, about typhus fever or twopenny tubes. The usual mean theory of motives will not cover the case; it is not ambition, for he could have been twenty times more prominent as a plausible and popular humorist. It is the real and ancient emotion of the salus populi, almost extinct in our oligarchical chaos; nor will I for one, as I pass on to many matters of argument or quarrel, neglect to salute a passion so implacable and so pure.


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—On the Negative Spirit MUCH has been said, and said truly, of the monkish morbidity, of the hysteria which has often gone with the visions of hermits or nuns. But let us never forget that this visionary religion is, in one sense, necessarily more whole-some than our modern and reasonable morality. It is more wholesome for this reason, that it can contemplate the idea of success or triumph in the hopeless fight towards the ethical ideal, in what Stevenson called, with his usual startling felicity, "the lost fight of virtue." A modern morality, on the other hand, can only point with absolute conviction to the horrors that follow breaches of law; its only certainty is a certainty of ill. It can only point to imperfection. It has no perfection to point to. But the monk meditating upon Christ or Buddha has in his mind an image of perfect health, a thing of clear colours and clean air. He may contemplate this ideal wholeness and happiness far more than he ought; he may contemplate it to the neglect or exclusion of essential things; he may contemplate it until he has become a dreamer or a driveller; but still it is wholeness and happiness Rh


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Rh that he is contemplating. He may even go mad; but he is going mad for the love of sanity. But the modern student of ethics, even if he remains sane, remains sane from an insane dread of insanity.

The anchorite rolling on the stones in a frenzy of submission is a healthier person fundamentally than many a sober man in a silk hat who is walking down Cheapside. For many such are good only through a withering knowledge of evil. I am not at this moment claiming for the devotee anything more than this primary advantage, that though he may be making himself personally weak and miserable, he is still fixing his thoughts largely on gigantic strength and happiness, on a strength that has no limits, and a happiness that has no end. Doubtless there are other objections which can be urged without unreason against the influence of gods and visions in morality, whether in the cell or street. But this advantage the mystic morality must always haveit is always jollier. A young man may keep himself from vice by continually thinking of disease. He may keep himself from it also by continually thinking of the Virgin Mary. There may be question about which method is the more reasonable, or even about which is the more efficient. But Rh


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Rh surely there can be no question about which is the more wholesome.

I remember a pamphlet by that able and sincere secularist, Mr. G. W. Foote, which contained a phrase sharply symbolizing and dividing these two methods. The pamphlet was called "Beer and Bible," those two very noble things, all the nobler for a conjunction which Mr. Foote, in his stern old Puritan way, seemed to think sardonic, but which I confess to thinking appropriate and charming. I have not the work by me, but I remember that Mr. Foote dismissed very contemptuously any attempts to deal with the problem of strong drink by religious offices or intercessions, and said that a picture of a drunkard’s liver would be more efficacious in the matter of temperance than any prayer or praise. In that picturesque expression, it seems to me, is perfectly embodied the incurable morbidity of modern ethics. In that temple the lights are low, the crowds kneel, the solemn anthems are uplifted. But that upon the altar to which all men kneel is no longer the perfect flesh, the body and substance of the perfect man; it is still flesh, but it is diseased. It is the drunkard’s liver of the New Testament that is marred for us, which we take in remembrance of him. Rh


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Rh Now, it is this great gap in modern ethics, the absence of vivid pictures of purity and spiritual triumph, which lies at the back of the real objection felt by so many sane men to the realistic literature of the nineteenth century. If any ordinary man ever said that he was horrified by the subjects discussed in Ibsen or Mau-passant, or by the plain language in which they are spoken of, that ordinary man was lying. The average conversation of average men throughout the whole of modern civilization in every class or trade is such as Zola would never dream of printing. Nor is the habit of writing thus of these things a new habit. On the contrary, it is the Victorian prudery and silence which is new still, though it is already dying. The tradition of calling a spade a spade starts very early in our literature and comes down very late. But the truth is that the ordinary honest man, whatever vague account he may have given of his feelings, was not either disgusted or even annoyed at the candour of the moderns. What disgusted him, and very justly, was not the presence of a clear realism, but the absence of a clear idealism. Strong and genuine religious sentiment has never had any objection to realism; on the contrary, religion was the realistic thing, the Rh


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