meanwhile to rejoice quite tamely in what freedom has been won.

Be all that, however, as it may, it is not the writer's present intention to join any section of the social struggle. That struggle is now being vigorously fought by leaders abler than he in their chosen battle-field, his own ability and present justification of pamphleteering having been got chiefly from experience in another sphere; and such being so, he makes this effort in the nature either of supplement to the crowned efforts of past leaders or of accompaniment to the present campaign, which can easily use a little more impulsive power. And as such it is, he thinks, no less than enlistment in the louder-raging struggle,- nay, in some ways rather more than this,- a useful and a needful undertaking.

For it is to be remembered that this modern struggle is mainly one for wages, hours, and conditions, all of which are highly important, but not all—or ultimately important; and probably not best obtained by fighting for them only. Only with higher urgencies in mind do men seem likely to be mindful of these and mend them.

The place and possibility of such urgencies among us we are shortly going to consider; and had better, therefore, first consider briefly the chosen activities of those of us to whom freedom has in some degree arrived.

2. ACTIVITIES

Considering how much music, poetry, and sculpture has been made in Freedom's name, and what worship of the abstract goddess has been general among new-free, joyful folk, one scanning history will be surprised to note how few of the aforesaid joyful folk and of their progeny would stay rejoiced in peaceful unoppressed possession of their old Divinity or would seek at any time to spread her happy reign. He will, in fact, soon find how few of all her one-time worshipers were verily devoted to the goddess, she being somewhat too abstract, how few fought and bled in Freedom's cause, and how many merely to be free. Perhaps, too, he may here remember Burke's remark, that "Liberty inheres in some sensible object" meaning one that may be grasped by the senses, often a very foolish one indeed; and following this clue, he will shortly reach the reason of this failure to rejoice perpetually in the safeheld prize. It was not for Freedom, and not merely to be free, that most men fought and bled, but to be free from doing these things which they did not like, for doing those things which they did. Hence these hortatory "Who so base as be a slave? "s, which even now can fire our long since franchised blood. Nay, if mere rest from tyranny has once seemed happiness, the recuperated spirit seeks activity and strives anew.

How, then, we are to ask, does the present ac

tive throng of our free citizens employ those, opportunities which their forefathers purchased, often at supreme expense?

Looking over the favored crowd of us who can to some degree choose our activities, we find confusion worse confounded! But let us group as many as possible of these pursuits about some common spirit that impels them all. Doing this we find that throughout the widest-distant walks of life, from Leisure Place to Labor Alley, two motives are the main impulses of free effort, which may therefore be appraised from reference to these.

Of these one is so generally recognized as to be embodied in an ideal,- the ideal of "getting a good time," the doctrine and the creed of Play. This for many is the faith. The articles of it are vastly different among the various scattered, sometimes mutually hostile, sects of the great cult; so also are the worship-places. The former range from firm conviction that the chief end of man is a theater seat, down by down by innumerable degrees through absolute belief in field or air or water sports, to inarticulate asseveration of the ecstasies of gin. And the latter, the temples of their practices, preserve appropriateness respectively. They are mostly of the "world's sweet inn" type, magnified to operatic palace or diminished to backalley barroom with unutterable lodgings overhead, but keeping in all cases the taper of their common spirit burning clear. And among these

beaconing abodes or other regions of allurement the multitude divides itself and undertakes to feed on superfine pure joy. A considerably greater number, we may remark just to complete the metaphor, have trouble getting free from rather urgent previous engagements not of joyful sort, and so rarely join the generous feast. Wherefore they are pitied much both by themselves and by the better-natured of the banqueters. "We want amusement," they proclaim; and the sympathetic "Poor things! We'll try to amuse you; perhaps we'll get you up a pageant or a parade, which is also highly educational "; or ask querulously, "Why have not our brothers been amused?"

answer:

But we shall by no means dwell upon these incidentals of the scheme. And the various activities of the diversion process, whether carried on with public approbation and triumphant blatancy or under secret circumstances which prohibit public mention, need not concern us now: I now want only to make clear the spirit which impels much of our freely chosen life. But does that spirit stand in need of any such elucidation? Is it not seen and known and taken as a matter of course by more than notice or imagine any other mode of self-expression in the world to-day? For this the fathers fought and sometimes died; for this the children seek and cry. "Let us play! Let us play! What is the use of freedom without play; or rather what is freedom but the oppor

tunity of playing? Without this play man is not free; he is "tied-down" to this or that, to these or those, and can't get free to go and do: he lacks diversion, and his life is slavery—a living death indeed. Such, then, is the standing of diversion in the estimation of many of our modern free-conditioned citizens. It is, in truth, the creed of the crowd, their simple axiom solving all life's mystery-except, perhaps, the problem of why Providence has not provided better for their entertainment. A troubling problem this, which some solve by concluding that the Providence which does not provide better, therefore is not, or were quite as well not, anyway. But this is beside our mark, which is merely to note the number that under Freedom make, or would make if they might, diversion their life's end and aim.

Perhaps the careful reader has discovered in the foregoing commentary signs that I partly disapprove the creed of the diversionists. That is true; and for several reasons, hereinafter to be rendered. Meanwhile, however, we have the other kind of activity to notice.

Set everlastingly against diversion stands devotion, and invites us to turn out antitheses. Checking the full flow of our responsive inclination, we shall turn out only one, and that not novel. Is it not, then, simply this: that diversion seeks to get; devotion seeks to give: that the first, seeking its own satisfaction, is entirely selfish; that the second, spending itself freely, is pure unselfish