to ruddy England, smiling France, and the other members of the family of nations, graybeard and dignified China, who expresses joy at the introduction, and hopes for a better acquaintance in the years that are to come.

During the time of his residence at Peking as minister of the United States, Mr. Burlingame interested himself in endeavoring to introduce the telegraph into China, and though meeting with opposition on account of certain superstitions of the Chinese, he was ultimately successful. The Chinese do not understand the working of the telegraph -at least the great majority of them do not-and like many other people elsewhere, with regard to any thing incomprehensible, they are inclined to ascribe it to a satanic origin. They believe the erection of poles and the stretching of wires would disturb the currents of Fung Shuey (good luck), just as some of the residents of Tennessee and Alabama, ten or twelve years ago, believed the telegraph-wires caused a lack of rain.

Hence their opposition to the construction of the telegraph; and it remains for the prejudice to be overcome before electric communication in China will be a success.

Some years ago, as the story runs, some Americans erected a line fifteen or twenty miles long, between Shanghae and Woosung, the place where all deepdraught vessels approaching Shanghae are obliged to anchor. The Chinese made no interference, officially or otherwise, with the line during its construction, and allowed it to work for some weeks, which it did very successfully. They did not investigate its operations, but supposed the foreigners employed active and invisible devils to run along the wires to convey messages. Had these bearers of despatches confined themselves to their own affairs, their highway would not have been disturbed; but, unfortunately, a Chinese died, one day, in a house that was crossed by the telegraph-wire, and actually touched by one of the poles. It is not an unusual thing for a Chinese to die-thousands of them do so every day

-but several friends of the deceased Oriental set a rumor afloat that one of the foreign couriers had descended from the wire, and caused the native's death. A Chinese mob very soon made short work of the telegraph-line.

In this the Chinese only followed the example of the Southerners referred to in the preceding paragraph. When the telegraph-line from Cincinnati to New Orleans was built, some of the people along the route supposed it would affect the fall of rain and injure their crops. A drouth confirmed them in that opinion, and a great many miles of wire were torn down in consequence.

To avoid all possibility of interference with the proposed line in China, Mr. Burlingame suggested that it be placed out of harm's reach by laying it in the form of a submarine cable along the coast. The Government readily adopted the suggestion, as it would prevent any disturbance by superstitious or illdisposed persons while the line was being tested; as soon as the people were accustomed to its workings and satisfied of its harmlessness, the construction of land-lines could be ventured. The concession granted by the Government was accepted by an American company, which is empowered to lay submarine cables, connecting all the treaty ports from Canton to Peking. Quite likely, the submarine telegraph will astonish John Chinaman a great deal more than a land-line; if intelligence can be flashed instantly along the bottom of the ocean, where there is no apparent communication, he will be compelled to admit that a visible, tangible wire on land is a safe and feasible route of communication. While the cable is in deep water, out of reach of anchors, and only to be touched by the apparatus specially designed for its recovery, it will hardly be liable to the calamity that befell the ShanghaeWoorsung line. Nobody will have a local habitation in its vicinity except where it is brought to shore, and even should it be charged with the death of some unfortunate native, the next of kin and the neighbors and friends of the

deceased will not be able to wreak their vengeance and protect others from a like misfortune. When John is convinced that the foreign innovation harms nobody, and is an excellent medium of communication, he will be not only willing, but anxious to extend its benefits through the whole length and breadth of The Middle Kingdom, and connect the interior and seaboard cities by means of the electric wire.*

The foreign houses established in China will furnish a large patronage for the telegraph when completed, and their example will be an excellent one for the native merchants, and especially those who compete directly with the foreigners. In California, the Chinese residents make a liberal use of the telegraph; though they do not trouble themselves with an investigation of its workings, they fully appreciate its im portance, and when a message is retarded from any cause, they are as ready as their paler-faced competitors to make complaint and demand the reason for delay. In California all messages must be sent in English, or at all events in English characters. Grammatical precision is not insisted upon; if it were, it is possible many a native-born American would find his telegrams refused by the receiving clerks on account of deficiencies of style. John, in California, is at liberty to send his messages in "pigeon-English," and very funny work he makes of it occasionally. Chin Lung, in Sacramento, telegraphs to Ming Yup, in San Francisco, "You me send one piecee me trunk," which

means, in plain language, "Send me my trunk." Mr. Yup complies with the request, and responds by telegraph, “Me you trunkee you sendee." His English is more Californian and less Cantonese than that of his Sacramento friend. Canton throws in the word "piecee" (piece) very often, and the same is the case with the Chinese-English spoken in most of the treaty ports. The inventor of pigeon-English is unknown, and it is well for his name that it has not been handed down; he deserves the execration of all who are compelled to use the legacy he has left; and it is proper to say that he has received a great many epithets, the reverse of reverent, from irate English and Americans. It is just as difficult for a Chinese to learn pigeon-English as it would be to learn pure and honest English, and it is about as intelligible as Greek or Sanscrit to a newly-arrived foreigner. In Shanghae or Hong Kong, say to your Chinese ma-foo, who claims to speak English, "Bring me a glass of water," and he will not understand you. Repeat your order in those words, and he stands dumb and uncomprehending, as though you had spoken the dialect of the moon. But if you say, "You go me catchee bring one piecee glass water; savey," and his tawny face beams intelligence as he moves to obey the order. In the phrase," pigeon-English," the word pigeon means business," and the expression would be more intelligible if it were business-English." Many of the foreigners living in China have formed the habit of using this and other words in their Chinese sense, and sometimes one hears an affair of business called "a pigeon." A gentleman, whom the writer met in China, used to tell, with a great deal of humor, his early experiences with the language. "When I went to Shanghae," said he, "I had an introduction to a prominent merchant, who received me very kindly, and urged me to call often at his office. A day or two later I called, and inquired for him. 'Won't be back for a week or two,' said the clerk; 'he has gone into the country, about two hun

dred miles, after a little pigeon.' I asked no questions, but as I bowed myself out, I thought, 'He must be a fool, indeed, and I was all wrong when I suposed him a sensible man. Go two hundred miles into the country after a pigeon, and a little one at that! He has lost his senses, if he ever possessed any.'"

Of course it will be necessary, in China, to use, in part at least, the language of the country in transmitting telegrams. As the Chinese written language contains thousands of characters -linguists do not agree as to the exact number—it will not be possible to make separate telegraphic signal for each character. Some of the missionaries and others who have lived long in China have endeavored to reduce those characters to symbols; a French savant claims to have arranged two hundred symbols, that comprise the written language of China, while Dr. Macgowan formerly in the service of The East India Telegraph Company-is the author of a system using less than twenty. Both these gentlemen are confident of their ability to apply their inventions to the practical working of the telegraph; at any rate, they will soon have the opportunity of making the experiment. Most of the business along the coast-line and between the treaty-ports will be transacted in English, by means of the ordinary apparatus, which will also be available for the symbolic methods. Probably it will be more satisfactory to the Chinese to receive despatches, not only in the exact language, but in the handwriting of the sender. This can be done by the Lenoir method-a French invention-and also by that of an Italian, whose name now escapes me. The French method is less cumbersome and works with greater rapidity than the Italian one, and will probably be adopted for autographic telegraph

ing in China. The principle is the same as that which Mr. Bain attempted to introduce in America, some years ago, but did not find practicable; its want of success in Mr. Bain's hands was due to the slight demand for autographic despatches rather than to any defects of the system.

Could a native of China, or of any other country in the world, fail to acknowledge the power and importance of the telegraph, when he receives in a few moments a letter in his own language, and in the familiar chirography of a friend a hundred or a thousand miles away? His wonder and respect would be greatly increased if the intelligence was borne to him beneath the waters and by no visible pathway.

Apart from its value as a financial speculation, the enterprise of supplying a telegraph system to China has a great national importance. The gift of the youngest nation to the oldest is, commercially and socially, important, as well as politically and evangelically. In commerce, it will serve to make more intimate the relations of the two countries, and will fitly succeed the establishment of a steam-line from California to the Chinese coast, and the completion of our great national undertaking-the Pacific Railway. Socially, it will awaken sympathies between two people, whose language, customs, and modes of daily life are strange and almost incomprehensible to each other. Politically, it will serve as a bond of peace and good will, and as time goes by and the nations become more intimate, will render of little moment the diplomat and the warriors who too often accompany him. Evangelically, it will make more welcome the missionaries from a land that first brought the telegraph into practical use, and will facilitate their labors in the proportion that it creates a kindly regard for America.

1868.

MY DEAR DAUGHTER: You ask me what I think of the modesty and sense of a woman who can insist, in these days, that she is not sufficiently cared for in public and in private, and who wishes to add the duties of a politician to those of a mother and housekeeper.

This is a large question to ask, and a still larger one to answer by letter; but since you have a clear and thoughtful head of your own, and we are widely separated just now and unable to converse together as in times past, I will see what can be said by pen and paper for just the woman you have described.

And let me begin by asking you the meaning of the word politician. Haying consulted your dictionary, you reply, "One who is versed in the science of government and the art of governing." Very well. Now who is thus versed in the science and art of governing, so far as the family is concerned, more than the mother of it? In this country, certainly, the manners, the habits, the laws of a household, are determined in great part by the mother; so much so, that when we see lying and disobedient children, or coarse, untidy, and illmannered ones, we instinctively make our comments on the mother of that brood, and declare her more or less incompetent to her place.

Now let me suppose her to be one of the competent ones who, like your Aunt E., has helped six stout boys and four of their quick-witted sisters all the way from babyhood up to manhood and womanhood, with a wisdom and gentleness and patience that have been the wonder of all beholders-and let us think of her as sitting down now in her half-forsaken nest, calm, thoughtful, and matured, but fresh in her feeling as ever she was, and stretching out by her sympathies in many directions after the

younglings who have gone each to a special toil, and what wonder if she finds it hard to realize that she is unfitted either by nature or education for the work of law making, on a broader and larger scale than she has ever yet tried.

Her youngest boy, the privileged, saucy one of the crowd, has just attained his majority, we will say, and declaims in her hearing on the incompetence of women to vote-the superiority of the masculine element in politics, and the danger to society if women are not carefully guarded from contact with its rougher elements-and I seem to see her quiet smile and slightly curling lip, while in memory she runs back to the years when said stripling gathered all he knew of laws, country, home, heaven, and earth, at her knee"and as for soiling contacts, oh! my son, who taught you to avoid these, and first put it into your curly little head, that evil communications corrupt good manners, and that a man cannot touch pitch, except he be defiled."

I have taken the bull by the horns, you perceive, in thus taking our mother from her quiet country home and setting her by imagination among the legislators of the land;—but it is just as well, because the practical end of suffrage is, not eligibility to office merely, but a larger use of this privilege than most women have ever yet dreamed of, much less desired.

I hope, by the way, that you have not forgotten the unanswerable argument of Mr. Attorney General Bates on "What constitutes the citizen," which we read together some years since. If it is not fresh in your mind, please read it again, because no woman ought to be ignorant or unmindful of her relations to her government, nor of her rights and duties under it, in times like these,

especially, when our country is forming itself anew, as it were, and needs all the wisdom and strength she can gather from every quarter.

And now she is there, we will say, in the legislature of our State-a highminded, well-bred woman; one who, amid all her cares, has never failed to read the newspapers more or less, and to keep alive her interest in the prosperity of her country, whatever the claims of her numerous family. She is one, too, who has not had the assistance of wealth in doing all this; she is, as you know, straight from the rural districts, a genuine farmer's wife. But she has more leisure now than she once had, and with it there comes a longing for change, for more cultivated society, for recreations and diversions such as her busy hours have seldom afforded her; and just now, by the unanimous vote of her townspeople, she is sent to our glorious old Hub, to spend the winter in considering what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts shall do this year, by legislation, for the public good.

She enjoys right well the prospect of ten or twelve weeks spent at the metropolis, where she may refresh herself, in the intervals of business, by the music of the Great Organ, and where she may command libraries and means of culture hitherto quite beyond her reach, and in whose busy life she may study human character and human activities under new aspects, which are of great interest to her matured and thoughtful mind.

Having secured a home not far from the old State House, she seeks the Assembly Room and meets there gentlemen from all parts of the State-farmers, merchants and mechanics, physicians, teachers and ministers, lawyers and bankers, and they go into debate on such questions as these: Shall our deaf mutes be educated at home, or in the Institution at Hartford, as heretofore? What of the economies of our past practice, and are there better methods of training than those instituted there? State Prison-shall the discipline be penal merely, or reforma

tory? the institution self-supporting by a system of rigid tasks, or partially supported by the State? what punishment shall be allowed, what religious and moral instruction furnished, and what sanitary regulations enforced? The prohibitory law-has it proved itself adapted to the suppression of intemperance? are its provisions enforced, and why not? Is a special license law better adapted to the desired end, or is there any thing which human ingenuity can devise that shall arrest the spread of intemperance over the land? The school for juvenile offenders-is that managed judiciously? Here obviously the great aim should be reformation. Is a system of rewards or punishments, or both together, best adapted to that end? Should boys and girls be associated in the same buildings and classes, and for what length of time should they be retained for improvement before sending them out again into society? Endowments for colleges and other educational institutions supported in whole or in part by the State: Shall these be confined to institutions designed exclusively for men, or shall they be applied equally to the education of both sexes? Taxation-how apportioned? What interests can best bear heavy taxation, and is any further legislation needed to secure the right of representation to all who are taxed? Prostitution-shall it be licensed as in the old countries, or left to itself, or subjected to severe penalties? Divorces -by whom granted, and for what cause, and upon what conditions? Common schools, and high schools, and the whole system of State education; insane asylums, poor-houses, jails, and many other institutions of modern civilization:-in all these objects, you will perceive, our mother has a deep and intelligent interest, and it is not difficult to imagine the warm, even enthusiastic energy with which she will give herself to the discussion of the ques tions involved-some of them the highest that can come before a human tribunal.

If you say, There are other State in