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the demands of the city dwellers for more of nature, says:

"Is it not a true instinct of so many individuals in a time like the present, when they find their actual lives nipped and cankered on the surface by the conditions in which they live, to hark back, not only to simpler and more 'natural' external surroundings, but also to those more primitive and universal needs of their own hearts from which they feel a departure may be made? They go back to the ever-virgin soil within themselves. And, perhaps, the deeper down they go the nearer they get to the universal life."

When it is not possible for people to live in the country or to spend at least a part of the year near to the heart of nature, the next best thing is to put within their reach as many of the charms of nature as possible. America has forest reservations amounting to something like 62,000 000 acres, but these reservations, being at a distance from the masses of the people, avail little. The great forest reservation of France, Fontainebleau, comprising 42,500 acres, is only thirty-seven miles from Paris, and the round trip fare, third-class, four francs sixty-five centimes, which puts it within the reach of thousands of people. The

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great forest reservations of Germany, like the Harz Mountains and the Black Forest, give the opportunity to the masses for frequent outings lasting from half a day to a week. A walking excursion in one of these reservations is the delight of many a poor artisan. The expense is nominal-car fare, accommodations at small, inexpensive hostelries, a small amount of food to supplement what he has with him, and beer,-—and he and his family have the joys of nature for a few days. It is some place to go to escape the monotony of daily existence. Perhaps the most delightful picture we have of recreation grounds comes from ancient Rome at the time of its pagan glory, when each day the youths exercised on the Campus Martius, or bathed or engaged in swimming contests in the Tiber. American cities have much to learn from foreign countries as to means and ways of providing healthful recreation. In enlarging her park system Chicago is, in part at least, solving many of the awful problems which confront her-infant mortality, the spread of infectious diseases, juvenile crime, public health, and public order. The day when she will emerge from her chrysalis, the City Beautiful is at hand.

"Watch Ye, and Pray”

By ANGELA URSULA PEARCE

HAD been reading the Passion according to St. Matthew, and as I pondered over the sad words of the Agony in the garden, my whole soul went forth in reproaches against the apostles, Peter, James and John; the three beloved of Christ, upon whom He had lavished blessings innumerable, and whom He had loved with a love surpassing any to be found from the foundation to the consummation of the world. Oh! how I

wished that I had been there, to comfort the Man-God in His misery and sorrow! How sweet would it have been to wait, and watch, and pray, with One who was about to lay down His adorable life for the sins of the world. I thought of Him, as, returning in search of human sympathy to the place where He had left the three-He found them sleeping!

Oh! the unutterable agony of that moment! The utter friendlessness of Christ, alone in the gloom and stillness

But

of that awful night! Nature herself was awed; and the stars trembled beneath their covering of inky clouds. man alone heeded not. In the distance gleamed the lights in the homes of Jerusalem, but in Gethsemane all was dark.

The hush of death was upon the place, and only once was the silence broken, when the sighing wind bore aloft the immortal plea: "My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass away. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt." And the softly flowing Cedron caught the echo of the prayer, and swept it down the stream of life to the unborn generations of the children of men.

Still the three slept!

I feared; and asked myself, how could this have been? Oh, the frailty of the flesh! the base ingratitude-to desert their Creator-to leave Him comfortless in His affliction to sleep while He was in agony! "Surely I would not have been as these three; of me would it have been written, 'one was faithful;'" these were the thoughts which filled my brain.

Even while I sat in meditation, sleep o'ercame me, as it had done unto those whom I had been condemning. The Testament fell unheeded from my hands; and I dreamt. I was in a church, before the high altar of which burnt a bril

liant light, the symbol of that Light, the Light of the world, shut within the tabernacle. But where were the worshippers? the watchers? The church was empty! With a start I awoke, the lesson of my vision branded upon my heart. Never until now had I realized the meaning of those words of Christ: "Watch ye, and pray." At last I saw their true significance. Not for the three alone had He intended the divine command; not for those few hours of that night long past; but for all upon whom the light of Christianity would shine; and for as long as there was a Christian soul upon this earth. Was not Christ here in our world, upon our altars, waiting, longing, entreating for acts of love? And I blushed with shame as I thought of the many times I had passed His church without a thought or care for the patient God within. Christians! Catholics! We need not long to have been in Gethsemane to show our love, nor on Golgotha to show our faith. 'Tis the present which requires our courage. Our every-day life is full of crosses and trials. Let us bear them bravely. Let us visit our Lord in the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist, and we will never blame Peter, James and John for what we have often done, but whatwith God's help, we will do no more.

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I

By MICHAEL EARLS, S. J.

N more senses than one the child is father to the man. Physically, of course, the child is the

man in miniature, and the moral development of the boy will, in the slow travail of the years, bring forth the character of his older self. But even in the lesser and the accidental things of life, the man is living and growing in the child. The little, susceptible eyes are continually looking about and finding quarrylands whence, in after life, the grown-up child, if he turn not pessimist, will excavate and shape the clear, white stone for his castles in Spain. His attentive ears listen and catch pleasant sounds from every breeze; even noises, rending the air, are music to him and will become fairy harmonies in the seigneurial mansions of old age. And his memory, so like a great storehouse, waiting for the homing cargoes, gathers in story and incident that will mellow and, under the warm sunshine of reminiscence, turn into happy romance and thrilling history. So it is that the country of youth is the fatherland of manhood, where the child is father to the

man.

And in the daily rambles about this magic country, journeys that are shortranged at first, but, day by day, reach farther on, and ever tend towards the new horizon, the young experience gathers his treasure piecemeal and in the rough ore; the after-life will extract and fuse together the various bits of the ore's treasure and enjoy it, seeing it stand unified before his eyes. The youth deals with objects only in the singular, with this particular scene and that individual behavior; he sees only the concrete; his people are Tom or Dick, Smith or Old Robinson, each one named, for abstract humanity enters not his eyes or phantasm. Later, when his faculties are

at their best, when his mental sight is keenest, he will note the similarities and differences of things. He will distinguish, and abstract, and prescind. With the two-edged sword of thought, he will rift the cloud of matter and get the vision of the form, that underlying, specific ghost of things. The incorporeal and the abiding will show to him from the corporeal and the transitory. Then, as if instinctively, he will group objects and happenings into families of universals and general laws; the various incidents. of the past, the days and doings of the years gone will be collected, as the little pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope, and show, at every turn, some new picture, some new mosaic, each more wonderful, more fascinating than the last.

He now becomes a moralist, if he have time for the luxury of reflecting and making wise saws; if he be a man whose evenings are free, free to sit and smoke and think by the winter fireside, or under the cedars and stars of summer, he will take up the kaleidoscope that he built up from his early, years and he will see visions. He is on an intellectual eminence he will come on many viewpoints of life. There he may observe that what was, in his youth, some concrete object, or particular scene or individual incident, shows now to his eyes as the shadow of some great mystery or the reflection of some truth of life, or the formula for some phase of human conduct.

One of these viewpoints of life, one of these little eminences where, as children, we stood and saw a concrete reality, and where, being grown men, we came again to see through the eyes of thought new scenes of men and manners, is what I call, Behind the Counter. It is a viewpoint of universal experience, and, therefore, familiar to everybody. Every

child who has not been all the days of his youth an indoor invalid or a dweller in bushman country, has looked upon the prosaic scene; and every man, supposing that he indulges in his grown-up power of reflecting, has seen it, though, perhaps, not advertently, in its shadowed meaning in the world of life.

The child, I have said, has had experience of Behind the Counter. For who of us does not recollect how, in the days of youth, we were wont to look with childish wonderment at the orderly rows of boxes and gilded compartments in some well-appointed store? Treasure-trove of merchandise, inlaid with Indian cloth and fur from Alaska, stood there, poised in vertical exactness; and others lay down in horizontal rest. In awe did your little eyes look upon the scene. You feared to step heavily; you breathed gently; you spoke in a low, half-affrighted tone, lest you should unsettle the foundations of a pyramid of hats or a pillar of handkerchiefs. The clerks stood at right angles to the floor and wore angular smiles. Formality and decorum ruled everything and everybody, as you stood before the counter.

But what a change met your eyes, what another scene, if, by some oversight or intrusion, you saw Behind the Counter? Order and angular rule were not there. Old boxes, empty and shattered, shreds of cloth and edges of ribbon; a novel, dog-eared by old Sellingwell when he left the hero to wait upon some villainous bargain-maker; a pic ture of a little home in the country where old S. once lived, and a few letters close to the picture; a jack-knife and a whittled piece of board; a pack of cards showing a hand at solitaire-these are some of the treasures in keeping Behind the Counter. This is the olla podrida that nourishes old Sellingwell and his kinsmen when business is halting, when the hours of parade before the counter are ended.

All this is a picture of life: this is a viewpoint whence may be observed a characteristic or a phase of man's social ways. For in the little world of most, if not all, men, there is a Counter. Before it, each of us has arranged, with thoughtful care, the wares that we will let the world see and judge us by, our manners the most perfect, wearing dignity and urbanity as gracefully as an officer his epaulettes: our medals of honor, won in the little village school or in the great university of life: our few heirlooms, eloquent praisers of time past: these, and other things, we have arranged Before the Counter. But Behind the Counter, little toys we have hidden, and playthings made up of cheerful sentiment and heart-lifting hopes and pleasant memories, "the light of other days." There we keep them in an atmosphere of ease and unconstraint, by the fireside of familiarity, and to them we come for sunshine on a depressing day, for heartease from noisy cares, and solace from

sorrow

This does not mean that the sublime, rational animal, Man. is a slave to the baubles of sentiment and transitory feelings and useless memories: that queenly reason is oftentimes forced to leave her "marmoreal calmness" and step from her throne to disport with tatterdemalion childishness. Neither does it mean that only nonsense and the day-dreams of simpletons are to be found Behind the Counter. Far from it. In these private sanctuaries, reason, and not childish fancy, rules; and there, too, oftentimes are stored away the precious articles of great lives. Men of noble hearts keep self-sacrifices there and humility, and pure thoughts, and high resolves. But these men do not properly enter into our class of those who have playful treasures Behind the Counter. It is of ordinary men we speak, of those who say with Terence: "Human am I, and nothing human think I foreign to me;" who

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