as domestic servants, who were born in the United States, not less than 353,275 are found in the former slave States and the District of Columbia, nineteen-twentieths of them being colored. This would leave but 351,059 from the old free States, including the Territories. But of the total number of domestic servants in these States, 53,532 are males, while 34,099 are females under 16 years of age, nearly all of whom were born here. Making deductions on these accounts, we have, in round numbers, 280,000 females, 16 years of age and upward, natives of the country, among our domestic servants, against a somewhat smaller number of all other nationalities. But can it be true that more than one-half our adult female domestic servants in the Northern States are native, are American? It is true, and it is not true. According to the strict sense of the word native, the sense in which the Census uses it, it is true; according to its popular meaning, nothing could be further from the truth. These Irish and German girls, as we are accustomed to call them, who are in our families as second girls, as nurses, and even as general servants, what proportion of them ever saw Ireland or Germany? They are, in fact, of the second generation. They are one remove from foreigners. Yet, though born among us, our general instinctive feeling testifies that they are not wholly of us. separate has been their social life, due alike to their clannishness and to our reserve; so strong have been the ties of race and blood and religion with them; so acute has been the jealousy of their spiritual teachers toward our popular institutions, that we speak of them, and we think of them, as foreigners.

So

It must be remembered that, so far back as 1850, there were resident in the United States 573,225 Germans, and 961,719 Irish, while the total number of persons of foreign birth was at that time 2,210,839. Many of these had then been residing long in the country. It is from the descendants of this class, scarcely less than out of the directly immigrating class, that our domestic service is supplied. It is clear that it will not be long before these home-made foreigners will far outnumber the direct immigrants, in the ranks of our domestic service. Already the children born in this country of foreign parents nearly equal those who were born abroad. Another Census will see the balance strongly inclined to the side of the former class; while their preponderance in

our households will undoubtedly be effected even earlier by the preference naturally given to them over new arrivals.

Of those domestic servants who were born in foreign countries, the Census assigns to Ireland, 145,956; to Germany, 42,866; to British America, 14,878; to England and Wales, 12,531; to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, 11,287; to China and Japan, 5,420; to Scotland, 3,399; to France, 2,874; to all other countries, 7,343.

The

The States of the North and West, in which the Irish, as compared with the domestic servants of any other foreign nationality, are in excess, are Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and California; those in which the Germans are in excess, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wisconsin; those in which the Scandinavians are in excess, Kansas and Minnesota; those in which the British Americans are in excess, Michigan and Vermont; those in which the Chinese are in excess, Nevada and Oregon. Chinese, however, very nearly approach the Irish in California, the numbers being 4,343 against 4,434. Illinois has 3,950 Scandinavians, and 5,603 Germans, against 6,346 Irish. Michigan has 1,755 Germans, and 1,748 Irish, against 2,456 Scandinavians. Ohio has 5,270 Germans, against 5,587 Irish. In Indiana, the Irish very nearly approach the Germans. In Maine, the British Americans nearly equal the Irish. In the remaining States, the preponderance of the foreign element first specified, is generally decided.

Considering the number of "French cooks" we have in this country, it may seem surprising that so few of our domestic servants should have been born in France. It is known, however, that French cooks differ from the cooks of other nationalities in this, that they may be born anywhere, and speak English with any sort of accent. Of the real Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who have entered our domestic service, the great majority, as might be anticipated, are found in towns, obeying, even on our happy soil, the strongest instinct of their people. Thirty cities have the honor to comprise 1,630 out of the total of 2,874 domestic servants born in France. Of these, 449 are found in New York; 368 in New Orleans; and 286 in San Francisco.

Two foreign elements which are likely to make an even greater proportionate showing in the domestic service of 1880 than in that of

1870, are the Swedes and the British Americans, if, indeed, by that time, we have not gratified our national passion by annexing the New Dominion, making thus the Canadians not foreigners, but natives. Speaking broadly, the Swedes are all found west of Lake Michigan, in Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The systematic efforts made to induce immigration from Sweden are not unlikely to yield considerable results in the immediate future. All the social and industrial conditions of the North-west are natural to this people, except only as being more favorable than their own at home. The British Americans, on the other hand, are substantially all east of Lake Michigan. They have overspread, more or less densely, the New England States, have colored deeply the northern borders of New York, and form an important element in the population of the peninsula of Michigan. In the latter State and in Maine the men of this nationality are lumbermen and raftsmen; in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, they are cotton spinners and shoemakers, forming, indeed, the bone and sinew of the redoubtable order of the Knights of St. Crispin. And, if ever our cooks get on a strike and go a parading the streets with bands and banners, breathing defiance to domestic tyranny, be sure it will be because the French Canadian women among them have formed the order of Ste. Coquula.

Of the natives of the Celestial Empire who cook and wash for our people, very few have yet ventured across the Rocky Mountains. Here and there at the East, an almond-eyed angel "stands and waits" in the house of a master who is considerably more than half afraid of him, with his cat-like step, his diabolical observances, his inscrutable countenance, and his well-known toxological accomplishments; but thus far, at least,

the great domestic revolution which was heralded in the newspapers and magazines with so much noise five years ago, as about to follow the advent of the Children of the Sun, has, like many another announced revolution, failed to come off. Of the total number of 5,420 Chinese servants in the United States, 4,343 are yet to be found in California, 503 in Nevada, and 268 in Oregon.

The

Is the Chinaman to be the domestic servant of the future? Will another census show him stealthily supplanting the European in our households, and setting up his gods on the kitchen mantels of this Christian land? I stoutly believe not. Chinese, whether miners or menials, are hardly more numerous in the United States than they were five years ago. "Forty centuries" have been too much for Mr. Koopmanschoop and his emigrant runners. Even when the Chinaman comes to the States, he leaves his wife and children behind him; he comes here with no thought of resting until he can rest at home; his supreme wish is ever to return to his native land, and if he be so unhappy as to die in exile, his bones at least must be borne back to sacred soil. Surely, a great element among us is not to be built up by immigration of this kind. Masses of foreign population thus unnaturally introduced into the body politic, must sooner or later disappear like the icebergs that drift upon the currents of our temperate seas, chilling the waters all around them, yet themselves slowly wasting away under the influence of sun and wind, having in themselves no source of supply, no spring of energy, no power of self-protection; helpless and inert amid hostile and active forces; their only part, endurance; their only possible end, extinction.

American Authorship.

MR. CHARLES READE is a man of plain speech. He applies his epithets with such hearty hate and contempt that they acquire dignity in the handling. The "gorillas," "chimpanzees," and "idiots," who have been the objects of his trenchant thrusts in his recent letters in "The Tribune," will look into their mirrors under a strong apprehension that their persons will indorse his characterization. On behalf of American authorship, we thank him for his unanswerable plea for justice. There is but one side to this question, and he has stated it. A creator and inventor has a natural right to the product of his brain, and wherever and by whomsoever that product is used, he is entitled to a royalty. There is not a rational argument which sustains the laws of international patent right that does not apply perfectly to international copyright. We have settled the principle, in our own national legislation, and settled it forever, and the refusal, on the part of our Gov. ernment, to accord international copyright amounts to self-stultification and self-condemnation.

We hope that during the coming session of Congress this matter will be taken up, and settled as it ought to be. The President's Annual Message would be dignified by asking at the hands of Congress such legislation as will protect the authorship of this country, and of all other countries, in its property. Our own authors have been compelled to compete in the market with stolen books long enough. They have been preyed upon by foreign publishers long enough. Our people have lived upon stolen bread long enough. We occupy, in this matter, as a nation, a most undignified and disgraceful position. There is nothing under heaven that stands in the way of international copyright but a desire to maintain the profitable freedom of stealing. The authors want protection; they need it; they must have it; they will have it; and no adverse interest can interfere with their efforts, without great injustice and discourtesy.

We were particularly impressed by Mr. Reade's closing letter. It ought to be read by every wellwisher of his country. He shows how, under the patent laws, our inventors lead the world. Other nations print on our presses, reap with our reapers, and sew with our sewing-machines, while, in literature, we are only a moon reflecting the light of other national literatures. The American patentee and the American author are at opposite poles, in their fortunes and in the world's consideration. One leads the world; the other follows it. Mr. Reade simply reiterates what we have long claimed, when he asserts that the American writer has larger, more varied and richer materials than the English writer. "Land of fiery passions and humors infinite," he says, "you offer such a garden of fruits as Moliére never sunned himself in, nor Shakespeare either.” Nothing is truer than this, and the only reason that American

authorship does not rise to the commanding position which its capacities and materials render possible, is, that men cannot live on the returns of their labor.

The history of our failure lies all around us. A genius blossoms, and we throw up our hats. The next thing we hear of him is that he is at work upon a salary, getting bread for his wife and children. He hardens and sours into a literary drudge, and never bears the fruit that was promised in his blossoming. The rare genius Halleck spent his life in a counting-room. Our living Bryant, who should have had a purely literary life, and left, as the heritage of his country, the consummate fruits of his genius and scholarship, spent his best years on a political newspaper. George William Curtis gives now all the products of his strong and graceful pen to the editor's office. Stoddard, a genuine genius, produces very sparingly, and is giving the weight of his culture to the presentation of other authors and other lives, mostly British. Stedman divides his time between the beautiful work that he loves, -the work to which nature has so generously fitted him, and the harassing cares of Wall street. Taylor, who holds in his industrious and accomplished hands the materials and the power to write a better Life of Goethe than ever was produced, delivered last winter a hundred and thirty lectures, and is now editing, for the consideration that is so necessary to "keep the pot boiling." Does any one suppose that he would be doing this if he had the British market of his book secure, with the right of translation into German and French? Moses Coit Tyler, who has an important history on hand, for which, in the intervals of productive toil, he has long been collecting material, is plodding along upon a professor's salary at Ann Arbor. Hawthorne, who, as a writer of fiction, did more for the literary fame of America abroad than any other American, was glad to accept political office, that he might be sure of the bread he could not earn by his pen. son has probably been obliged to earn by lecturing more money than he has ever received from copyright. The magazines are flooded with articles from pens that ought to be at work upon our permanent national literature, simply because money is wanted, and wanted now.

Emer

It is an old, sad story. The experiment has been repeated ad nauseam, and yet American authors are blamed for writing hastily and without due preparation. The question lies between writing hastily and starving. Give American authors half a chance; give them an opportunity to live, and they will do their work better. Give them the markets of the world, secure a return to them from all who now steal the usufruct of their genius and their labor, relieve them from the present killing competition with books that pay no copyright, and they will do for themselves and their country what the patentees have done for themselves and the country. We do not wonder that Charles Reade, with his intelligent eye

upon our position, and his strong sense of equity and right, should use the most convenient and telling epithets that come to his hand to characterize his opponents. Opposition is so unjust, so shortsighted, so inconsiderate of the interests of a class on which the permanent fame and character of the country most depend, that it may well evoke his ire, in any terms in which he may see fit to express it. Our Government fosters agriculture, fosters railroads, fosters manufactures, fosters invention, fosters mining interests, fosters scientific exploration, and even fosters the weather, but it does not foster, it never has fostered, that great interest of authorship on which its moral and intellectual character and consideration depend. Anybody can get rich but an author. Anybody can realize from his labor his daily bread, except an author. If all the receipts from the copyright of accepted American authors should be put together, and all the authors were compelled to live from it, they would not live; they would starve. Is this right? Is it too much to ask of the Government that it place the authorship, not only of this country, but of the world, in a position where it can have an even chance with other interests? It does not ask for the pensions accorded to useful authorship in other countries; it does not seek for grace or guerdon; it simply asks for justice and a fair chance to win for itself the return for labor which it needs, and for its country the consideration due to productive genius and culture.

Winter Amusements.

ONE of the most puzzling questions which parents have to deal with is that which relates to the amusements of their children, and especially to those among them who have reached young manhood and young womanhood. The most of us are too apt to forget that we have once been young, and that, while we are tired enough with our daily work to enjoy our evenings in quiet by our firesides, the young are overflowing with vitality, which must have vent somewhere. The girls and young women particularly, who cannot join in the rough sports of the boys, have, as a rule, a pretty slow time of it. They go to parties when invited; but parties are all alike, and soon become a bore. A healthy social life does not consist in packing five hundred people together in a box, feeding them with ices, and sending them home with aching limbs, aching eyes, and a firstclass chance for diphtheria. But the young must have social life. They must have it regularly; and how to have it satisfactorily-with freedom, without danger to health of body and soul, with intellectual stimulus and growth-is really one of the most important of social questions.

It is not generally the boy and the girl who spend their days in school that need outside amusement or society. They get it, in large measure, among their companions, during the day; and, as their evenings are short, they get along very comfortably with their little games and their recreative reading. It is the young woman who has left school and the young man who is preparing for life, in office or

counting-room, in the shop or on the farm, that need social recreation which will give significance to their lives, and, at the same time, culture to their minds. If they fail to unite culture with their recreations, they never get it. It is not harsh to say that nine young men in every ten go into life without any culture. The girls do better, because, first, they take to it more naturally, and, second, because, in the absence of other worthy objects of life, this is always before them and always attainable. The great point, then, is to unite culture with amusement and social enjoyment. Dancing and kindred amusements are well enough in their time and way, but they are childish. There must be something better; there is something better.

It is an easy thing to establish, either in country or city neighborhoods, the reading club. Twentyfive young men and women of congenial tastes, habits, and social belongings can easily meet in one another's houses, once during every week, through five or six months of the year. With a small fund they can buy good books, and, over these, read aloud by one and another of their number, they can spend an hour and a half most pleasantly and profitably. They will find in these books topics of conversation for the remainder of the time they spend together. If they can illuminate the evening with music, all the better. Whatever accomplishments may be in the possession of different members of the club may be drawn upon to give variety to the interest of the occasion. This is entirely practicable, everywhere. It is more profitable than amateur theatricals, and less exhaustive of time and energy. It can be united with almost any literary object. The Shakespeare Club" is nothing but a reading club, devoted to the study of a single author; and Shakespeare may well engage a club for a single winter. Such a club would cultivate the art of good reading, which is one of the best and most useful of all accomplishments. It would cultivate thought, imagination, taste. In brief, the whole tendency of the reading club is toward culture-the one thing, notwithstanding all our educational advantages, the most deplorably lacking in the average American man and woman.

66

There was a time when the popular lecture was a source not only of amusement but of culturewhen it stimulated thought, developed healthy opinion, conveyed instruction, and elevated the taste. The golden days when Sumner, Everett, and Holmes, Starr King, and Professor Mitchell, Bishop Huntington and Bishop Clark, Beecher and Chapin, Emerson, Curtis, Taylor, and Phillips, were all actively in the field, were days of genuine progress. Few better things could happen to the American people than the return of such days as those were; and the "lecture system," as it has been called, is declining in its usefulness and interest, simply because it has not men like these to give it tone and value. A few of the old set linger in the field, but death, old age, and absorbing pursuits have withdrawn the most of them. The platform is not what it was. The literary trifler, the theatrical reader, the second or third rate concert,