out to the barn and see to my horse. I had driven twenty miles that day and was tired when I put him out and had not blanketed him. Fortunately I put on an old overcoat, but without a lantern I started out.

"The night was black, and a blizzard was on. The wind was in my face, and the fine hail came like shot from a gun. It fairly bit my cheeks. As I crossed the garden I turned to have the wind at my back and catch my breath. I saw the light in the house glowing faintly through the sleet. It was the light or the want of it that gave me the suspicion I had lost my way. I had turned around and walked backward awhile with my head bent and not looking for the house. Then when I did look I couldn't see the light. I knew I had gone far enough to reach the barn if I was ever to get there, and I realized I had gone wrong in some way.

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I began to arouse myself and look for the barn. I had gone there so many times I would have said I could get there with my eyes shut and my feet and hands tied. But I couldn't see it and soon began to learn that I couldn't get near it by zigzagging back and forth. I don't know how long I cruised around as a dog would search a trail. It probably was only a few minutes, but it seemed an hour. It was the longest part of the night's experiences. I was slow to confess to myself that, keen as I believed I was in prairie craft, I was really lost and could not help myself even a little bit. I suppose I went around in a circle, but there was no proof to my mind of the fact.

The place was the prairie at Flandreau, where I now live. It is as level as this floor and is now well settled, but then it was miles to any other house. Every inch of the prairie was like every other inch. When I knew I was lost, I made up my mind to be as long as possible freezing to death. I gave up trying to find the barn and just walked without thinking where I was going. I kept saying. 'Walk, walk, walk!'

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Of course I went with the wind a good deal. But I realized I ought not to, and as a moral duty I religiously faced it. This fancy saved my life. I kept fighting something all night. I pounded myself and called myself a fool a thousand times. I even kicked myself now and then.

"Then I began to feel sleepy. It grew on me, and I thought I would lie down and rest, for I was very tired. But I rebelled against this as a piece of folly. I kicked myself and again called myself a fool. Then the first I knew I was down on my hands and knees in the snow.

I guess I did not realize my danger. I remember I noticed the snow drifting around me. I had my back to the wind. I had found horses and cattle frozen to death standing with their backs humped up against the wind. You see, I have big lungs and am strongly built. I kept breathing good and strong all the time. I clinched my hands and kept saying to myself, 'Live, live, live!' It was a sort of will power. I suffered fearfully all the time with the cold. My clothes seemed like so much paper rustling on my stony limbs The snow got deeper.

"The snow kept creeping on up over my back, and I stayed as still as I could, so as to let it roof me over. It was inky dark when it finally covered me entirely, and I was where it would be days before they would find me. Then I wondered how long I should lie there, and I thought of the wolves that might come when the snow had thawed a little and scratch down to me and begin to gnaw my frozen flesh.

"In this way my mind went wandering on from one idea to another. I succeeded in keeping myself alive by thinking. I felt better after awhile. I did not know it, but it was warmer there under the snow. My breath melted a little hole up through the drift. The air was cold, but it was the sweetest relief in the world that it was still and not cutting like a million whiplashes. The snow around me got so I could press it back, and it would pack and stay, so I had a little room to move. I was still fearfully cold, but in comparison with the suffering earlier in the night I was as warm as toast.

"It was about this time I noticed I could see a button right under my eye on my coat. The night had passed, and it was daybreak. My mind took the fact in slowly. I did not dare to get up or move. I deliberated whether I should try to get up. I almost decided not to do it. And then, with a snort and a grunt, I was on my feet and shaking off the snow. I shall never forget the agony of that moment. If there was a muscle in my body that did not fairly shriek in a protest of pain, it must have been in parts that were frozen. But I took a step forward and then tottered along and gradually learned again to walk.

The sky was clear, a few stars shone faintly in the western horizon. The wind had gone down. In the half light I could see what I thought was a house some distance away. I struggled on painfully toward it, rubbing snow on my face as I went to take out the frost. As I drew near the house I saw some one coming from the opposite direction. It was my wife. She and the boys had been up all night, and with the first light of morning

necticut, wooden nutmegs; Delaware, muskrats; Florida, fly-up-the-creeks; Georgia, buzzards; Illinois, suckers; Indiana, hoosiers; Iowa, hawkeyes; Kansas, jayhawkers; Kentucky, corn crackers; Louisiana, creoles; Maine, foxes; Maryland, craw thumpers; Michigan, wolverines; Minnesota, gophers; Mississippi, tadpoles; Missouri, pukes; Nebraska, bug eaters; Nevada, sage hens; New Hampshire, granite boys; New Jersey, blues, or clam catchers; New York, knickerbockers; North Carolina, tar boilers and tuckoes; Ohio, buckeyes; Oregon, webfeet and hard cases; Pennsyl

abiding interest. It shows that immigration of late has declined in volume and improved in quality. This is excellent. There is still plenty of room here for the right kind of people, but the day when almost any kind of an immigrant was welcome who was willing to shoulder a pick or wield a shovel has gone by. The supply of unskilled labor, especially as it has been congested in the chief cities of the Atlantic slope, is amply equal to the need, and excessive immigration along this line strongly tends to depress the wage rate below the level of a decent subsistence.

This is something to be deprecated and as far as possible to be prevented. It is in the highest degree desirable that every American citizen should be able to earn enough to live on in comfort and to put something aside for the inevitable rainy day, and so far as it interferes with this consummation immigration is unwelcome. Mr. Sargent's figures show that the transAtlantic exodus continues to come chiefly from southern Europe, and especially from southern Italy. To such an extent is this the case that nearly one-fourth of all the immigrants who landed here were Italians, although of these nearly 40,000 fewer came than within the previous twelve months. Italians are not reputed to make the best kind of immigrants, but much of the unfavorable opinion with regard to them which used to prevail was due to prejudice and has been expelled by experience and observation. Their worst faults are their disposition to huddle together in the cities and their fondness for going back to Italy as soon as the modest sum which is there accounted a competency has been accumulated, but it is not too much to hope that they may get over that. If they could be induced to apply themselves to the cultivation of the soil, instead of merely laboring in the cities as hewers of wood and drawers of water, it would be a great change for the better. There is room and a place for them in the Southern States, where they would find a congenial climate and a healthful, profitable occupation, and where there is great need for the service they have it in their power to render.

Mr. Sargent rightly says that the advantageous distribution of the people seeking new homes in this country is a problem loudly calling for solution. There can be no doubt about that and it would be well for Congress to take the matter in hand. Nothing in this direction has yet been attempted and much that would be of the highest value could without any great difficulty and with a moderate expenditure of money be achieved.-Plain Dealer.

One Who Never Experienced Poverty Afraid

Charity Will Pauperize the Poor.

An investigator who, to dispel the ennui of a purposeless and pampered life, devotes her spare moments to a course in dilettante philanthropy, called at the salvage depot of the Salvation Army, in the hay market, Tuesday.

For fifteen minutes she bored Captain Joplin with her views and theories for "the uplifting of the submerged classes." She hoped the army was careful to help only "worthy poor." The danger of

pauperizing the poor" was a thing to be guarded against.

It was with relief that Captain Joplin turned from the visitor to a young Ger man who had come for help. He was a giant in stature, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, but his sunken cheeks were evidence that he had fasted long. He wanted food and a place to sleep; he was willing to work.

Captain Joplin wrote an order for a meal at a nearby restaurant and gave it to the applicant.

"Come back when you have eaten, and I will have work for you," said Captain Joplin, and the German went away.

"Do you know that man?" asked the investigator.

'Don't you talk. You've heard that kind of talk before, too. Investigate a man's past while he starves to death! I'll bet a cooky that German fellow comes back to square his account. I'll bet another cooky that that woman got her ideas from a lecturer or a book and has been preaching them as gospel truth ever since. A lot she knows about poor folks -she who has never stood in need of a square meal in her life!

I always get excited when anybody talks the pauperization of the poor to me," the captain explained. "It was a difference of opinion on this very question which resulted in my giving up the ministry in England years ago. A certain millionaire member of my congregation insisted on making a hungry man wait for food until his past had been looked into; I opposed him; I found that

most of the congregation sided with him, so I left the church and joined the Army.

"Now what is it that philanthropists are trying to do? To so systematize public charity that begging will be impossible and work will be within reach of all men. Good.

"What have they done so far? They have systematized the heart out of charity. Their institutions have become burdened with officialdom, and officialdom has made the officials hard as rocks.

"Thousands of dollars are spent yearly in Cleveland in salaries for investigators. Instead of making begging impossible, they are making beggars of poor men.

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What's your father's name?' "Your grandfather's name?' "Where were you born?' "When?'

"How long did you live in Pittsburg?' "Where did you go from there?' ".. Why?'

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"So it goes, every conceivable kind of question, fired with rapid-fire swiftness, until all self-respect is lost to the applicant under the pitiless catechism.

""Then give it to the next fellow you meet who is up against it.'

"Did I pauperize that man? Yet suppose he had proved worthless and ungrateful. A professional pauper is the mongrel of humanity. If you should find a mongrel cur in the gutter, suffering the pangs of starvation, would you give him food or investigate his past to learn if he is worthy? You would feed the cur, because you know the clamoring of an empty stomach will not await the pleasure of an investigator.

"Hello! Didn't expect you back so soon. There's some wood down stairs that needs sawing. Come on."

These last words were addressed to the young German, who, his stomach and heart full-one of food and the other of gratitude-had come back to pay his debt.-Cleveland Press.

The Voice of the Church Rings Out for Labor Declarations of Three

Ecclesiastical Bodies.

The growth of interest in the moral and social aspects of the labor question is indicated by the increasing attention paid to that subject by churches. Both the Protestant Episcopal and the Congregational Churches have made inquiries into the subject through committees, and their reports just made public are highly instructive. Pope Pius X., through an official letter, repeats the interest in labor expressed by his predecessor.

"The organization of labor is essential to the well-being of the working people," is the conclusion of the Standing Commission on the Relations of Labor and Capital, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, after three years' investigation.

The members of the Commission are: The Bishop of New York, Henry C. Potter; the Bishop of Massachusetts, William Lawrence; the Bishop Coadjutor of Chicago, Charles P. Anderson; the Rev. R. H. McKim, D. D.; the Rev. George Hedges, D. D.; the Rev. C. D. Williams, D. D., Samuel Mather, Jacob Riis and George Pinckard.

Concerning the causes of industrial disturbances, the Commission reports:

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We are agreed in the conviction that the causes of the violence of the past three years in Pennsylvania, in Colorado, and in Illinois, are not so much economical as moral.

"The strike commonly begins in distrust. The reason at the heart of it is that the master has as little confidence in the good will of the men as the men have in the good faith of the master. The employer and the employed, separated by our industrial conditions at such a social distance as to make fraternal understanding difficult, make their bargain one with another, under these conditions, not as partners, but as competitors. Where distrust and antagonism are well founded, there is nothing for it, so far as the Church is concerned, except conversion. They who are at fault are to be admonished, on the one side against prejudice and passion, and on the other side against covetousness and the sins which proceed from the inordinate love of riches.

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Church. They may not sit in the sa seat, or even in the same building; that is largely a matter of locality. But there is as much loyalty to the Church and to the Divine Head of the Church in the one class as in the other. The voice of the Christian religion reaches both capital and labor. The Church helps to remove the moral causes of industrial strife when she brings these different members of her family into better acquaintance."

Concerning the "aim and spirit of labor organization," the report says:

"We perceive among our clergy and laity alike much ignorance (frankly confessed and deplored) as to the principles which are involved in the conflicts of the industrial world. At the same time, it is plain that an enlightened public opinion is one of the determining factors of the situation. Every industrial dispute involves three parties-the employer, the employed and the public; and the public eventually casts the deciding vote. Thus a serious social responsibility rests upon every Christian citizen, and more especially upon the Christian minister.

The

'We call attention to the analogy be tween certain offenses, past or present, of both the capitalist and the churchman. Thus the employer's black-list corresponds to the union's boycott, and both are akin to the major excommunication. lock-out and the strike are of the same nature, and there is no great difference between such endeavors to employ the argument of famine and an interdict which deprives a people of the blessings of spiritual life. The question of the closed shop is like the question of the closed state. Men whose Puritan ancestors strove to maintain a state whose privileges should belong only to members of the Church, ought to be able to understand the struggle of their brethren to maintain a shop in which no man shall serve except a member of the union. They may not agree with these brethren, but they ought to appreciate their selfsacrifice. The laborer has learned from the capitalist to despise order and break law. He has learned from the churchman to pursue the dissenter with menace and violence. The recent tragedies in Colorado do not follow at a far distance the massacres which in the sixteenth century ensued upon the withdrawal of Holland from the ecclesiastical union.

"While, then, we condemn the tyranny and turbulence of the labor union, and call upon the law to preserve the liberty of every citizen to employ whom he will and to work for whom he will, we depre cate the hasty temper which, in condemning the errors of the unions, condemns at the same time the whole movement with which they are connected. The offenses