Quite a few coloured men of families are caretakers of offices and large buildings, and are considered honest on the whole, and are well liked by those who employ them.

There are a few coloured people who hold some very important positions, and are highly respected by those for whom they work, and also by those with whom they come into contact through business intercourses.

I have friends employed on leading New England daily newspapers, and they are well paid. I also know of a few instances where large manufacturers have hired negroes to work in mills and have told all whites who objected to work by the side of a coloured person to clear out; but I do not know of a single case where white workers have taken such advice.

Socially the coloured man is ostracised in all parts of the United States as a rule. But there are many of the best white families in the North and West who constantly entertain coloured gentlemen and ladies in their homes and think nothing of it. White ministers frequently do this.

But I admit that anything approaching intermarriage of the races would certainly shatter such friendship to atoms, and the fragments could never be gathered up. But is this not true among all or most of the English-speaking white races the world over? It is not confined to Americans alone, and abundant proof is easily had on this point.

There is no law to prevent such unions as are found on the statute books in all ex-slave States. But what is singularly true in such case is that the races are actually far less mixed in the North and West than in the South.

In the South the white man is and has always been noted for making certain laws, and is the first man to break the very laws which he enacted.

Any number of coloured waiters, especially in New England, are married to white girls who were chambermaids in hotels, and such unions generally turn out good. There are some few white men married to coloured women in New England, and these marriages are also good. There would be more, but white men and coloured women are brought less into contact than coloured waiters and white chambermaids.

Miscegenation of whites and blacks, which is so distinctly marked in the South, took place when the slave planters owned the black women, and it is at the door of the white man where the responsibility now rests. There is no such a thing as inborn social hatred. It is a thing that is acquired, a thing which emanates from economic and not social conditions.

There is an affinity between all mankind, which, when given a chance, will assert itself.

This is a scientific law, which is absolutely true, and yet thousands of scientists will not admit it in discussing racial questions, more especially where one of the darker races is concerned.

But is it not true that dislikes will, under favourable conditions, attract each other? This theorem has been demonstrated by every schoolboy who has studied chemistry, and, for all that, learned men tacitly reject it and firmly deny it when speaking of the natural relation which one race of the human family bears to another. But the white man ignores facts in this case, and why? Because, if he admits this principle to be true, he admits what is absolutely true, and that is, given the same chances, the black man may prove himself to be the white man's equal! What then? Each man may have to bear his own burden and so fulfil the law.' Will it ever come to pass?

BACK TO THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE NORTH AND WEST

In college coloured students have fair play, as far as the regular college curriculum is concerned; but The Greek Letter Societies,' which are purely social, will not admit them to membership. I think this is almost as much a caste as a racial prejudice or rather 'colour' prejudice, for hundreds of Irish students in New England institutions are treated in the same manner. But the Irish students have the best of the situation. If an Irish fellow has money and his father has political prestige which gives him social standing—which is often the case in American life-then the Irish fellow is sought after and welcomed into social societies in college. But not so with the coloured student. Though he may have money, and in complexion he is as fair as any of his class-mates, and may stand as well or even better than any other fellow in his classes, his 'colour' or race or both will surely doom him.

I have often observed this in college and attempted to discuss it with students and professors; but they don't like to discuss such matters. They do not bear directly upon college studies. Coloured students may attend any white church near the college, and will always be well treated. But hardly any minister would venture to ask a coloured student to teach a class of white children in his

Sunday School. Any coloured person may worship in white churches; but when it comes to joining a point might be raisedthough there are hundreds of coloured people members of white churches, and are well treated. I myself am a member of a white church, and sang in the choir for two years, and went to many social gatherings in connection with the church, and was always well received, and treated as well as others. I might say, however, that I lived with the minister, who was preparing me for college. In his

family I had a place, just as a son, and never had any occasion to feel slighted in any way.

I have always found the best of white friends in New England, and so have most coloured students from the South. New England people are much interested in the development of the coloured race.

I know the whole family of a coloured girl who graduated at Vassar a few years ago. They all live in Boston and go to white churches. The young lady in question is a member of Trinity Episcopal Church, Boston, of which the late Bishop Brookes was rector for many years. When at Vassar College her friends, white and coloured, say she was treated all right, and I know for a fact that the authorities knew, from beginning to end of her college course, that she was considered to be a coloured girl. A white lady-member of Trinity—was much interested in her education, and had her go to Vassar. After her graduation there was considerable newspaper discussion, that a coloured girl had actually graduated from one of the most, if not the most, aristocratic female colleges in America.

There were many most unfavourable comments, as hundreds of newspapers generally make, to create sensation, though much of the talk was unwholesome.

This young lady had many offers to go South and teach in a coloured college. But she declined, and received a first-class situation in the Boston New Public Library, which Boston people say is the finest library in the world. Of course, Boston is the Athens of America, and Bostonians think Boston is yet to be the centre of the world. To appoint a member of the coloured race in the Boston New Public Library certainly shows that Massachusetts, at least, is waking up on this knotty' American race problem. All the North and the West are slowly waking up, though there is tremendous apathy on this the great problem in American life.

But the problem is being simplified day by day.

There are more than thirty thousand young negro men and women who have graduated from splendid institutions of learning during the past generation, and they are hard at work endeavouring to elevate others of the race, morally, religiously, and industriously, and, with the aid and assistance which lovers of humanity will continue to give, the issue is sure and righteousness altogether.

The world moves forwards and not backwards, nor does it stand still. The negro is working hard for his place as a man in American life and institutions, and he is bound to win.

D. E. TOBIAS.

PLAGIARISM

In this age of facilities everything which is not, and, with one exception, everything which is worth acquiring, is within the reach of everybody. In less locomotive and possibly less fortunate times, it was not everybody, if we may trust the authority of an eminent classic, who could go to Corinth. Nowadays nothing is easier, though Corinth is perhaps less worth going to than it was, for eminent tourist agencies positively infest the highways of London, and the interval between Victoria Station and the huddled mud-village in question is barely appreciable. In the same way the falls of Niagara, the Jubilee procession (as seen on the Biograph), prehistoric man (as seen at the Westminster Aquarium), a knowledge of foreign tongues (as taught on the modern sides of public schools), Wagner, golf links, American dentistry, cheap editions of immortal works, all in fact that makes life lovely, is brought to our very doors. There is scarcely a notable or curious object in the world that we cannot see or use, often to the accompaniment of appropriate music, within an hour or two of leaving the pavements of London, and many without leaving them at all. The cost, moreover, is, in most cases, really

nominal.

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This murmur of undeniable platitude may serve to act as usher to a doubtful paradox-namely, that we are not of necessity one whit the better educated by all these exceptional advantages. We may in fact and here perhaps is chilly and forbidding consolation-be no wiser than Doctor Johnson, who, however, had the courage of his inept conviction, when he proclaimed the monstrous doctrine that one green field is like another green field. In those happier days any number of green fields were easily accessible from mid-London, and though Doctor Johnson might without difficulty look at them, yet he could not see them, and says as much. Ours, it is to be feared, may be the same hopeless case: we may look at Niagara and prehistoric man, we may doze in the hushed gloom of the theatre at Baireuth, we may have innumerable lessons in the Italian tongue, without seeing, hearing, or apprehending any of these things. There is something lacking, no less a thing indeed than that one which an age of facilities cannot supply, and it is critical perception. And critical

perception, we hope to show, is practically the same thing as Originality.

Mr. A. J. Balfour, in his late lamented capacity of essayist, made, in his charming essay on Handel, some remarks about originality, which are luminous. Whether they are absolutely and eternally true is so beside the point that we should not have mentioned it at all, except in view of that distressing and almost universal fallacy that a criticism in order to be valuable must necessarily be proof against all future criticism. There was never anything so commonly taken as a postulate which has so little claim even to probability. For criticism does not aim at answering riddles, but in putting questions in new lights. This, as most readers will remember, Mr. Balfour has done, when he defends with nimbleness and great address Handel's claim to originality. True, the master uses without acknowledgment somebody's Mass, somebody else's Requiem, a third air, a fourth fugue, but this, according to the essayist, does not make good the accusation of plagiarism. On the contrary, Handel discovered the possibilities of admittedly inferior work, and out of inferior work he made a star. Out of poor material he produces what is of the first order, out of old material he produces new, and by virtue of this he is a creator.

Let us take this admirable piece of criticism as a starting-point, and, indeed, it is impossible to have a better. The defence is ingenious and almost convincing; for, as the essayist points out, Handel does not rob the original maestro of his theme, but rather gives him a credit for it which he would not otherwise have had. It was already forgotten, when Handel, to save himself trouble perhaps (the possible paltriness of his motive does not concern us), bestowed on the unhonoured dead, immortality (and, we may add, a cherished opportunity for the musical critic to show his own acumen), and on the musicloving public the Hallelujah Chorus. The world benefits all round, and it is difficult to see what harm has been done to anybody. The theft is harmless, and so morally speaking it is no theft, while æsthetically Handel has turned a common thing into a thing of beauty, the aim and the raison d'être of the artist.

Now truth is simple, and this train of argument is so simple that at first sight it looks as if it must be true. But to the disturbance of one's perfect peace, for we all like to believe in the ultimate truth of any fine piece of criticism, simplicity need not be true. For analogy, in another case, leads to a different conclusion. Homer, for instance, made use of current legends; the Iliad is a tissue of such, and in consequence the more advanced and enlightened scholars of the day have, so to speak, pulled him limb from limb, and substituted for that venerable name a company of myth-makers. To call Homer a plagiarist seems somehow a futile form of attack; one might less ridiculously throw pellets of bread at the Matterhorn with a view to its demolition.