Germany, and Japan. Personally, I believe we stand at the parting of the ways, and that the student of England and the English is looking on to-day at the first indications of the decay of, in many respects, the greatest Empire the world has ever seen. The sun that never sets is setting. Nothing but a tremendous, almost miraculous, wrench can turn our stout, red-cheeked, honest, sport-loving John Bull away from his habits of centuries, to compete with his virile body against the nervous intelligence of a scientific age. His game of settlement on the land, there to raise his crops, there to play, there to live in peace, there to expand himself till he occupies his present large proportion of it, he has played to perfection. But the nations are playing a new game now, and some of them seem to play it more brilliantly and more successfully than he does. Though one may praise, and praise honestly, the game he has played, and the manly way, upon the whole, he has played it, this need not interfere in the least with the conviction that he is being caught up with-which means, of course, ere long left behind-in the far more scientific game that Germany, Japan, and America are now playing.

That pleasant physical fatigue which lulls the nerves to sleep, and which is one of the most beneficent effects of physical exercise, may be at work in this case, leaving Mr. Bull as confident as ever, and pleasantly unconscious of his own dan

the body by playing games seriously and taking sport seriously has provided them with a calmness, steadiness, and fearlessness of character all their own, no one can doubt. That these characteristics have made them ideal governors of inferior races, no one but perhaps a jealous German will deny; nor can it be denied, either, that it has kept the peace at home, leaving them unharmed and practically untouched by the class wars and modern political philosophies, which have caused grave unrest among the masses of the people all over the world.

England, at any rate, has kept in view the laudable ambition to bring up her rich with the hardness and resourcefulness of the poor, while we in America have dropped into the vulgarity of bringing up our poor to be rich. Not a few of our social sorrows in America are being fostered by a widely advertised, though fortunately small class who, having been recently poor, are trying to appear anciently rich. At least there is no such thinly veiled hypocrisy, no such self-conscious social awkwardness in England. That, at any rate, is not their weakness. On the other hand, the easy unconsciousness born of great physical vigor and great national success is apparently consoling them with a blind belief that theirs is the only type of manhood, theirs the only road to national health and prosperity. Alas, there are many indications just now that though this is a brave and comfortable creed, it is not comprehensive enough.

HE Curé of St. Fidèle laid aside his vestments in the sombre sacristy and reviewed his morning achieve ment. On this eleventh Sunday after Trinity he had preached a great sermon; a sermon on temperance. His text from the Ephesians: "Drunkenness, revelling-they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven," had rolled sonorously from the high pulpit to every corner of the crowded parish church. At the plainness of the statement men had straightened themselves, women had nodded emphatically, and little children had opened their eyes. He had preached for fully an hour, but his people's attention had not wandered; without quiv

ering an eyelid, without moving a muscle, they had sat spellbound in the uncushioned wooden pews. The Curé, himself, had not been insensible to the power of his appeal; even now, as he moved mechanically about the sacristy, he was tasting in retrospect the joys of the orator, looking once more on that sea of upturned faces, feeling again men, women and children vibrate at his lightest touch. None of his parishioners, he remembered, had borne so strongly the impress of fear and repentance as Pascal Rochette, the owner of the village saloon. He could not forget the man's big head, with its red-gold beard, its shaggy, unkempt hair, its light-blue eyes, which had stood out so strongly from its fellows that, in the end, swept along on the tide of his own elo

quence, it had seemed that the parish church held but two beings: himself and the burly publican. As in flaming sentences he had pictured the terrors that await those who ignore the apostle's warning, he had seen Pascal's great face work with emotion, and finally, when he had ended his sermon by a denunciation of all those who, in the pride of their hearts, are a stumbling block to their brothers, he had heard the big man weep aloud.

St. Fidèle had nestled for years among the green encircling hills untroubled by the sorrows of intemperance. Guided gently, but firmly, by Monsieur le Ferrière and upheld by the people, Mayor and Council had voted persistently against license, until, with the building of the new saw-mill and the subsequent influx of foreign labor, a party had arisen which scoffed at such conservatism, and declared open war on the time-honored policy. As the mill interest grew, the radical party gained in power, and at the last election, in spite of the Curé and his trusted lieutenants, swept all before it. Philippe Coutourière, a mayor shorn of office and glory, was forced to give his undivided attention to shop-keeping, and Pete Tremblay, the boss of the mill, reigned in his stead.

The first official act of the new government had been a reversion of St. Fidèle's temperance attitude; the village was declared in favor of license, and Pascal Rochette, an overgrown farmer with a pirate's beard and a rabbit's brain, opened his saloon between the blacksmith's and the shoemaker's. Here for the last month Pascal had ingeniously plied his trade; his whiskey blanc, though bad, was cheap. At all times of day, at all times of night, a half-dozen or more of the villagers could be seen lolling over the long, wooden counter, sipping their petits verres. The old priest, bent on the duties of his office, often passed the rough, unpainted building, but never without a sigh, for, little by little, he saw the best of his people drawn into the meshes of Pascal's net. Drunkenness became an every-day occurrence, moral standards lowered rapidly. The Curé was forced to realize that the hour of secret protest and pleading was over. Harassed but undaunted, he decided to preach a sermon, not an ordinary Sunday discourse a gentle exposition of the daily duties of Christian life-but a denunciation so

severe, so eloquent, that the parishioners of St. Fidèle should tremble, and turn them from their evil ways. All through the months of June and July the Curé, his soutane caught high with safety-pins, his hands behind his back, had paced his garden walk, casting and recasting his sentences, planning and replanning his climaxes. He was a man who battled seldom, but when once engaged gave no quarter.

"C'était terriblement beau your sermon, Monsieur le Curé," said François Lavoie, as he placed the priest's simple midday meal on the bare table in the back room of the presbytère. "St. Fidèle talks of nothing else!"

The Curé smiled. "What will they do?" he said.

"Dame, Monsieur!" returned François, shrugging his shoulders, "that is quite another affair!"

The old priest meekly bent his head. Still he could not forget Pascal's face. He felt confident that to one, at least, he had not preached in vain. Would it be wise, he mused, to follow up his seeming victory, strike while the iron was hot, or to allow the weight of his words to sink unaided into the man's soul. Eating his boiled meat, he considered the matter; but over and above his solicitude for this erring member of his flock floated the assurance that, whatever the results, Jean le Ferrière had preached a great sermon. Before he went to bed he looked out on the stars shining low above the murmuring river and thought once more of his morning's triumph. Perhaps, after all, his eloquence was wasted in this little hill town; he must speak to his Bishop; perhaps he had been created to preach to the wise rather than to the foolish.

The Curé was in the midst of that first sound sleep which is the luxury of rich and poor alike when a group of men, all more or less under the influence of whiskey blanc, staggered out of Pascal Rochette's bar and made their zigzag way in the direction of the presbytère.

"That was a sermon of first-class, never have I had so much drink for so little,” hiccoughed Joseph Desbiens, as he pressed old Hector Dufour's homespun-clad arm. "Monsieur le Curé is a man of talent, we should stop chez lui and tell him of our admiration."

Dufour, the bent shoemaker, nodded his

gray head approvingly; then, with a touch of genius, "we will give him a little serenade," he said; "C'est fin ça."

The idea thus fathered received an enthusiastic allegiance, it grew, it prospered. Each member of the noisy group, eager to do his part, went his way with drunken gravity, to return a few minutes later a stone's throw from the house of the slumbering priest. Hector Dufour and Joseph Desbiens had brought their fiddles, rude, unvarnished instruments with wire strings and mangy bows. Ulysse Otis willingly exposed his Quebec accordion to the damp night air, while Dosité Girard and Pamphile Maltais were armed with battered mouth organs. The remainder of the serenaders trusted to their voices. The old shoemaker, by right of seniority and superior intelligence, constituted himself the leader.

"My children," he said pompously, if a little unsteadily, "we will play together an air which is familiar to all of you, 'Malbrouck se va-t-en guerre'; those who do not play shall sing, and when we have finished the fifth couplet Pamphile Maltais, who is a gars du talent, shall make a parlement. He shall tell Monsieur le Curé that the Saint Père could preach no better, that he has the love of his thirsty people, and that we are much obliged to him.”

A titter burst forth from the huddled homespun group, but Hector quelled it with an imperious stamp of his botte sauvage.

"Silence," he commanded, "and when I say one, two, three, commence.”

The men stood at attention, and at the given signal, accentuated by a rapping of old Dufour's bow on the back of his fiddle, broke forth into discord and confusion. No instrument was tuned like another, no voice struck the same note.

Monsieur le Ferrière, awakened thus rudely, sprang indignant and puzzled from his bed to catch, amid the din of drunken voices, the remnants of the well-known chanson:

Malbrouck se var un guerra, li ri too ra la, li ri

too ra la

Malbrouck se va-t-en guerre ne sait quand il

viendra.

Là bas

Conscientiously, discordantly, they played through their five couplets; then, at the sight of old Hector's upraised bow, the music ceased and Pamphile the orator stepped forward.

By this time the village was awake, lights began to gleam through unshuttered windows, dim figures moved to and fro in the moonlight, and François Lavoie, his face scarlet with anger, hung out of a lower window and shook his fist at the serenaders.

"Monsieur le Curé, Messieurs and Dames," began Pamphile, with a wave of his hand, but St. Fidèle was never destined to hear his parlement.

"Pamphile Maltais," said the priest, knitting his white eyebrows and leaning out of his window, "thou art mad with whiskey; all thy companions are drunk. Where didst thou get thy liquor?"

"At Pascal Rochette, of course," shouted the unabashed Pamphile, "thank you, Monsieur le Curé," and he took off his battered straw hat and waved it enthusiastically toward the indignant priest.

He

The Cure's lined face flushed. squared his shoulders. "Go to "Go to your homes," he said, sternly; he spoke like a man accustomed to obedience; "you have brought disgrace upon the village. Never in the history of St. Fidèle have her people so forgotten themselves. I am ashamed for you, my children, ashamed for St. Fidèle. Go, and to-morrow think of what you have done!"

Though the men hardly grasped the meaning of the angry priest's words, a lifelong subordination to the church swayed their bewildered brains. With one accord, heads hanging and with uncertain footsteps, they disappeared from the moonlit road like a flock of frightened sheep.

et gentiles

Courrez, courrez, courrez venez ce soir vous

amuser.

lights were extinguished, voices ceased, but still the Curé did not move.