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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

toilers, from among the poor and illiterate of other lands longing to find in a new home, under a new flag, that comfort and reward for labor which could not be theirs in the already over-crowded fatherland.

The consideration shown them, their independent and responsible position, filled them with a novel sense of individual importance, and stimulated them to ambitions heretofore unknown. They have swept over the whole country, and that they have not entirely uprooted and blotted out the native stock is proof of its original strength. But while it is in a sense still the controlling force, how under these circumstances could a national type be formed? Look around you in any city of the land. Do you see Americans? Do not your eyes fall rather upon faces unmistakably Irish or Ger­man or Swedish, Italian, or other marked nationality? How many generations will be needed to harmonize these dissimilar types, even if today were to witness the coming of the last immigrant? Give time for the embryo American to come forward and claim his heritage.

Whether he will possess all the nervous energy of his predecessors is doubtful. So far as climate affects him, he will, of course, be much the same; but the relations of food supply to population, the inevitable change in habits and pursuits and all those conditions which the years will impose upon us, must affect the temperament of later generations. Even now the first settled parts of the country are accused of looking with an assumption of dignity upon the crudities of younger sections. And these in return have shown the customary heedless disregard of the wisdom of their elders, dubbing them old fogies, and scorning the quiet respectability of New England vil­lages as the decrepitude of old age. Ah! but there is a pace which kills, and the decadence of a nation comes only by the follies of its constituents. Its life may be long or short; its influence great or small; its career brilliant or inglorious; its fame enduring or transient. It will be strengthened by the morality, conservative business methods and true patriotism of its people; it may be destroyed by reckless specula­tion, individual ambition, sectional strife, or anything else which weakens its physical or moral fiber.

How many of our men live, or seem to live, only to do business. The man seems lost, submerged under its exactions. The thing he created to serve him as a means to an end is transformed into the master, to which he is chained. He no longer seeks amusements; home sees little of him; wife and children are small incidents in his daily life; friendship is an almost forgotten word; general reading is out of the question; and the grind of the counting room or office goes on year after year, till the wheels stop, utterly worn out. These men tell us, when they are implored to give up busi­ness and take needed rest, that they would rather “ wear out than rust out.” Rust out, indeed! Does money-making—for that is the great incentive in most cases—does this constitute the only legitimate and worthy employment of time? Is there not today a large field in philanthropy, science, art, literature and healthy recreation of many kinds, which can profitably and agreeably occupy one’s powers, conferring benefit in the change it affords, as well as by enlarging the bounds of human sympathy and knowledge? Why should one’s success in life be measured by the amount of wealth he has acquired ? It does not always represent industry or honesty or any other virtue, and to accept such a standard would be to prove that during our exceptional progress we have lost something precious that we once had. Such gross materialism is not a worthy result of all this toil and struggle, nor an acceptable answer to the prayers and hopes of our fathers.

Where are our grand old men, the Gladstones of our country, hale and hearty, still young at eighty-four, enjoying life and foremost in questions relating to our welfare? We have a right to the accumulated wisdom of those who have had the experiences of life as teachers. “ Young men for action, old men for counsel,” is still and always will be the natural order. We can ill afford to lose the services of our leaders who have been falling so fast around us. And the almost universal verdict is: “ Killed by over­work.” Not by age, nor by accidental disease, but cut off in their prime, the victims