nest. A friend accompanying him had climbed a closely adjoining live pine and suddenly saw and heard the distant parent eagles flying swiftly to the rescue. He called out the danger, and as the huge ferocious birds drew nearer, he threw all his weight on the branch nearest the nest and swung it over. Sanford desperately clutched at it, it held, and he was saved, but not before he had thrown fluttering to the ground a squawking eaglet.

It should be mentioned here, that it was not from home life that the boy ran away to sea, but from boarding-school, where he was preparing for college. And in later years his only son evidently inherited his love of the sea; for as a young naval officer he was aboard the squadron which Roosevelt sent around the world in 190810.

Knowing the father's devotion to his son, it is pleasant to recall my last sight of them, fishing together in a shady New England brook, and enjoying the silent communion of kindred spirits. MARY G. ELLINWOOD.

I was shocked by such judgment, for I had supposed that the masterpiece of this genre was written by myself and published in Life about 1903. This is said with all modesty, for I was merely the 'lyre' — spell carefully, printer 'on which the spirits played,' as you will agree when you read how the thing happened.

I was shaving one day when a student at the University of Virginia and, to while away the moments of scraping, tried to imitate a limerick that had just appeared in a college paper, something about Fla., which rimed with Ha. — as good a rime in Fla. or Va. as it is in Boston. I started running through the states in order to receive inspiration from the Atlantic seaboard. Me. might have helped me:

There was an old maiden of Me.

Who never knew when it would Re.,

but this seemed innocuous. Neither N. H. nor Vt. could ever inspire me as they do Robert Frost and Calvin Coolidge, and I was so discouraged by Mass. and Conn. that I scuttled past N. Y., N. J., Pa., without stopping. Thus I happened upon Del., which brought me a vision of Und., and then the real masterpiece came bubbling into my mind:

A young lady of Wilmington, Del.,
Of the latest French fashions was Well.,
'For the outside, you see,

They look fine, but,' said she,

'I had Rath. Del. Und.'

Now this poem is obviously superior to the other, for Cupid with his Darts and Hearts has the musty smell of the valentine, mortal enemy of the limerick, and the fifth line, which is the real test, just as the fifth act has been said to be of a tragedy, is certainly inferior to mine, not only because there are fewer abbreviations and because John Jacob Astor had already figured in a limerick that you would not be willing to print, but chiefly because it is an ephemeral poem that can live no longer than the fame of the Astor family, while my theme is eternal. Eternal, yes, unless you are prepared to argue that the day will soon dawn when young ladies will no Long. Del. Und. or any other.

Your magazine has many pseudo-enemies. They are the writers of the poems which you have sent back 'with regrets.'

This vast army of disappointed poets have an unanswered question rankling in their hearts: 'Why did the Atlantic Monthly return MY poem, and print another not half as good?'

There must be some reason I have never dreamed of, for my poem was from-my-heart sincere, and had a lilt.

I know this that, were you to publish a brief article on some such subject as 'A Specimen Rejected Poem,' giving the reasons for its non-acceptance, many, many hundreds of would-be, 'rejection-slip' poets would buy your magazine instantly.

May I send you two of my returned poems for the basis of such an article?

THE first General Assembly ever held in Pennsylvania, by the law passed at Upland in 1682, required that 'the laws of this province, from time to time, shall be published and printed, that every person may have knowledge thereof; and that they shall be one of the books taught in the schools of this province and territory thereof.' Here by this 'fit and wholesome ordinance,' passed with the 'providential circumspection' of the Quakers, it was contemplated that not only lawyers but even children should be drilled in the statutes from infancy; and in our happy State ignorance of the law excuses no one, because under the Upland Statute such ignorance cannot exist.

Moreover the whole body of our Pennsylvania legislation probably does not exceed 41,736 Statutes. The last Legislature passed only 451 new Acts. So that our children by reading, say, an act a day (omitting Saturdays and Sundays, and a moderate vacation) can keep abreast with current legislation; and, by reading four additional, or a total of only five a day, can readily catch up with the past Statutory Law of Province and State in about fortytwo years, when they will be properly prepared for a review of Federal legislation. I do not guarantee this estimate, but anyone contemplating this

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A

course may count the laws for himself. He will find that (perhaps injudiciously) I have omitted joint and concurrent resolutions, in which our children would be equally interested.

At a time when 'capacity production' is regarded as the great desideratum, every well-wisher of his country must be interested in the widening scope of legislation, and the increased activity of our legislatures.

We stand at the threshold of a New Liberty. Liberty now consists in the voluntary subjection of the will of the citizen to law: —

Naught nobler is than to be free;

The stars of heaven are free because
In amplitude of liberty

Their joy is to obey the laws. This sentiment must be politically true (I say nothing as to its physical truth), for the poet was seriously considered as Laureate. Webster stated the principle more prosaically in his Charleston Speech. 'Liberty,' said he, 'exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.'

It follows from this that the more laws we have, to which to subject our wills, the freer we are. The New Liberty then is not merely a liberty regulated by law; it is a liberty created by law. Let us examine the elements of our New Liberty.

I

First. We find that at its foundation lies the prohibitory principle. Government being founded for the general welfare, it follows since the days of Plato that the good citizen must be encouraged and the bad citizen restrained. This is most evidently so in a democracy, where each member has willingly committed his well-being to the State. It is a wrong, therefore, to our neighbor not to restrain him in proper bounds. In the words of the greatest of the humanitarian poets of the last century,

Where we disavow

Being keeper to our brother, we're his Cain. We may congratulate ourselves that the smooth and satisfactory progress of the newest and greatest application of this principle points and paves the way to its extension. The inclusion of Prohibition in the Federal Constitution has gone far to make the United States a general legislative unit, in which the rule of the majority, or even of a minority, may now be given full play.

It is hoped by many that the prohibition of tobacco in every form may be the next step. Indeed it is difficult to understand why, with liquor, we did not also do away with 'the sooty handmaid of the vine.' Let us take a moment to show that such restriction is, in fact, more logical than that of liquor.

It is especially to be noted that tobacco is very exhausting to the ground, and the economical use of our agricultural lands in the face of an increasing population demands that they be put to more productive crops - such as arrowroot and spinach, both of which are recognized as nutritious; spinach indeed, on account of the iron which it contains, may be ranked as one of the noblest of tonics.

That large proportion of my readers

which is addicted to religious reading will no doubt instantly recall the encomium which the Shakespeare of Divines passes upon spinach by classing it among the articles of a robust diet: 'And he that hath a sickly stomach,' says Jeremy Taylor, 'admires at his happiness that can feast with cheese and garlic, unctious brewages and the low-tasted spinage.'

I do not, however, insist on spinach as the only safe and prudent substitute. It may be that the majority of the American people prefer parsnips on account of their high value as a nutrient and antiscorbutic (and certainly tobacco is neither of these). So, let the fact be determined by a general vote and the crop be limited accordingly.

Yet in spite of these obvious facts, in 1922, in the United States, we had under tobacco 1,725,000 acres, which yielded 1,324,840,000 pounds of tobacco (not all of the best), equal to an allowance of one pound a month for every man, woman, and child in Continental United States. Think of 1,725,000 acres in a Christian land smoking to Heaven, like the plains of Sodom! And think, again, of 1,324,840,000 pounds of tobacco converted into 1,324,840,000 pounds of arrowroot and distributed among the undernourished children of our land!

The tobacco habit, moreover, though now more widespread, insidious, and continuous than drunkenness, is comparatively recent. Man had been the slave of wine since the days of Noah our second universal fallen ancestor. I follow tradition, and disregard the suggestion of the Higher Criticism that there were really two Noahs a dry Noah and a wet Noah. The Noah our Noah, he of the water-wagon was, according to this theory, bonedry, and depended, he and his family with him, for months on water alone. Understand me: I emphasize the evi