and that they can't understand us, anyway. THE discussions relative to M. Paul Bourget's "Outre-Mer" that have every where arisen have brought into new And that is very possible. Yet, whethprominence, and sometimes into amusing er we ourselves be commonly aware of it prominence, a fact which, forever stand- or not, we have new psychological qualiing between foreign observers and our- ties; and our more earnest foreign critics selves, prevents us from coming to a satis- are right in anxiously striving to grasp factory understanding of each other. Of and analyze the constituents thereof, and course the usual differences of race, point in preferring the study of these elusive of view, temperament, are factors in the entities to that of some other, more obvimisunderstanding; but greater than these ous, things that we have to show. Peris, on the one side, the persistence with haps we might say that we have one new which the cultivated European of deli- psychological quality, for in it all others cate perceptions (I speak here of no other are contained. The American has come class of our foreign critics) seeks in us for to be known in the world for the large new psychological qualities engendered hope that is in him; for the easy confiby our new material conditions, and, on dence in the face of the strange and the the other, the affronted brusquerie with unfamiliar born of that hope; for his lack which many of us repel the assumption of fear of what has not been experienced, that we have developed, or should have lived through, before. To show at last developed, anything akin to a psychosis that this lack of fear was possible-terror of our own-much as we might repel a of the thing unknown being the emotion hypothesis that latter-day democratic in that has beset the sentient animal since stitutions, as they are to be seen over here, the beginning of consciousness-seems to give rise to queer physiological departures, have been our deepest national mission. such as humps or caudal appendages. All this has been pointed out by President We have no consciousness that ours is Charles W. Eliot, of Harvard; and that we anything but an every-day soul, like all have overcome the terror pronounced by other souls of people of good manners him one of the reasons why this republic everywhere; and we do not wish it cata- should endure. In a short paper also, logued as a "variety." We are more than written by Mr. Henry James a while ago willing to show our foreign travellers and in memory of Wolcott Balestier, there are observers everything else modern: bath- passages that are not to be forgotten in tubs, hotels, elevators, ice-chests, and which stress is laid upon the rare, buoyelectric motors; but when we find that ant faculty that this young man possessed they are less interested in our material of being able, at once and fully, to estabimprovements than in the new abstract lish an ease of relationship with the whole idea that may be lurking, shadowy and big earth, and any of its varied orders of impalpable, behind the same, then we are citizens. In this faculty Mr. James saw annoyed. We say that it is an intrusion, the significance of Wolcott Balestier's whole life-a life that left an impress on the imagination of those best able to judge of it so seemingly disproportionate to the measure of its actual achievement. It was, in the perfection in which he owned it, a prophetic faculty; speaking of the time when it should be universal, when all human beings will approach new circumstances, the untried atmosphere, and one another with a serene assurance, and without those shocks of readjustment that now tear so many sensitive fibres in each one of us. This, then, is the great psychological quality that we have evolved for ourselves. It is the spirit that some of the serious writers and thinkers of FranceI don't speak particularly of M. Bourget in this connection-are tentatively following the scent of, gropingly trying to lay hold of, as they seize on one or another of its manifestations. If our foreign critics could come fully to comprehend this spirit in its depth and its breadth, they would at last possess the true key to our national character. They would touch with the finger that which makes American life best worth living, makes it, in one sense, like no other life anywhere; and that is the help fulness that pervades it, that feeling that is in its air, which says to the man on whom circumstance presses heavily that he need not despair, that he can find friends and opportunity. They would also hold the explanation of much of that absence of picturesqueness, of what may be termed the lyrical quality, in our life, that vexes them so sorely (and not only them, but us, on occasion). For it is not to be controverted that with the loss of fear before the unknown we lose some of the most intimately, poignantly poetic human emotions, as well as some of the most pusillanimous, egotistic, and retarding. The lack of fear makes us free, but it takes that mystery from the unfamiliar which is the most powerful of all incentives to the imagination. From the ignorant peasant's suspicious horror of all that lies beyond his narrow horizon springs the passionate love of the soil that translates itself in the rich and profoundly touching poetry of the people, that gives the ache and the throb to the accents in which the German expresses his Heimweh, the Swiss his mal du pays. It is this that wails in the wild banshee of the Irish. It is, too, the nervous shrinking from contact with aliens, aliens whose feelings, manners, and associations may jar upon their own, that causes the most typical of the civilized classes in the older societies to fold themselves in upon themselves, elaborating complexities of sentiment and sensibility that to us, very often, seem fine-drawn to utility. Delicacies and halfshades concern us less. If we forfeit something in interest thereby, and we certainly do, it is that our new psychological quality is a medal with the reverse side of all medals. The chief trouble is, perhaps, not that our foreign critics dwell more on the reverse than on the obverse, but that we are inclined to do the same ourselves; or, rather, to insist that the reverse is as good as the obverse-when we do not, indeed, deny that there is an obverse at all. THAT discreet woman, who is the wife of Colonel Ned Maltby and the mother of his son, has interposed several times to save him from what he is proud to call his commercial imagination. Ordinary business does not tempt Colonel Ned, but he scents the fields of scientific adventure like a bee the clover. Recently, after reading some experiments made by German scientists, he proposed selling certain properties in order to go into bacteria-farming. Mrs. Ned, who had just come through some experiments conducted by the family doctor with antitoxine and the boy, threw up her hands at the word bacteria, and expressed her opinion of so inhuman a proposition. 66 'My dear, this is an age of discrimination, not of generalization," replied the Colonel, mildly. "The bacillus of diphtheria, like the comma bacillus, of which we heard so much during the cholera invasion, is not a fair representative of the large family of bacteria, many of which are hard-working and responsible members of the community. Do you realize how you depend on them in your breadmaking ; that they are essential to the vinegar industry, and I may mention also the wine and brewing interests? What I was considering were the butter and cheese trades, in which the most important developments are making. You perhaps do not know, my dear, that the preparatory work in buttermaking, after the cow has done her part, is performed by bacteria. Hitherto this has been done in a desultory and disorganized manner. We have often observed that butter has not always the same flavor; that it commends itself, or the reverse. We have blamed the butter man and he has blamed the cow. Now the scientific men exonerate the cow. she dispenses the milk it is all right. But immediately it is possessed by bacteria of all sorts. There are circles in bacteriadom as elsewhere. These struggle and contend for supremacy. As this or that downs the other, it gives social stamp, as it were, to the butter. As "Now some German scientists have taken butter of different flavors and have succeeded in isolating the various bacilli that have produced them. The bacillus that produces the very best butter is now known and recognized. The intention is to cultivate this species with a view to butter-making. There will be bacteria farms where this bacillus will be nourished and kept in prime working condition for the purpose of letting it out to creameries and dairies. The milk will not be left to sour, as we have ignorantly expressed it; but the bacteria will be immediately set to work at the fresh milk. I myself fully believe that when this scheme of buttermaking by means of the intelligent employment of bacteria is under way that there will be no excuse for the presence of anything but the best butter on any table, and a vast source of complaint and ill-nature will be removed from the world. It is by such steps we march toward the millennium, my dear. "The bacteria that induce the proper ripening of cheese have not yet been identified. There is no doubt, however, that they will be. They are much more important to cheese than to butter. The process is slow, extending over months, and is peculiarly subtle. The bacilli enclosed in the cheese feed on it, multiply in it, and make a composite sort of ferment that gives to cheese its aroma and flavor. Different sorts of bacteria, it is inferred, will be required for different sorts of cheeses. Roquefort cheese is ripened in caves which a certain bacterium finds conducive to its health. It is this that gives Roquefort its flavor. Thus with Camembert, Brie, and other varieties. "The Secretary of Agriculture is authority for the statement," Colonel Ned went on, with brightening eye, "that it requires from 25,000,000 to 165,000,000 bacilli to ripen an ounce of cheese. These figures will give some idea of the extent of the new industry of raising bacteria to hire out when it is once established. I wonder what it would cost to start a bacteria farm ?" "You could readily raise the money, Colonel, by selling or mortgaging the Maltby block," said Mrs. Ned, with apparently prompt sympathy in the venture, "only it would be a pity if our boy didn't happen to inherit your business ability." "You are right, as always, my dear. Perhaps I'd better wait until Weissmann and Spencer settle that disputed question of heredity. How with our widening opportunities have our responsibilities to our offspring increased!" and Colonel Ned, with a sigh, took up a German polysyllabic treatise on molecular emotion. |