Columbia has need of ships of war but she has need also of watchfulness within, lest, in looking for enemy abroad, she forget that in her very borders there are dark-browed assassins lying in ambush ready to slay her and take Justice and Liberty captive. No evils threaten greater menace to the nation than those which are embodied in the rum traffic and in corporate bribery. The serpent trail of each is seen in council chambers and senate halls. They work in the dark and they work stealthily. They are traitors and public foes. They should be destroyed. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their path. _Isaiah 8:22._ [Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY FRED’K L. CHAPMAN & CO. THE ENEMIES OF THE REPUBLIC.] [Illustration] THE IMMIGRANT. During four hundred and more years this continent has been the melting pot for the population of the Eastern hemisphere. For three-fourths of that time the yearly infusions of raw metal was so slight that it was not hard to compound them with the native stock and preserve the high character of American citizenship. But when alien immigration pours its stream of half a million yearly, as has frequently been done during the last decade, and when that stream is polluted with the moral sewage of the old world, including its poverty, drunkenness, infidelity and disease, it is well to put up the bars and save America, at least until she can purify the atmosphere of contagion which foreign invasion has already brought. Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word: Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. _Jer. 7:2–3_. [Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY FRED’K L. CHAPMAN & CO. THE STRANGER AT OUR GATE. EMIGRANT.――Can I come in? UNCLE SAM.――I ’spose you can; there’s no law to keep you out.] [Illustration] BY AUTHORITY OF THE PEOPLE. When that famous submarine reef known as Hell Gate was blown out of the waters of Long Island Sound, the world echoed with rejoicing to learn that what had been a menace and a barrier to vessels and to commerce was blasted into fragments never to return. There is a greater Hell Gate which with its infinite submarine and subterranean tunnels honeycombs our social structure. The saloon is the dreadful barrier to commerce and prosperity, as well as a menace to health and peace. In spite of the fact that its awful traffic bears the approving stamp of our government, the time will come when this great thing, whose foundations are laid in hell, will be blown skyward by the power of public sentiment mightily aroused and intellectually directed. Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that putteth thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also. _Hab. 2:4._ [Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY FRED’K L. CHAPMAN & CO.