Others, on the contrary, who devote themselves to glorious deeds and seek enjoyment only in the intervals of more serious exertion, will have their best reward in the pure, unchanging happiness purchased by such self-denial. Pleasure, indeed, has a higher zest when spontaneous and self-created; and it rises in value in proportion to its affinity with that perfection of beauty in which moral excellence is allied to external charms." Our attention as a nation to the acquisition of material wealth to the utter disregard of our æsthetic natures may very largely account for the fact that America has produced but few of those literary and artistic stars which are almost always coincident with commercial prosperity. We seem to have neither passed the Elizabethan nor the Victorian age in literature upon this side of the water--not because we have not produced talent along these lines, but because the quantity has been so small and seems to be growing less every year. Since the opening of the present century, there has practically been nothing produced which will demand recognition among literary and artistic people after our own generation. There seems to be only one other great problem before humanity to-day. Next to the distribution of wealth, it, however, is undoubtedly the most perplexing question with which every democratic country will sooner or later have to deal. In its two forms--as prostitution and the restriction of birth--it constitutes what for a better name is commonly called "the social evil." Under our civilization and in our system of social caste we have no class of serfs; but as low, if not lower, than these we have those women who sell their favors for money to anyone who will pay the price. Unfortunately, we have not yet reached the place where the majority of our male population decry moral looseness on the part of women with whom they are not connected by blood or matrimony; although this may or may not have been done for profit, as the case may be. It is still largely a matter as to how general the knowledge is, as to how great is the crime. Nevertheless, with those unfortunates whose character is generally known, our modern society has no place--they are outcasts in the true sense of the word. Worse than all, is the fact that society refuses to proscribe immorality of this nature in man as it does in woman--consequently, she alone before the world is made to suffer for what he is as much to blame for as she is, and very frequently more so. The incongruity of this, under a democratic form of government, is readily apparent to anyone and that such a condition of affairs may not exist permanently under our civilization cannot be doubted. It would therefore seem that either one of two things will have to come to pass in the future; either we shall have to regard our prostitutes as a class, as they were probably esteemed in ancient Greece, or we shall have to attach an equal calumny