There is a lamentably large number of illiterates in the United States. Let us reduce the number as fast as possible. But let us stop assuming that the spelling book will rub the Decalogue into the conscience. Our immediate troubles and dangers come from literates who are as bright as lightning, and almost as destructive. We shall not get moral education by way of the spelling book. The statistical proof that we do is defective. We may count up the illiterate rogues in prison with much satisfaction, if we forget that the literate rogues are too smart to be caught and caged. Moral character does not result from intellectual training. Thirty years ago we had this straight, and taught that an educated bad man was a much more dangerous beast than an uneducated bad man. * * * * * A few kind-hearted people have for several years conducted a crusade against horse-shoes. They claim that the horse-shoe is a piece of unprofitable cruelty. They furnish examples and drive their own horses unshod. Among their examples is this: “In Africa, a horse working in a post-cart does, barefoot, over hard ground, twenty-four miles in two hours.” One view is that our horse-shoeing bill would pay off the national debt in a few generations. It is rather remarkable that these reformers do not receive more attention. We hope they will soon get the general ear; hence this note. * * * * * President Eliot, of Harvard, in a recent address, makes a suggestion which is likely to arrest attention. The clergy are likely to have a monopoly of classical education, perhaps of liberal education, if present tendencies are not overcome. One of these tendencies is to give candidates for the ministry a monopoly of Greek study in colleges. President Eliot thinks that increased and more thorough study of English may help in resisting the tendency toward purely mechanical education. English study of a thorough sort requires and promotes classical study. We add our thought that real liberal education is a fruit of study _after_ the school-boy discipline, and that a classical revival and an English literature revival are both clear possibilities of the Chautauquan organization and methods. The most thorough study, with the best helps, is within the plan of our university. * * * * * Salmi Morse was last year at this time struggling to exhibit his “Passion Play” in New York. The religious feeling of the country won a conspicuous victory in defeating the purpose of Mr. Morse. Near the end of last month the dramatist drowned himself in the East river, and an actress whose relations to him were questionable, is trying to gain notoriety by a theory that a rejected suitor of hers murdered Mr. Morse. There are a dozen good morals in the story. * * * * *