Progress? We boast of progress? Progress whither? From the slavery of the auction-block and cat-o'-nine-tails to that of the great industrial system, where souls as well as bodies are bought and sold; where wealth is created as by the magic wand of a genie or the touch of gold-accursed King Midas, while thousands and tens of thousands beg in God's great name for the poor privilege of wearing out their wretched lives in the brutal treadmill,--to barter their blood for a scanty crust of black bread and beg in vain; then, finding the world against them, turn their hands against the world,--become recruits to the great army of crime. From the child-like simplicity, where man saw and adored the Deity in all his works, heard his laughter in the ripple of the stream, his voice in the thunder-storm and saw his anger in the writhen bolt, to the present age of skepticism, where he can see his Creator nowhere; and, blinder than his barbarian ancestors--knowing more of processes but less of principles--protests that Force is the only Demiurgus, dead matter the only Immortal. Progress toward Greatness! Greatness of what? Certainly not of the individual, for the present conditions tend toward mediocrity. Greatness of the State? What does eternity know of States, that to promote their welfare immortal souls should be sacrificed? Why toil and travail, suffer and sin for toy balloons which destiny will whistle down the winds? There are entirely too many self-commissioned watchmen, who, like Sir Edwin, sit at ease in their boxes and cry all's well,--meaning thereby that it is so with them; too many seers who look into their own cozy back parlors and imagine that they are standing on a Mirza's Hill and reading the riddle of human life; too many listening enchanted to their own sweet voices and mistaking the sound for a world-wide paean of praise, or at least the drowsy hum of human content. Such are blind Neros who complacently fiddle while Rome is, if not actually burning, yet filled to overflowing with combustibles, ready to burst into flame! THE PLATONIC FRIENDSHIP FAKE. A charming little lady, the front elevation of whose name is Stella, takes pen in hand and gives the Icon. a red-hot "roast" for having intimated that Platonic Love, so-called, is a pretty good thing for respectable women to let alone. Judged by the amount of caloric she generates, Stella must be a star of the first magnitude, or even an entire constellation. She "believes in the pure, passionless love described by Plato as sometimes existing between the sexes--the affinities of mind as distinguished from the carnal lusts of matter," and opines that the Apostle "must be gross indeed not to comprehend this philosophic and highly satisfactory companionship." "Twinkle, twinkle little star, How I wonder what you are, Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky."