the song of a ten-inch shell from the boom-de-aye of a sham battle. I'll call the attention of my Hardshell Baptist Congress to Washington's advice that while avoiding overgrown military establishments, we should be careful to keep this country on a respectable defensive posture, and that if that advice is not heeded, I'll distribute the last slice of federal pie among the female Prohibitionists of Kansas. If this is to be a government of, for and by a lot of nice old ladies, I'll see to it that none of my official grannies grow a beard or wear their bronchos clothespin fashion. And I'll warrant you that were this nation ruled by sure-enough women instead of by a lot of anaemic he-peons of the money-power, Columbia would not be caught unprepared when "the spider's web woven across the cannon's throat shakes its threaded tears in the wind no more." . . . To the American patriot familiar with the rapid development of this country it seems that the hour must assuredly come when its lightest wish will be the world's law-- when foreign potentates will pay homage to the sovereigns of a new and greater Rome; but let us not be too sanguine, for nations, like individuals, have their youth, their lusty manhood and their decay; and despite the rapid increase in men and money there are startling indications that Uncle Sam has already passed the zenith of his power. "First freedom, then glory, when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption--barbarism at last." Freedom we have won, and glory, yet both have failed-- we have become, not the subjects of native Caesars, but the serfs of foreign Shylocks. Wealth we now have, and Oriental vice, and corruption that reaches even from the senate chamber through every stratum of society. That we are approaching barbarism may be inferred from the magnificence of the plutocrat and the poverty of the working people. The first reaps where he has not sown and gathers where he has not strewn, while if the latter protest against this grievous injustice they are branded as noisy Bryanites or lampooned as lippy Populists. To the superficial observer, a nation seems to be forging forward long after it has really begun to retrograde. There's an era of splendor, of Lucullus feasts, of Bradley- Martin balls and Seeley dinners; there's grand parade of soldiery and ships, miles of costly palaces, and wealth poured out like water in foolish pageantry; there's refinement of manners into affectation, dilettantism, epicureanism--but 'tis "the gilded halo hovering 'round decay."