Way down South where tradition is king and they hark back for all the glory of life, it has been surmised that Li is in some way connected with the family of the great soldier of the Confederacy and an investigation is going on with the hope of establishing a relation of elbow kin with the Celestial prince. It ought not to be news to my Southern friends that the Lees are great people in China. For these many years the secret faction fights which take the place of politics in the land of the sun have been between the Lees and the Chews. The latter are supposed to be in some way consanguine to the Chaws of Castle Garden. If so, it will be seen that the Flowery Kingdom is divided on much the same lines as Tammany Hall, and Li may have good reasons for feeling much at home in New York. * * * * * From the PHILISTINE view-point it is very funny to note the panic among our friends of the cloth at the inroads that bicycles are making on the attendance at the churches. Some of the reverend gentlemen seem to overlook the well-established philosophic fact that religion is innate and fundamental in human nature and is bound to assert itself somehow. The present symptom fills them with anxiety, and what most gets them, so to speak, is that “fair weather Christians,” so-called, are the ones who are missing now. When it rains it’s too wet and when it’s fair they go wheeling. One minister takes his robes and his liturgy and follows his sheep to the park—but that’s a stern chase. Another checks wheels and his Sunday school room looks like a road house. I suppose a bowling alley and golf links will be next. There’s no real reason for alarm, of course. Relief will come from the opposite side, as it usually comes. Wheeling is going to diminish the ranks of the old maids, and marriage is the nursery of the church. But in all fairness I think there should be no commutation of wedding fees in favor of wheel marriages. It costs just as much to splice a pair in bloomers and goff socks as if they wore point lace and waiter coats and it has happened that future millionaires and millionairesses have been married with a foot on the pedal, so to say. Let no gilty one escape. * * * * *