Conditions in America are constantly assimilating themselves more and more to those existing in the older countries, where the conflict for existence is close and intense, and where the prudent, the careful, and the far-sighted inevitably crowd out the weaker and more careless individuals and families. An almost unmistakable sign of "an old family" in America is conservatism in expenditure and modes of life. The newly rich, who set the pace of public luxury, are always amazed at the probates of the wills of these quiet citizens. They cannot believe that one who spent so little should have so much, not realizing that the simplicity of life made it possible to solidly invest a surplus. The heirs of this solid wealth have been bred to prudence and self-denial. Such a family survives, while in all probability the offspring of the other type may in two generations be hopelessly trodden into the mire. There is in the breasts of many parents a half-resentful feeling that they should not be asked to sacrifice themselves to the new generation. They insist upon their own right to all that is to be got out of life, feeling that what they give to the children is never repaid. This selfish type forgets that in doing their duty they are but returning to their children what they themselves received from the past generation, and that the children will in turn pay to their descendants the inherited debt of honour with interest. July 30. A Question of Heredity. I was lunching out to-day, and sat beside Mrs. C---- S----. She told me her daughter was so hoping that the new child would be a girl. Four boys seemed a superfluity of masculinity in one household. "I wish there was some way of knowing beforehand about such things," she complained. "When F---- came," I said, airily, "there was the same feeling in our family; we all wanted so that she should be a girl. H---- was so comforting. He said she certainly would be, if there was anything in heredity; her mother was a girl, and all her aunts, and both her grandmothers. And she did turn out to be a girl, you see." Mrs. C---- S---- looked at me with her mild blue eyes, and said, happily--"I wonder if there is really anything in that; for you know it's just the same in our family!" October 6. The Little Dumb Brother. I have been reading in one of the magazines a record of travel in the Rocky Mountains of the Arctic regions. It is illustrated with pictures of some ten polar bear skins--two of them evidently mere babies of bears--a dead ram, a dead caribou--the former killed, the author explains, to furnish the first food he had in forty-four hours. He concludes his article with this naive charge: "Wolves, when pressed by hunger, do not hesitate to fall upon one of their own number and sacrifice it to their beastly cravings. They are utterly lacking in conscience, and the young or weak of every class of land animals suffer from their wanton lack of mercy."