February 22.—Washington’s Birthday is generally celebrated throughout the United States and foreign nations. President Roosevelt is the chief orator at the University of Pennsylvania, which institution confers the degree of LL.D. on himself and Emperor William of Germany. A bust of Washington is presented to Congress by M. Jusserand, the French Ambassador. A “boodle fund” of $60,000 is produced in court at the trial of Charles Kratz at Butler, Mo. Thomas K.. Niedringhaus, Republican nominee for United States Senator, is summoned as a witness in the case. Professor William Osler, in his farewell address to Johns Hopkins University, states that men after forty years of age are “comparatively useless,” and after sixty are entirely so. President William R. Harper, of the University of Chicago, undergoes an operation for cancer while thousands of students and friends pray for his recovery. Physicians find cancer, but are unable to remove it. Colonel William F. Cody, “Buffalo Bill,” says he will apply to Howard Gould, the millionaire, for $125,000 furnished Mrs. Howard Gould when she was an actress. February 23.—General Nelson A. Miles, in the _Independent_, makes a rejoinder to those who had criticized him for placing Jefferson Davis in irons, publishing several letters, among them a note from Mrs. Davis thanking him for “kind answers,” and begging him to look after her husband’s health. Standard Oil stocks drop 10 points, or $41,000,000 in nine days. February 24.—The New York State Factory Inspector finds immigrant boys who are virtually made slaves and compelled to work twenty hours a day without pay. Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, employs troops to protect from lynching a negro accused of having assaulted a white girl. Frank H. Monnett, ex-Attorney-General of Ohio, reaches Topeka, where he will assist in framing a case in the Supreme Court to oust the Standard Oil Company from the State. The plan for mutualizing the Equitable Life Assurance Society fails, and the war between the Hyde and Alexander factions goes on. The Vanderbilt interests purchase a majority of the stock of the Boston & Maine Railroad. February 25.—Wall Street sees a wild day on the stock market because of a reported merger of the New York Central and Union Pacific railroads. Independent crude oil producers and refiners of Kansas, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana unite to fight the Standard Oil Company. A two-million-dollar fire sweeps Hot Springs, Ark., causing several deaths. Richard Croker, former chief of Tammany Hall, sails for Ireland. The Engineering Committee of the Isthmian Canal Commission estimates that a sea-level canal can be constructed for $230,500,000, and that the time occupied in building it will be ten or twelve years.