Never in the history of New York have its public servants been so absolutely and completely _owned_ by so-called public service corporations as at present. These corporations have literally taken over the people’s municipal corporation, merged it with their own and impressed their management upon it. For instance, Dr. Darlington, President of the Health Department, goes to Washington to urge Congress to pass a law to destroy dirty money, because it is a means of conveying disease germs. But he does not destroy or clean the filthy disease-bearing car straps in New York. Why? Because August Belmont and H. H. Vreeland won’t let him. Darlington is in the position of the Irishman who would free Ireland but for the police. The people want the signs, slot machines, etc., put out of their Subway stations, but they can’t get it done. Why? Because the Interborough Corporation is stronger than the municipal corporation. The people’s public servants in New York City have become the servants of the public service corporations. It does seem that even men who call themselves conservatives in New York would rise up next fall and stamp the life out of this condition. _Casus Belli_ “Now, the trusts—” began the patent-churn man, addressing the washing-machine agent. “The trusts, let me tell you, are——” “Here, now, gentlemen!” remonstrated the landlord of the tavern at Polkville, Ark. “That’s what the fight here yesterday started about; and it’s goin’ to cost me three or four dollars for new window glass, alone!” _A Character Study of Byron and Burns_ BY ELIZABETH BAILEY TRAYLOR These names are live wires in the lands of the Scotch heather and the English rose, and equally so here by the red hearts of the watermelons and the snow showers of the cotton-fields of the Southern States. One often hears it said of those devoted brotherhoods—the Burns Clubs and the Scotch Societies—“Their Bible is Robbie Burns.” Frank Stanton has a large hearing when he sings: We’ll slip away from our today Of wonder and of worry, To where, in meadows of the may, He whistled “Annie Laurie.” To meet him in some gabled inn, And pass the rare decanter, Or in some ingle nook begin A race with “Tam o’Shanter.” To a large coterie of kindred spirits the name of Byron evokes a pageant of ideas pulsating with life’s strongest emotions. It is told of a pleasure club that they recently abandoned the books of the day and read the poet exhaustively and with great enthusiasm—no slight tribute to his genius in a time of unremitting demand for that which is palpitant with the breath of today’s life. A learned minister from his pulpit says: “‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’ is a marvel of diction and technique, and no divine has approached the narrative in its exact correspondence to Holy Writ.”