quent address on the Economics of Advertising, —an address so vigorous and sane and convincing, and delivered with such ardor and measure, that the terrible youth covered himself with honor, and triumphantly bore away the prize. There you had a self-repeater worth talking about.

Such, then, as I view these pleasant interests, are the humors of advertising. I am advised, however, that some, Charles Dickens among them, prescribe an attitude less frivolous than mine toward so solemn a thing as the printed advertisement. Says Dickens, "The advertisements which appear in a public journal take rank among the most significant indications of the state of society of that time and place." Which is literally true of this singular brochure in the Dyersburg, Tennessee, Gazette: "LOST A HOUSE.

"On Tuesday, March 16, my dwelling-house, thirteen miles above Caruthersville, was washed from its foundation and floated down the Mississippi River. It is a new two-story frame, painted white and built in T shape, with a hall in the centre, and a two-story front porch all the way across the building. It contained all my household and kitchen furniture, including an organ with J. C. engraved on the plate. The cook stove is an old-fashion No. 8 range. A Marlin rifle, sixteen-shot, 38-calibre, was also in the house. Any one knowing the whereabouts of this house will be rewarded by informing me at this place."

Here, beyond doubt, you have an accurate picture of life in Dyersburg, Tennessee. The advertisement thus becomes material for the sociologist, and if this be sociology let us make the most of it! "The most truthful part of a newspaper," says Thomas Jefferson, "is the

advertisements."

When, therefore, I read, "Come and see the Human Suicide: he kills himself every fifteen minutes,” or "A bottle of Italian air (price one dollar) will make you sing like Patti in her early days," I have doubtless enlarged my personal sapiency by peacefully annexing an indisputable fact. Nevertheless, so ill-poised is my solemnity that, even when thus handsomely enriched, I laugh in the face of my new acquisition. Yet a kindly laugh it is, — with charity for all, and with malice toward none.

Indeed, he were a sad sort of Christian, who, stalking abroad through the sunny realm of public advertising, could fail to be warmed by its humors. For, despite their conscious or unconscious grotesquerie, they bespeak the Pauline virtues of faith, hope, and love: faith in the omnipotence of the advertisement; hope writ large in a splendid commercial optimism; love, singing ever of noble disinterestedness. And the greatest of these is love. Fortunes in mining stocks, health and long life in unfailing pills and potions, wisdom by mail or in packages of breakfast food, the trappings of splendor for only a tithe of their value, these, and a hundred other precious things, are fairly pelted at a beloved public, to the apparent ruin of its benefactors. Even the advertising of this vast and profoundly altruistic sacrifice costs millions of dollars. And the pretty point of it is, the advertisers, such is the joy with which an approving Providence beholds their self-forgetfulness, get rich in the process. Moreover, it is sweet to know that, in the last analysis, it is my money and yours that they fatten on, and, by virtue of increased prices, my money and yours that pays for their extravagant advertising which, methinks, is the best joke of all.

Rollin Lynde Hartt.

Madison Cawein.

It would be interesting to know if the impulse to organize that first resulted in a Woman's Club in 1868 had its basis in any fundamental and common need of the women of that period. That two clubs, the New England Women's Club of Boston, and Sorosis of New York, were formed formed almost simultaneously, would point toward such a conclusion. That some of the leaders in the movement were suffragists, that the individual members were women who had been intellectually quickened and trained in practical experience by the events of the civil war, and that the time to enjoy the results of such organization had been gained by the improved domestic economy, will suggest some basis for speculation as to the underlying causes. The superficial and stated reason for being, in the constitutions of those early clubs, was unanimously "for mutual, or general, improvement, and to promote social enjoyment."

With this simple and egoistic platform, the club idea gained adherents very rapidly in New England and the Middle States. Study clubs were formed

in large cities and remote villages, each with its encumbering constitution, and rules of order that seemed specially designed to retard the business of the day.

Outwardly, for twenty years, the woman's club remained an institution for the culture and pleasure of its members; but within, the desire for a larger opportunity was gradually strengthening. Parliamentary practice gave women confidence in their ability to lead larger issues to a successful conclusion. The inherent longing for power, coupled with confidence in the wisdom and beneficence of whatever woman should do, brought the leaders of the club movement to a conception of social service. To effect this, further organization was necessary. It was then, in 1890, that a union of individual clubs was formed into a chartered body, known as the General Federation of Women's Clubs. Closely following this culmination, the women of Maine formed the first union of the clubs of that state into a state federation. Other states joined in the movement, each state federation as it organized becoming a unit of the General Federation. There

are now represented in this body thirtynine states and territories and five foreign countries, with 3288 clubs having a membership of about 275,000 women. The organization of the General Fed3 complete, making it possible, responsible person in office, to diately into touch with every member. Its character is ially heterogeneous, sectionread, theoretically of no polipledged to work for the iment of its members in every line aan culture and for all wise mearelating to human progress. o be a member of such an organition must stimulate the imagination, deepen the sympathies, and go a long way toward overcoming that provincialism of mind with which our country has constantly to reckon. This subjective work was the early endeavor of the federations; but for eight years, since the Biennial held in Milwaukee, and also since the state federations found their social consciences, the effort has been toward the concrete issue. Something must be done to justify our existence,' has been the constant cry of officers, federation bulletins, and committee reports. To see the general preparedness to do passing on to an active doing may well cause a certain dismay in the mind of the onlooker.

The amused toleration that has for long characterized the thought of those unfortunates who were outside the club movement is changing to a somewhat anxious curiosity, and not without cause. It makes little difference to the community that the club has set aside the colored lithograph in favor of a Preraphaelite photograph in carbon, or that it studiously regards the possibilities of Hamlet's madness. Even vacation schools and college scholarships as an issue fail to arouse serious comment. But when the clubs begin to appear in legislative committee rooms, bearing yards of signatures, and when they ques

tion why the employees of bakeshops are permitted to work seventy or eighty hours a week, their potential power becomes a factor to be seriously considered.

The spectacle of 275,000 women splendidly organized, armed with leisure and opportunity, and animated by a passion for reform, assumes the distinction of a "social force." Forces must be reckoned with, and the work and the worth of the woman's club movement are becoming important public interests.

The work of the woman's club is threefold: to educate its members, mentally and morally; to create public opinion; to secure better conditions of life. Its worth, personal and social, is in proportion to its effectiveness in securing these ends.

The first clubs were study clubs; all clubs are in some degree study clubs, the culture idea having been the most tenacious. The early club, and the parlor club of to-day, would frequently devote a season to the study of one book, or one author, or some theory of economics or epoch in history. Their study may not have been either profound or judiciously chosen, but the woman herself really believed in it, and was being as studious as she could easily be.

The members took great interest in naming their clubs. The heroines of antiquity, the modern literary celebrities, Greek words that look so simple but mean so much, flowers of the field, all were pressed into the significant service of this organization.

The club members of long ago did not bring ponderous dignity with them to their meetings. They were gay, girlish, and, it may be, frivolous. Their programmes and calendars reveal a schoolgirl's indifference to the decorous habits of an older society. Happily there are still sections of our country where the president appears in the Year Book as "Mrs. Bob," or "Mrs. Mayme," and where the Recording Secretary naïvely writes her

self "Mrs. Katie;" where the "Clio Club" devotes the season to the study of "Robert Louis Stevenson and of Nature;" ;" where "Browning Clubs" read "Shakespeare and the Magazines," and where a "Current Events Class" studies "The Bible."

The simple club, with its accessories of tea and poetry, has given way to, or been absorbed in, the Department Club, a club that needs no distinguishing title, but is, par excellence, the Woman's Club.

The department club has taken unto itself the sphere of human knowledge, or, to be specific, and according to the records of 1902, it devotes itself in general to nine named lines of work: Literature, Music, Art, Education, Current Topics, Finance, Philanthropy, Household Economics, and Social Economics. The average scope of endeavor of all the clubs of the country is six departments to each club, the majority undertaking five subjects, and a goodly number being undaunted by the nine.

The theory that underlies the depart ment club is, that the members will naturally gather around the standing committee with whose work they are in especial sympathy, study groups being thus formed; while from time to time each committee will introduce some eminent person to speak to the whole club of his specialty. Practical work will be assigned to the group to which it belongs, and so all possible interests of society will have their hospitable centre from which community betterment will radiate. That the theory is workable has been proven by the efficient practice of such clubs as the Cantabrigia in Massachusetts, the Chicago Woman's Club, and the Woman's Club of Denver. The common practice is far from the ideal. The individual members do not cumulate, nor does the standing committee radiate. The season's work consists, instead, of an expensive programme in which the amusement idea is overlaid by the serious character of the subjects presented. Few

groups of study are formed, and these are likely to be on culture subjects. The concrete work of the club is spasmodic, and dependent for its performance almost entirely on the personnel of the standing committee, which is annually changing. The one permanent feature is the lecture; that cannot be escaped, nor can it be related.

A succession of lectures on widely divergent subjects has the effect merely of awakening a transient emotion, buried by the keener emotion of the next intellectual opportunity. There can be no valid objection to listening to lectures when one is a mere listener; but the woman's club listener has added to her receptiveness a vague feeling that she, by virtue of her position, must do something about it. Her passivity is aroused into convulsive but feeble volition; but before she has time to respond to the present claim, another blow has been struck and another purpose presented, to be vanquished in its turn by another claimant. The indefinite process of stimulation and exhaustion, without accompanying activity, goes on until the desperate club woman listens to all causes with equal stoicism and with mechanical in

terest.

Quite aside from the ethical import of the modern club lecture is its intellectual appeal. Unquestionably certain lectures arouse an eager desire to follow out lines of thought. I have frequently watched with interest the connection between the reading habit of a community, as evinced in the call for books at the public library, and the train of thought inspired by the last lecturer. One day in the poets' alcove I missed the copies. of the Odyssey and the Iliad. Their places had not been vacant before. I hurriedly went to the alcove where Philosophy reposed. Thomas à Kempis was not there. The last lecture at the club had had to do with "literature and life." The books were back in a day or two in their accustomed places. I