stuff of which he is made. To be sure, there are degrees of conspicuousness in the Cabinet. Mr. Olney, for instance, who has been successively Attorney-General and Secretary of State, and had no prominence as a public man before entering the Cabinet, would seem to demand an inquiry, if we are looking for a successor to the President in his own political family; or Mr. Carlisle, who has been long in public life, and whose office is most closely connected with concerns of national welfare. But we pass these by, and select for our consideration the member of the Cabinet whose department was the latest to be created, and who, though well known in his own State of Nebraska, may be said to have entered upon the arena of national politics when Mr. Cleveland sent his name to the Senate as Secretary of Agriculture. A good many Congressmen asked then, Who is Julius Sterling Morton? and his personal history is not now so generally known as to make a brief recital of it here superfluous.

He was born in Jefferson County, New York, in 1832, of parents English on one side, Scotch on the other. He was educated at Union College and the University of Michigan, was married soon after graduation, and started in the fall of 1854 for the newly organized Territory of Nebraska. Omaha was then the outpost of civilization, and the young couple went about fifty miles to the south, and chose for their homestead a site on the second lift of the intervale of the Missouri, two or three miles from what is now Nebraska City. They built their log cabin in pioneer fashion, and the spot has ever since been Mr. Morton's home. His wife died twenty years after their first coming. Four sons have grown to manhood, and are now heads of families. Ostensibly a farmer and stock-raiser, the young college graduate had a leaning toward journalism and public life. He at once took a lively interest in territorial affairs, and became a member of the

territorial legislature. Before going to Nebraska he had lived a short time in Detroit, and there became a protégé of General Cass. It was through Cass's influence that President Buchanan appointed Mr. Morton secretary of the Territory in 1858, an office which he held until 1861; and during a portion of that pe riod, from September, 1858, till May, 1859, he was acting governor. In 1860 he was a candidate for Congress, and received a certificate of election from the governor; but in the fast-and-loose game of that period his opponent contrived to secure another certificate, and, reaching Washington before him, presented his certificate and took his seat. Mr. Morton, as contestant for a seat in a House which was overwhelmingly Republican, had small chance of success, and returned from Washington to Nebraska, made up his case, and awaited the result. He was unsuccessful, and this was the beginning of a series of defeats. He was the candidate of the Democratic party for governor in 1866 under the first state constitution, and was defeated. He ran for Congress the same fall, and was defeated again. In the long contest over the question of statehood, he was persistently opposed to the erection of the Territory into a State under the conditions then existing. Since 1866 he has been three times the candidate of his party for the governorship, and has been the standing candidate for a seat in the Senate; but during his entire political career the State has been steadfastly Republican, and it was not until 1893 that he came into power as a member of President Cleveland's Cabinet.

Meanwhile, his political activity found constant expression in writing and speaking. He started the Nebraska City News in 1855, and edited it for many years. Having formed a connection with Mr. Wilbur F. Storey, editor of the Detroit Free Press, when Mr. Morton lived in Detroit, he became a contributor to the Chicago Times when Mr. Storey as

sumed control of that paper, and held a semi-editorial position on it. His writings, at first somewhat turgid, though charged with a rude wit and humor, became more direct as he developed in intellectual force, but have always suffered from a tendency to diffuseness. The subject to which he has given his most earnest thought has undoubtedly been political economy. He is a straight and unconditional free - trader of the school of Cobden, but he can scarcely be regard ed as a mere doctrinaire; the temper of his mind and a strong practical sense forbid this.

Indeed, his entire course of public life, with a single exception, has been characterized by an uncommon independence of merely popular and superficial movements in their crude efforts after results at the expense of sound economic laws. In a paper on some unpublished letters of Thomas Jefferson, in the Transactions of the Nebraska Historical Society, of which Mr. Morton has been president for many years, he gives his ideal of the public servant in these words: "We need men of mental and moral courage, who shall study what they can do for rather than what they shall get from the commonwealth. Public affairs call persistently for public men who shall have fixed economic views, for which they are willing to forego offices, in behalf of which they are ever ready, with reason and fortitude, to face popular clamor, and if need be meet popular defeat. Men who esteem it more honorable to adhere to principle and meet disaster than it is to trim, to pander to popular vagaries and compass victory by deceit, will at last be honored in history." Mr. Morton applied this characterization to Jefferson, but he was thinking under his breath of himself, and he had justification for such thought.

It was not long after his settlement in Nebraska that the Territory was attacked by one of those fevers of speculation which leave the unhappy sufferer

an easy prey to financial quack medicine. Mr. Morton was a member of the Assembly, and at once took a position hostile to wild-cat banks and fiat money. He was made chairman of a special committee to which was referred a bill incorporating these banks, and brought in a minority report, which was evidently very heartily condemned by the majority, as it was denied a place in the house journal, though it appeared in the newspapers at the time. A period of artificial prosperity followed the establishment of the banks and the neglect of industry, and this prosperity was inevitably succeeded by disastrous hard times. The young apostle of sound finance to a reluctant community made a speech at the first Nebraska Territorial Agricultural Fair, September 21, 1859, in which, among other capital things, he delivered himself of this plain truth: "The scheme for obtaining wealth without labor, prosperity without industry, and growing into a community of opulence and ease without effort has been a complete failure. . If there are fortunes to be made in Nebraska, they are to be acquired by frugality and persevering exertion alone. The soil is to be tilled and taxed for the support of the dwellers thereon; and out of it, and it alone, is all true and substantial independence to be derived."

That was in 1859, and from that time to this, save once when, like other men, he fell under the fascinating influence of Pendleton and gave his adhesion for a brief period to the greenback heresy, he has never flinched from the maintenance of sound financial belief, and that in the midst of a perverse and untoward generation. In Nebraska, in 1892, he almost alone in the Democratic party resisted the efforts of the free coinage element to stampede the party into the fold of Populism. How courageous he could be in the support of an unpopular position appears from this incident. Early in January, 1893, just as the new legislature of Nebraska was assembling, and

upon the eve of the election of a United States Senator, there were suggestions made that a coalition should be formed between the Democrats and the Populists with a view to electing Morton. A considerable crowd had gathered in the rotunda of the principal hotel at Lincoln, where this talk was going on. Suddenly Mr. Morton stepped out of the crowd, and, ascending two or three steps of the main stairway, spoke substantially as follows:

"It has come to my knowledge that there is some discussion as to the possibility of my election as Senator by the vote of a combination of Democrats and Populists; and as to this it seems to me proper that I should now say openly, as I do positively, that under no conditions will I accept an election to the office of Senator by the vote of the Populist party so long as it adheres to its vicious financial vagaries." And yet the dream of this man all his days had been to be Senator.

Upon other public questions in which his own State was more definitely involved Mr. Morton has not gone with the crowd. That he should have been in the employ of the Burlington railway as a pamphleteer, during the popular attack on railways which found expression in the Potter laws, does not intimate that he sold his principles, but that he was a paid advocate on the side which he believed to be in the right. From the time of his speech at the Agricultural Fair, already cited, he has been a consistent supporter of the policy of state development through the improvement of its natural resources. his own farm he has made costly experiments, for the purpose of introducing improved breeds of horses, cattle, and swine into the country. One of the sayings quoted from him and current among the farmers is, "A well-bred sow is to the farmer an inconvertible bond, her porkers the annual coupons," and by pen and voice he has untiringly aimed

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to promote the agricultural interests of his State. The most notable single exploit, and the one of which he never wearies in the telling, is the suggestion of Arbor Day in the schools, and the pursuit of this idea, with the result that the movement has extended to every State in the Union with the possible exception of three. At least a billion forest trees and many thousand fruit trees and vines in Nebraska may be said to have started from the seed which he planted and nourished in the public mind, and what was a treeless waste is dotted with vigorous forest growth.

It was unquestionably this devotion to agriculture and forestry, coupled with his unflinching support of Democratic doctrines and his reputation as a man of character and ability, which led Mr. Cleveland to call Mr. Morton to the head of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, in spite of the fact that Mr. Morton had from the beginning of Mr. Cleveland's presidential career been a bitter and unrelenting enemy of the President; for Mr. Morton, with all his heartiness, can be a vehement hater, and the attitude which Mr. Cleveland at the outset took toward the West could readily excite the animosity of a man whose temperament is not unlike Mr. Cleveland's in respect to positiveness. His career at Washington has been marked by two notable stands which he has taken. They are notable as illustrating the courage and the open-mindedness of the man. The first relates to the economical management of his department. Out of $5,102,500 appropriated for his branch of the government since July 1, 1893, he had saved and turned back into the treasury, down to July 1, 1895, $1,126,000, or over 20 per cent; and this had been done while the department had developed greatly, and the work of all its bureaus had been expanded and improved. There was expended in 1895 for purely scientific work 52 per cent of the total amount paid out as against 45

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per cent paid out for the same class of work by his predecessor in 1893. The saving has been due to the reduction of the cost of carrying on the department, and especially to the stoppage of waste. Believing that the promiscuous free distribution of seeds by Congressmen was only a stupid abuse of a law originally passed to provide a new country with rare, uncommon, and valuable” plants for cultivation, the words of the statute, Mr. Morton early set about its abolition. It was very characteristic of the man that, after appealing in vain to Congress to drop a wasteful appropriation, he went to work to execute the statute, providing for the distribution with a thoroughness and vigor that had never been equaled. For two years he scoured the known world, through special and consular agents, for rare and uncom mon seeds, plants, etc., and purchased everything that seemed to be of the slightest use to this country. He supplied to Congressmen, it is said, ten million more packages of seed than they had ever received before. Of course the great bulk of them were of no use to our people, but the secretary accomplished his purpose. After advertising in all known markets, and buying and distributing in two years all the rare and uncommon seed left in the world, he stopped the business, and notified Congress there would be no more seed. No seed under the terms of the statute being found, no seed could be bought. So rural Congressmen must go seedless back to their constituents, or buy their electioneering grains and tubers themselves.

The other illustration of character drawn from the secretary's official life is in his attitude toward civil service reform. He began with a disbelief in it; he has come to be one of its most sturdy supporters. During his administration of the Department of Agriculture, only six out of its twenty-four chiefs of bureaus and divisions have been changed by

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death, resignation, or removal. tary Morton filled five of these places by promoting skilled and experienced men in this department. The only question with him has been, Where can the best qualified men be found? and other things being nearly equal, he has given the preference to the men already in the service. At the head of the three new divisions established by him, he has appointed in similar manner three experts who were connected with the department under previous administrations. The same wise and benignant rule has been followed in filling all minor positions. The statistical and animal industry bureaus, which have been heretofore almost entirely given over to the spoilsmen, have been completely reorganized and brought under the civil service. As a result of his steady work for this cause, the whole department is now subject to civil service rules, except two positions filled by presidential appointment, and the four clerks of the secretary and assistant secretary.

Such, in brief, is the public record of Secretary Morton, nearly forty years in the opposition in Nebraska, with slight experience in political administration, for three years a member of the President's official household in Washington, and an administrator of public business. It is not surprising that he has acquired the habit of mind of one always in the opposition, which for a man of courage readily takes the form of recklessness of speech. He has worked out the greater problems in a somewhat theoretical fashion, so that his convictions are not always based upon large information and experience; and once possessed of a conviction, he is undeterred by possible consequences from delivering it with an uncompromising earnestness. Uncalled upon during a long career to put his political principles into practice, he has had small need to adjust them to existing conditions; but when he has been required to act, his practical sense has been forti

fied by his speculative studies. With an active and alert mind, he has been open to new influences, and would not unlikely, if placed in a position of great responsibility, reason and act too quickly; but his frankness and open-mindedness would not make him an easy follower where principles which he had reached in his studies were assailable. No amount of

pressure would move him. His strong, well-set physique impresses one who meets him with an agreeable sense of the man's vitality and vigor. His hospitable nature is evident at once, and he makes friends quickly. Indeed, there is an outflow of sentiment and cordiality which may produce a little uneasiness in

the mind of a cautious observer, and such an one would not be surprised to learn that this genial host could nurse with a vindictive energy a hatred which he had conceived of this or that man. The astute politician who wishes to shape Mr. Morton to his own ends will encounter a difficulty in the honesty and shrewdness of the man. Mr. Morton himself is not an astute politician, and he never will manage conventions or intrigue for power. He is not built on those lines, and he will not be wanted by the Democratic party. Nevertheless, he has in him the sort of stuff out of which better Presidents than presidential candidates are made.

"Honor the old, but bring a warm heart to the new."- ROBERT SCHUMANN.

SAVE in one blessed age of the world, never to come again, the great artist, in whatever line, has nearly always had a hard time in getting recognized at his true worth, and the composer of music has had a harder time than any of his brothers. This may be partially attributable to the nature of his art materials, which can never be counted upon as fixed. How few, in listening to music, realize that the tonal system underlying the harmony of to-day had barely been established two hundred years ago! The gamut, which is so familiar to us that we feel it must be coeval with musical man, and which we hold to be the true and only scale, is one among many scales existent and in actual use, and is, moreover, theoretically, by no means the most perfect of them all. The present diatonic series, major and minor, is retained because it suits the present ideal of musical

design in the so-called civilized countries, and is adapted to the instruments now in use in those countries. Should entirely new instruments be invented, so constructed as to make available certain tones of which our ears are now unconscious; should radically different notions of design arise and prevail, it is quite conceivable that a new scale might be required, resulting in altered harmonie relations, and consequently in a totally changed style of composition, to which the ears of coming generations would have to grow accustomed as those of the past have grown accustomed to each fresh development in the musical art.

A second and even more important reason why the composer makes slower way than other art workers towards a just and general recognition is that his conceptions need follow no models of anything in the visible, audible. palpable creation, but may be evolved ad libitum out of his own consciousness, and may