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Robert Howard Hutton was born in Westmoreland county, Eng. land, forty-seven years ago. He belonged to a family of "natural bone-setters," the most famous of whom was his uncle, who taught him all the mysteries of his craft. He practised surgery in Westmoreland and adjacent counties for several years, where he acquired such a reputation that he was induced to move to London. He appears to have made the change more from philanthropic than from monetary considerations. He loved the country and was very fond of hunting. Once in London and within reach by railroad of every portion of Great Britain, his patronage became so extensive that he had no time to gratify his inclination in regard to sports.

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Men of the class to which Mr. Hutton belonged, were once quite common in this country. Men conducting large lumbering operations in Maine generally arranged to take a "natural bone-setter into the woods every winter. The masters of whaling vessels endeavored to have one among their crews. The faith of ignorant people in "natural bone-setters" is profound.

They believe that they are possessed of inherent knowledge and skill. Some think that they are possessed of a natural gift, and others that they have acquired secrets that never become known to the members of the medical profession. The circumstance that they effect a cure in persons who had "suffered much from many physi cians," though they never read a medical book, never attended college, never witnessed a clinic, and never received instruction from a preceptor, elevates them in the minds of the people far above the directors of hospitals.

It is fair to presume that men like Mr. Hutton are possessed of great skill and also of great knowledge. They may not know the scientific name of any bone, ligament, or muscle in the human body, but they may know the location and function of every one of them. Instead of being derided as "quacks," they should be classed as hereditary specialists. It is admitted that bees, ants, dogs and horses inherit knowledge and skill, and it is certainly fair to presume that human beings do the same. No person will be likely to practice surgery without having had a course of training, unless he has great confidence in himself, and self-confidence makes one resolute. Mr. Hutton, it is said, never administered an anesthetic and never employed an assistant. He was very strong, quick, and active. He jerked a bone into place in an instant, while he was telling a story, and before the sufferer knew what was about to happen. He had a most extensive practice, and "practice makes perfect.' It is likely that he put more dislocated bones in place than any ten regular practitioners in his country. He was an observant man, with remarkable keenness of sight and delicacy of touch. His great success caused him to undertake risks that many surgeons would shrink from. His success as well as that of others of his class, may be accounted for on scientific principles. It remains to be seen what medical journals will say of him. It is certain that the secular press regarded him as a most extraordinary man, and regret that the family of "natural bone-setters" died out with him. - Chicago Times.

It is for the suppression, imprisonment or banishment of such men as Hutton and the American bone-setter, Sweet, that American legislatures are besieged by medical monopolists. It is not long since that the gifted Italian woman, Rosa del Cin, was driven back to Italy by medical hostility in New York. No medical college allows its students to learn the healing power of gifted individuals.

Educational.

EDUCATIONAL REFORM IN ENGLAND. - Education, writes James Payn in the Independent, has for a long time, as regards the upper classes, been in the hands of impostors and coxcombs. Scotch schools for ten pounds a year have for generations turned out better educated men than in our public schools for two hundred pounds, and of late the school boards have shown how efficiency can be combined with low prices. This last development has put the great educational establishments upon their mettle, and induced them to consider whether a smattering of Greek obtained in twenty years, and forgotten in the twenty-first, is, after all, the highest form of intellectual culture. The head-masters of Harrow, Winchester and Marlbro' have come at last to the sage conclusion that twelve years of age is quite early enough to begin Greek, and that for a good many boys that tongue is a superfluity. The simple truth is that not one boy in ten understands Greek. Unhappily this act of tardy justice (and mercy) can have no retrospective effect. Think of the generations of unhappy children who have been tortured by that infernal language, and of the imprisonment in summer days of which it has been the cause. Who can give us back our lost time and liberties infringed? I don't wish to revive ancient customs of a vindictive nature, but I should like to see the Greek grammar burnt by the common hangman in every school yard.

Payn's indignant language might be reinforced by quoting De Quincey's description of the second Lord Shaftesbury, a man whose intellect was developed by classical studies alone, and who was practised daily in talking in Latin until he became "the most absolute and undistinguishing pedant that perhaps literature has to show. No thought, however beautiful, no image, however magnificent, could conciliate his praise as long as it was clothed in English, but present him with the most trivial commonplaces in Greek, and he unaffectedly fancied them divine." Hence he ridiculed Milton, Dryden, Locke, and Shakespeare. How much time and money have been spent in colleges to produce this pedantic perversion of the mind, to create that love of the ignorance of antiquity and indifference to modern enlightenment which are so so common among the collegeeducated classes.

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DEAD LANGUAGES VANISHING. In the eighty higher grammar schools in Germany which are entitled to grant certificates of the proficiency requisite in order that military service may be reduced

from three years to one, French and English are the only foreign languages taught, Latin being excluded.

HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. Women in Russia have for the last twenty-three years been permitted to obtain university degrees, and now they are permitted to enter the medical profession. Sweden and Norway have followed the example, so has Italy and even Portugal. De Castro, the Portuguese prime minister, says that the improvement of female education is the most urgent question of the day. In France, Mad. Kergomard has been elected a member of the Superior Council of Public Instruction by a large majority.

In the London University this year, there were 340 successful candidates, sixty-one of whom were ladies. They were rather more successful than the men in gaining honors.

Emily S. Bouton says, "In England a society has been formed of young women, some of them belonging to families of wealth and distinction. Each member binds herself upon entering to learn some one thing, whether art, profession or trade, so thoroughly, that if misfortune comes she will be able to maintain herself by its exercise. It is the beginning of a realization by women themselves, that for any work that demands wages, there must be, not a superficial knowledge which is sure to fail when the test is applied, but a training that will give the mastery of all the faculties, and enable the worker to labor to a definite purpose."

BAD SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS. An Eastern correspondent of the St. Louis Globe has been talking with a Sunday-school superintendent about the bad books in the Sunday-school library, as follows: "But that isn't all or the worst of it," continued the superintendent. "Not long ago one of the teachers came to me and said her faith in orthodoxy had been very much shaken, and she did not know that she could conscientiously remain longer in the school. Several of her class were also losing their confidence in the old creed. She said this result had been reached by reading one of the books in the Sunday-school library. It was Bluffton,' and was the account of how a young Presbyterian minister had gradually been converted to rationalism, and had finally taken his congregation with him over to liberalism. I hunted up the work and read it. The author is Rev. Minot J. Savage, the prominent and eloquent Boston Unitarian clergyman. The book is a remarkable one, and even made me feel uncomfortable, as hide-bound in Calvinism as I supposed I was. Investigation showed that a score of our older scholars and several of the teachers had been very much impressed by the story, and had been talking the subject over. The book is all the more effective because it is a faithful portrayal, so I understand, of Mr. Savage's experience. How the book got into our library I don't know, but I suppose the selections were made by some clerk in the publishing house of whom we purchased. He saw the book was by a minister, and naturally presumed it was eminently fit. Right in our own city I have learned that Bluffton is in half a dozen libraries, and is doing deadly work to orthodoxy. Of course this sort of thing must stop.

OUR BARBAROUS ORTHOGRAPHY. - An attempt was once made to introduce the English language in Japan, but their learned men decided that the irregularities of English spelling and grammar were a fatal objection. The best illustration of its barbarism is to attempt to carry it out uniformly,

For spelling is easy, although

We may not always knough.
How to spell sough.

The attempt to form the past tense of verbs by analogy produces this amusing result from the pen of H. C. Dodge..

The teacher a lesson he taught;
The preacher a lesson he praught;
The stealer, he stole ;

The healer, he hole;

And the screecher, he awfully scraught.

The long-winded speaker, he spoke ;
The poor office seeker, he soke;
The runner, he ran;

The dunner, he dan;

And the shrieker, he horribly shroke.

The flyer to Canada flew ;

The buyer, on credit he bew;

The doer, he did;

The suer, he sid;

And the liar (a fisherman) lew.

The writer, this nonsense he wrote;
The fighter (an editor) fote;

The swimmer, he swam;

The skimmer, he skam;

And the biter was hungry and bote.

Critical.

EUROPEAN BARBARISM. — A German Major, of distinguished military career, brought a suit for libel securing an apology and retraction, but after this satisfactory result a caucus of army officers, called a court of honor, induced the war office to dismiss him from the army because he had not challenged his opponent. This appears to be the doctrine of the war office. America has outgrown such barbarism. Not only are duels forbidden, but Texas has passed a severe law against carrying pistols, the punishment being imprison

ment.

BOSTON CIVILIZATION. More space is given by our leading dailies to base ball, pugilism, races, games and crimes than to anything else. Of course Boston wants such reading. The Herald says, "It is not unusual to see 5000 people sitting in the hottest sun of the hottest summer days for more than two hours, and not even

murmuring at the lack of liberality which fails to provide them the slightest awning for shelter. There is a grand stand for which the price of $1 for a reserved seat is charged. The character of these reserved seats would exceed belief on the part of those who have not been in them. And yet the management who deal in this manner with a long forbearing public find it not an unusual event to make $3000 clear profit from a single game of base ball!"

But Boston has religion as well as base ball and "Sufferings of God's Mother" was the heading of a piece of religious news in the Boston Herald.

On the other hand the temperance influence through high license has reduced the number of liquor saloons in Boston to 800 less than two years ago.

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MONOPOLY. The latest monopoly under the name of a trust is the "Salt Trust." Sixty-three companies unite to form it. The object is to freeze out competition and keep up the prices. These "trusts" which began with the Standard Oil, and are gradually extending over the whole field of production, are as much opposed to the genius of our institutions as Socialists or Nihilists. They are gigantic monopolies, and the purpose is to do by combinations of capital what could never be done under fair and honest competi

tion. Herald.

The remedy for this must be found in legislation. Boycotting is illegal, monopoly should be.

WOMEN'S DRUDGERY.- Why should all the washing, cooking, and sewing of each household be done by its women? We have laundries, ready-made clothing, and bakeries, and now it is proposed in Boston to furnish a complete supply of ready-cooked food. This can be done cheaper than families can supply themselves, if we leave out the American propensity to speculate in exorbitant profits.

CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION.- Wong Chin Foo may boast of the superiority of heathenism as long as pauperism shows itself to be a vast ulcer, as in the following despatch from London:

"Pauperism is on the increase in the metropolis. Last week relief was given to 53,164 indoor, and 35,110 outdoor paupers. The total shows an increase of 2011 over the corresponding week last year. Trafalgar Square pavement is half covered nightly with houseless vagrants, and church steps, benches, and doorways in nearly all parts of London have their complements of destitute people after midnight. Many resort to the parks in the daytime to obtain on the grass the sleep which they are unable to get on the stones by night, and begging cannot be suppressed by the police."

WALT WHITMAN, the odd and original American poet, enjoys in his declining years and feeble health the admiration of a large number of literary friends, who are to build him a beautiful little cottage. His special admirers regard him as the greatest of American poets, and he has equally warm admirers among the foreign

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