The Sifting of a Calamity.

HE chief ocean-slaughter of all the THE centuries thus far, has been now depicted before the world in such a shape that the people can understand its gruesomely terrible details. In a philippic of clearness and force, Senator Smith has placed the matter so that no one can doubt the startling facts.

Some have asked why United States should take so much interest in the fate of an English vessel, and what she can do about it, anyway? To this may be answered, American citizens are constantly traveling to and fro upon these ships, and must be protected there the same as in any foreign country; and as for the matter of what she can do about it-she can close her ports to every British ship that approaches them, if due regard to her interests are not shown in their handling.

Here are the most important points covered by Senator Smith's speech, and by other accounts equally reliable:

1. Every preparation for sacrificing the vessel to ruin if there should arise any opportunity for doing so, seems to have been made before she started. There were no tests of boilers, bulkheads, equipments, or signal-devices.

2. No proper discipline existed between officers and men, and the crew were not familiar with the ship's implements and tools, and with their use.

3.-There were 1,324 passengers, and life-boat accommodations for only 1,176. This would seem to indicate that the usual idiotic idea was, in case the ship should sink, and every bit of room in

these boats be used, that 148 of these passengers should drag on behind, and drag through the water till aid was at hand. or quietly and decorously drown.

4. Although the sea was almost as smooth as glass, the confusion and lack of discipline was such, that these boats, capable as they were of containing 1,176 persons, took off only 740, and twelve of those were rescued from the water.

5. On the evening of the disaster, no practical attention was paid to wireless information from three steamers, that they were in a region of icebergs. The speed of the giant ship was kept up to 24 miles per hour-half as fast as one of our swiftest railroad-trains. A Sunday dinner and dance went on till a late hour in the saloon, in which champagne flowed freely, and some of it went out to the men who were supposed to be on watch.

6. Nobody was advised of danger, although the President of the Company was on board, and knew of the warnings that had been given. All these people-of all ranks and conditions in life, who had trusted themselves under the protection of this precious band of careless roysterers, were allowed to believe that they were as safe as in their own homes.

7-After the Company had been fully. informed of the extent of the disaster, it for some reason gave out false statements that all were saved, and, apparently, yielded to the truth only when it had to do so.

8. The above-mentioned President of

the Company, after he had been saved with other passengers, occupied one of the best staterooms of the rescuing-ship, and allowed feeble and suffering women and children to lie upon the floor, anywhere they could get a chance.

9.-The Captain of the vessel, an experienced seaman, and one who might be supposed to oversee everything, and safeguard the people under his charge. would appear to have been overruled by the superior commercial rank of the President of the Company, and to have conducted the boat in accordance with a desire to make a "record trip" for speed-no matter what risks were run. What more wholesale impishness has ever been known than this-if it be true? -and how else do the appearances look, than that they are true?

10. Although the shock of the collision was sufficient to convince any practiced seaman that the ship was doomed, no general alarm was given for some time, and no orderly routine of rescue was established. What a forcible picture of the situation is this:

"Haphazard, they rushed by one another, on stairways and in hallways, while men of self-control gathered here and there about the decks, helplessly staring at one another or giving encouragement to those less courageous than themselves."

What a picture of the condition of things on an ocean palace that had been advertised as the safest ship that floated! That which ought to have been a regiment of well-trained rescuers, was a mob, bent upon saving itself, and such others as were bound to go.

And here is another diabolical fact: "The lifeboats were filled so indifferently and lowered so quickly that, according to the uncontradicted evidence, nearly 500 persons were needlessly sacrificed to want of orderly discipline in loading the few that were provided."

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II. When the lifeboats were reached by such as were able to reach them, they were as poorly equipped as if they were. intended to float upon an inland pond. There was not a compass in one of them and lanterns in only two. Weak women had to do much of the rowing.

The above record is bad enough: but there is a worse one, connected with a man who had nothing to do with the "Titanic", and, apparently, took care not to have. The Senate Committee claims that one Captain Lord, of the ship "California", was WITHIN FOUR MILES of the sinking vessel, while she was firing distress-rockets that were plainly seen from his ship. Instead of rousing his wireless operator, who could easily have found where the trouble was, he went to his room and lay down, with all this misery where he could have reached and relieved it in fifteen minutes' time.

The world is curious to know what the man's explanation can be-if he has any. If there is no good reason that compelled him to perform this act of unparallelled cruelty and meanness, he ought to be pursued wherever he goes, with the curses of his fellow-men. A man who has the opportunity of saving life that this man had, and does not improve it to the utmost, is a thousand murderers in one. If there ever was a case upon the ligh seas that ought to be thoroughly investigated, and, if possible, punished, it is this.

Gleaming like a star through and above these murky clouds of woe, is the conduct of Captain A. H. Rostron, of the "Carpathia." No wonder Congress is presenting him with a gold medal, and will give him other honors that it is able to bestow. His rush through distance and danger to save as many of the stricken people as he could, will be told as long as the ocean endures; and when he dies, a monument will be reared to him, reaching well toward the heavens.

Patois and Slang.

ONE of the most sensible and con

servative of our American newspapers is worried because some foreigner has been criticizing the way that Americans talk, he asserting that speech in this country is merely a succession of one patois after another.

The nation to which the critical foreigner deigns to belong is not disclosed; but whatever it is, he might as well look. and listen at home. No country of any size maintains uniformity of speech and pronunciation. In England the Yorkshireman, the Cumberlander and the Northumberlander all have dialects of their own, and the cockney speaks a certain something over which no dictionary has ever been able to throw its protecting arms. France, Germany, Italy -all countries of any size, have their dialects, often amounting, sooner or later, to the dreaded patois. It is not to be wondered at if we, with such a large variety of climate (which in its influence upon the vocal organs is largely responsible for dialect) and almost every blessed and otherwise tongue of the earth to encounter, assimilate and extinguish, should "wabble" a little in our language. Let us hope that railroads, telegraphs, and especially telephones and phonographs, may some time help form a United States language that will be uniform and universally. intelligible.

The same paper says that slang is perfectly reprehensible, even if it sometimes adds to the language; for there are already words enough and more. too. It forgets that every language needs constant additions, from the fact that more or less old words are all the while going out of use. People get tired of always calling a spade a spade, and when some new designation comes, even if it be slangy, it rests them so that

When, however, the automobiles arrived, all was changed, and the world. felt that there was something for which to live, and something by which to die. One did not have to drive close up to a railroad, in order to get his horses frightened half to death: he did not have to cross the tracks in front of a train, in order to be butted off the earth; the automobile furnished all needful sources of danger.

It is so now. The highways of our country are now practically all railroads. You are no safer, in walking or driving upon the road, than if it were a railway, along which expresstrains were liable to rush along at certain intervals. Indeed, you are not so safe: for you know exactly where an express-train will run, and you are. never at all sure where an automobile (or a motorcycle) will go, or from what direction it may be coming.

What comfort is there in America, if there is to be no safety for foot-passen

across the corner, without perhaps her body's being crushed to pieces by an automobile, without any record as to who did the worse-than-careless deed? When one even has to be on the lookout in going along the sidewalk, for fear some one of the machines may "skid", and crush him against the wall? If legislatures are good for anything, they will soon provide the means for every one to have a free chance to walk or drive along the earth, without the liability of being assaulted by machinery, and wounded or killed by mechanical violence.

A Luxury-Famine.

NO one in the city of New York, Washington, or any city of this country, but can buy enough food to sustain human life, at a few cents per day but when it comes to the superfluities that "swell" people expect to have flung all over their viands nowadays, that is a different matter.

Did you ever ride through rural districts until you were "right jolly hungry", and then hitch in front of a village grocery-store, go in, and strengthen yourself up with crackers and cheese, variegated, perhaps, with a pitcher of new cider? You had no use for waiters then: all there were in the world might have gone on a strike that day, and it would have made little difference to you, from a palatal and stomachal standpoint.

You can have the same experience in New York, or any of the large or small cities: all you need to do, is to go without food long enough to give you a genuine appetite, and then walk into a dairy or bakery where good substantial food is to be had.

Some of the waiters of New York have been striking, and vowing that they will not carry any more high-priced

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food to the tables of guests, if they do not have their way in the matter of remuneration. The proprietors are not yielding to their demands, and at this writing, the strike seems to be a failure, as, fortunately or unfortunately, nine-tenths of the strikes are.

If the people (who are the real sufferers in such matters) would cultivate more independence in their habits of eating, there would be no such troubles as New York has just been enduring -or thinking that it endured. But the average high-liver is a sort of slave to his waiter, and knows that if he wants himself and friends waited upon with any kind of thoroughness and decency, he must conform to that waiter's ideas of things-among which the most important are "tips"-large, and plenty of them.

The Vacation Industry.

EV

VERY WHERE wishes all its readers a pleasant vacation, and prays that no detail of the great annual outing may go wrong. May the fishings, the sailings, the mountain-climbings, the flirtings, the summer engagements, the sea-bathings, and the educational assemblies, all go off without flaw or accident. May the children have so good a time as to temporarily forget all the arts, sciences, and illimitable lore that has been injected into their brain by the Learnit-all-while-you-wait System.

May everybody come back to work in the Autumn, better fitted for work than ever before.

And they who cannot afford a vacation, and there are many of them-let them remember that it is a short river that has no windings,and hope for better days ahead.

EVERY WHERE takes no vacation; it works all the harder during the hot months, and strives to make itself the more worthy of reading.

Five Minute Sermon,

BY REV. CHARLES EDWARD STOWE.

FORGIVENESS.

WHEN John Wesley was in Georgia

with General Ogelthorpe, on one occasion the General was in a rage with a soldier who had offended against military discipline. Wesley pleaded for the offender. "Forgive him this time, General", he said. "Mr. Wesley," replied the General, "I never forgive!" "Then God grant that you never sin, General!" replied Mr. Wesley.

Let us suppose a domestic servant of good intentions, but uneducated, untrained, and not very strong-minded. She goes out to service in a reckless, extravagant family where temptation is put in her way, and in an unguarded moment she takes a valuable bracelet or ring. She is detected and arrested, tried and convicted. Her general character is overlooked, her penitence goes for nothing, and her protestations of innocence are unheeded. She is sent to jail, her character is ruined.

She is like one who has fallen into the ocean, and left to sink alone. Had this first fault been covered and its repetition prevented by kind and watchful care, great good might have been accomplished. A character might have been formed instead of lost. But this first fault unforgiven became the beginning of a ruin that could not be arrested.

Here again is a young man just beginning life, who falls into bad company. He gets into debt, and yielding to temp

tation takes money to use in an alluring speculation, thinking that he can win a high stake and replace it. He loses; he is unable to meet the amount of money he has borrowed without his employer's consent or knowledge. His father makes good the amount and the case against him is not pushed; but his reputation is gone. No one will employ him. He becomes discouraged and sinks into poverty, and as situation after situation is denied him, he is embittered, and drifts away in the vast multitude of the abandoned and self-abandoned. He feels that society is against him, and it is. What he needs is the whole moral and spiritual force of society behind him, pushing him onward to higher and higher moral and spiritual attainment: instead of that, it is in front of him, pushing him back into crime and wretchedness. The whole weight of the moral and spiritual forces of society are brought to bear on him; but to ruin him, not to help him.

So those who offend are reviled, condemned and dismissed from the regards of good people, and refused opportunity to reform or to redeem themselves. All this because men will not forgive the moment's weakness and drag the fault out into the lime-light instead of covering it.

Now let us look at the other side of the question.

Society needs to be toned up in virtue, and all crime must be punished as an example to others. The purpose of punishment is the protection of society. Each man must feel that he lives in the