Of course the "Fighting Allens", in times of excitement, developed into a torrent of terror rushing through those hills. Officers learned that it was wise to wink at their errors, if they did not want to take the last terrible wink of death. They told of good blood away back in Scotland-but whether that was so, I am not at all sure. Some of them, at times, would claim to have Ethan Allen's blood in their veins: but I never believed it: the famous Green Mountain Boy was a hill-warrior, but not a hill-robber, and his acknowledged descendants, so far as I have known them, were honest, law-abiding people.

And so were the Virginia Allens, if you only allowed them to make the law. The quaint but dangerous dictum of David Harum, "Do unto the other man as he would like to do to you, and do it first", was amended to "Do unto the other man as you would like to do unto him, and do it on the sly, if possible." Instead of "Obey the laws that be", they substituted "Obey the laws that you would like to have be." Instead of "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's", they said, "Render unto yourself everything you can get, and let God take care of himself: he has all he wants, anyhow."

Among "the laws that be", they particularly hated the revenue ones. They refused to understand why the Government had any right to tax them for making whiskey, when they themselves owned the grain, and the stills, and "put up" for the process of producing the remunerative liquid. To be sure, they paid their help largely in whiskey: but that was to be expected. Sidna Allen's $20,000 palace was built largely in that way: some of his best carpenters were frequently exhilarated with the "best" of "mountain dew."

People all about there, were very much averse to slighting one of the calls of this terrible band of the mountain fastnesses. A physician was summoned to go and minister to the feud-begotten wounds of one of them, and he said to

don't, I'll soon need a physician myself -and perhaps an undertaker." A merchant said, "I don't like to sell them goods-especially arms and ammunition: but there's liable to be a fire in town, right on my corner, if I refuse." A minister said, "The sinfulness of sin in the abstract is all I dare to preach against when there is present an Allen or a relative of the clan: for whatever specific sin I might denounce, some one of the crowd might think I meant him, and my work in this world would probably soon be left undone."

My father often remarked that there was not nearly the usual competition among natural office-holders, in our county, for the positions such men are generally wont to covet. A brave sheriff is willing to risk some danger, in consideration of salaries and perquisites: but when the said perquisites are more than liable to be paid in leaden coin, the eagerness, sometimes, like Bob Acre's courage, "oozes out." The law-abiding mountaineers of Virginia have certainly no taint of cowardice clinging to their names: but most of them have wives, or sweethearts, or brothers, or sisters, or children, or fathers, or mothers, that are not ready to spare them: and do not particularly desire to execute law in a lawless region.

When the Judge who sentenced Floyd Allen left home that morning, he well knew that he carried his life in his hand: and bade adieu to his loved ones as if it were for the last time. "I may come back in a box", he remarked: and he did.

He had rather do that, than fail in his duty. When a Judge once accepts office, he must go about his work fearlessly, and perform it, with no display of fear, whatever he may apprehend within. If he flinch the least bit, "his middle name will be Coward." In all parts of the country, it is well known that a Judge's position is really one that requires great courage he is constantly being threatened, overtly and covertly, by criminals whom he has relegated to punishment, and by their friends and relatives. He

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We moved away from there, about the time I came to man's estate, and settled in another city, much to the relief of all connected with the family: but I have often thought there was more or less Allenism, in different forms, all over the country.

The Railroad Accident-Plague.

N°

O wonder that Mascagni, the celebrated Italian composer, sprang to his feet and pulled the bell-cord of an American train, endeavoring to stop the rushing, swaying, and plunging cavalcade of coaches, and explaining piteously that he wanted to die in his bed "at Italy, when it was that the event occurred, and not in a railroad-track"! He perhaps saw in a glimpse of the prophecy of genius, what would occur on the banks and amid the glittering ices of the Hudson, a few years later-and what has occurred meanwhile many and many times, in different forms, but with similar gruesome results-generally very much.

worse ones.

Travelling with any approach toward certainty as to being safe meanwhile, is one of the lost arts. We go hither and thither up and down upon our railroads, with no thought of whether we will arrive as wholes or in sections.We assume that of course we will wake up tomorrow morning and find ourselves five hundred miles from where we went to bed, and breakfast luxuriously in a palatial restaurant on wheels, supplied with all the enticing delicacies of the season. When the journey is over, we will be met by friends who whisk us away in their automobiles, or by paid carriagiers or well-schooled taxicabers, who take us to whatsoever hotel we wish to use as an abiding-place. Ah, the joys of travel!-How different from the oldtime ways!

If. One of the most important-the most portentous-of words in our language, is spelled with just two lettersthe third vowel and the fourth conso

With all the protections, with all the safety-appliances-and they are many and increasing all the time-there are a million ifs scattered all along the road, from New York to San Francisco, and all the north and south routes running across and these ifs all head the lifeand-death conditions-If this rail is a perfect, and not a broken one; if the flange of this wheel does not give way;

IF THE METALS ARE NOT ADULTERATED WITH INFERIOR SUBSTANCES, IN ORDER TO PRODUCE THEM MORE CHEAPLY, AND THUS REALIZE LARGER PROFITS FOR THE COMPANY THAT MANUFACTURED THEM.

A beautiful and luxurious train of cars-a Waldorf-Astoria upon wheelsmay rush in eighteen hours from Chicago to New York-(a distance of nearly one thousand miles), if there is no broken rail on the way—or none so weak that it is ready to break, at some unusual weight or jarring. What a humiliation that all this care-guarded comfort and splendor can be metamorphosed, in a half minute's time, into a hideous heap of junk, by one flaw in a little piece of iron or steel!

The loss of property would not be of so much consequence, although it means much to the stockholders of the road: but among these crushed fragments of inert matter, are HUMAN LIVES, of inestimable value-lives which no crisp bank-bills or picture-embellished checks. can replace. There are also nerves which are capable of receiving shocks that will last for life-and limbs which may for years be wrecks hanging upon a still-living human body.

Eleven "flyers" (to say nothing of many ordinary trains) wrecked in two months and a half! Some of them in one way, some in another: but the broken-rail plague leads the van.

And are corporations growing more and more heartless? Are they willing, as such, to sacrifice the safety of their customers, to the chance of earning extra fares by extra speed?

Extra speed is a curse, if extra chances of safety do not accompany it.

THIS Magazine is taken and read by

people of all sorts of political tendencies. It has a good many opinions of its own, but does not take time to express them all. Indeed, it is going to let its readers edit it, politically, during the next few months. It has sent all about, asking for sentiments and preferences, and a good many of them have arrived. Here are some:

WANTS THINGS ABOUT AS THEY ARE.

I think President Taft is doing and has done about as well as any one could, under the circumstances, and should not have the reins snatched out of his hands, either by experienced or inexperienced people.

Of course he has made some mistakes who hasn't? Count all the blunders that have been committed during the past three years that Taft has been in, by everybody in the country, and you'll find a few hundred millions, I guess. Put any of us into that exalted but dangerous position, and how many of us could come through free from severe criticism-even by our own party? Even give us the training and experience he has had in such matters, and we could not do any better-if as well.

He is a steady man. He does not spend half his time quarreling, and calling other people liars. He does not tell any one he's "delighted" to see him, when all the time he wishes he had not come. He does not kill all the animals he can find at both ends of the earth. He does not mope and fidget about, if he is not the center of observation, and the target of all the hurrahs in town. He seemed just as good a man, just as happy a man, just as contented a man,

when at his desk wth no one to pay court to him, as now when he is the storm-center of thunders of applause. He has the kind of resolute and selfreliant modesty, which the stable, straightforward people of America admire, and which they are trying to teach to their children.

He believes that the people should rule-in such matters as they are educated and competent to do so. He doesn't want the passengers of a train to take the throttle out of the hands of the engineer, or the railroad-tickets away from the conductor after he has collected them. He does not believe in tearing down the Column Vendôme, and trying to build something in its place that shall please every one of the people that helped tear it down.

Put me down for Taft-the man who has done more for the country, than any other one man living! Yours truly,

JAMES G. PICKERING.

WANTS MORE LIFE IN THE ADMINISTRATION.

Let's try Roosevelt again. This Administration is too slow-motioned, for me. There was more life and progress in one day of Roosevelt's two administrations, than in a month of the present

one.

And Roosevelt has the courage of his convictions, and a conviction of his courage, and he knows how to use them. When the time comes to act, he is ready to do the acting, and let the audience cheer or hiss, just as they like.

I believe that he is the man for the hour, and would vote for him and work.

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for him, for any office for which he might run-President preferred. SAMUEL J. GOODWILL.

DOWN ON THEODORE. Theodore Roosevelt is the Benedict Arnold of the Republican Party. After taking all the honors it could give himhe turned around and deliberately tried to sell it out-because he hoped to get additional wealth and honors by doing so. Success meant all sorts of prosperity to him: opportunities of speculation, the booming of the stock of the relig ious (?) paper with which he is connected and in which he is financially interested, and continual dominance over the destinies of our country.

He has found that he cannot get the office, this time, and now he is trying to wreck the party-so as to get what he can out of the debris.

Some think, or at least say, that he made Taft: but this is not true. He merely yielded to a desire that rose in the country, to have some one in the Presidential chair who would work for the country instead of for himself, and he intended all the time to take the office from him if he could, after the four years were up. He promised not to run again, in order to make sure his election in 1908, and then deliberately turned around and broke his word. Would we want such a man in the White House again? And, now that it is practically settled that he cannot get there, shall we let him, through the help of a lot of disgruntled "outs", ruin, because he cannot rule?

JAMES N. DAVIDSON.

La Follette is the man whom the country should elect to its chief position. He has earned it, and is entitled to it. He is one of the very few public men that will stand right up and say what they think, and say it again and again, regardless of newspaper clamor and opposition. He said what he believed, in his great Philadelphia speech, and the newspapers which represented

the big interests, did their best to down him. He will continue in the fight for the nomination, till the Chicago Convention is over, and if he lives will be a candidate again, in 1916. Watch La Follette. BURNETTE G. MAPES.

WANTS THE MISSOURIAN. Champ Clark is the man we want. He has run the whole scale of American occupations, is in touch with the people, and knows exactly what they need. He has been a hired man on a farm, a clerk in a country store, a newspapereditor, a lawyer, the President of a College, Speaker of the National House of Representatives, and a success all the way along. He was born in that grand old nursery of orators and statesmen, Kentucky. He is one of the greatest factors in the only real progressive party of today-the Democratic. He is the most picturesque of all the "favorite sons", and if I am not very much mistaken, you will see him win at the quarter-post, and have a walk-over for the last stretch.

AMOS N. COLTON.

A STONE THROUGH THE WINDOW.

I am glad to be able to throw my little paving-stone of common sense, through the show-window of folly and pretense that is now the bane of American politics. Let us women have a chance to vote, and we will show you an entirely new order of things. Men alone will never purify politics: nobody but the women can do that. They are all ready, if you will give them a chance.

They do not want the ballot through vanity, or love of power, or resentment against the sex that has ground them under its feet so long: they want it because they have an instinctive feeling, or a knowledge, rather, that politics, and sociology, and finance, and even theology, and, indeed, almost everything else in this country, need PURIFYING, and they feel that they are most decidedly the ones to do it.