things that may happen-to God. It may be a long journey before you. It is a long journey for it reaches out into Eternity. Start today. Start now! When you come to plains cross them; when you find tunnels go through them; when you reach mountains go over them.

Let this day mark a new epoch in your personal life; let it open to you a new career ennobled by confidence in the true science of religious faith; a new career of surrender to the true, the beautiful and the good as revealed in Jesus Christ; a new endeavor to do good by being good is God's way.

Never mind how many times you have begun and failed before. Begin again. One asked Christ "If my brother sin against me seven times shall I forgive him?" Jesus smiled and answered (I know he must have smiled when he said it) "I say not unto thee until seven times but until seventy times seven!"

It is a beautiful record in the life of Charles Kingsley. He wrote in his journal, "Tonight I have been walking by the sea and looking out on the vast expanse of waters beyond me and looking up at the stars in heaven overhead I made a solemn covenant with my God which by His grace shall never be broken for time nor for Eternity." And so today I ask you in silence, every one of you, to make a secret compact with God from this hour forward to give yourself up to Him. His plan, His love, His way of life and His service!

Upon the Malvern Hills one May morning the author of "Piers the Plowman," "went to rest down by a broad bank beside a burn, and as [he] lay there leaning, and looked in the water it sounded so merrily that [he] fell into a slumber. Then [he] dreamed a marvelous dream.”

The author of "Piers the Plowman"-if but one author there were-is commonly thought to have been William Langland, a clerk of some learning and an obscure officer of The Church. Little is known of his life save that he was a contemporary of Chaucer, born, possibly, in 1332, and dying about 1400. He wrote several poems of which "Piers the Plowman" is the best known. It is an allegory written in alliterative Middle English verse plentifully interlarded with Latin. In some respects it resembles "Pilgrim's Progress" written three centuries later. The great difference between the two, however, is that whereas "Piers the Plowman" pictures the evil state of contemporary society and seeks the remedy, "Pilgrim's Progress" pictures merely the trials of the soul in its efforts to attain personal salvation.

"Piers the Plowman" may, therefore, be classed with the Utopias such as the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More, "Looking Backward" of Edward Bellamy and "News from Nowhere" of William Morris. It differs in one important respect from all other social romances, however, in that it does not outline a new and improved social system. The author has no radical theories of society. He has merely an almost morbid appreciation of the ills of his time, ills which he bitterly portrays. His remedy is an ethical one: The triumph of righteousness and truth over evil and self-seeking. He

does not find it necessary to remodel social institutions to establish his universal brotherhood; a moral awakening he thinks sufficient. The poem of "Piers the Plowman" is interesting, therefore, because of the light it throws upon the England of the fourteenth century and because of its moral earnestness and dignity. It is not significant in the history of constructive social thought.

The allegorical form of the poem and a certain lack of logical unity make it in part rather trying reading to the modern reader even in its modernized prose version, that of Kate M. Warren. Allegory at the best is not attractive to the modern taste and Langland's conceptions are not as a rule so human and striking as are those of the "Pilgrim's Progress" the one great allegory with which the average reader is acquainted. But if the reader persists, he will be rewarded by frequent passages of moral force and dignity, illuminating flashes which more than compensate for the intervening obscurities. The story of the allegory is briefly this:

The dreamer is accosted by a fair woman, Holy Church, who explains to him the meaning of a beautiful castle and a dismal dungeon which lie before him; the castle is that of Truth and the dungeon that of Care. Holy Church expounds the beauty of Truth and the uses of Conscience and Charity.

The dreamer asks further how he may know falsehood. Thereupon he is made aware of a woman beautifully dressed and adorned with jewels. She is Meed the Maid. "Meed" signifies in its broadest sense reward, but it is here used in the sense of reward gained by dishonor-bribery-or perhaps better our modern word "graft.” Meed is to be married to Falsehood and the celebration is in progress when Theology objects that Meed (reward) should be married to Conscience not Falsehood. The wedding is halted and the dispute is taken before the King. Meed is fawned upon by all of the corrupt functionaries at the court, who are bought by her wealth, but Conscience will have none of her and explains her falsity to the King. Meed, he says, is not true reward but corruption and not to be allied to Conscience. Meed defends herself with sophistries and seems to have the better of the argument. The King urges the match, but Conscience refuses unless he shall be so counseled by Reason. Reason is sent for and condemns Meed although she is defended by Law and the minions thereof. Meed is

sent from court but is followed by some who favor her, a sizer, a summoner, and a sheriff's clerk, lower officers of the court.

The allegory turns next to a field preaching. Reason the Minister preaches and his arguments seconded by Repentance move the seven deadly sins to confession and the resolve to live better lives. Then the multitude, stirred by this sight, resolve to seek Truth. They ask a Palmer who has been to the Holy Land to show them the way, but he cannot. A plowman named Piers who has been taught the way by Conscience and Mother Wit offers to lead them. The journey is delayed for the plowman must first plough his land. He sets all the pilgrims to work, meanwhile, and to this they are spurred by Hunger. The lazy rebel but are beaten into submission by Hunger. Those unable to work are gladly fed by those who are strong and efficient.

Truth hearing the good works of the plowman and his followers sends Piers a bull of pardon for him and his heirs. The pardon bears but two lines: "And those who have done good shall go into life eternal and those who have done evil into everlasting fire." A priest disputes the efficacy of such a pardon, and in the midst of the debate the dreamer awakes to ponder his strange vision. He gives it as his opinion that though The Church may grant indulgences and pardons for sin yet a man were better off, if, at the Judgment, he have Do-well beside him to help him.

With this sensible conclusion the poem ends. Its allegory when briefly outlined is not uninteresting; but it is certainly far less interesting than the pictures of the times which are to be found throughout the narrative, pictures which make the twentieth century with all its social evils, seem an agreeable place by comparison with the fourteenth.

The King's English in England

The following extracts are taken from that very interesting study of English society, "England Without and Within," by Richard Grant White. Mr. White's entertaining account of English speech is perhaps not unduly flattering but is without prejudice as all who have read the entire work will admit. Mr. White was a sympathetic and scholarly observer, one who had unusual opportunities to know English life in all classes of society.

The first peculiarity that attracted my attention in the speech of Englishmen was a thick, throaty utterance. It was not new to me, but I was struck by its general diffusion. The attempt is somewhat as if the speaker were attempting to combine speech with the deglutition of mashed potato. This peculiar utterance, in which a gutteral aw seems to prevail, is, however, far from being universal. It is not high-class speech. Yet it begins to manifest itself somewhat high in the social scale, being perceptible just below what may be called the Oxford and Cambridge level. Then it broadens down from precedent to subsequent, until, when it reaches the lowest level, it is broad enough and thick enough for the foundation of a very substantial theory of peculiarity in national speech. It manifests itself chiefly in the utterance of some of the sounds of a, o, and u, in combination with 1 and r; for example, in such words as ale, pale, people, and royal, which are spoken by Englishmen of the lower and lower-middle classes much as if they were written ayull, payull, peopull, and ryull, the 's being gobbled low in the throat with a turkey-like gulp. The tendency to this mode of speech seemed to be strongest in those who were short-necked and corpulent. I remember one obese, red-faced shopman who gulped at "Royal Wilton" in such a strangling fashion that I should hardly have been surprised to see him fall down upon the spot in a fit of apoplexy. General negative assertions are unsafe; and I shall therefore not say that this gulp is never heard among eduacted English gentlemen and ladies; but I am sure that in such society I never heard it.

The ill treatment which the letter h receives from a very large proportion of the English people has long been known to the most superficial observers of their speech. It is the substance and the point of a joke which never loses its zest. Mr. Punch's artists, when hard put to it for the subject of a social sketch, can always fall back upon the misfortunes of the aspirate. H in speech is an unmistakable mark of class distinction in England, as every observant person soon discovers. I remarked upon this to an English gentleman, an officer, who replied, "It's the greatest blessing in the world; a sure protection against cads. You meet a fellow who is well dressed and behaves himself decently enough, and yet you don't exactly know what to make of him; but get him talking, and if he trips upon his h's that settles the question. He's a chap you'd better be shy of." Another friend said to me of a London man of wealth, and of such influence that comes from wealth and good nature, "The governor has lots of sense, and is the best fellow in the world; but he hasn't an h to bless himself with." And there seems to be no help for the person who has once acquired