's relations who get them? To be
sure, Ruth said, thy people shall be my people, and where thou goest I
will go, and all that, and this beautiful sentiment has touched all time,
and man has got the historic notion that he is the head of things. But is
it true that a woman is ever really naturalized? Is it in her nature to
be? Love will carry her a great way, and to far countries, and to many
endurances, and her capacity of self-sacrifice is greater than man's; but
would she ever be entirely happy torn from her kindred, transplanted from
the associations and interlacings of her family life? Does anything
really take the place of that entire ease and confidence that one has in
kin, or the inborn longing for their sympathy and society? There are two
theories about life, as about naturalization: one is that love is enough,
that intention is enough; the other is that the whole circle of human
relations and attachments is to be considered in a marriage, and that in
the long-run the question of family is a preponderating one. Does the
gate of divorce open more frequently from following the one theory than
the other? If we were to adopt the notion that marriage is really a
tremendous act of naturalization, of absolute surrender on one side or
the other of the deepest sentiments and hereditary tendencies, would
there be so many hasty marriages--slip-knots tied by one justice to be
undone by another? The Drawer did not intend to start such a deep
question as this. Hosts of people are yearly naturalized in this country,
not from any love of its institutions, but because they can more easily
get a living here, and they really surrender none of their hereditary
ideas, and it is only human nature that marriages should be made with
like purpose and like reservations. These reservations do not, however,
make the best citizens or the most happy marriages. Would it be any
better if country lines were obliterated, and the great brotherhood of
peoples were established, and there was no such thing as patriotism or
family, and marriage were as free to make and unmake as some people think
it should be? Very likely, if we could radically change human nature. But
human nature is the most obstinate thing that the International
Conventions have to deal with.

ART OF GOVERNING

He was saying, when he awoke one morning, "I wish I were governor of a
small island, and had nothing to do but to get up and govern." It was an
observation quite wor