merly claimed to be your masters, your pathetic but
manly appeal for just treatment and recognition. I see in all this the
promise that the time is not far distant when, in common with the white
race, you will have the free, undisputed rights of American citizenship
in all parts of the Union, and your rightful share in the honors as well
as the protection of the government.

Your letter would have been answered sooner if it had been possible. I
have been literally overwhelmed with letters and telegrams, which, owing
to illness, I have been in a great measure unable to answer or even read.

I tender to you, gentlemen, and to the people you represent my heartfelt
thanks, and the assurance that while life lasts you will find me, as I
have been heretofore, under more difficult circumstances, your faithful
friend.

OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS.,
first mo., 9, 1888.

REFORM AND POLITICS. UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS.

THERE is a large class of men, not in Europe alone, but in this country
also, whose constitutional conservatism inclines them to regard any
organic change in the government of a state or the social condition of
its people with suspicion and distrust. They admit, perhaps, the evils
of the old state of things; but they hold them to be inevitable, the
alloy necessarily mingled with all which pertains to fallible humanity.
Themselves generally enjoying whatever of good belongs to the political
or social system in which their lot is cast, they are disposed to look
with philosophic indifference upon the evil which only afflicts their
neighbors. They wonder why people are not contented with their
allotments; they see no reason for change; they ask for quiet and peace
in their day; being quite well satisfied with that social condition which
an old poet has quaintly described:--

"The citizens like pounded pikes;
The lesser feed the great;
The rich for food seek stomachs,
And the poor for stomachs meat."

This class of our fellow-citizens have an especial dislike of theorists,
reformers, uneasy spirits, speculators upon the possibilities of the
world's future, constitution builders, and believers in progress. They
are satisfied; the world at least goes well enough with them; they sit as
comfortable in it as Lafontaine's rat in the cheese; and why should those
who would turn it upside down come hither also? Why not let well enough
alon