trikes in Belgium. The government preparing to repress
outbreaks. Shocking facts in regard to the employment of girls in
Belgium coal mines.--Wholesale evictions in Ireland.

"HOME AFFAIRS.--The epidemic of fraud unchecked. Embezzlement of
half a million in New York.--Misappropriation of a trust fund by executors.
Orphans left penniless.--Clever system of thefts by a bank teller;
$50,000 gone.--The coal barons decide to advance the price of coal and
reduce production.--Speculators engineering a great wheat corner at
Chicago.--A clique forcing up the price of coffee.--Enormous
land-grabs of Western syndicates.--Revelations of shocking corruption
among Chicago officials. Systematic bribery.--The trials of the Boodle
aldermen to go on at New York.--Large failures of business houses.
Fears of a business crisis.--A large grist of burglaries and
larcenies.--A woman murdered in cold blood for her money at New
Haven.--A householder shot by a burglar in this city last night.--A
man shoots himself in Worcester because he could not get work. A large
family left destitute.--An aged couple in New Jersey commit suicide
rather than go to the poor-house.--Pitiable destitution among the
women wage-workers in the great cities.--Startling growth of
illiteracy in Massachusetts.--More insane asylums wanted.--Decoration
Day addresses. Professor Brown's oration on the moral grandeur of
nineteenth century civilization."

* * * * *

It was indeed the nineteenth century to which I had awaked; there
could be no kind of doubt about that. Its complete microcosm this
summary of the day's news had presented, even to that last
unmistakable touch of fatuous self-complacency. Coming after such a
damning indictment of the age as that one day's chronicle of
world-wide bloodshed, greed, and tyranny, was a bit of cynicism worthy
of Mephistopheles, and yet of all whose eyes it had met this morning I
was, perhaps, the only one who perceived the cynicism, and but
yesterday I should have perceived it no more than the others. That
strange dream it was which had made all the difference. For I know not
how long, I forgot my surroundings after this, and was again in fancy
moving in that vivid dream-world, in that glorious city, with its
homes of simple comfort and its gorgeous public palaces. Around me
were again faces unmarred by arrogance or servility, by envy or greed,
by anxious care or feverish ambition, and stately forms of men and
women who h