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sian Greeks, who look upon the Roman Greeks with a great deal of scorn. Marblehead, on Lake Erie, where these Slovaks are engaged in the limestone quarries, this division was discovered after all the Greeks had built one church, that of the Roman Greeks. A few of the wiser ones who arrived in this country later were dreadfully shocked when they saw this, and in Peter Shigalinsky's saloon plans were made to gain possession of the church for the only true Greeks, the Russian; many pitched battles were fought, a long and fruitless litigation followed, and finally Peter Shigalinsky built next to his saloon a new church, whose orthodoxy is emphasized by one of the hori zontal pieces of the cross slanting at a more acute angle than that of the Roman Greek church, in which of course there can be no salvation. Where they have no church of their own they worship with the English or Germans if they are Romanists, but in many cases the priests told me that they are not wanted and must keep to one corner of the building. There are not priests enough to shepherd them, and those they have are in many cases unfitted for the task. It is asserted that the Lutheran pastors are no better, and count for little or nothing in making these people Christians and citizens. Various denominations, notably the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, are engaged in the difficult work of evangelizing these people, and it is a gigantic task undertaken with little money, but wherever it is successful it means the winning of men for America and for the kingdom of God. They are naturally suspicious of strangers, but grateful for every kindness, and once a door is opened to their hearts it is never closed again. Unfortunately, their speech shuts them out from the touch with American people of the same community, but there are avenues of approach in which only one language is spoken the language of love and kindness; one noble American woman whom I know ministers to them by nursing them and suggesting simple remedies when they are ill, and has thus become no small factor in their social and religious redemption. Thousands of such doors are opened which are closed to the professional missionary, although many men of common sense, or, as in many

cases, women of consecrated common sense, have accomplished much, and are daily enlarging the kingdom of God on earth.

Of literature little or nothing enters the mining villages; a Slovak weekly comes to one or two homes and that is all. The Slovak lives an isolated life, sublimely ignorant of "wars and rumors of wars;" his breakfast is not spoiled by the glaring headlines of the daily paper, nor does the magazine or novel press upon him the problems of human society. He knows his camp, his mine, his shop, and though he lives in America and in the most busy States in the Union, his world now is not much bigger than it was when its horizon touched his village pastures. As yet he is not a factor politically, though the political "boss" finds him the best kind of material, for he is bought and soid without knowing it, and votes for he knows not whom. At Braddock, Pa., it was told me that he is sold first to the Democrats and then to the Republicans, and afterwards is naïve enough to come back to the Democrats and tell of his bargain, willing to be bought back into his political family. Like almost all foreigners, he is a Democrat by instinct or by association, one scarcely knows which, although he is usually anything that a drink of liquor makes him. I asked one his political faith, "Are you a Democrat?" "No, me Catholic-Greek, not Russian," was the reply. "What are your politics?" I asked a number. "Slovak," was the invariable answer. Not twenty per cent. of those I interviewed knew the name of our President, not two per cent. the name of the Governor of the State in which they were residing. The Slovak does not know the meaning of the word citizen, and the limited franchise in Hungary is exercised for him by those wiser than himself; he is just force and muscle, with all the roots of his heart in the little village across the sea, and with his brain wherever the stronger brain leads him. As a rule, he does not plan to remain in this country, and I doubt whether the number of those who expect to do so exceeds six per cent.

He is quiet and peaceable except on feast days or when Yanko and Katchka have their wedding day, and then you may hear the voice of the bridegroom lifted in a song about the " sweetheart he

tastes-apple pie. It is a glorious sight to see them eat, their faces buried in these unheard-of luxuries. Beer flows as freely as did milk and honey in the promised land, and again the little band plays, this time a new tune, and the bridegroom sings a new song.

"Beer oh! beer oh! beautiful beer, And who then will drink of it When I am down in the pit?

Beer oh! beer oh! who'll drink it then?" While he is singing about the future and the crowd dances to this melancholy tune, the present takes care of itself, as barrel after barrel is emptied, until the pyramids of Egypt have small rivals in those built entirely of empty beer-barrels in the Pennsylvania mining town. Many of the drinkers fall asleep as soundly as Rameses ever did after he was embalmed, while others are making ready for the end of the feast-the fight, for "no fight, no feast" is the proverb. Somebody calls a Slovak a Polak, or vice versa; some young man casts glances at some young maiden otherwise engaged-and the fight is on. I have never discovered just the reason for the fight, and one might as well search

for the cause of a cyclone or for the eruption of Mont Pelée, but the results are nearly the same: furniture, heads, and glasses all in the same condition-broken; everybody on the ground like twisted forest trees, while one hears between long black curses the peaceful 'snores of the unconscious drunk. The next day and the next the programme is repeated, and this is the Slovak's only diversion, unless it be a saint's day, when history repeats itself and he once more practices his two vices, drinking and fighting. Sexually he is virtuous, and no scandal taints these mining camps, where one woman cooks for fifteen or twenty. men, who respect her as the wife of one man, while she respects her own virtue and would fight if necessary to remain loyal to her husband. There is much coarse, indelicate talk and much crudeness, but among no other foreigners is there such virtue.

The Pole who emigrates to this country comes from nearly the same region as the Slovak, and lives very much the same life, although in many things he is his superior. He has greater self-assertion, is not so submissive to the Church, chafes