have an agency to which any person could be taken quietly and unobtrusively for advice as to peculiarities in mental habit or disposition or attitude toward life, which may indicate the beginnings of mental disorder. Special dispensaries for the earlier recognition and treatment of mental diseases exist in many foreign cities and in a few American cities. They have a clear field of usefulness and undoubtedly as the medical profession plants such outposts in that little explored field, the congested centers of city population, the dispensary or clinic for nervous and mental diseases will be one of its important facilities.

No other fact in modern social life is so hopeful as these various movements for the prevention of disease. Piously claiming to value human life above all else, we have for generation after generation, by our acts, denied our words. We have failed to do the things which would preserve human life. The little white hearse calls at the door for one in five of the babies born in the great cities. The great white plague has taken from one-third to one-fifth of all those dying in middle life. Insanity

has filled great hospitals until teeming populations are thus set apart. We have suffered all these things to be done because the lines of responsibility were not clearly defined, because the facts were not clear beyond all possibility of doubt. This comfortable margin of uncertainty affords us refuge no longer. Science points at us its finger and says, "Thou art the man. Thou art thy brother's keeper." We now know not only that we are our brother's keeper, but we know how to keep him; how to protect him; how to conserve his life. forces. We know how to build up a strong, vigorous race, fit to live; fit to build up a great nation; fit for great deeds of constructive social life; fit to promote the education, uplifting, strengthening of the masses, not simply of the few. Those who have already passed threescore years are to be pitied, chiefly because they will not live to see the wonders which will be accomplished within the next quarter-century in the control of the great ills which have afflicted mankind through centuries of weariness and of suffering, and among them insanity. The devils are not to be cast out, they are to be kept from getting in.

TH

HAT the American Continent derived its name from the Florentine merchant and geographer, Emerigou Vespucci, and that thereby an injustice was done to Columbus, is an impression which still retains a firm hold on the popular mind; yet many proofs have been offered that before Columbus landed the name America was found scattered over the Southern Continent from the Carribean Sea to the Pacific Ocean and from the Maricaibo Gulf and Amaracapana coast, near the Orinoco's outlet, to the mountainous regions of Cax-Amaraca around Bagota and over the heights of the Andes as far to the south as Peru.

Ex-President Harrison added his influence to the popular impression with the remark that the continent should have been named for Columbus; thereby implying that it was in fact named for Vespucci. The only evidence to sustain this assumption is the letter of a Florentine bishop, in which he writes rather boastfully "and well may our new world be named America since its discoverye was due to our eminent countryman, Emerigou Vespucci," etc.

On the other hand the proofs that the country bore a title much nearer to "America" than "Emerigou," may be summarized in the following citations: Girolemo Benzoni, a Milanese, in his "Historia delle Mondo Nuovo," published at Venice in 1565, ays: (p. 7 of trans.): "The Governor shortly after left Cumana, with all his company, and coasting westward, went to Amaracapanna; this was a town of about forty houses, and four hundred Spaniards resided there constantly, who annually elected a captain."

Humboldt, in his "Relations Historiques," a narrative of personal obser

vations, chiefly in South America, from 1799 to 1804, writes, Vol. 1, p. 324, that "the first settlement of the Spaniards on the mainland was at Amaracapana." The coast between the Capes Paria and de la Vela, appear under the names of Amaraca-pana and Maracapana in Codazzio's map of Venezuela, showing the voyages of Columbus and others.

Herrara in his history of the West Indies, narrates the voyage of Ojeda (1499), whom Amerigo Vespucci accompanied as a merchant, and says: "Finally he arrived at a port, where they saw a village on the shore, called Maracaibo by the natives, which had twenty-six large houses of bell shape, built

on pillars or supports, with swinging bridges leading from one to another; and as this looked like Venice in appearance, he gave it that name. which was subsequently adopted by the Republic of Venezuela." This simple sentence is conclusive proof that at the time Vespucci made his first landing in the Western Continent, the port he stopped at was called Amaracai-bo or America-land.

Sir Walter Raleigh reached the same region (1595) and wrote of it as "the Bewtiful valley of Amerioca-pana." Sir Walter also, writing in 1596, describes one of the younger brothers of Atahualpa, the Inca of Peru, (whom the Spaniards under Pizarro had slain). as taking thousands of the soldiers and nobles of Peru, and with these "vanguishing all that tract and valley of America situated between the Rivers Orinoco and Amazon."

Besides this, the name given to the whole country between the "Coast of Amaraca," which stretched from the Orinoco River to Maracai-bo bay, and thence to the whole country between

Maracai-bo bay and the Pacific, was called Amarca, while the whole country now known as Bogota and stretching down to Peru was called CaxAmarca. Along the heights of the Andes in this region the name again appears in the Capital City, which was also called Cax-Amaraca, in one of its near-by towns, called Pult-Amarca, and in the three other local names strewn to the southward along the Andes, of And-Amarca and Catamarca. Down near the mouth of the River Cumana was Amaraca-pana, previously mentioned, while out in the Carribean Sea, off the Coast of Amaraca-pana, was the large island of Tamaraque, a Spanish mode of spelling the same word, also a name given to one of the gods, or one of the names given to the Great Spirit of the natives.

To these citations may be added the probability that had there been any intention to name the continent after Vespucci, his surname would have been used, so that the result would have been something like Vespugia, instead of Emeriga. In short there seems to be very little room to doubt that the world has been misled through the complimentary notice of the Florentine bishop.

There seems to be a law for the evolution of continental names from names

of a divinity or of small localities, which through use by the persons first coming into contact with the continent at that point, spread gradually over the whole. Thus Europa originally designated a small village in Thessaly, but as it lay to the west of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, it must have been spoken of by Asiatic neighbors in a manner to facilitate its more extended application. "Asia" indicated originally a very small part of what is now Asia Minor, but near the dividing line. Africa meant originally only that small part of the continent lying around Carthage, and with which the

Romans came in contact. It was

much less extended than Lybia. Egypt was the name by which the Greeks mouth of the Nile and bears no resemknew a small seaport town near the blance to the name "The Black Country" by which the ancient Egyptians designated their own land. The name China spread from a pretty mountain region on the borders of India, because it was there that Europeans first came into any considerable contact with the empire, and it was by European na

This

tions that the name came to be obtruded on a nation which knew itself only as The Middle Kingdom. shows that it is by the spread of local names, indigenous to a small region, that large regions are named.

ST

INCE the Delphic Oracle retired from business, disowned and discredited, and the bears consumed Elisha's juvenile associates, the profession of prophecy has not flourished in its pristine strength and glory; but the tendency toward prophetic utterance is still latent in the race, and sporadic manifestations of its power are still in evidence.

A discussion of the Literary Future of the South, or of the future of anything else only illustrates the vitality of this primitive instinct. In all ages the prophet speaks, regardless of the deafness and skepticism of his auditors. In the rare instances when, like Joseph of old, his prophetic soul discloses the trend of the market on some great commodity, thenceforth he is "arrayed in purple and fine linen and fares sumptuously every day." Indulgence in literary prophecy is not so productive but it is more conducive to sound slumber.

The ultimate source of all literature is life. Hearts throb, cheeks burn, eyes flash, pulses thrill, chivalric impulses leap up, tears fall, memories linger, and iterature is simply the record of these the history of the fears, hopes, griefs, joys, defeats and victories which fill up all our days.

The people of the South have lived. They have lived so much, their lives have been so crowded with every human vicissitude, that they have not yet paused to write the story of their deeds. Practically the whole literature of the South is a literature of the future. Honored Southern names which were reverently spoken in an earlier day, and many which are equally honored now, stand high in the annals of American letters, but the master minds who can recognize and utilize the wonderful literary possibilities in the for

tunes and misfortunes of our Southern land, have not yet spoken. Some day a genius will come whose accents will voice the soul life of this people-who. in sweet and tender strains, will translate their sacred memories into purest and most delightful music; and then, bolder mood will breathe into heroic verse their achievements and their aspirations.

It is not hard to explain or understand the lack of literary pre-eminence in this section up to this time. Within a comparatively brief period the South has passed through all the stages of material progress from the hut of the pioneer to the marble palace of the

millionaire.

riding a mule thirty-six miles to a camp meeting on Sundays.

The days of luxury which succeeded the hardships of the pioneer period were not much better adapted to the evolution of the literary instinct. No Southern name stands prominently out at this time unless Poe can be claimed as a Southerner. The fact that he was

born in Boston and his father only of

Southern blood makes this claim somewhat doubtful, though his subsequent residence in Richmond and Baltimore may serve to give it a substantial basis. The interesting story, frequently told of Poe's winning a prize story competition with his "Manuscript Found in a Bottle." marks the early development of a still flourishing custom. The present writer has not read "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle." and, generally speaking, is not an authority on the contents of bottles, but he has been led to believe that many other manuscripts can trace their origin more or less directly to the same source. Whether or not their quality has been improved thereby is another story.

The turning point in Southern letters, as well as in every other phase of Southern life came with the Civil War. The period of dreams gave way to the period of action. Emotion crystallized into thought, and thought into deeds. Writers like John Esten Cooke, Henry Timrod. Father Ryan, and many others who lived through those stirring scenes, have bequeathed to the writers of the future, the very spirit which animated our fathers and mothers in those splendid, terrible days. And when the mind of that future genius begins its work what a splendid heritage of all kinds of literary material will be his! The sound of the settler's axe will drift down to him, mingled with the crack of the rifle and the yell of the savage. The rustle of the waving corn will sweep down on the breeze with the chant of cotton pickers in the snowy fields. He can hear the hum of the old

water wheels and picture the barefoot boy riding to mill with a well-balanced corn sack serving as a saddle for his melancholy mule. He can recall the melody of murmuring streams and picture the poetic beauty of a country town on "First Monday," with its lonesome looking lost canines, its sorebacked and spavined steeds sent in to be traded, and its anxious visitors from

the interior who wander around in red neckties, and some other things-eat watermelons, and drag their youngest hopefuls by the arms in an earnest effort to keep them from being trampled by the hurrying throngs. That future genius can grow eloquent over the pink cheeks and clustering ringlets, the sunny smiles and flashing eyes of the Dixie maidens of long ago, and the Dixie maidens of today, tomorrow and forever. He can catch the glow of ambition which animated the breasts of the young men of an earlier day. He can describe their luxurious lives in their ancestral homes, and repeat the fiery accents which fell from their lips in debate in the halls of Congress.

He can let his fancy down from its higher flights, and with affectionate remembrance, can tell of the old "Black Mammies," with their bandanna bound heads, their wondrous tales of ghosts and "ha'nts," their good and evil omens and their crooning lullabies.

The fierce and lurid story of the war will claim him. He will tell of the tear dimmed eyes and sorrowing hearts of the mothers who watched their darlings march away and waited vainly for their return. His pages will echo with the boom of cannon, the roar of musketry and the shouts of triumph and despair.

He will recognize that human nature. today is the same as the human nature of our fathers. He will look beneath the apparently sordid struggles of this later time and discover that we are still animated by primal emotions. The love of the bank clerk for the daughter of