austerities of a Carmelite's life was not the least supernatural part of her vocation, but her very delicacy furnished her with a means of leaving home and of bearing in her own courageous heart alone the bitterest pangs of the sacrifice. The doctor ordered her to winter at Nice. She petitioned to be allowed to stay there alone, meaning to break herself gently the while from all the ties of flesh and blood, and never to return to the shelter of her father's roof. It was settled that the Count and Countess de Maistre should accompany her to the South and leave her at the house of a relative, the Countess de Camburzano, after which she was to go for a time to the Visitation Convent. Her last days at Beaumesnil were passed in agony at the thought of what she was leaving, but she kept her secret to herself, and saved the feelings of her father and mother. The winter was well over before she saw her promised land. She had almost drained the cup of parting, tasting all its bitterness, drop by drop, during her six months at Nice; but Our Lord was mindful of her oblation, and he sent her always desolation where others would have found their joy. On the 15th of May, 1862, she entered the Carmel of Poitiers. On her way from Nice a priest had happened to find out the end of her journey, and had questioned her as to her motives. "What are you going there for?" he had asked. "To suffer," she had answered.

Worldly romances show us to the door of the nuptial chamber and there close. Why should we seek to penetrate further into the mysterious secrets of the Divine Bridegroom? A few months later, on August 21st, 1862, Sister Teresa of Jesus stood in her white marriage robes at the altar of sacrifice. Her father gave her away and she retired for ever behind the thick veils of Carmel, to suffer, labor, and pray for souls, to lay up gold in the treasury of the Church.

As her girlhood had been, so was her religious life, fuller of the Cross than of joy, knowing rather the thorns of her chosen One's crown than the roses of His tenderness. She was elected first subprioress, then prioress, and whilst she held this latter office she was called from earth at the early age of thirty-three.

Evil times are spreading over us the dark atmosphere of materialism. It is invigorating to inhale for a time the pure air of higher regions, and to know that even in our days God is loved with the entire worship of hearts and with the whole burnt offerings of human lives. Let Xavérine de Maistre and those who have the fortitude and the call to imitate her example trim the fire of penance which is to keep the charity of Christians from growing cold.

THE RAILROAD AND KINDRED MONOPOLIES.

UNTIL quite recently it was commonly believed that our demo

cratic forms of government furnished an all-sufficient guarantee against the domination of any one class of persons, and the consequent depression and subjection of others. It was supposed, too, that no such extremes of riches and poverty as are found in European countries could come to exist here, through which a few persons inherit or acquire, and continue to accumulate, wealth, beyond all possibility of rationally enjoying it, while vast multitudes of other persons are, year by year, sinking down deeper into an abyss of hopeless destitution and misery.

Yet facts within the personal view of every observing person prove that this supposition is a sheer delusion. The conditions of decent, respectable subsistence are rapidly becoming more difficult; they have already become practically unattainable to vast multitudes; and their children have nothing better to look forward to. Until a few years back, it was the boast of every Fourth of July orator, and of every demagogue who courted popularity, that in this country the variety of pursuits was so great, and the recompense of honest labor so generous, that nothing else but industry and reasonable economy was required to insure a decent liveli hood and a competent provision against sickness and old age.

The man who would indulge in such euphemistic exaggeration now, would be set down as either an idiot or an audacious falsi

fier. In every direction the cry goes up from unemployed millions, "Give Us Work!" It is not bread that they demand, but work. And the distinction is well worth noting. It is not "a distinction

without

a difference," but one which carries with it a deep and

pregnant meaning. It signifies that it is not alms which the vast multitude of unemployed working-men and working-women in our country demand, but work; they do not want to live at any one

else's

public. tunity to work. Yet of these men and women who are willing to do" a fair day's work for a fair day's wages," estimates made by different writers, estimates based on a comparison of the returns of the last United States census, with other more recent statistics gathered from reliable sources, concur in the statement that the number of unemployed persons among those who may be properly included under the phrase "working classes," as commonly understood, is about two millions.

Cost and expense, nor at the cost and expense of the entire

They are willing to work; all that they ask is the oppor

Nor is this the darkest side of the picture which facts present. While two millions of persons are clamoring for an opportunity to earn, we will not say a livelihood, but even a bare subsistence by honest work; and while week by week and month by month thousands and tens of thousands of them, disheartened and discouraged, yield to the compulsion of stern necessity, and swell the rapidly increasing number of "tramps," who in summer become a public nuisance and a cause of fear and terror in every rural community, and in winter crowd, beyond their capacity to receive and provide for them, the "lock-ups" and temporary refuges and jails of our towns and cities; while this is the fact as regards multitudes of unemployed workingmen, the cry goes forth from other thousands and hundreds of thousands of workingmen, of workingwomen, of boys turned prematurely into men, and young girls made prematurely women, by having to face the stern realities of life and plunge into the intense strife for existence, and depend upon themselves while yet they ought to be under their father's and mother's protection and care,-the cry goes forth.

"We have work; we are working; working like slaves, working harder than slave owners made their slaves to work, but we are not fairly paid. Our condition is worse than that of slaves. They are sure of sufficient food by day to keep up their strength, and of a shelter by night; we are not. We work harder than they do, and our condition is worse. If our strength gives out, if sickness or old age overtakes us, our employers, or masters, cast us off with as little consideration and concern as they cast aside a worn-out piece of machinery, and with less of regret or commiseration than a crippled or superannuated mule. We are treated worse than slaves, worse, far worse, than brute beasts of labor. We are willing to work; but we do not receive a fair or just recompense for our work. We do not receive a fair, honest wage for a fair, honest day's work."

That these are facts, and that the words we have put into the mouths of the millions who compose our working classes are a truthful expression in plain English of their thoughts and feelings, every one who takes the trouble to acquaint himself with their condition, and their sentiments, will acknowledge.

And what a satire is not this state of things upon our vain proclamation: “Happy, Prosperous America!" What a commentary upon the pregnant clause of our Declaration of Independence, "That all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights,” among which are "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

What of Life, we ask (life in this world we mean, for to that the Declaration of Independence refers, and we do not propose in this paper going beyond the principles of natural reason and mere human ethics), can the millions enjoy, who toil in and about our

coal and iron-ore mines, our quarries and mills and factories, our stores and shops, and yet, who, when each month expires, find themselves without sufficient savings, unless they have stinted and starved themselves, to subsist without employment for one month ahead? What of liberty do those persons possess who are absolutely dependent from day to day upon the meagre wages their employer pays them, and who, if they would leave his employ, would have practically to starve for months before they could find work elsewhere?

What of substantial, practical opportunity, or possibility even, to engage in the "Pursuit of Happiness" do they possess who must toil from month to month, and year to year, without finding themselves a dollar in advance of their previous dependent precarious condition?

The truth is, that instead of our growth in population, and our progress in the settlement of our unpopulated territories, and the utilization of our forests, and of the treasures (gaseous, liquid, and solid) in and under the surface soil of our country, marking a corresponding increase of comfort and prosperity to the majority of the people of the United States, they seem, they do, indeed (according to the combined testimony of indisputable facts), keep even step with the depression and degradation of vast multitudes, if not of the majority, of the people of the United States.

For the majority of the people of our country, as of every other country on earth, is composed of those who must earn their daily bread by their daily toil; and the number of these is increasing with far greater rapidity than the increase of our population. In other words, the proportion of those who can live at their ease is diminishing, while the proportion of those who are slavishly dependent is increasing with fearful rapidity. In other words, in sardonic contradiction to our vain boast of political equality, and of its supposed consequent, the social respectability of every class and position in society, we have entered upon the road by which "the rich are becoming richer, and the poor poorer;" and we are advancing so rapidly along it that those who work for wages are confronted with the alternative of becoming mere "proletariats," dependent entirely upon the will of their employers for work and subsistence, or else are becoming "tramps " or public paupers.

ways.

We are well aware that the substantial truth of these statements is denied, and that they have been widely controverted in various Statistical tables have been framed to show that wages are higher now than they were years ago; that money has a greater degree of purchasing power, and consequently that the condition. of wage-workers has improved of late years.

Without diverging from our intended line of thought to refute

these statements, it is sufficient to say that facts everywhere around us prove that they are misleading and fallacious. The increasing misery and wretchedness; the increasing intensity of the struggle for employment; the increasing number of the unemployed in all our cities and towns; the misery that characterizes the condition. of our mining regions; the supplanting there of American, Irish, Scotch, and Welsh miners with imported laborers, who are little else than barbarians, and live as no civilized human beings are willing or should be willing to live; these and other kindred facts utterly disprove the assertion that the material condition of the people of the United States, as a whole, is becoming more comfortable, more independent, or happier.

Some of our readers, perhaps, may regard these general remarks as irrelevant to the subject suggested by the title of our paper— "Railroad and Kindred Monopolies." They are not, however. For we directly charge, and it is the purpose of our article to prove, that monopolies are a productive cause of these and other evils; and that chief among these monopolies, and the most pernicious of them, is the railroad monopoly.

When railroads were first constructed in the United States, it was intended that they should serve and promote the same general public purposes which turnpikes, canals, and navigable lakes and rivers promoted, and in a much more efficient way. It was intended that they should be public highways, over which the travel and traffic of our country should pass with like facilities, and freedom of individual action and enterprise, which turnpikes, canals, and navigable lakes and rivers had afforded.

For this reason extensive privileges and powers were granted to them; privileges and powers which are never granted to individuals in their private personal capacity, and which would not have been granted to railroad corporations, or any other corporations, except with the expectation and intention that their powers should be employed strictly and impartially for the promotion of the public interests. The right to charge reasonable rates for the services they performed was conceded in order that the stockholders might receive a fair and equitable return for the capital they invested.

Thus public interests, and not individual or corporate emolument, were the chief and primary purpose of creating these corporations and allowing them to exist. It was never intended that they should control and dominate public interests and become practically independent of the civil authority to which they owe their existence. It was supposed that the limitations of their charters and the established principles of the Common and Statutory Law would be a sufficient safeguard against any such abuse of the powers granted to them.