study and collect from the newspapers.  Certainly there are enough of them!  A man who bets wants to make money without work, and that on the face of it is a dishonourable aspiration; if he robs some one, I do not in the faintest degree try to palliate his crime—­he is a responsible being, or ought to be one, and he has no excuse for pilfering.  I should never aid any man who suffered through betting, and I would not advise any one else to do so.  My appeal to the selfish instincts of the gudgeons who are hooked by the bookmakers is made only for the sake of the helpless creatures who suffer for the follies and blundering cupidity of the would-be sharper.  I abhor the bookmakers, but I do not blame them alone; the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done, and they are doubtless tempted to roguery by the very simpletons who complain when they meet the reward of their folly.  I am solely concerned with the innocents who fare hardly because of their selfish relatives’ reckless want of judgment, and for them, and them alone, my efforts are engaged.

May, 1888

DEGRADED MEN.

The man of science derives suggestive knowledge from the study of mere putrefaction; he places an infusion of common hay-seeds or meat or fruit in his phials, and awaits events; presently a drop from one of the infusions is laid on the field of the microscope, and straightly the economy of a new and strange kingdom is seen by the observer.  The microscopist takes any kind of garbage; he watches the bacteria and their mysterious development, and he reaches at last the most significant conclusions regarding the health and growth and diseases of the highest organizations.  The student of human nature must also bestow his attention on disease of mind if he would attain to any real knowledge of the strange race to which he belongs.  We develop, it is true, but there are modes and modes of development.  I have often pointed out that a steady process of degeneration goes on side by side with the unfolding of new and healthy powers in the animal and vegetable kingdoms.  The great South American lizards grow strong and splendid in hue amid the rank freedom of pampas or forest; but their poor relatives in the sunless caves of Transylvania grow milky white, flabby, and stone-blind.  The creatures in the Kentucky caves are all aborted in some way or other; the birds in far-off islands lose the power of flight, and the shrivelled wings gradually sink under the skin, and show us only a tiny network of delicate bones when the creature is stripped to the skeleton.  The condor soars magnificently in the thin air over the Andes—­it can rise like a kite or drop like a thunderbolt:  the weeka of New Zealand can hardly get out of the way of a stick aimed by an active man.  The proud forest giant sucks up the pouring moisture from the great Brazilian river; the shoots that rise under the shadow of the monster tree are weakened and blighted by lack of