This is the most hostile to the government of all the sects. They condemn all the State laws, of whatever character, and they refuse to live in peace with the Orthodox. They hold that all who would escape the wrath of God must own neither house nor land, and have no continuing city here below; consequently they reject all social ties and wander in the forests. In that inhospitable region, however, subsistence cannot be found in the woods; so they have admitted an order of lay brethren who live in the villa ges, pay their taxes, attend the parish church and act in all things as good citizens, but who support the Wanderers by their labor and give them shelter when needed. When a lay brother feels death approaching, he separates himself entirely from the world, and is carried out to die in the open air. The Russian government is very hostile to sectarianism, and often bitterly persecutes all heretics and dissenters. This is done entirely on political grounds, and it is indeed true that the tenets of some sects make them enemies to the laws. But this persecution is bestowed wholly upon the native Russians. The government considers it the most natural thing in the world that the Tartar should be a Mohametan, the Pole a Roman Catholic, and the German a Protestant; and it protects these in their religion so long as they do not make it offensively prominent, or try to convert the Orthodox.

over.

But it also considers it only natural that a Russian should be a true Greek Catholic, and where it finds one who is not it believes there is some hidden and dangerous motive beneath the apostasy. The Molokáni, espe、 cially, are said to be inimical to the State, but Mr. Wallace denies the charge and insists that they are faithful and loyal citizens. The future of these sects will be watched with keen interest by Protestants, the world For while some are beyond the pale of brotherhood, there are many whose tenets and practice bind them closely to us in bonds of sympathy. The Fantastic sects will probably die gradually out, or be suppressed as subversive of good morals; but the purer bodies will increase in culture and power, and will have great influence in the work of educating the masses. In numbers, the Protestants of Russia are rapidly growing. In some districts there is scarcely a village that has not one or two independent sects. The "Old Ritualists" and "Priestless People" number about seven millions, while the strict Protestants are two millions and the Fantastic sects count a million more; altogether about one-eighth the whole population of the Empire. There are few nobles or cultured people among them, but they hold the most of the wealthy merchant class, the greater part of the Don Cossacks, and all the Cossacks of the Ural.

Charles H. Woodman.

I HAD been in to Boston to see a friend, New York bound, safely on board the steamboat train at the Providence depot. Returning through Charles street to the corner of Cambridge, and finding no proper car in sight, I set my face toward the glowing west and my foot forward upon the West Boston bridge, and by a brisk walk reached the Grand Junction crossing, a mile out, before my car, betokened by its orange-colored light, overtook me. My favorite place on the front platform by the driver's side, proved to be unoccupied, and I jumped on.

"Let's see,” said he, after a moment's pause, as we were getting under way again, and while the horses were settling down to the new stretch of road before them; "did I tell you I had given up my place on the road and was going away?"

"No," I replied. The fact was, I had not happened to fall in with Trescot for several weeks. "Where are you going?"

"Out to Iowa."

"To Iowa! Going on to a farm?" "Yes.

I've got a sister married out there, and her husband's rented me a farm right alongside o' his, and I'm going to start two weeks from Monday."

"And is your family going with you?" "Yes, my wife and child, both of 'em." His child, Trescot afterward told me, was only seventeen months old.

be making our own living out of the ground instead o' earning it out of other people. There's lots and lots of men 'd be better off, if they only knew it, to get away from these crowded cities into the country and go to farming."

"Where in Iowa is it you're going? Do you know the place?"

"No, I hain't never been there myself, but they say it's a nice country. It's eight miles, my sister writes, from Somerset, the county seat, and a good rolling country. They say they can see the church spires in Somerset from their front door step, so that 'taint very far off. My brother-in-law says he's got a good pair of horses looked out for me, and a stock of seed in hand; and the first year he will let me have what tools I want; and then his father lives close by so

'cot.

"That's the way I look at it," said Tres'Tis a kind of a machine life, driving in and out on one of these cars, so many hours in the day, and every day in the week. I've worked too much Sundays, I know that." "In my opinion," I continued, "one way out of the hard times' everybody is talking about, is to work off some of the men who are driving horse-cars and doing such things away to the farms at the West."

till we get started."

I hope you have been able to lay up a little something while you've been here," I continued.

"Yes, I've got ahead a little. I've been on the road here three years. I've worked hard, and my wife she's worked hard, and I've got ready money enough, I guess, to get what we shall have to buy the first year. 'Twouldn't hardly pay a man who hadn't but a little money to spend, to go out there to look up a place after he got there. There's a great deal in knowing just where you are going."

"And how do you go? Boston and Albany?"

"Yes. Boston and Albany, New York Central, Lake Shore, and then, I believe, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy. It takes about three days to get there. I'xpect to leave here a Monday morning and get there a Wednesday night."

"And how soon shall you get to work upon your farm?"

law

"About the 8th of March, I 'xpect. My brother-in-law writes that if I come out right off now, I shall have just about enough time to get settled down before going to plowing." "Living's cheap out there," Trescot continued in a hopeful tone. "My brother-insays that one of these horses he's looked for me is a good, nice, clean horse, about ten years old, perfectly sound, and just as pretty a horse to drive as ever you see, and he cost him only fifty dollars. The other isn't quite so slick, but he's a good fair workhorse, and he cost only forty dollars. Corn was fourteen cents, but now it's sixteen, and it's going up higher."

up

"Are you leaving anybody behind?” "Yes, I've got an old father and mother Down East. Father, he's seventy-six, and mother, she's seventy-two. But they're both in good fair health; and I've a brother down there who looks after them. I was down to see 'em last spring, and then we calculate after we've got two crops in that we'll all come East and see 'em again."

"Your health is good and rugged, I suppose? That's an important matter for one setting out on such an undertaking."

“Well, no, I hain't always had just perfect good health. And that's one thing 't makes me think I'll be better off out there. I'm kind o' dyspeptic here; and it's a hard climate here in Massachusets for anybody." "Well, when you get settled, Trescot, you must write me and let me know how you are getting on. Your old comrades on the road will be glad to hear about you if you prosper and like it. I expect some of them will be for following you."

"Well, I'll write. Yes, there's a number of the men talking about it already. Harry Manter thinks he sh'll come out in the spring, anyway. But then 'twould be harder for any of them to go than it is for me. They wouldn't know where they was going, and it's kind o' hard to leave a certainty for an uncertainty, especially when you've got a little fam❜ly on your hands."

"Well, good-bye," I said, as my jumpingoff place came in sight, "and God speed you."

"Good-bye."

And so we shook hands and parted under the early starlight of the February night. By the time these words reach the reader my friend of the platform will be far out upon the prairie, peering round in curiosity over his new home, and taking hold with hopeful earnestness of the first things of his new life. Success attend him! If I ever get his promised letter, SUNDAY AFTERNOON shall have the first chance to print it.

And now what are the practical points emphasized by this conversation?

1. It is unquestionably the fact, established by broad principles of political economy and attested by the present condition of affairs, that certain classes of labor, especially at the East, and pre-eminently in the cities and larger towns, are over-stocked, and that there is sore need of transplanting the surplus from the rank of consumers into that of producers.

2. It is extremely probable that there are a great many Trescots in the various trades and lines of labor at the East, who would be very glad to go to farming at the West or the South, if they could find any way of getting across the chasm of difficulty which separates the two conditions of life.

3. The difficulty in the way of the change is half removed when the man can see distinctly the place where he is going. The knowledge of a specific State, town, farm, route, time, is a great attraction, and smooths the way for the mind to its final resolution.

4. Some form of coöperation, labor and privilege is of inestimable advantage to the Eastern artisan or laborer going to a new and distant life in the far West. It greatly softens the prospect of the first year.

5. A little capital is requisite in some form, acquired either by savings or by credit.

And so the effect of my conversation with Trescot has been, very greatly to deepen the sense of the importance and value of some wisely matured plan for providing men like him with the advantages which his peculiar private connections afforded.

There are

Rose Terry Cooke.

ESTHER WILLIAMS sat on the kitchen door-step, one summer afternoon, thinking it all over. She was tired, that was plain; her drooping attitude, and the haze over her blue eyes showed it. She had just finished the family ironing,-no light labor with the thermometer eighty-five in the shade. Three hundred and fifty, at least, it seemed to be, in the kitchen. It was all well done at last; and Esther, while her flushed cheeks and blistered hands returned to their ordinary color under the light breeze, sat, resting, and "thinking it over."

Her eyes with an expression of inward trouble regarded the distant form of the Rev. Jeremiah Williams, who, arrayed in a rusty alpaca coat and old straw hat, was engaged, notwithstanding the heat, in "bushing" his peas. A tall, stooping figure meandering about the garden in a way that betokened both weakness of body and absence of mind; indeed at this moment Mr. Williams was very likely saying to himself: "Thirdly, my brethren, predestination, whereby we mean the decrees of God or the eternal counsel of His will;" for the most

evil-disposed of his parishioners had always allowed that he "gave himself to his work."

He was a most unworldly man. Strong in his own sphere, he was pitiably helpless beyond it. When his wife died there was danger of his losing all connection with outward things; but Esther, then fifteen, had thrown herself bravely into the awful chasm of the household and brought back her father to life and comfort. As her four young sisters grew up they helped according to their ability; but nothing could take from Esther the memory of those first years of struggle. She had come to look upon her father as her baby-an inspired and lofty baby, yet with all the helpless dependence that binds her child to a woman's heart as with chains of adamant.

It should not be supposed that the feminine population of Brayton were remiss in their efforts to fill the vacant situation of minister's wife; but his daughters, warned by some precocious instinct, ranged themselves round their unconscious father like the foster-brothers in the Fair Maid of Perth; and woe betide the spinster who