doubt as to the most effective method, arising from the uncertainty involved in inferences from facts capable of so many unknown influences as crime, should be resolved in favor of the crimi nal by substituting the lighter penalty. And I would even go so far as to say that a small increase in the probale number of murders when the state goes out of the business, would be preferable to a continuance of judicial slaughter houses and the revolting scenes there enacted ; and this partly, but only partly, (so far would I carry "senti ment") because the greater sanctity of life that would be possible and probable, even if not at first felt, would be likely in the end to make an actual' decrease in such crimes. *Capttal Punishment. J. M. Buckley: Form June 1887. [TO BE CONTINUED.] THE MEDITATIONS OF A SPECTATOR 1 sat complacently upon the fence and gazed abstractedly into the melee below me. There was great confusion and noise among the crowd of spectators about me but I heard them not. To them this was merely a fight of Freshmen and Sophomores; to me it was something grander, I am a philosopher and in that quarreling mass Of ignorant humanity I saw a likeness to what ?—the beginning of the world. I am fond of making such comparisons between the common place af• fairs of men and the actions of nature ; and I was proud that this conception of my imagination was a grand one. Science teaches us that at the be ginning of the work all was in a chaotic state; surely here was chaos pure and simple. All the colors of the rain-bow were blended together in that confused mass; every stage of intellectual de velopment was there represented, and in as mixed and powerless a state as at the creation of man ; all the languages under the sun, so it sounded, were there so mingled as to make it seem like a veritable babble; every variety of clothes that could possibly have been worn by man, it appear. ed, was to be found in that chaos. Sul ely, I pon • THE FREE LANCE. dered, it was out of just such an unorganized con dition of matter that Earth was made. I • dont think that the beginning of the world swore quite as bad as this inordinate mass, but yet on the whole it seemed' to inc that there was a wonderful similarity and that my simile was a beautiful one. I had just arrived at this conclusion and was con gratulating myselfupon it, when a Freshman hit me severely on the head with Eddie Pyne, as a result of which when I picked myself up out of the mud and gathered together my disorded senses I de cided to take a safer post of observation. Mak ing a wide circuit around the struggling classes, I succeeded in gaining the other side of the road and planted myself firmly by a hitching post. The battle of the elements was waxing. fiercer; coats, hats, shoes, mud, cobble stones and puddles were thrown in every direction from the main body by the wonderful power of centrifugal force, and occasionally a battered, hill clothed fresh man would drop from the clouds, exhausted at' the feet of the onlookers. I gloried in it; such a splendid chance for philosophic meditation 5 such a beautiful opportunity to let loose one's fancies. I was in raptures; and was again fast unrolling my imagination, thinking myself at a safe distance from the struggle, when a heavy foot caught me a terrific crash in the chest and threw me backward with such force as to pull the hitching post, to which I clung, out by the roots. I looked up just in time to see the mysterious author of my in jury disappear in the fray. I may note here that upon a diligent . search afterward I found that the shoe of J. M. Brewer fit exactly in the hole in my chest. Once more I collected my disordered senses and took up my post of observation. Hav ing despaired of getting out of the reach of .a bad ly aimed combattant I trusted myself to the fates. The crowd was slowly bein separated ; from a single large struggling : mass of humanity, it split off, or rather flew off, into various small knots of fighting men, who, having now free use of their limbs, began individually to scratch each other, and with better judgment than was at first shown.
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