I followed up the steps of a “Home” for sailors, planned to give them a refuge from the traps known as “sailors’ boarding-houses.”  The long dining-room we entered was spotlessly clean, and some thirty men were dining.  I looked for a moment as my friend spoke with some one sitting at the head of the table, then passed out.

“You saw,” he said, “plenty of food, and all clean as a whistle, but what sort?  Steak fried to a crisp, soggy potatoes, underdone cabbage and pork, bread rank with alum, and coffee whose only merit is warmth.  Those men are filled, but not fed.  The bread alone is condensed dyspepsia.  In an hour the weaker stomachs will have what they call ’a goneness.’  They will crave something, and poor R——­ will have half a dozen of them half drunk or wholly so on his hands by night.  He will pray and exhort, and bundle them up to the Mission if he can, and cry as he tells me how they will give way and yield to the devil whether or no.  And so it goes.  Women must get hold of this thing.  It’s the first item in your temperance crusade, and till the people have better food there is no law or influence that can make them give up drinking.  I wouldn’t if I were they.”

Here the talk ended.  My impetuous friend disappeared around a corner, and I went my way, a little surer than before of the fact which was already so distinct a belief it needed no new foundations, that better food will and must mean better living.  Hard times are passing, but none the less is there still the imperative demand for wider knowledge of what food those hard-earned dollars shall buy.  Philanthropists may urge what reforms they will—­less crowding, purer air, better sanitary regulations—­but this question of food underlies all.  The knowledge that is broad enough to ensure good food is broad enough to mean better living in all ways; and not till such knowledge is the property of all women can we look for the “emancipation” from some of the deepest evils that curse the life of woman in the slums and out.  Toward that end all women who long to help, yet see no outlook, may work, and with its full recognition will come the day for which we wait—­a day whose faint dawn even now flushes the east and gives promise, dim yet sure, of the slowly-nearing light, holding even when most clouded the certainty of

  Purer manners, nobler laws. 
                                —­HELEN CAMPBELL.

DELECTATIO PISCATORIA.

THE UPPER KENNEBEC.

  From the great mere set round with sunbright mountains
    Full born the river leaps,
  Dashing the crystal of a thousand fountains
    Down its romantic steeps.

  ’Tis now a torrent whose untamed endeavor
    Is eager for the sea,
  Angry that rock or reef should hinder ever
    Its frantic liberty.

  Then, for a space, a lake and river blended,
    It sleeps with tranquil breast,
  As if its haste and rage at last were ended,
    And all it sought was rest.