China Learning Her Resources.
The eight thousand students resigned immediately and left Japan. Shortly afterward, the Japanese government, in fear lest the general indignation in China should result in measures of tariff reprisal, restored the old status, and the Chinese students returned, having carried their point.
Just as deep a sentiment has been aroused among my countrymen by your exclusion laws. We see the immigrants pour into your land from all countries by thousands every week; while not only is the law-abiding, industrious Chinaman desirous of making a living unable to come in with these others, but our most refined and intelligent men cannot get the mere passports for travel that they can readily get in any other country.
China now knows her resources and her rights. There will be no more invasions of China, for she is ready to defend herself with cannon and with sword, if necessary.
When Mr. Kang was asked about the dreaded outbreaks against foreigners he replied with apparent conviction that there would be no more Boxer rebellions. In his view, education is rapidly conquering the form of ignorance in which anti-foreign movements have their root.
AN EXILE.
By ADAH ISAACS MENKEN.
Adah Isaacs Menken was one of those restless spirits who suffer from their own unsatisfying versatility. Daughter of a Spanish Jew and a Frenchwoman, she was born, Dolores Adios Fuertes, near New Orleans, June 15, 1835. At the age of seven years she made a successful stage appearance as a dancer. She became very popular, especially at Havana, where she was known as "Queen of the Plaza." At twenty she was married to Alexander Isaacs Menken, at Galveston, Texas, retired from the stage, and published a volume of poems, "Memories." Divorced from her husband, she returned to the stage in 1858, but soon abandoned it to study sculpture.
In 1859 she was married to John C. Heenan, the pugilist, from whom she was divorced three years later. Twice again she was married before her death, at Paris, August 10, 1868. In the tragedy of misdirected genius she filled a pathetic rôle.
Where is the promise of my years
Once written on my brow—
Ere errors, agonies, and fears
Brought with them all that speak in tears,
Ere I had sunk beneath my peers—
Where sleeps that promise now?
Naught lingers to redeem those hours
Still, still to memory sweet;
The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers
Are withered all, and Evil towers
Supreme above her sister powers
Of Sorrow and Deceit.
I look along the columned years.
And see Life's riven fane
Just where it fell—amid the jeers
Of scornful lips, whose moaning sneers
Forever hiss within my ears
To break the sleep of pain.
I can but own my life is vain,
A desert void of peace;
I missed the goal I sought to gain—
I missed the measure of the strain
That lulls fame's fever in the brain,
And bids earth's tumult cease.
Myself? Alas for theme so poor!—
A theme but rich in fear;
I stand a wreck on Error's shore,
A specter not within the door,
A homeless shadow evermore,
An exile lingering here!
"KELLY AND BURKE AND SHEA."
At the last banquet of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, in New York, President Roosevelt, the guest of the evening, asked Joseph I.C. Clarke, the president of the "Friendly Sons," to recite "The Fighting Race."
Mr. Clarke wrote this poem at the time of the blowing-up of the Maine. Looking over the list of dead and wounded, he remarked to his wife: "They are all there, as usual—the Irish. Yes, here we've Kelly and Burke and Shea——"
Within two hours he had finished the verses which are now recognized as a lasting tribute to the fighting qualities of the Irishman. The poem makes a point; it also expresses the conviction and the wistful pride of the old veteran.
Mr. Clarke was born in Kingstown, Ireland, July 31, 1846, and came to the United States in 1868. The greater part of his life has been spent in newspaper offices—on the New York Herald, 1870-1883; magazine editor of the New York Journal, 1883-1895; editor of the Criterion, 1898-1900; Sunday editor New York Herald, 1903-1905. He is now engaged in writing plays, work which has taken intervals of his time for a number of years.