decreased, while the number of native Americans of Northern birth in the "Black Belt" is steadily becoming less. The element of immigration, instead of showing any probability of revolutionizing the Southern life, is itself, year by year, becoming more and more insignificant.

White Spaces Show Proportions,

Accounting for Strange

THE

Things.

HE reason for all this is not far to seek. The South boasts, not without reason, of the hospitality of her people. The stranger within her gates, even in her humblest homes, is royally entertained. Kindness toward a guest, unwearying ministration to his pleasure and comfort, is instinctive with her people. At the same time the South is a shocking bad step-mother. Her people know nothing about the art of making those who come to abide with them feel at home.

The immigrant, seeking to establish his household gods in any one of the Southern States, is received with effusive hospitality. So long as he remains a guest, nothing could exceed the kindness with which he is treated. Hardly, however, has he become attached to the soil when a strange suspicion, almost animosity, manifests itself with a peculiar fear that he may find something which he shall not approve. With the utmost kindness and hospitality the people are yet self-conscious, devoted to their own ideals, and jealous to the utmost degree of all those who differ with them in thought, in sentiment, or in method. It is hardly to be wondered at that such is the fact. Except along the borders where Northern immigration has thrust itself across the charmed line, there has hardly been such a thing as a movement of population toward the South for a hundred years. Indeed, it is nearly twice that period since there can be said to have been any material accessions to the life of the older Southern States. The people who dwell within their borders to-day are either natives of their State or of neighboring Southern communities the general characteristics of which are the same as their own. They know nothing of the

arts of accommodating themselves to the various shades of thought which the influx of population from other regions brings.

To the people of the North this seems a strange, almost incomprehensible thing. For three hundred years our doors have been open and the world has been pouring through our homes, in at the front door and out at the back, until we have become cosmopolitan in our tastes and feelings. A farmer from New England finds himself in the midst of a Western community composed of people from all sections of the country and almost every nationality of Europe; in a week he is as much at home as upon his granite hills; in a month he is looked upon as a neighbor with whom all are acquainted; in a year it has been forgotten that he has not always dwelt among them. This process going on from day to day at the North and West has given to the Northern people a power of assimilation not paralleled in any other country.

They have

All of this the South has lacked. lived to themselves; they have nourished their own sentiments and beliefs; they have encouraged each other by that sense of approbation that builds up the self-love of a people. Who

ever comes bringing different ideas is in a sense regarded as hostile. The warm welcome which was extended to him as a guest is chilled into coolness when he becomes a neighbor. The South requires all who come to dwell within her borders to become Southerners before they have ceased to be strangers. The North requires no change of any man that comes to build up her interests and be one among her people. His religious belief is almost a matter of indifference; his language and customs and the traditions of his father-land are looked upon with respect, if not with approval. The South, on the contrary, demands that whoever comes within her limits shall leave his former life behind; he shall become not only part and parcel of her material prospects, but he shall divest himself of the personality which he brought and become more ardent in his worship of all things Southern than even those who are to the manner born. In all their frantic appeals of the last twenty years for immigration there will be noted by a careful reader an undertone defining what the desired immigrant must not be. He must not come bringing with him. new ideas. He must not come with any thought that is not in harmony