The Buzzard

The buzzard vvill fly almost an incredible distance if need le in seárch for its chosen iood. Over tíelds rich with waviug grain and sweet with the perfume of flowers; past clear, sparklinK brooks whirli carry Iicalth in every ripple, it soars, with never a stop, far above all the attraetive things of life. It is seeking the dead. Instinctively and unerringly it finds the carrion on which it feeds. In the economy of nature the buzzard may fill a niche of its own and serve a helpful purpose, but the scavenger bird, too cowardly to flght, too lazy to earn a living by active eompetition and too debased to have any aspiration above the offal on which it gorges its ill-odered carcasa, is not a figure to attract nor a model to be admired. But certain buzzards do not fly. Some of them walk aud wear clothing. Those that fly have no voice ; those that do not have little else. The calamity wailer is the buzzard of the industrial worid. Ile does not hear the hum of a waken ing prosperity; he does not perceive the smoke arising from the factory chimneys long given over to the feathered masons for their habitation ; he does not know that the bank clearances are heavier, that business failures are fewer, that times, however hard tliey may be, are better now than they have been at any period since democratie mismanageinent and administrative neiliciency sent wages and profits down to low-water mark. The calamity buzzard sees nothing which makes for business improvement, because he does not look for it. He is seekina: not for a commercial life but for industrial death. If a firm becomes embarrassed he sets up a loud croaking to apprise the whole worid of the disaster. If ;i strike throws out of employment a few workmen in a certain industry Le maintains that the wheels of progress are completely blocked. He croaks because a republican administration Iims been unable in four months to repair all the damages of twice as many years of misrule. He croaks because a tariffbill lias not brought a floodtide of prosperity even before it has been formulated and placed upon the statute books. Ile croaks because it is his nature to croak, just as it is tho nature of his feathered prototype to fly. But he is a bird of ill omen, at all times and ander all circumstances, and the voters of any state who adopt that symbol for their party standird will see their colora trailed in the