HYPOCRISY AS A SOCIAL ELEVATOR. 599 



ing at Fredonia, N. Y. But now gas wells increase and multiply 

 in the land, and lines of pipe radiate from thein in all directions, 

 conveying silently as the lapse of time, to city and mill, forge and 

 furnace, their heat-giving product that has lain dormant in the 

 earth for untold centuries, but which now, at the summons of 

 modern Science, comes forth from its abiding-place to do no small 

 share of the work of the world. Many of these lines of pipe are 

 of great length,* and suggest the possibility of converting coal 

 into gas at the mines and conveying it to consumers in distant 

 cities by pipes ; and this proposal in our day is not nearly as 

 uncertain of realization as was the original idea of lighting cities 

 and buildings by gas at the time of its invention, one hundred 

 years ago. 



[ To be continued. ] 







HYPOCRISY AS A SOCIAL ELEVATOR. 



By JOHN McELROY. 



WHEN atrabilarious Hamlet, in his choleric interview with 

 his mother in the cabinet, impudently advised her to 

 " Assume a virtue if you have it not," 

 he unwittingly laid down a general-conduct rule of high value to 

 individuals and the community. 



Simulation of virtue, though far inferior to the real article, is 

 still the next best thing to it, just as whitewash, though much 

 inferior to marble, is yet greatly superior to dirty nakedness. 



It is very desirable that all men and all women should stand to- 

 gether on the very highest plane of goodness ; but the largest pro- 

 portion of them do not probably never will. It is unreasonable 

 to expect that the mass of humanity will be steadily aligned on 

 the most advanced standards of morality, especially when those 

 standards are pushed forward as rapidly as they have been in the 

 more recent centuries. Ethics is a constantly developing science. 

 What was a high grade of morality in the eighteenth century 

 would be a very ordinary one to-day ; just as the man who, in our 

 colonial times, would have been regarded as neat and cleanly in his 

 person, would seem a good deal of a sloven to-day. Then, as now, 

 men and women assumed to be much cleaner, morally and physi- 

 cally, than they really were, and by sheer force of persistence 

 and habit became really cleaner than they at first pretended to 

 be. Persons with the bump of approbativeness highly developed 

 constantly forge to the front on lines which they think will win 



* One large mill has three liDes of pipe, each over forty miles long. 



