cises of worship, and that Protestant religious influences shall positively prevail. Such being their attitude, they can not consistently object to a division of the public moneys. They want sectarian teaching, but that of their own sect. This is what the Roman Catholics ask also. If these claims are strongly insisted upon, it seems that to divide the funds is not only just but the only thing that can be done in a free country, unless taxation for educational purposes be abandoned altogether. If Protestants desire the public-school system continued, they will be careful how they press the theory that the schools must be religious or under religious influences. On the ground which they ordinarily take, they have not the slightest right to oppose the division asked for by the Romanists. The only position from which these latter can be successfully resisted (I mean logically) is the platform of non-religious, or scientific teaching which has been above set forth.
[To be continued.]
| THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS. |
By ERNEST INGERSOLL.
A PICTURE of the Great Plains is incomplete without a coyote or two, hurrying furtively through the distance. The coyote is a wolf—a wolf about two thirds the size of that one which haunts forests and the pages of story-books. He has a long, lean body; legs a trifle short, but sinewy and active; a head more foxy than wolfish, for the nose is long and pointed; the yellow eyes are set in spectacle-frames of black eyelids, and the hanging, tan-trimmed ears, may be erected, giving a well-merited air of alertness to their wearer; a tail—straight as a pointer's—also fox-like, for it is bushy beyond the ordinary lupine type, and a shaggy, large-maned, wind-ruffled, dust-gathering coat of dingy white, suffused with tawny brown, or often decidedly brindled:
"A shade in the stubble, a ghost by the wall,
Now leaping, now limping, now risking a fall;
Top-eared and large-jointed, but ever alway
A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray."
Such is the coyote—genus loci of the plains; an Ishmaelite of the desert; a consort of rattlesnake and vulture; the tyrant of his inferiors; jackal to the puma; a bushwhacker upon the flanks of the buffalo armies; the pariah of his own race, and despised by mankind. Withal, he maintains himself and his tribe increases; he outstrips animals fleeter than himself; he foils those of far greater strength; he excels all his rivals in cunning and intelligence; he furnishes to the Indian not only a breed of domestic dogs, but in many canine races
