lack of self-confidence,
may attend the class but will not attempt the paper work or the
examination. But in every community are scores of earnest, hungry
students anxious to learn but knowing not how to get the knowledge
that they crave,--mature students settled in homes and in
business,--to such university extension offers chances for improvement
and refreshing labor that were never known before. Then it is no
longer imperative to reside in the vicinity of the university, or to
forever remain ignorant of university learning, for wherever a score
or more of students may congregate, there can be brought from college
halls a master workman to direct the work.

It is easy, then, to realize the scope of the American society. It can
stretch its influence into every corner of the country; it can enter
every town and city; it can enter even the isolated home. Ordinarily
colleges and universities of the country are anxious to work with the
National Society, for in this way even the small college becomes a
link in this great chain of organization, and the efforts of its
faculty may bear fruit, whereas unsystematized work is little better
than a failure. By such co-operation the work of extension teaching
may have come to have such a positive educational value that its
certificates, when awarded by the members of a college faculty, may,
in that institution, at least, pass current for a definite amount of
the work required for a degree. At Cambridge, England, students from
centres that are in affiliation with that institution can thus save
one year's residence at the university. Is it, then, visionary to
expect as much here?

University extension, however, offers no royal road to learning; it is
as yet, as it were, laying the ties for a broad gauge track where only
those that have the strength to work their passage may travel. But
when operated by the American Society, it is far in advance of the
overland or Panama routes of the forty-niners in extension travel.
This society seems to have solved the problem, and promises to become
the great American University that Washington proposed, Jefferson
planned, and scores have, since the founding of our government,
prophesied and awaited.

POPE LEO ON LABOR.

BY THOMAS B. PRESTON.

In reading the encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII. on the condition of
labor, one is chiefly struck by his earnest desire for the welfare of
all mankind, his clear recognition of the existence