No MATTER what the cause may be, no one will dispute the fact that the country is viciously beset just now by too strenuous lawlessness. Not only is Chicago at the wits' end of her authorities and people to know how to deal with aggressive criminalism, but Boston is scarcely less beset with burglarious operations, and with assaults upon people on her streets, which proceed from the snatching of women's purses to deadly assaults upon men. To other and lesser cities the era of crime rampant has spread, until the news of each day includes murderous assaults by burglars, or the robbing of people or houses with a daring recklessness most disturbing. The times are not hard enough, so far as financial conditions go, to give ample explanation and accounting for all this. Do people realize that these evil conditions have gone to such a pass in Boston, that Police Commissioner Emmons has advised women to carry pistols and use them, in case of attack on the streets? Recognizing what can not be blinked, and addressing women "who are careless with their pocket-books, and who fling their valuables about and leave them in all sorts of tempting places," the Boston Globe advises:— Yet things being as they are, the best we can do is to utter a word of caution to the careless. The woods are full of criminals just now. It would greatly aid the police and shopkeepers if the women would be more watchful of the loopholes where thieves usually break through and steal. These are days full of trouble for the police everywhere, for they are under fire in all the cities, and in Boston especially. This winter is opening with an amount of criminality in our cities far beyond the ordinary in the boldness, wantonness and extent of its operations. How shall society adequately deal with this misdirection of strenuous effort?—Springfield Republican.