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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #55208 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55208)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, July 1884, No. 10, by
-The Chautauquan Literary and Scientific Circle
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, July 1884, No. 10
-
-Author: The Chautauquan Literary and Scientific Circle
-
-Editor: Theodore L. Flood
-
-Release Date: July 26, 2017 [EBook #55208]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHAUTAUQUAN, JULY 1884 ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Emmy, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
-
- _A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE.
- ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE._
-
- VOL. IV. JULY, 1884. No. 10.
-
-
-
-
-Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.
-
-
-_President_—Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio.
-
-_Superintendent of Instruction_—Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn.
-
-_Counselors_—Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.; Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H.
-W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.
-
-_Office Secretary_—Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.
-
-_General Secretary_—Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.
-
-
-
-
-Contents
-
-Transcriber’s Note: This table of contents of this periodical was created
-for the HTML version to aid the reader.
-
- The White House 557
- Sunday Readings
- [_July 6_] 560
- [_July 13_] 560
- [_July 20_] 560
- [_July 27_] 561
- Growth 561
- Tenement House Life in New York 561
- The Cañons of the Colorado 564
- The Courts of Three Presidents 566
- Astronomy of the Heavens
- For July 569
- For August 570
- For September 570
- Rise Higher 571
- Landmarks of Boston in Seven Days 572
- Vanishing Types 577
- The Council of Nice 580
- Sonnet on Chillon 582
- An Ocean Monarch 582
- Eccentric Americans
- IX.—A Pioneer Eccentric Woman 584
- The Imperial College in Peking 587
- Eight Centuries with Walter Scott 589
- Alaska—Its Missions 592
- Our Naval Force 595
- The Coming Summer Meetings at Chautauqua 597
- Going to Europe 598
- C. L. S. C. Work 600
- The C. L. S. C. Course for 1884-’85 600
- Local Circles 601
- C. L. S. C. Testimony 606
- Editor’s Outlook 607
- Editor’s Note-Book 610
- Talk About Books 612
-
-
-
-
-THE WHITE HOUSE.
-
-By MRS. PATTIE L. COLLINS.
-
-
-When Washington was in its infancy, and the patriots of that early day
-bethought themselves of the propriety of building a residence for the
-President, it was with some difficulty that they could decide what it
-should be called. In truth, this seemed a more serious question than
-location, expense, or architecture. Anything that suggested monarchies
-or kingdoms, such as the word “palace,” could not be entertained; not a
-trace of the effete despotisms of the Old World should be tolerated, even
-in our nomenclature. At last “Executive Mansion” was settled upon as a
-proper title. Any gentleman, provided it was sufficiently pretentious,
-might style his house a “mansion,” and the chosen executor of laws for
-the nation was not therefore set apart and above his fellow countrymen,
-when installed as chief magistrate. In the course of a few years, when
-only its blackened walls were left standing as mute witnesses that our
-British cousins still loved us, so much paint was required to efface the
-marks of the destroyer, when it was restored, that it gleamed white as
-snow in the distance, and naturally, nay almost inevitably, came to be
-called the “White House” by popular consent. And by this pretty, simple
-name the home of the Presidents will doubtless continue to be known as
-long as republican institutions endure. It is as different as possible in
-external appearance from the habitations of royalty in European cities;
-no iron-barred windows, better fitted for a fortress than ordinary
-outlook, no gloomy, gray walls, chilly and forbidding, frowning down upon
-you, no squalid tenements thronged with degraded specimens of humanity
-press upon its outskirts to accentuate the beauties of the one and the
-miseries of the other. Instead of this, the White House rises fair and
-inviting from an elevation which seems just sufficient to bring it into
-relief as a conspicuous feature of the landscape. Its north front looks
-toward Pennsylvania Avenue, commanding a view of Lafayette Square—itself
-a most interesting spot, containing the celebrated equestrian statue of
-Jackson, by Clark Mills, and grouped about it the cannon captured at the
-battle of New Orleans—while around it stand some of the many historic
-residences of the capitol. To the east and west of the President’s
-grounds, respectively, may be seen the Treasury, and the War, State
-and Navy Departments; the southern aspect is the most charming of all;
-flowers, trees and emerald lawn, with the music of falling water make up
-a picture as bewildering in loveliness as it is arcadian in simplicity,
-its boundary line being the Potomac, shining in the distance like a bit
-of blue sea, but disfigured by no great iron hulks or other sea monsters;
-only a modest little excursion steamer, now and then a tall three-masted
-schooner lazily rocking and glancing skyward, impatient to set sail.
-
-With these surroundings a President must be singularly oblivious to
-the voices of nature, art and patriotism if he does not find about his
-temporary abode everything to minister to his higher nature.
-
-At present, on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, the President usually
-receives from twelve to one o’clock; Tuesday and Friday are Cabinet days,
-and Monday he claims as absolutely his own. Of course if a Secretary,
-Senator or Representative should present himself upon urgent business,
-that would not admit of delay, the rule would be violated, but not
-otherwise.
-
-The official etiquette of the White House remains about the same from
-generation to generation, but the social regime varies very much,
-according to the tastes of the temporary occupants. If, by a combination
-of fortuitous circumstances, an unpretending woman of limited education
-and provincial habits finds herself suddenly thrust into a position
-for which she is wholly unprepared by previous training, she fills it
-more or less acceptably, as she has tact and adaptability. These seem
-qualities which have not of late years been conspicuously characteristic
-of the “first ladies” of the land, no matter what their previous station;
-unless, indeed, an exception be made in favor of a certain beautiful
-woman, who was herself a more priceless treasure than any the White House
-contained.
-
-A visitor going for the first time to the White House would suppose at
-a casual glance that it was a gala day, and all the world was thronging
-thither. It is rather surprising to learn that it is always the same.
-There are fine ladies and gentlemen who come in great state, foreigners
-of all nations, rustics from the depths of the forest, the perfectly
-blasé, the ignorant clown, the ubiquitous, irrepressible American
-child—all running rampant over the President’s house. Perhaps it would
-be just as well to go back to the very beginning, when this surging
-crowd presents itself at the main entrance. Few, fortunately, make the
-mistake of the intoxicated straggler who found his way into the grounds,
-and perceiving the three harmless gilded shells used in the way of very
-questionable ornamentation in front of the mansion, thus accosted a
-door-keeper: “Old man in?” Receiving only a look of dazed inquiry by way
-of reply, he continued, “Old ten per cent. money bags, I say?” At this
-juncture it dawned upon the official, so far as his sense of shocked
-dignity permitted him to receive any impression, that this besotted
-wretch actually supposed himself at a pawnbroker’s shop! But a much
-prettier story than this can be told of these empty shells: Formerly the
-birds built their nests in them, and now that the holes have been filled
-so that they can not, they yet come and perch and twitter and circle
-around their former dwelling-place.
-
-Eight persons are required to stand guard at the entrance; not all
-at once, but to alternate and keep a sufficient number on duty. An
-imperative necessity has drawn the line of demarcation for White House
-sight-seers. Entering the hall they are ushered at once into the East
-Room, and having inspected it to their heart’s content, return by the
-same way they came, unless choosing to ascend to the waiting room on
-the second floor, and risk an opportunity of seeing the President. In
-this case, to a student of human nature a rare opportunity for study is
-presented. Hardened, chronic office-seekers, schemers, conscienceless
-plotters, shabby women, forlorn, dismal, nay, often heart-broken, pert,
-self-assured youth, and even the small boy, with ragged jacket, one
-illy-adjusted suspender and rusty shoes walks in with an air that could
-only have been begotten by the consciousness that he was a part of the
-republic. Much patience brings the vigil of each to a close, and if the
-business be simply to shake hands with the President, that ceremony
-is speedily accomplished. At present it would be something like this:
-Entering as other people go out (for the other people are always there,
-going out before you, and coming in after you), a tall gentleman, very
-grand and very dignified, quite like a gigantic icicle—but no, that
-comparison is derogatory—let us say like Pompey’s Pillar—stands Chester
-A. Arthur. He glances at your card mechanically, he takes you by the hand
-most indifferently, and in an inexpressible broad voice, without a single
-inflection, he says, “It is a very pleasant day.” You may say that you
-are charmed to have an opportunity to pay your respects to Mr. President,
-or any such nonsense that comes uppermost, but it is not of the least
-consequence what you say, or whether you say anything at all. That is
-all, and you may salaam yourself out of the side door.
-
-The East Room is used for all public receptions. It is of noble
-proportions, eighty feet in length by forty in width, and twenty-two in
-height. It was originally intended as a banqueting hall, but the first
-authentic account of its use was that Dolly Madison found it an excellent
-place for drying clothes. Under its present aspect it would scarcely
-appear to be well adapted to that purpose. A rich carpet of those soft
-tints that seem to melt into each other covers the floor. The walls
-and ceiling are all white and gold; glancing into the immense mirror
-you find it reproduces an endless vista of panels and columns lost in
-space. The windows are draped with lace curtains, and in warm weather
-the breeze comes up fresh and sweet direct from the river, blowing them
-about at will—just as it does the curtains of other people! But something
-else happens to these curtains, too, that is not so pleasant, and from
-which other people’s, as a rule, are exempt. But a short time since an
-employe of the White House called my attention to the fact that here
-and there a figure had been entirely cut out by a souvenir-thief. This
-apartment, as well as several others in the mansion, has been recently
-done over by Tiffany, and greatly improved; it has now very much the
-appearance in general effect of the “Gold Salon” of the Grand Opera House
-in Paris. It contains only two pictures; one of Washington, purchased
-as the original, by Gilbert Stuart, but of doubtful authenticity, and
-the Martha Washington painted in 1878 by Andrews, an Ohio artist. This
-latter shows the same refined, high-bred features that even the crudest
-representation of her portrays, and the flowing train and satin petticoat
-are quite regal. The dress was copied from a Parisian costume made for
-a New York lady to wear at the Centennial tea party in Philadelphia in
-1876, and purports to be an exact reproduction, but with a not unusual
-nineteenth century skepticism, I confess that I boldly decline the sleeve
-as an anachronism, and leaving the queenly robe out of the question, do
-not hesitate to say that in my opinion the hand was borrowed—perhaps
-from a Greek statue. Certainly it is not the strong right hand which
-accomplished the prodigious amounts of spinning, weaving, and the like,
-usually ascribed to this wonderful matron; but it is a tiny, symmetrical,
-extremely pretty hand, in the delineation of which the artist was
-probably true to his instincts rather than history, and in consideration
-of the happy result, the departure from fact to fancy deserves to be
-condoned.
-
-The Green Room, which derives its name from the prevailing color of
-its decoration, is next in order to the East Room. It contains a
-portrait of Mrs. Hayes, by Hunt, in an elaborate wooden frame, carved
-and presented by young ladies from the Cincinnati School of Design; it
-represents luscious bunches of grapes and graceful foliage, a design
-which, it has been sarcastically observed, in this connection is
-singularly inappropriate—since it wreathes the very high priestess of
-temperance like the fabled bacchanalian god. There are also crystal
-vase of exquisite workmanship, selected by Mrs. Lincoln, a grand piano,
-costly cabinets and candelabra, and a bronze clock which is said to be
-a little childish about keeping time. That is to say, it will do well
-enough for presidential and diplomatic time, but not for running trains
-on single track. It was presented by Napoleon to Lafayette, and by him
-to Washington. Another much-prized antique is a claw-footed round table
-of mahogany, inlaid with brass, and known to be at least one hundred and
-seventy years old. A cover almost envelops it, quite hiding its rich
-color and fine polish; the reason for this being that once upon a time a
-vandal borrowed some of the brass ornamentation and forgot to return it.
-
-The Blue Room is very much prettier than its title is suggestive. It is
-here that foreign ministers present their credentials. The furniture,
-with its gilded framework, and upholstered in a silk damask of blue and
-gold, is in harmony with the curtains, the carpets, and the decorated
-ceiling. It is oval in form and the general effect is very beautiful,
-especially by gas-light.
-
-The Red Parlor is used for general receptions, both by the President and
-the ladies of the household. This was the last room occupied by Lincoln
-in the White House. He left it on that fateful 14th of April, accompanied
-by Mrs. Lincoln and Speaker Colfax. The tiled mantel represents the
-style of 1200; this also is some of the high art—Tiffany decoration. And
-in truth the entire furnishing shows a singular, but not inharmonious,
-conglomeration. The candlesticks, dating back to Monroe’s time, the gold
-pitcher and bowl presented by Elkington & Co., of London, after the
-Centennial, a wonderful screen embroidered in silk and beads, from the
-Austrian Government during Grant’s administration, vases from France,
-upon whose delicate surface are portrayed the conviction and sentence
-of Charlotte Corday, a curious cabinet, of which the entire front is
-formed of brass tacks and pin heads, and many other things, but the most
-interesting and probably the most highly prized is the clock used by
-Lincoln in his private office during the war. A portfolio of engravings,
-a pot of flowers, and a single book occupy a small table. It is a
-refreshing oasis, a glimpse of something real and altogether home-like,
-that rests one after so much overpowering richness and antiquity combined.
-
-The State Dining Room is furnished in green. The heavy curtains with
-bright borders and lambrequins are themselves pretty enough to excuse
-their shutting off the river view. The table will seat forty persons
-as it is, but when arranged in the form of a cross, fifty-four. Only
-three state dinners are ordinarily given during a season, but nine were
-interspersed through the last. A sideboard contains wine glasses of every
-shape, size and description. Some one laughingly explained his by saying:
-“You know when the little friends of the President’s daughter come to see
-her, he likes for them to have a real good time, and these are for their
-dolls’ tables.”
-
-Apropos of the wine question, a colored employe, seeing a visitor taking
-a copious draught of ice-water just within the vestibule, and return from
-his explorations through the East Room soon after, complaining of being
-sick, exclaimed in a triumphant voice: “Boss, I tole you dat stuff wuz
-only fit to wash clothes in.” Turning to me he added, “Dat’s so, missus,
-’cept to cool your head when you got a ra’al bad headache, and can’t git
-no cabbage leaves to wrap ’round it.”
-
-It is said to be quite a general impression that the expense of state
-dinners is borne by the government. This is not true, and President
-Arthur keeps his own horses, coachman, and cook.
-
-The table is ornamented by a center-piece for flowers, the bottom of
-which represents a miniature lake, and mirrors the floral beauties above
-and around it. The President’s chair is on one side, at the middle.
-In speaking of this I am reminded of a young American girl, who, like
-myself, was upon a certain occasion being shown through one of the
-numerous abodes of a crowned head. Entering the _salon_ in which foreign
-ambassadors were received, we perceived that the throne chair stood upon
-a sort of dais which was entirely covered with superb crimson velvet.
-This adventurous little spirit inadvertently let fall a profane footstep
-upon the sacred fabric, when she was immediately reprimanded in an awful
-voice and solemnly admonished to keep a respectful distance. Proceeding
-further in this princely residence, we reached the dining room. The
-king’s chair, like our President’s, stood in the middle, and unlike it
-was of entirely different and of more elaborate workmanship than the
-others. Whilst the extremely loyal and obsequious attendant was looking
-in another direction, young America silently and swiftly drew out the
-chair from its place and seated herself with a comical assumption of
-dignity that was very amusing, a perilous position, which even she was
-not audacious enough to maintain more than a few seconds.
-
-A door from the dining room leads directly to the conservatory, a perfect
-wonderland of perfume and color. It seems as if all the wealth of Flora
-had been gathered here; forests of ferns, banks of azaleas, roses in
-endless profusion and variety, and priceless exotic children of the
-tropics without number. One stands almost breathless with admiration
-before the exquisite orchids; and here is a plant with thick, polished
-leaves, heavy clusters of scentless blossoms, from the southern coast of
-Africa, named for its discoverer, Prof. Rudgea, while not far off the
-medinella waves slowly and sadly its long red clusters, as if sighing for
-its native Japan. Ensconced here and there are receptacles for goldfish,
-and even a coral bank is to be discovered among the drooping ferns and
-falling water. It is difficult to come away from these fairy regions to
-prosaic places, but there is another nook near by into which prying eyes
-must peep, and after all the transition is not so very trying, since it
-is into the family dining room, which is a charming picture in itself.
-
-There is something so attractive in this warm, bright looking spot, that
-I must confess to a fascination here stronger than that inspired by the
-tiles, mosaics and bric-a-brac found elsewhere. Perhaps every feminine
-heart is sensitive to the dainty beauty of china, cut glass, and richly
-chased vessels of silver and gold, but the most unsusceptible would be
-moved to warmer enthusiasm over the set of Limoges faience, manufactured
-by the order of Mrs. Hayes. It consists of five hundred pieces,
-representing the fauna and flora of America, and each is a delicious
-study, bearing the impress of true artistic skill. The designs were all
-made by Mr. Theodore Davis, whose studio is upon one of the most romantic
-portions of the New Jersey coast. There, in his happy home, surrounded
-by wife, children and mother, far removed from the turmoil of the outer
-world, and borrowing inspiration from sea, sky and air, he labors, and
-sends forth the admirable results to an appreciative people. This china
-is a rich legacy to the White House families.
-
-The grand corridor is hung with portraits of former Presidents; that
-portion of it from which the private stairway ascends is cut off for
-the exclusive use of the household. A marvelous light falls through the
-western window upon the cabinets with their treasures, the many flowering
-plants and inviting easy chairs. But even here history must intrude;
-a marble table of hexagon shape is said to have been the property of
-General Jackson, and tradition asserts that broken places here and there
-in the smooth surface are the traces of his seal ring when his hand was
-brought down with that terrible emphasis peculiar to him on certain
-occasions.
-
-The elevator which was put in for “Grandma Garfield,” she never returned
-to the White House to use. The dreariest place, perhaps, under the roof,
-is the shabby, forlorn little cloak room, in which Minister Allen fell
-dead last January a year ago, at the New Year’s reception.
-
-It is not an uninteresting spectacle, to stand just within the vestibule
-on Cabinet day, and observe the arrival of the nation’s arbiters,
-sandwiched between the throng. Perhaps a slight murmur is heard, and
-strangers turn toward the entrance. It might be a pleasant-faced
-countryman in his plain black clothes, but instead it is the Honorable
-Secretary of the Interior. Next, a stylish coupé, with an iron-gray
-horse, from which Postmaster-General Gresham and his chief clerk alight.
-The Postmaster-General is in the stalwart prime of life. He is tall and
-commanding, with strongly marked features. Immediately following him is
-a British tourist, with a glass screwed in his eye, who pauses to ask,
-before entering the East Room, “What do you call that cold-looking place
-there?” Then the Spanish Minister enters and passes so slowly up the
-stairway that one is involuntarily reminded of the inevitable _manana_
-(to-morrow) of his people, not one of whom has ever been in a hurry since
-the beginning of time. No matter what the service required of these
-children of the sun, unless a compelling power supplements the order,
-“_Manana, manana_,” is the response.
-
-Another carriage rattles over the pavement, and a pale, spare man, with
-a white fringe under his chin, and close cropped hair, with a mysterious
-gloom upon his countenance, and bent, as if, like Atlas, he upbore the
-world upon his shoulders—passes with such an air as has never been known
-outside of the State Department. There they all have it in greater
-or less degree, messengers, clerks, and assistant secretaries. It is
-indescribable, but it is admirable. Even the high-stepping bay horses
-appear to be distinctly conscious of their position.
-
-Next in order comes Attorney-General Brewster, who is without doubt the
-most gorgeous man in Washington. I say gorgeous advisedly. He wears an
-immense expanse of buff vest, a dark necktie, illuminated by a pin of
-diamonds clustering around a ruby center, light drab pantaloons, and lace
-ruffles about his wrists.
-
-Secretary Folger has the aristocratic appearance which is the legitimate
-birthright of those wonderful old Nantucket families and their
-descendants. I need not ask you to pause longer at the entrance; the
-other notabilities are out of town to-day.
-
-But after all its artistic finish, its rich decoration, the luxury
-apparent at a glance, there is a sense of something lacking in this
-grand habitation. All of these fine apartments leave the impression that
-they are mere show-places, not the habitual resorts of a family. One
-of my pet theories is that people’s houses always look like them—they
-transfer a portion of their personality to everything with which they
-come habitually into contact. Well, this is nobody’s home; it belongs to
-the government, and is illustrative of the national wealth and taste,
-but of no individual peculiarities. The question has often been debated
-of erecting another residence, which shall literally be the President’s
-home, while the present mansion shall be devoted exclusively to public
-receptions and official affairs. Then, and not till then, will the Chief
-Magistrate taste occasional immunity from outside trespassers, and enjoy
-a well earned repose.
-
- * * * * *
-
- Angel of Patience! sent to calm
- Our feverish brows with cooling palm;
- To lay the storms of hope and fear,
- And reconcile life’s smile and tear;
- The throbs of wounded pride to still,
- And make our own our Father’s will!—_Whittier._
-
-
-
-
-SUNDAY READINGS.
-
-SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
-
-
-[_July 6._]
-
-It is true that the task which God lays upon us all is the same—the
-unceasing surrender of their own wishes to the higher aims which he
-successively sets before them. But with men of passionate temperament and
-selfish habits, who are therefore at every turn exposed by circumstances
-to violent temptation, their natural wishes are, for the most part, so
-obviously sinful that, though the struggle of renouncing them may be
-hard, the duty of doing so is clear and pressing. And when such turn to
-God, their falls in attempting the Christian walk are often frequent
-enough, or at least their battles with temptation severe enough, to
-teach them the evil and weakness of their own heart. With men, on the
-other hand, of calm, pure and affectionate disposition, and trained in
-conscientious habits, so many of their wishes are for things harmless,
-or even good in themselves, that it is less easy to see why and how they
-are to be given up. Such men, just, kindly, and finding much of their
-own happiness in that of others, live, for the most part, in harmonious
-relations with those around them, and have little to disturb their
-consciences beyond the fear of falling short in the path of duty on
-which they have already entered. But they are exposed to many perils,
-more insidious, because less startling, than those which beset their
-more fiercely tempted brethren. They are in danger of depending too much
-on the respect and love which others so readily yield them; of valuing
-themselves on a purity which, if ever one of struggle, has come to be
-one of taste; of prizing intellectual clearness above moral insight and
-vigor; of mistaking the pleasure they feel in the performance of duty,
-for real submission to the will of God; and above all, of shrinking from
-new truths which would, for the time, confuse their belief, and break up
-the calm symmetry of their lives.
-
- * * * * *
-
-For … different natures require and receive a very different discipline
-from God. Sometimes it is by outward affliction that God speaks to souls,
-thus sinking into the lethargy of formalism; and the loss of friends,
-or health, or influence suddenly seems to cut off, as it were, half the
-means of serving him, and to rouse long-forgotten temptations to rise
-up against his will. Sometimes, on the other hand, he speaks to them
-inwardly, by opening their eyes to heights of holiness which they had
-never before steadily contemplated. They now suddenly perceive that
-many of the fancied duties which have till now occupied their lives and
-satisfied their consciences, have long ceased to be duties, and have
-come to be mere habits or pleasures; and that while they have been thus
-living in self love, unseen and unrepented of, they might have been
-coming to the knowledge of the higher obligations to which they have been
-so blind, but which were all implied in their first belief if they had
-but continued to read it with a single eye.—_From Susanna Winkworth, in
-“Tauler’s Life and Times.”_
-
-
-[_July 13._]
-
-Especially, too, if they be distracted and disheartened (as such are wont
-to be) by the sin and confusion of the world; by the amount of God’s
-work which still remains undone, and by their own seeming incapacity
-to do it, they will take heart from the history of John Tauler and his
-fellows, who, in a far darker and more confused time than the present,
-found a work to do and strength to do it; who, the more they retired
-into the recesses of their own inner life, found there that fully to
-know themselves was to know all men, and to have a message for all
-men; and who by their unceasing labors of love proved that the highest
-spiritual attainments, instead of shutting a man up in lazy and Pharisaic
-self-contemplation, drive him forth to work as his Master worked before
-him, among the poor, the suffering, and the fallen.
-
-Let such take heart, and toil on in faith at the duty which lies nearest
-to them. Five hundred years have passed since Tauler and his fellows did
-their simple work, and looked for no fruit from it, but the saving of one
-here and there from the nether pit. That was enough for which to labor;
-but without knowing it, they did more than that. Their work lives, and
-will live forever, though in forms from which they would have perhaps
-shrunk had they foreseen them. Let all such therefore take heart. They
-may know their own weakness; but they know not the power of God in them.
-They may think sadly that they are only palliating the outward symptoms
-of social and moral disease; but God may be striking, by some unconscious
-chance blow of theirs, at a sort of evil which they never suspected. They
-may mourn over the failure of some seemingly useful plan of their own;
-but God may be, by their influence, sowing the seed of some plan of his
-own, of which they little dream. For every good deed comes from God. His
-is the idea, his the inspiration, and his its fulfillment in time; and
-therefore no good deed but lives and grows with the everlasting life of
-God himself. And as the acorn, because God has given it “a forming form,”
-and life after its kind, bears within it not only the builder oak, but
-shade for many a herd; food for countless animals, and last, the gallant
-ship itself, and the materials of every use to which nature or art can
-put it and its descendants after it throughout all time; so does every
-good deed contain within itself endless and unexpected possibilities of
-other good, which may and will grow and multiply forever, in the genial
-light of him whose eternal mind conceived it, and whose eternal spirit
-will forever quicken it, with that life of which he is the giver and the
-Lord.—_From Rev. Charles Kingsley, in “Preface to Tauler’s Sermons.”_
-
-
-[_July 20._]
-
-It astonishes all thought to observe the minuteness of God’s government,
-and of the natural and common processes which he carries on from day
-to day. His dominions are spread out, system above system, filling all
-height and latitude, but he is never lost in the magnificent. He descends
-to an infinite detail, and builds a little universe in the smallest
-things. He carries on a process of growth in every tree and flower and
-living thing; accomplishes in each an internal organization, and works
-the functions of an internal laboratory, too delicate all for eye or
-instrument to trace. He articulates the members and impels the instincts
-of every living mote that shines in the sunbeam. As when we ascend toward
-the distant and the vast, so when we descend toward the minute, we see
-his attention acuminated and his skill concentrated on his object;
-and the last discernible particle dies out of our sight with the same
-divine glory on it, as on the last orb that glimmers in the skirt of the
-universe.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The works of Christ are, if possible, a still brighter illustration of
-the same truth. Notwithstanding the vast stretch and compass of the work
-of redemption, it is a work of the most humble detail in its style of
-execution. The Savior could have preached a sermon on the mount every
-morning. Each night he could have stilled the sea, before his astonished
-disciples, and shown the conscious waves lulling into peace under his
-feet. He could have transfigured himself before Pilate and the astonished
-multitudes of the temple. He could have made visible ascensions in the
-noon of every day, and revealed his form standing in the sun, like the
-angel of the apocalypse. But this was not his mind. The incidents of
-which his work is principally made up, are, humanly speaking, very humble
-and unpretending. The most faithful pastor in the world was never able,
-in any degree, to approach the Savior, in the lowliness of his manner and
-his attention to humble things. His teachings were in retired places,
-and his illustrations drawn from ordinary affairs. If the finger of faith
-touched him in the crowd, he knew the touch and distinguished also the
-faith. He reproved the ambitious housewifery of an humble woman. After
-he had healed a poor being, blind from his birth—a work transcending
-all but divine power—he returned and sought him out, as the most humble
-Sabbath-school teacher might have done; and when he had found him, cast
-out and persecuted by men, he taught him privately the highest secrets
-of his Messiahship. When the world around hung darkened in sympathy with
-his cross, and the earth was shaking with inward amazement, he himself
-was remembering his mother, and discharging the filial cares of a good
-son. And when he burst the bars of death, its first and final conqueror,
-he folded the linen clothes and the napkin, and laid them in order apart,
-showing that in the greatest things he had a set purpose also concerning
-the smallest. And thus, when perfectly scanned, the work of Christ’s
-redemption, like the material universe, is seen to be a vast orb of
-glory, wrought up out of finished particles.—_Horace Bushnell._
-
-
-[_July 27._]
-
-He who would sympathize must be content to be tried and tempted. There is
-a hard and boisterous rudeness in our hearts by nature, which requires
-to be softened down. We pass by suffering gaily, carelessly; not in
-cruelty, but unfeelingly, because we do not know what suffering is. We
-wound men by our looks and our abrupt expressions without intending
-it, because we have not been taught the delicacy, and the tact, and
-the gentleness, which can only be learned by the wounding of our own
-sensibilities. There is a haughty feeling of uprightness which has
-never been on the verge of falling, that requires humbling. There is an
-inability to enter into difficulties of thought which marks the mind to
-which all things have been presented superficially, and which has never
-experienced the horror of feeling the ice of doubt crashing beneath the
-feet. Therefore, if you aspire to be a son of consolation; if you would
-partake of the priestly gift of sympathy; if you would pour something
-beyond commonplace consolation into a tempted heart; if you would pass
-through the intercourse of daily life with the delicate tact which never
-inflicts pain; if to that most acute of human ailments, mental doubt, you
-are ever to give effectual succor—you must be content to pay the price of
-the costly education. Like him, you must suffer—being tempted.
-
-But remember it is being tempted in all points, _yet without sin_, that
-makes sympathy real, manly, perfect, instead of a mere sentimental
-tenderness. Sin will teach you to _feel_ for trials. It will not enable
-you to judge them; nor to help them in time of need with any certainty.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Lastly, it is this same human sympathy which qualifies Christ for
-judgment. It is written that the Father hath committed all judgment to
-him, _because_ he is the Son of Man.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The sympathy of Christ is a comforting subject. It is, besides, a
-tremendous subject; for on sympathy the awards of heaven will be built.…
-A sympathy for that which is pure implies a repulsion of that which is
-impure. Hatred of evil is in proportion to the strength of love for good.
-To love intensely good is to hate intensely evil.… Win the mind of Christ
-now, or else his sympathy for human nature will not save you from, but
-only insure, a recoil of abhorrence at last.—_F. W. Robertson._
-
- * * * * *
-
- Hast thou not learned what thou art often told,
- A truth still sacred and believed of old,
- That no success attends on spears and swords
- Unblest, and that the battle is the Lord’s?—_Cowper._
-
-
-
-
-GROWTH.
-
-By EMILY J. BUGBEE.
-
-
- Grow as the trees grow,
- Your head lifted straight to the sky,
- Your roots holding fast where they lie,
- In the richness below,
- Your branches outspread
- To the sun pouring down, and the dew,
- With the glorious infinite blue
- Stretching over your head.
-
- Receiving the storms,
- That may writhe you, and bend, but not break,
- While your roots the more sturdily take
- A strength in their forms.
- God means _us_, the growth of His trees,
- Alike thro’ the shadow and shine,
- Receiving as freely the life-giving wine
- Of the air and the breeze.
-
- Not sunshine alone,
- The soft summer dew and the breeze
- Hath fashioned these wonderful trees,
- The tempest hath moaned.
- They have tossed their strong arms in despair,
- At the blast of the terrible there,
- In the thunder’s loud tone.
-
- But under it all
- Were the roots clasping closer the sod,
- The top still aspiring to God,
- Who prevented their fall.
-
- Come out from the gloom
- And open your heart to the light
- That is flooding God’s world with delight,
- And unfolding its bloom.
- His kingdom of Grace
- Is symboled in all that we see,
- In budding and leafing of tree
- And fruit in its place.
-
-
-
-
-TENEMENT HOUSE LIFE IN NEW YORK.
-
-By GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.
-
-
-New York City, which is the soul and center of a series of cities which
-may be called the Metropolitan District, has not far from a million and
-a half of people, nearly all of whom reside upon an island of rocky
-formation, surrounded by deep water. Within recent years a district
-to the north of the island has been annexed to the city, and city
-protection and privileges partly extended to it, and new parks have just
-been legalized there, but little that has yet been done in the outlying
-districts and cities has been effectual to thin out the population of the
-great central city, whose inhabitants are gathered from all races.
-
-The island of New York extends over thirteen miles along the North River,
-and it is densely built up as far as 70th Street, on that river, and on
-the East River it is almost solidly built up to Harlem, which is six
-or seven miles from the point of the city at the Battery. The middle
-of the island, to the extent of nine hundred acres, is occupied by the
-Central Park and other parks, and broad driveways or boulevards take up
-considerable of the unoccupied or partially occupied portion, so that the
-time is admitted to be near at hand when all this island will be covered
-with houses. The character of these houses is already indicated by the
-tall flats, apartment houses, or tenement houses which are rising,
-apparently in the country parts, out of the green fields, and some of
-these are six, seven and eight stories high. Extensive apartment houses,
-in which the floors are rented or sold, are also being constructed in
-the vicinity of the park, sometimes to the height of nine, ten and even
-twelve stories.
-
-It would therefore appear that the future residence of the New Yorker is
-to be some kind of a tenement structure after the fashion prevailing on
-the continent of Europe. For some of these costly tenements the rent is
-as high as six thousand to eight thousand dollars per annum. The cheapest
-tenements on New York island probably cost twenty dollars a month.
-Although a bridge has been built at enormous expense to connect New York
-and Brooklyn, it is a mere convenience, and has exercised no influence
-on the general character of New York island. While Brooklyn is growing,
-Harlem relatively is growing faster, at the northern end of New York
-island. The elevated railroads, of which there are four parallel to each
-other up and down the length of the island as far as the park, and three
-the whole length of the island, or to Harlem River, have rather exercised
-a recalling influence to the city from the suburbs, and the tendency is
-to extend New York across the Harlem River rather than across the Hudson
-or the East rivers and the bay, which are often embarrassed by fog, ice,
-and storm.
-
-The New York manufactures have so expanded that the operatives do not go
-from the city to the country parts to do a day’s labor, but come from
-the country parts into New York to earn a living. The protective tariff
-has transferred the foreign commerce of New York to foreign nations,
-while it has made New York City our largest manufacturing city. These
-manufactories compressed on that small island necessarily partake of the
-tenement house character, and it has been necessary for the legislature
-to pass laws prohibiting the making of cigars in the tenement houses
-where the people live. A few years ago I was requested to visit some of
-these cigar tenements in the vicinity of Tompkins Square, and further
-uptown, and I found an extraordinary condition of things which has not
-yet been checked by legislation, because after the prohibitory law
-was passed it was found to be defective in phraseology, and has to be
-reënacted. In these tenements could be seen a whole family, men, women
-and children, living and working their tobacco, and at the same time
-cooking, sleeping, eating and entertaining, with the tobacco spread over
-the floor to be dried at night, the children walking on it, and the
-vapors of the tobacco filling the lungs of the sleepers. In the morning
-the man got up and began to cut, trim and fill cigars, and put them on
-the bench before him, and there he sat all day, for at least six days in
-the week, seldom going out to let the rooms be aired, and some of these
-buildings, from four to six stories high, were nothing but pigeon cases
-of such tobacco tenements.
-
-It is to be doubted whether the law can reach such cases, because
-detection would always involve an intrusion into the living apartments
-of families, and would make in time such hostility that the law itself
-would have to be repealed. As in Lyons, France, and in Belgium, where the
-silk weavers, the lace makers, etc., take their work home, there is no
-doubt a tendency in New York City to live and toil on the same premises.
-The population of New York is made up from most of the laboring nations,
-and each of these brings its own habits, and expects to exercise them
-freely in this free country. The vices of European laboring society
-have been imported with the virtues. The city electing its officials by
-suffrage modifies its usages and government in the direction of these new
-elements, and the foreigner soon picks up from his demagogues and the
-small newspapers published in his own language aggressive ideas, which
-some think are rapidly becoming a great defensive system, some day to
-plague the metropolis.
-
-Whatever we native Americans think about the foreign methods of living
-in New York, those methods are as natural to the immigrants as it is for
-us to occupy a whole house. Indeed, the American in such cities as New
-York is becoming of necessity the imitator of the foreigner, because the
-rent of a whole establishment on that cramped island is out of the reach
-of any but the well employed and independently prosperous.
-
-As this article may come to eyes which have never seen the great city,
-I will convey to you some slight notion of the structure of New York
-island. This island is made of gneiss rock, or hard granite, which
-apparently extended in ribs or ridges, sometimes depressed, sometimes
-high, and in places like islands, and between these ridges and islands
-sand and gravel have been deposited, so that when you come to lay out a
-street, to lay pipes under the street, or to excavate for a house, you
-may strike solid rock, or you may find quicksand, and therefore the cost
-of building on the island is greater than almost anywhere on the globe.
-Probably the steam drills employed to blast on New York island exceed
-in number all the steam drills in the entire United States. Most of our
-cities are built on clay or sandy soil, and a cellar can be excavated in
-two or three days, whereas I have seen building lots in New York, only a
-hundred feet by twenty to twenty-five feet wide, which took months, or
-indeed a whole building season, to get the rock out, and when the cellar
-is excavated it is like a great trough or hole made in solid stone.
-Naturally, a man who has been at such expense to start his house looks
-into the air for his recompense. With that solid foundation in the stone
-he has procured from the cellar he begins to build a tower instead of
-a house, and to let it out in floors, and for each of these floors he
-expects to receive higher rent than is elsewhere paid for a large and
-complete house.
-
-A friend of mine who recently failed disastrously, showed me one of
-these new flat houses he had put up. It was three lots broad, each
-lot one hundred feet deep, making a front of seventy-five feet. Each
-of these lots he held to be worth $30,000, making $90,000 for the
-situation, though it was not on a fashionable street, but rather up a
-side street. He then raised one upon another seven apartments on each
-side of the entrance, and over the entrance were six bachelor apartments,
-each consisting of only one room, a bed alcove, and a bath closet.
-Consequently, there would be in such a building twenty tenants, of whom
-fourteen would be families. These fourteen paid from $1,800 to $1,300
-apiece. Each had the same number of rooms, in the same space, the rents
-only being modified by the position of the floor. The lower floors of
-course rented higher than the upper floors. Generally speaking, each
-living place consisted of a parlor and a side room, either library or
-sitting room, a bath room, and a servant’s bath also, about three bed
-rooms, beside a servant’s bed room, a dining room, a kitchen, pantries
-and wardrobes. The only economy in such living lies in the reduction
-of the number of servants, and in the less expense of furnishing. The
-proprietor has to keep an engineer, an assistant engineer, a porter and
-assistant, and perhaps a housekeeper, and of course a watchman. Elevators
-front and rear accommodate the landlords and the servants. Such a
-building, exclusive of the ground, probably cost $150,000, and therefore
-it would be hard work to make ten per cent. upon it after paying
-salaries, taxes, etc. The bachelor apartments rented from $50 to $30 per
-month.
-
-Now this stylish apartment house looks out at the rear upon a series of
-common tenement houses, where in old brick or frame buildings a dense
-mass of people look out of the back windows on their more aristocratic
-neighbors. These latter houses perhaps have a pole erected in the back
-yard which is as high as the house, and from every floor proceed to this
-pole clothes lines, attached there by pulleys, and whatever is washed is
-affixed to the line and run out by the pulley to dry. Most of the people
-in these back apartments live in one room, or at most in two, and there
-the good man arises in the morning, takes his early breakfast and goes
-out with his truck or dray, or hies him off to work and does not return
-again till night. The wife arises and sends the children off to school,
-and then she proceeds to wash or iron, or do other work, cooking her
-meals meantime, and supplying the children at noon, and the old man at
-night. Perhaps in that room or two live half a dozen people. They may
-even have a sub-tenant. There must be more or less exposure, more or less
-bad air, more or less indifference to the decencies of life, and yet it
-is surprising, on the whole, how much cleaner and better these people
-live than might be expected. This to some extent arises from the happy
-construction of the blocks in the new or uptown quarter of New York.
-Many of our American cities have deep blocks and alleys, or inferior
-streets, running up between them. The ground is too precious in New York
-to be sacrificed in such lanes, so the back yards touch each other, and
-the houses are built high stooped, the basement being the first story,
-and through the basement hall the slops, ashes, etc., are carried to the
-front street and there left for the scavenger and the ash-man to come
-and remove them. Consequently, each of these uptown blocks is one great
-court, open to the sun and to the sky. New York streets across town are
-only two hundred feet apart, and therefore the lots are of uniform depth.
-
-The old Dutch city and its English successor in the lower part of the
-island covered a triangular space not a mile long, and about a mile
-wide. In the course of time Broadway was opened right up the center of
-this triangle, and streets called East Broadway and West Broadway were
-thrown in a course generally parallel to the two rivers, and the attempt
-was continued to make a more or less rectangular city, and finally, at
-the distance of more than two miles up, a real rectangular metropolis
-was secured by opening broad avenues, of which there are about twelve
-lengthwise of the whole island, and these are crossed by streets running
-in number up to 220th, and in the course of time in the annexed portion
-they will run to something like 300th Street. Although the city is thus
-expanded, business and population are very tenacious of the old and
-crowded situations. As it is impossible to draw the money and finance
-out of Wall Street, so it is next to impossible to alter the situation
-of the market houses, the railroad freight depots, the express offices,
-the steamboat piers, the ferries, and even the manufactories. As an
-immense portion of what is manufactured in New York is not sold to
-the people of the city, but for export, it remains a consideration to
-manufacture, prepare and pack goods down in the dense, lance-shaped point
-of the island. Consequently business, tenements, folly, manufactories,
-everything grow denser as you go down town, and the east side of the city
-is especially given up to the Germanic races. At that point there is a
-protuberance of the city into the East River, overlapping the city of
-Brooklyn, and the avenues here are not numbered, but being to the east of
-First Avenue they take the names of Avenues A, B, C and D.
-
-Here you find the tenement houses in their glory. Grand Street is the
-great artery of that side of the town.
-
-Fifty years ago there were but 200,000 inhabitants on this island;
-thirty-five years ago there were but 500,000; twenty-five years ago
-there were but 800,000 people; fifteen years ago there were 950,000. By
-the census of 1880 the population of the island was put down at over
-1,200,000. It will not be far wrong to call it in general terms a million
-and a half. But the stable population of New York bears no comparison
-with its transient and daily population. It is immediately surrounded
-by two millions more of people who depend upon the city, and who can
-leave it at all hours of the night by ferries. It is the resort of sixty
-per cent. of all the ocean vessels in the country, with their crews. It
-contains the offices of nearly every corporation in the United States,
-all of which, after they have attained a certain stability or prominence,
-keep a commission house or branch office on New York island.
-
-The morals of New York City are therefore to a great extent beyond the
-reach of mere administration, and have to be lenient according to the
-temptation and the concourse. Marriage itself is subordinate in such a
-hive, to society and necessity. The American elements of the population
-generally adhere to their traditions and decencies, but there is a native
-American generation in New York, begotten of foreign parents, which knows
-no other country than this, but is as different from Americans of the old
-time as we differ from the American Indians. From this secondary growth
-New York derives most of its mechanical, laboring, and artisan class.
-These, like their forefathers, adhere to the tenement house method of
-life. They do not understand the necessity of a whole house, which has
-to be furnished, cleaned and warmed, when they spend so much of the day
-and night elsewhere, either at work or pleasure. So does the American
-element, which goes from the country to New York, content itself with a
-room. As for the poor, as their families increase they have no resort but
-the tenement house.
-
-The latest history of New York City says that 500,000 people in New York,
-or more than one-third, live in tenement houses, and that the densest
-blocks in London do not compare, in the number of inhabitants, with the
-same space in the dense quarters of New York. A single block is referred
-to on Avenue B, which has fifty-two tenement houses, the population of
-them amounting to nearly 2,400 persons. One single house in New York
-is said to have 1,500 inhabitants, and often a house with twenty-five
-feet front accommodates 100 souls. Of course height is the great point
-to give such area. If you enter New York and walk toward the east side
-through the streets which run so close together, but which are all
-happily of fair width, and all straight, you will see row after row of
-red brick houses, generally built to the height of five or six stories.
-In themselves they are rather neat to look at, except for the signs of
-population at every window, where on a hot and steaming day everybody
-seems to press to get the air. You can see the baby at the breast, the
-hunchback elder child, the man rolling cigars, the Chinaman washing, the
-woman running her sewing machine, the musician practicing on the bugle,
-the dentist, perhaps, filling teeth in a tenement house at modest rates
-to suit. You may also see some quiet old German smoking his pipe and
-reading science, unaware that anything is much worse than it generally
-is in the world. These houses have a common entrance below, sometimes in
-the middle, generally at the side. Through this entrance pours in and
-out the population going above; the stairways are generally narrow, the
-steps worn almost through, sometimes loungers and children are playing in
-the halls, and our fastidious habits are much shocked at the necessary
-familiarity engendered.
-
-Yet it is to be remembered that as one’s day is, so is his strength,
-even in the matter of smells, and while there are tenement evils there
-are also tenement house virtues. The close sociability engenders another
-species of Christianity. The policeman is near at hand to correct any
-evils. While the summers are dreadfully hot, the winters are also long
-and cold, and the two things most needed in a tenement house are coal and
-sunlight.
-
-The tenement house laws have been made at Albany by the landlords of
-these houses, many of whom are rapacious and merciless. Not a single day
-is given by law, I understand, to a tenant who does not pay the rent.
-The landlord is permitted to put his agent or constable in any apartment
-and set the things on the sidewalk, whatever may be the disaster or the
-disease within. Many of these tenement houses have been built up by
-the sales of liquor and beer, and probably the majority of our Irish
-saloon-keepers project a corner in which they do business into a tenement
-house above, and they both provide the rum and collect the rent. Possibly
-the men above stairs drink away their wages in the saloon below, while
-the women work at something to keep the rent up.
-
-In some cases, especially among the more rural Irish, the shanty in the
-suburbs is substituted for tenement house life. As you walk along some
-of the newly filled streets, composed of great rocks which have been
-blasted in one spot to fill up another spot, you will look down into
-a former meadow, now a mere hole surrounded by four dungeon walls of
-stone, and there you will see three or four shanties pitched together
-on suffrance, made of old boards taken out of some fence or from dry
-goods boxes. Unaware of anybody being about, you can sit there and hear
-the whole domestic menage going on; see Patrick, very drunk, sociably
-quarreling with his wife, who is not far behind him in her potations.
-They perhaps keep a cow somewhere down there under the planks, and this
-cow is being milked more or less all the time, and if the milk can not be
-sold it helps to support the life of the squatters.
-
-Again, you will go into some far quarter of this island, many miles from
-the business centers, and to your surprise you will there find another
-species of tenement house, showing that this system of herding together
-and economizing room is the fate of this city at least. There seems to
-be no future for the tenement house system. The laws passed by our state
-legislature with reference to this city are more apt to be in favor of
-the tenement house proprietor than of the tenant. The tenants hardly know
-where the legislature is, while the tenement house owner is informed
-by his lawyer or lobbyist of what is going on. As far as philanthropy
-goes, it despairs of accomplishing anything in the midst of such a dense
-population. Of course, when things become outrageous, the police report
-them to the Board of Health, or the tenants take the law into their own
-hands.
-
-This gregarious life leads to great independence of character among the
-women; the average survivor of the tenement house is no puny, frightened
-creature, but a very active animal, ready to scratch, retort, appeal to
-law, and loves and marries as she wishes. There is some natural deviation
-from virtue, as from cleanliness, yet the recuperative principle in
-women, as in men, is at least redeeming, and it is to be doubted whether
-the vices in the tenement houses exceed those in the fashionable streets.
-
-It is believed here that the worst class of people New York possesses
-are the Bohemians from northern Austria. This degraded race was at one
-time, or until the emperors destroyed it politically, the repository of
-most of the vices of Europe. Among the Bohemians you find the domestic
-virtues at the lowest ebb, and socialism at its lewdest. A manufacturer
-was recently telling me of two Bohemians in his employment who grew weary
-of their wives, and without any other marriage, and without quarrel,
-they agreed, men and women, to change partners, and continue to live
-and work together. At a recent strike of cigar makers in this city, a
-working woman who stripped tobacco was set upon by three men and knocked
-down because she preferred to take lower wages rather than keep idle and
-support some of the demagogue patrols.
-
-New York, however, has no such dens to-day as it had forty years ago,
-when the Five Points was in the height of its orgies. Through that old
-swampy quarter of the city broad streets have been cut, and manufactories
-have been established. I have my doubts whether, at this moment, the
-worst features of New York’s population are not to be found in some of
-the rougher suburbs off the island. The draft riots of 1863 assisted
-the peace and order of New York by bringing about a collision between
-the very bad elements and the law. The police, who are generally hated
-by the vicious as the visible representatives of the law, received from
-that moment a degree of discipline which has ever since been kept up,
-and the militia regiments of New York City have been provided with large
-armories, and are in a fair state of discipline.
-
-Of course, in such a rank soil as this island, the gentler virtues do
-not grow, but my observation of some rural districts, many hundred miles
-from this city, is that they are far below the tenement house quarter
-in intelligence, and not above it in morals. The matter of virtue is
-to a large extent involved in the race; it will take a long time to
-debauch, utterly, people descended from the British and Germanic races.
-Fortunately, we have not had much immigration from the south of Europe,
-but the Italian quarter is attracting some attention, as possibly the
-worst we possess. The Chinese in New York are self-reliant, and a good
-many of them have shown a decided bias to be Christianized. I lived near
-a church, two or three years ago, where I one day observed a large number
-of Chinese, and glancing up at the church I saw that it was a Baptist
-one. On inquiry I found that a Chinaman who attended the Sunday-school
-of that church had been murdered by some semi-American roughs, and his
-classmates had come to pay the last honors to him. Like Americans, they
-came in cabs, and came filing out of that church quiet, uncomplaining,
-injured specimens of our common brotherhood.
-
-Legally, a tenement house in New York is one house occupied by more
-than three families living independently of each other, and doing their
-cooking on the premises. All tenement houses are compelled to have
-fire-escapes built outside of the house, of iron. There is one quarter of
-New York City where 300,000 persons are said to live on a square mile.
-Observers now say that not one-third, but one-half of the population of
-New York City lives on the tenement house plan.
-
-A superficial observer here would think that the greatest misery on the
-globe was to be found in this tenement house quarter, yet I think that
-much of this sympathy will be thrown away, because in the large majority
-of cases the people who live under this system would not exchange it for
-any other.
-
-
-
-
-THE CAÑONS OF THE COLORADO.
-
-A lecture delivered on Saturday, April 26, in the National Museum,
-Washington, D. C., by Major J. W. Powell, Director of the U. S.
-Geological Survey.
-
-
-The lecturer at the outset stated that the valley of the Columbia River
-might be divided into two portions; the lower third lying but little
-above the sea level, the other two-thirds of the valley area drained by
-the Colorado and its tributaries being five to eight thousand feet above
-the level of the sea.
-
-On the summit and sides of the mountain were thousands of lakes of clear
-water, which received their supply from the masses of snow which are
-collecting throughout the winter on the mountain ranges, filling the
-gorges and half burying the forests. In summer the snow melted and poured
-down the mountain sides in millions of cascades, eventually forming the
-Colorado River, which grew into a mad torrent ere it reached the Gulf
-of California. Eventful indeed would be the history of these waters if
-traced from their starting point. Some of these streams ran across arid
-plateaus, being fed in their course by intermittent showers. Each year
-their channels became deeper and deeper, cutting their way out of solid
-rock. Every river, brook, creek and rill ran into a cañon, so that these
-vast areas were traversed by a labyrinth of deep gorges hewn out of the
-rock by the ever-flowing streams. If the Colorado plateau had been in
-such a country as the District of Columbia, the land lying adjacent to
-the river courses would have been washed down by the rains and streams,
-and instead of cañons there would now be a broad system of valleys. It
-was an error to regard that Colorado plateau as a region of great erosion
-or degradation. It was a vast system of cañons, caused by the water
-eating its way through the hard rock, with lofty stone walls on either
-side.
-
-Major Powell said that in 1867 and 1868 he had explored the Grand River
-and other tributaries of the Colorado, and these expeditions thrilled him
-with a desire to explore the vast cañons of the Colorado River itself.
-Accordingly in May, 1869, he started for this purpose with a small party
-of men and four boats from a point a few miles below where now the Union
-and Pacific Railroad crosses Yukon River. The first forty or fifty miles
-of their course was through low cañons, cut through the green and alcove
-lands of that region. Their course was southward. As they descended
-the river, a mountain seemed to stand athwart their path, and into this
-mountain the river penetrated. They followed around the base for a
-hundred miles or so, meeting the river beyond. Now, why had not the river
-flowed _round_ the mountain instead of cutting its way _through_? The
-answer was exceedingly simple. Because the river was there before the
-mountain, and had the right of way, keeping steadfastly on its southward
-course, across which the lands had been gradually elevated. These land
-upheavals had taken place very slowly, enabling the river to force its
-passage as the land rose inch by inch.
-
-At last they reached the junction of the Grand and the Green rivers—the
-head of the Colorado River—some three thousand feet below the general
-surface of the country. At that point the cañon was about three thousand
-feet in depth. One of the boats had been lost, and one of the men had
-left them before reaching this point. The walls of the cañon here were
-about half a mile high. One of these they determined to scale at a point
-a little below their camp, where there was a gorge—a natural break in the
-wall. Half way up further progress seemed impossible, but by crawling
-round a narrow ledge of rock they were enabled to resume their toilsome
-climb. From this point they could see the river fifteen hundred feet
-below them, wildly rushing and tossing, and at the same distance above
-them was the cañon’s brink that seemed to blend with the sky. Again the
-wall was found to have broken down, but by crawling up a fissure so
-narrow that they could press against the hinder side with their backs,
-while forcing with hands and feet their steep and dangerous path upward,
-they finally emerged into the upper world, where they could look out at
-the broad expanse of landscape. Away to the north were orange and azure
-cliffs, two and three thousand feet high; to the west were the Wasatch
-Mountains, and a plateau with a hundred dead volcanoes on its back, while
-to the east was another group of dead volcanoes. Thirty or forty miles
-away in the same direction were seen forests of green and masses of gray
-volcanic rock clothed with patches of snow; green, gray and silver,
-resplendent in that noon-day sun. To the south was a labyrinth of cañons.
-
-On the following day they commenced the exploration of the Colorado
-River. From this starting point it was about seven hundred miles to the
-foot of the Grand Cañon. Through the entire series of cañons the river
-tumbled down more than 5,000 feet. The lecturer here stated that the fall
-of the Mississippi from Cairo down was about four inches to the mile, and
-of the Ohio some eight inches, and that the Colorado carried about as
-much water as the Ohio at Louisville. In some places the river was wide,
-and here its fall did not exceed that of the Ohio or Upper Mississippi.
-The fall in Marble Cañon, however, was from ten to three hundred feet
-to the mile! The boats, with the exception of the one in which he and
-Major Powell traveled, were about twenty-two feet long and decked, so
-that there were three water-tight compartments in each boat. His boat, in
-which were two other men, was only sixteen feet in length. This led the
-way, while the other boats, laden with provisions, etc., followed. The
-roar of the water in the cañon could be heard a long way off. The chief
-difficulty in navigating was riding the waves, which differed greatly
-from that of the sea. In the case of the latter the water remained,
-simply rising and falling, while the _form_ alone rolled on; but in the
-former the water of the wave rolled on, the form being fixed. As long
-as the boat could be kept on the waves, all was well, but the great
-tendency was to drift into the whirlpool in the center. Three miles
-below the junction of the Grand and the Green rivers appeared a series
-of rapids and falls, and nearly two weeks were spent in running through
-this difficult portion of the river. Having passed through Cataract
-Cañon, they encountered Narrow Cañon, where the river for seven miles
-rushed down a steep declivity. Seven miles again below a stream came in
-on the right side. Up this the leading boat went, and one of the men,
-in reply to a query from another in one of the boats following, as to
-the nature of the water in this new stream, called out, “A dirty devil,”
-and by that name it was designated on the maps. It was a stream of red
-mud, having along its course hot mineral springs. The odor was fetid and
-foul, resembling, as the lecturer graphically described it, “One of those
-alabaster boxes of ointment with which they used to anoint abolitionists
-in the brazen days of yore.” Below Narrow Cañon was Glen Cañon,
-stretching for a hundred and fifty miles through homogeneous sandstone of
-a beautiful color, its walls often perpendicular and indented with glens,
-alcoves and caves. The latter were formed by the rain-showers running
-down the sides of the wall, and slowly eating them away. At the foot of
-the homogeneous sandstone was a soft, friable, crumbling sandstone, and
-through this the river had cut some fifty miles of its course. In the
-next cañon—Marble Cañon—was a series of cataracts and rapids which made
-progress very difficult. Here the falls were too steep to be “run,” and
-the boats were therefore let down by a line. First one was lowered, then
-the second passed down to and beyond the first, and then the third past
-the first and second.
-
-When these falls had been passed, they found themselves at the head of
-the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, which was about two hundred and seventy
-miles long, varying from five to six thousand feet in depth. Here they
-stopped several days to examine the cañon before entering it. Where
-the rocks were sandstone the river was comparatively quiet, but where
-limestone prevailed it presented a much more threatening appearance. In
-some places the river was very narrow, the entire volume of water being
-compressed into a width of not more than fifty feet. For a distance of
-twenty or thirty miles a curious set of buttresses stood out from the
-wall of the cañon, and between each two of these was a bay where the
-waters would sweep around seething and boiling. Sometimes lofty pinnacles
-of rock rose from the river’s bed, past which the boats darted with
-fearful rapidity. Many days were spent in traversing this part of the
-cañon. The weather was gloomy and much rain fell in showers, which in
-that region had a very different effect from those which fall in our own
-districts. There every drop was precipitated—as it were—into one vast
-rain trough, soon causing the waters to swell. At first was heard in the
-distance the patter of the drops on the rocks; then came the noise caused
-by the rills and brooks hurrying their streams to the main river, and
-louder yet the larger creeks and rivulets hurled their foaming waters,
-soon swelling the river itself into a furious and maddening torrent. The
-black clouds overhead appeared to be miles above them, mingling with the
-very skies. Through this dark cañon they worked their way, examining
-the rocks, toiling from daylight to dark. They were now living on half
-rations, as the supplies of food were fast decreasing. Suddenly was seen
-a fearful rapid, only three or four hundred yards below. A landing was
-effected and the camp pitched on a projecting rock some fifty feet above
-the water. The boats had to be hauled up out of the way of the torrent.
-In continuing the journey on the following morning, great difficulty
-was experienced in rounding this rock. The boats were pitched almost
-against it, and instantly rebounded on the retiring water. A few days
-later Diamond Cañon was reached. Here two streams came in, one from
-either side. A fearful “fall” was in sight, which, after long and careful
-consideration, it was determined to “run.” Here three of the men grew
-faint-hearted and left the party. It was afterward learned that they had
-fallen in with Indians and been killed.
-
-The anxiety attending the resolution to “run” this “fall” was fearful.
-The lecturer said that he paced up and down a little sand-plot all night
-without sleeping or resting. In the morning rations were given to the
-deserters, who determined to watch the fate of the rest of the party. The
-“run” was successfully made, and it was hoped that the other three would
-then be induced to follow. This, however, they would not do. On the next
-day the most difficult point in the entire journey was reached, owing
-to obstructions caused by lava rocks. In one place a dam was found, the
-waters rushing over in a cataract. This it was also decided to “run,” on
-the right hand side. The decision was however reversed when the fearful
-danger of the attempt was realized. But already one of the boats had been
-let down to the very head of the fall, where the men were attempting to
-hold it by winding the rope around a great block of lava. There was one
-man who had been a whaler—named Bradley—in the boat. The roar of the
-waters was so deafening that no voice could be heard. At length he was
-seen to take out his knife with perfect composure, and in an instant he
-cut the rope, knowing that otherwise the boat would have been dashed to
-pieces by striking heavily against the wall of the cañon. A moment later,
-and he and the boat were hurled over the cataract, probably never to
-be seen again. But a few moments later he appeared a few hundred yards
-below, waving his hand. All haste was made to reach him, fearing he might
-be severely bruised, but in the hurry to reach him one of the party (the
-lecturer) fell overboard and was picked up by this invulnerable old
-whaler.
-
-On the next day the foot of the Grand Cañon was reached. Thence they
-went to Virgin River, and from that point to Salt Lake, after which they
-hastened home.
-
-In conclusion, the lecturer said that if all the sands that had been
-eroded by the rivers of that region, and washed into the ocean, could be
-brought into one mass, they would form a rock one mile and a half thick,
-and bigger than New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania put together.
-
-
-
-
-THE COURTS OF THREE PRESIDENTS.
-
-
-THIERS, MACMAHON, GRÉVY.
-
-We all read in the newspapers how, on the day when the Duke of Albany’s
-lamentable death occurred, M. Jules Ferry, the French Prime Minister
-and Secretary for Foreign Affairs, gave a dinner party. An Englishman
-having expressed astonishment that this dinner had not been put off, a
-Frenchman answered by asking whether Lord Granville would countermand
-a banquet in case M. Wilson, M. Grévy’s son-in-law, were to die? Our
-countryman seems to have concluded that Lord Granville would not let his
-hospitalities be interfered with by M. Wilson’s decease; and perhaps he
-was right. M. Daniel Wilson holds more effective power than was ever
-possessed by a Dauphin of France; but his father-in-law is only the chief
-of a government, not the head of a court, and M. Wilson’s existence has
-therefore never been brought officially to the cognizance of foreign
-rulers. It does not follow, however, that because M. Wilson is a private
-person, the French government is bound to look upon the relations of
-foreign monarchs as being exactly in the same position as this gentleman.
-It is more than probable that if Marshal MacMahon were still president,
-the foreign secretary would not have given a dinner on the day when a
-child of the Queen of England had died suddenly on French soil. It is
-equally probable that there would have been no such dinner if M. Thiers
-or M. Gambetta had been president.
-
-Presidents are not all alike. In their views as to the functions of
-a republic—in their opinions as to the amount of authority which a
-republican ruler may exercise over his ministers, as to the more or
-less pomp in which he should live, as to the etiquette which he should
-enforce, and as to the relations which he should personally maintain with
-the rulers of other countries, M. Grévy and his predecessors have all
-differed from one another. The three presidents who have governed France
-since 1871 have in fact been so dissimilar in their characters, tastes,
-principles, and objects, that it is really curious to compare their
-various methods of living and ruling.
-
-M. Thiers was seventy-four years old when he became supreme ruler of
-France, after the siege of Paris. After the first vote of the Assembly,
-which appointed him chief of the executive, M. Thiers took up his
-residence at the Préfecture, in the apartments which M. Gambetta had
-vacated.
-
-“Pah! what a smell of tobacco!” he exclaimed, when he strutted into the
-ex-dictator’s study; and presently Madame Thiers, her sister Mdlle.
-Dosne, and the solemn M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, added their lamentations
-to his. They had been going the round of the house, and found all the
-rooms tenanted by hangers-on of M. Gambetta’s government, who had not yet
-received notice to quit, and who hoped perhaps that they might retain
-their posts under the new administration. All these gentlemen smoked,
-read radical newspapers, refreshed themselves with absinthe, or beer,
-while transacting the business of the state; and played billiards in
-their leisure moments. They were dismissed in a pack before the day was
-over; but Madame Thiers decided that it would require several days to
-set the house straight; and so M. Thiers’ removal to the Archbishop’s
-palace, where Monseigneur Guibert (now Cardinal), whom he afterward
-raised to the see of Paris, offered him hospitality. M. Thiers would, no
-doubt, have liked very much to sleep in Louis XIV.’s bed, and to have for
-his study that fine room with the balcony, on which the heralds used to
-announce the death of one king and the accession of another in the same
-breath. His secretary and faithful admirer, M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire,
-went about saying that it was fitting the “national historian” should be
-lodged in the apartments of the greatest of the kings; but this idea did
-not make its way at all. M. Thiers ended by saying that the rooms were
-too large, while Madame Thiers despised them for being full of draughts
-and having chimneys which smoked. Nevertheless, M. Thiers was nettled at
-seeing that the Republicans objected quite as much as the Royalists to
-see him occupy the royal apartments. “Stupid fellows!” he exclaimed on
-seeing a caricature which represented him as a ridiculous pigmy, crowned
-with a cotton nightcap, and lying in an enormous bed surrounded by the
-majestic ghosts of the Bourbon kings. Then half-angry, half-amused, he
-ejaculated with his usual vivacity: “Louis XIV. was not taller than I,
-and as to his other greatness I doubt whether he would ever have had a
-chance of sleeping in the best bed of Versailles if he had begun life as
-I did.” Shortly after this, M. Mignet meeting Victor Hugo spoke to him in
-a deprecating way about the fuss which had been made over this question
-of the royal apartments. “I don’t know,” answered the poet. “Ideas of
-dictatorship would be likely to sprout under that tester.” This was
-reported to Thiers, who at once cried: “I like that! If Victor Hugo were
-in my place, he would sleep in the king’s bed, but he would think the
-dais too low, and have it raised.”
-
-It was quite impossible for Thiers to submit to any of the restraints
-of etiquette. He was a _bourgeois_ to the finger-tips. His character
-was a curious effervescing mixture of talent, learning, vanity,
-childish petulance, inquisitiveness, sagacity, ecstatic patriotism,
-and self-seeking ambition. He was a splendid orator, with the shrill
-voice of an old costerwoman; a _savant_, with the presumption of a
-schoolboy; a kind-hearted man, with the irritability of a monkey; a
-masterly administrator, with that irrepressible tendency to meddle with
-everything, which worries subordinates, and makes good administration
-impossible. He was a shrewd judge of men, and knew well how they were
-to be handled, but his impatience prevented him from acting up to his
-knowledge. He had a sincere love of liberty, with all the instincts of a
-despot. He was most charming with women, understood their power, and yet
-took so little account of it in his serious calculations that he often
-offended, by his Napoleonic brusqueness, ladies who were in a position to
-do him harm, and did it.
-
-M. Feuillet de Conches had to give up M. Thiers as hopeless. What was to
-be done with a president who, at a ceremonious dinner to Ambassadors and
-Ministers, would get up from table after the first course and walk round
-the room, discussing politics, pictures, the art of war, or the dishes
-on the _menu_? Mr. Thiers’ own dinner always consisted of a little clear
-soup, a plate of roast meat—veal was that which he preferred—some white
-beans, peas, or lentils, and a glass saucer of jam—generally apricot.
-He got through this repast, with two glasses of Bordeaux, in about a
-quarter of an hour, and then would grow fidgety. “Is that good that you
-are eating?” he would say to one of his guests, and thence start off on
-to a disquisition about cookery. Telegrams were brought to him at table,
-and he would open them, saying, “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but the
-affairs of France must pass before everything.” If he got disquieting
-news he would sit pensive for a few moments, then call for a sheet of
-paper and scribble off instructions to somebody, whispering directions to
-his major-domo about the destination of the missive.
-
-But if he received glad tidings, he would start from his chair and
-frisk about, making jokes, his bright gray eyes twinkling merrily as
-lamps through his gold-rimmed spectacles. After dinner there was always
-a discussion, _coram hospitibus_, between him and Madame Thiers as to
-whether he might take some black coffee. Permission to excite his nerves
-being invariably refused, he would wink, laughing, to his friends, to
-call their attention to the state of uxorious bondage in which he lived,
-and then retire to a high arm-chair near the fire, where he soon dropped
-off to sleep. Upon this, Madame Thiers would lay a forefinger on her
-lips, saying, “Monsieur Thiers sleeps;” and with the help of her sister
-she would clear the guests into the next room, where they conversed in
-whispers while the President dozed—a droll little figure with his chin
-resting on the broad red ribbon of his Legion of Honor, and his short
-legs dangling about an inch above the floor. It was always very touching
-to see the care with which M. Thiers’ wife and sister-in-law ministered
-to him. The story has been often told of how M. Thiers having been
-forbidden by doctors to eat his favorite Provençal dish of fish cooked
-with garlic, M. Mignet, the historian, used to smuggle some of this
-mess enclosed in a tin box into his friend’s study, and what a pretty
-scene there was one day when Madame Thiers detected these two countrymen
-enjoying the contraband dainty together.
-
-M. Thiers had naturally a great notion of his dignity as president of
-the republic, and he was anxious to appear impressively on all state
-occasions; but the arrangements made to hedge him about with majesty were
-always being disconcerted by his doing whatever it came into his head to
-do. His servants were dressed in black, and he had a major-domo who wore
-a silver chain and tried to usher morning visitors into the president’s
-room in the order of their rank; but every now and then M. Thiers used to
-pop out of his room, take stock of his visitors for himself, and make his
-choice of those whom he wished to see first. Then the most astonishing
-and uncourtly dialogues would ensue:
-
-“Monsieur le Président, this is the third time I have come here, and I
-have waited two hours each time.”
-
-“My friend, if you had come to see me about the affairs of France, and
-not about your own business, we should have had a conversation long ago.”
-
-Precedence was always given by M. Thiers to journalists, however obscure
-they might be. Ambassadors had to wait while these favored ones walked
-in. A journalist himself, the quondam leader-writer of the _National_
-extended the most generous recognition to the brethren of his craft, but
-he also did this because he was wide awake to the power of the press, and
-had generally some service to ask of those whom he addressed as “my dear
-companions.” He had such a facility for writing that when a journalist
-came to him “for inspiration” he would often sit down and dash off in a
-quarter of an hour the essential paragraph of a leader which he wished to
-see inserted. At the time of the Paris election of April, 1873, when his
-friend the Comte de Rémusat, then foreign secretary, was the Government
-candidate with the insignificant M. Barodet opposing him, a writer on
-the _Figaro_ called at the Elysée and M. Thiers wrote a whole article
-of a column’s length for him. It was printed as a letter in leaded type
-with the signature “An old citizen of Paris;” and a very sprightly letter
-it was, which put the issue lying between M. de Rémusat and his radical
-adversary in the clearest light. However, the electors of Paris acted
-with their usual foolishness in preferring an upstart to a man of note,
-and within a month of this M. Thiers resigned in disgust.
-
-Marshal MacMahon accepted the presidency without any desire to retain
-it. If anything seemed certain at the time of his accession, it was that
-Legitimists and Orleanists would soon patch up their differences and that
-a vote of the Assembly would offer the crown to Henri V. The Ministry
-formed under the auspices of the Duc de Broglie labored to bring about
-this consummation, and the Marshal was prepared to enforce the decrees of
-the Assembly whatever they might be. At the same time he established his
-household at once on a semi-royal footing, as though he intended there
-should be at least a temporary court to remind French noblemen of old
-times, and to give them a foretaste of the pomps that were coming. M.
-Thiers had been a _bourgeois_ president; the Marshal-Duke of Magenta was
-a _grand seigneur_. Under Madame Thiers’ frugal management the £36,000 a
-year allowed to the president sufficed amply to cover all expenses; under
-the Duchess de Magenta’s management the presidential income did not go
-half way toward defraying outlay. The Marshal had a comfortable private
-fortune (not equal to M. Thiers’), but he was only enabled to hold such
-high estate in his office by means of the assistance pressed upon him by
-wealthy relatives.
-
-The first signs of returning splendor at the Elysée were seen in the
-liveries of the new president’s servants. Instead of black they wore gray
-and silver, with scarlet plush, hair powder, and on gala occasions wigs.
-M. Thiers, when he went to a public ceremony, drove in a substantial
-landau, with mounted escort of the Republican Guard, and his friends—he
-never called them a suite—followed behind in vehicles according to their
-liking or means. Marshal MacMahon with the Duchess and their suite were
-always enough to fill three dashing landaus. These were painted in three
-or four shades of green, and lined with pearl gray satin; each would be
-drawn by four grays with postilions in gray jackets and red velvet caps;
-and the whole cavalcade was preceded and followed by outriders. Going
-to reviews, however, the Marshal of course rode, and this enabled him
-to make a grand display with his staff of _aides de camp_. M. Thiers
-had a military household of which his cousin General Charlemagne was
-the head; but this warrior never had much to do, and it was no part
-of his business to receive visitors. Anybody who had business with M.
-Thiers could see him without a letter of audience by simply sending up
-a card to M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire. Marshal MacMahon, on the contrary,
-was as inaccessible as any king. Visitors to the Elysée in his time
-were passed from one resplendent officer to another till they entered
-the smiling presence of Vicomte Emmanuel d’Harcourt, the President’s
-secretary, and this was the _ne plus ultra_. Against journalists in
-particular the Marshal’s doors were inexorably locked. So far as a man
-of his good-natured temper could be said to hate anybody, the Duke of
-Magenta hated persons connected with the press. For all that, he did not
-object altogether to newspaper tattle, for whilst he read the _Journal
-des Débats_ every evening from a feeling of duty, he perused the _Figaro_
-every morning for his own pleasure.
-
-The sumptuous ordinance of Marshal MacMahon’s household was rendered
-necessary in a manner by the Shah of Persia’s visit to Paris in 1873.
-It is a pity that M. Thiers was not in office when this constellated
-savage came to ravish the courts of civilized Europe by his diamonds
-and his haughtily brutish manners, for it would have been curious to
-see the little man instructing the Shah, through an interpreter, as to
-Persian history or the etymology of Oriental languages. In the Marshal,
-however, Nasr-ed-Din found a host who exhibited just the right sort of
-dignity; and all the hospitalities given to the Shah both at Versailles
-and Paris—the torchlight procession of soldiers, the gala performance at
-the opera, the banquet at the Galerie des Glaces—were carried out on a
-scale that could not have been excelled if there had been an emperor on
-the throne. In the course of the banquet at Versailles the Shah turned to
-the Duchess of Magenta and asked her in a few words of French, which he
-must have carefully rehearsed beforehand, why her husband did not set up
-as emperor. The Duchess parried the question with a smile; but perhaps
-the idea was not so far from her thoughts as she would have had people
-imagine.
-
-It was a really comical freak of fortune that brought M. Jules Grévy to
-succeed Marshal MacMahon. The story goes that during the street fighting
-of the Revolution of 1830, a law-student was kicked by one of the king’s
-officers, for tearing down a copy of the ordinances placarded on a wall.
-The officer was armed, the student was not; so the latter ran away and
-lived to fight another day. For the officer, as it is said, was Patrice
-de MacMahon, and the law-student Jules Grévy. M. Grévy is a man of talent
-and great moral courage, but he owes his rise to an uncommon faculty for
-holding his tongue at the right moment. “I kept silent, and it was grief
-to me,” says the Psalmist. M. Grévy may have felt like other people at
-times, an almost incomparable longing to say foolish things; but having
-bridled his tongue he was accounted wiser than many who had spoken
-wisely. Under the empire he practiced at the bar, continued to make
-money, was elected in his turn _bâtonnier_, or chief bencher as we might
-say, to the Order of Advocates, and in 1868 was returned to the Corps
-Législatif by his old electors of the Jura—in which department he had by
-this time acquired a pretty large landed estate. A neat, creaseless sort
-of man, with a bald head, a shaven chin and closely-trimmed whiskers, he
-looked eminently respectable. The only reprehensible things about him
-were his hat and his hands. He always wore a wide-awake instead of the
-orthodox chimney-pot, and he eschewed gloves. If his hands were cold he
-put them into the pockets of his pantaloons. Some pretended to descry
-astuteness in this contempt for the usages of civilized man, for the
-wide-awake is more of a radical head-dress than a silk hat. But it never
-occurred to M. Grévy at any time since he first achieved success, to
-regulate his apparel, general conduct, or words, in view of pleasing the
-Radicals.
-
-The Assembly elected after the war at once chose M. Grévy for its
-speaker, and he took up his abode in the Royal Palace, from which party
-jealousies had debarred M. Thiers. But he did not alter his manner of
-life one whit on that account. In Paris and Versailles he was to be
-seen sauntering about the streets looking in at shop windows, dining in
-restaurants, or sitting outside a café smoking a cigar and sipping iced
-coffee out of a glass. He had a brougham, but would only use it when
-obliged to go long distances. It often happened that setting out for a
-drive he would alight from his carriage and order his coachman to follow,
-and for hours the puzzled and disgusted coachman would drive at a walking
-pace behind his indefatigable master, who took easy strides as if he were
-not in the slightest hurry.
-
-There is one point of resemblance between M. Grévy and the Marshal, for
-M. Grévy is a keen sportsman; but in most other things the two differ,
-though in sum M. Grévy differs more from M. Thiers than he does from
-the Marshal. His manner of living at the Elysée is dignified without
-ostentation. His servants do not wear gray and scarlet liveries; but the
-arrangements of his household are more orderly than those of M. Thiers
-could ever be. His servants in black know well how to keep intruders at
-a distance. No mob of journalists, inventors and place hunters calls
-to see M. Grévy in the morning. On the other hand, three or four times
-a week a great number of deputies, artists, journalists and officers
-may be seen going into the Elysée as freely as if they were entering a
-club. They do not ask to see the President or the latter’s secretary, M.
-Fourneret, but they make straight for a magnificent room on the ground
-floor overlooking the garden, which has been converted into a fencing
-saloon, and there they find M. Daniel Wilson, _le fils de la maison_.
-All these _habitués_, who form the court of the Third Republic, keep
-their masks, foils and flannels at the Elysée, and set to work fencing
-with each other as if they were at Gâtechair’s or Paz’s. Presently a
-door opens and the President walks in. For a moment the fencing stops,
-the combatants all turn and salute with their foils, whilst the visitors
-stand up. But, with a pleasant smile and a wave of the hand, M. Grévy
-bids the jousters to go on, and then he walks round the room, saying
-something to everybody, and inviting about half a dozen of the guests to
-stay to breakfast.
-
-M. Grévy has allowed his beard to grow of late, and he is almost always
-attired in evening clothes, with the _moiré_ edge of his scarlet _cordon_
-peeping over his waistcoat. But for the rest he is the same unassuming
-man as ever, and he takes life very easily. Now and then the Cabinet
-meets at the Elysée in the Salle des Souverains, and he presides over it.
-It is worth observing that in this Salle there are the portraits of a
-dozen sovereigns of the nineteenth century, including Queen Victoria, but
-not a symbol of any kind to remind one that it is a Republican Government
-that sits in this room. Even the master of the house has more in him of
-the Constitutional Monarch than of the President. The Constitution has
-conferred upon him large powers which he never uses; he seems to keep his
-eye on the portrait of the English Queen whilst his ministers discourse.
-Whatever papers are offered for his signature he signs, and then it is
-_Bon jour, Messieurs; au revoir_; and while the ministers disperse the
-President makes his way to his private apartments, where he finds his
-daughter and his grandchild, in whose company he sometimes takes more
-delight than in that of statesmen.
-
-Now and then there is a dinner at the Elysée, twice a week at least there
-are evening receptions, and about twice in the winter there are grand
-balls. On all these occasions everything is done in the best possible
-style, and the President discharges his functions of host with a serenity
-which disarms all criticism. He says nothing much to anybody, but he
-is the same to all. If by chance he falls into deep conversation with
-any particular guest, nobody need suspect that state matters are being
-discussed. The probabilities are that the President will be talking
-about the next performance of his new breechloader at Mont-sous-Vaudrey.
-Moreover, what makes M. Grévy more puzzling and interesting at once to
-those who behold him so simple in his palace, is the knowledge which
-all have, that when his time comes for leaving the Elysée he will walk
-out of it as coolly as he went in, without wishing that his tenancy had
-been longer, and certainly without doing anything to prolong it. His
-only anxiety will be to see that his gun-case suffer no damage at the
-door.—_Abridged from Temple Bar._
-
- * * * * *
-
- Thus God has willed
- That man when fully skilled
- Still gropes in twilight dim,
- Encompassed all his hours
- By fearfullest powers
- Inflexible to him.
- That so he may discern
- His feebleness,
- And e’en for earth’s success
- To Him in wisdom turn,
- Who holds for us the keys of either home,
- Earth and the world to come.
-
- —_Cardinal Newman._
-
-
-
-
-ASTRONOMY OF THE HEAVENS.
-
-By PROF. M. B. GOFF.
-
-
-FOR JULY.
-
-
-THE SUN.
-
-We now enter upon what is usually called the “heated term,” in earnest.
-The “Dog Days” are upon us, that is, we say they are; but the statement
-is a somewhat doubtful one. We have the story that the ancients regarded
-the Dog Star, _Sirius_, in the constellation _Canis Major_, as the
-source of “unnumbered woes,” because it rose a short time before the
-sun about the season of their year that the hot weather set in, and
-diseases incident to their climate more than usually prevailed. It is
-said that they estimated this period as continuing for the space of
-forty consecutive days, beginning twenty days before, and continuing
-twenty days after what was called the heliacal (that is, rising just long
-enough before the sun to be visible) rising of the Dog Star. Now, the
-difficulty we moderns find in fixing the limits of these days is this:
-The heliacal rising of the star for any one place can readily be found;
-but when determined for one place, it would not suit for another in a
-different latitude. Besides, the right ascension of Sirius, on account
-of the precession of the equinoxes, is constantly increasing, and hence
-for the same place these days fall later each year, in the course of
-time occurring even in mid-winter. Almanac makers, when they notice them
-at all, seem to take the liberty of treating them to suit their own
-convenience. For example, one of this year’s publications announces that
-“Dog Days” begin on the 21st of July, and end on the 30th of August,
-making, as we see by including one extreme date, altogether the forty
-days claimed by the ancients. But in this latitude, on the former date,
-the star rises at 5:43 a. m., one hour and five minutes _after_, and on
-the latter date at 3:06 a. m., two hours and twenty minutes _before_
-sunrise. Others fix the time from July 3rd to August 11th (forty days),
-without any respect to the rising of _Sirius_, which on the former date
-appears above our horizon at 6:51 a. m., or two hours and seventeen
-minutes after, and on the latter date at 4:18 a. m., forty-nine minutes
-before sunrise. Others, again, making an effort, we presume, to adapt
-them to our climate, regard them as continuing only thirty-two days,
-namely, from July 24th to August 24th. Taking it all in all, we may as
-well leave them to the Egyptians and Ethiopians, among whom the ideas in
-regard to them seem to have originated, as a superstition of the past
-ages, taking our “heated term” at its usual time, July and August, and
-throwing our “Dog Days,” as some do physic, “to the dogs.”
-
-Whether we account for it by the extreme heat or not, it is nevertheless
-a fact that the sun lags along behind our clocks during this entire
-month; on the 1st, not reaching the meridian till 12:03:41 p. m.; on
-the 15th till 12:05:44 p. m., and on the 30th till six minutes and nine
-seconds after noon. The time of the sun’s rising on the 1st, 15th and
-30th, is 4:33, 4:43 and 4:56 a. m.; and the time of setting on the same
-dates is 7:34, 7:29 and 7:17 p. m., respectively. The 30th day of this
-month will be about forty minutes shorter than the 1st, the latter being
-fifteen hours one minute, and the former fourteen hours and twenty-one
-minutes in length. The time from daybreak to the end of twilight is, on
-the 1st, 19 hours 24 minutes. Sun is due west on the 30th at 5:29 p. m.
-Its greatest elevation above the horizon in latitude 41° 30′, is 71° 33⅔′.
-
-
-THE MOON
-
-Exhibits the following phases: Full moon, 5:02 a. m. on the 8th; last
-quarter, 4:30 p. m. on the 15th; new moon, 7:46 a. m. on the 22nd; first
-quarter on the 29th, at 4:53 p. m. On the 1st it sets at 12:11 a. m., and
-on the 30th, at 11:51 p. m. On the 15th, rises at 11:32 p. m. On the 4th,
-at 7:54 a. m., and again on the 31st at 11:00 p. m. it is at its maximum
-distance from the earth. On the 20th, at 1:36 a. m. is nearest the earth.
-Its greatest elevation, equal 67° 13⅔′, occurs on the 19th; and its
-least elevation, amounting to 29° 42⅔′ on the 5th.
-
-
-MERCURY.
-
-This planet will be morning star till the 13th, after which it will be
-evening star till the end of the month. It rises on the 1st at 3:41 a.
-m.; sets on the 15th at 7:41 p. m., and on the 30th at 8:07 p. m., on
-which latter date it is possibly visible to the naked eye. Its motion
-during the month is direct, and amounts to 62° 30′ 31.5″. On the 17th
-at 6:00 a. m. it is nearest the sun; on the 12th at 1:00 a. m., 6° 20′
-north of Venus; on the same date, at midnight, is in superior conjunction
-with the sun; that is, it is in a line with the earth and sun, and in
-the order, Earth, Sun, Mercury; on the 23rd, at 3:00 a. m., 1° 10′ north
-of Jupiter; and on the 23rd, at 7:05 a. m., 6° 30′ north of the moon.
-Diameter decreases from 5.6″ to 5.4″.
-
-
-VENUS.
-
-A view of Venus during this month through a telescope of moderate power
-would be an interesting sight, since she now presents the appearance of
-our moon in its first or last quarter, and thus seems quite different
-from the simple star that is visible to the naked eye. She will be
-evening star till the 11th, at which time she reaches her inferior
-conjunction, that is, reaches a point directly between the earth and the
-sun; after which she will be morning star, not only to the end of this
-month, but for several successive months. Of course, for a number of days
-both before and after conjunction, she will, on account of her proximity
-to the sun, be invisible. We shall miss her “beaming countenance,” but
-we know that she will appear again. On the 1st she sets at 8:14 p. m.,
-and rises on the 15th at 4:38 a. m., and on the 30th at 3:17 a. m. On the
-21st at 6:28 a. m. she is 1° 11′ south of the moon; and on the 29th at
-11:00 a. m., farthest from the sun.
-
-
-MARS
-
-Has from the 1st to 30th a direct motion of 15° 36′ 32″, and although
-much reduced in apparent diameter, is still quite a prominent object in
-the evening sky, following westward in the wake of Jupiter. His diameter
-decreases from 5.6″ to 5.2″. He rises in the forenoon, and sets as
-follows, in the evening: On the 1st at 10:47; on the 15th at 10:11; and
-on the 30th at 9:31. On the 26th at 5:04 p. m. he is 2° 5′ north of the
-moon.
-
-
-JUPITER
-
-Will be evening star throughout the entire month, though at its close
-approaching so near the sun as to be scarcely visible. He sets at the
-following times: On the 1st at 9:08; on the 15th at 8:22; and on the 30th
-at 7:33 p. m. His motion is direct, and amounts from the 1st to the 30th,
-to 6° 17′ 55″. Diameter decreases from 30.2″ to 29.6″. On the 23rd, at
-3:00 a. m. is 1° 10′ south of Mercury; and on the same day at 6:34 a. m.
-is 5° 21′ north of the moon.
-
-
-SATURN.
-
-This planet is now one of our morning stars, rising on the 1st at 3:06,
-on the 15th at 2:17, and on the 30th at 1:25 a. m. Motion direct,
-amounting to 3° 32′ 30¾″. Diameter increases from 15.6″ to 16.2″. On the
-19th, at 1:01 p. m. is 3° 2′ north of the moon.
-
-
-URANUS,
-
-Whose direct motion during the month is estimated at 1° 3′ 26″, continues
-its _role_ as evening star, setting at the following times: On the 1st at
-11:10; on the 15th at 10:16; and on the 30th at 9:17 p. m. On the date
-last named, _Beta Virginis_ will be only two minutes south of and will
-set at the same time as the planet. On the 19th, at 2:00 p. m., Uranus
-will be eleven minutes north of Mars; and on the 26th, at 9:57 a. m. will
-be 2° 43′ north of the moon.
-
-
-NEPTUNE
-
-Scarcely affords this month material for comment. Its diameter at present
-appears to be 2.6″. Its motion is 40′ 35″, and is direct. On the 1st it
-rises at 1:44 a. m.; on the 15th at 12:49 a. m.; and on the 30th at
-11:45 p. m. At 5:27 p. m., on the 17th, it will be 1° 11′ north of the
-moon.
-
-
-FOR AUGUST.
-
-The mid-day shadows lengthening northward indicate to us northern folks
-that “Old Sol” has departed on his annual southern tour. He now cuts off
-the day at both ends, on the 1st rising 25 minutes later and setting 20
-minutes earlier than on the 1st of July. His change in declination since
-June 20th, beginning of summer, till August 31st, will be a little over
-15°, and the decrease in the length of the day for the same time, will be
-a trifle less than two hours. He will come to the meridian on the 1st,
-at six minutes and two seconds after 12:00; on the 15th at four minutes
-and eight seconds after 12:00; and on the 30th at sixteen seconds after
-12:00. On the same dates he will rise at 4:58, 5:11, and 5:26 a. m., and
-set at 7:14, 6:57, and 6:35 p. m. Daybreak will occur at 3:05, 3:23, and
-3:44 a. m., and twilight will end at 9:07, 8:45, and 8:16 p. m. Greatest
-elevation in latitude 41° 30′ will be 66° 18⅔′.
-
-
-THE MOON’S
-
-Phases occur in the following order and time: Full moon on the 6th, at
-5:58 p. m.; last quarter on the 13th, at 10:00 p. m.; new moon on the
-20th, at 4:46 p. m.; and first quarter on the 28th, at 10:34 a. m. The
-moon rises on the 15th at 12:39 a. m.; and sets on the 1st and 31st at
-12:30 and 12:43 a. m., respectively. On the 16th at 11:00 a. m., nearest
-the earth; on the 28th, at 5:30 p. m., farthest from the earth. Its
-greatest elevation, 67° 4′, occurs on the 15th, and its least, 29° 50.8′
-on the second day of the month.
-
-
-MERCURY
-
-Reaches its greatest elongation east (27° 21′), very nearly its maximum
-distance from the sun; yet the opportunity for observation is not so
-favorable as on many occasions when the elongation is several degrees
-less. And the reason is, that the planet is now moving southward, is in
-fact on the 23rd, the date of its greatest eastern elongation, 1° 16′
-south, while the sun is still 11° 9′ north of the equator, and sets,
-therefore, only about fifty minutes later than the sun. The time of the
-planet’s setting is for the 1st, 8:07 p. m.; 15th, 7:53 p. m.; 30th, 7:16
-p. m. It has a direct motion of 32° 49′ 39″. Its diameter increases 2.6″,
-namely, from 5.6″ to 8.2″. It is farthest from the sun on the 20th, at
-6:00 a. m. On the 23d, at 8:00 a. m., 3° 5′ south of Uranus.
-
-
-VENUS
-
-Again reaches a position of greatest brilliancy on the 17th, and during
-the entire month will be an object of interest to early risers. On the
-2nd she will appear stationary; and on the 17th at 4:37 p. m. will be 23
-minutes south of the moon. Her diameter will decrease from 49″ on the 1st
-to 31.8″ on the 30th. Her time of rising will be as follows: On the 1st,
-at 3:08; on the 15th, at 2:23; and on the 30th, at 2:01 a. m.
-
-
-MARS
-
-Seems to grow “small by degrees and beautifully less,” his diameter at
-the close of the month being only 4.8″. He sets at 9:25 on the evening of
-the 1st; at 8:51 p. m. on the 15th, and at 8:13 p. m. on the 30th. On the
-24th, at 10:29 a. m. he is only 10′ south of the moon.
-
-
-JUPITER
-
-With his huge form and accompanying satellites fare the fate of
-all “lights” terrestrial and celestial, and his “glory” sinks into
-insignificance beside that of his “ruling power,” as he on the 7th, at
-1:00 p. m. comes in conjunction with the sun and changes his relation
-from that of an evening to that of a morning star. On the 1st he sets at
-7:26 p. m.; on the 15th rises at 4:44 a. m.; and on the 30th rises at
-4:02 a. m. Is in conjunction with and 5° 8′ north of the moon at 2:36 on
-the morning of the 20th.
-
-
-SATURN,
-
-Another of our morning stars, rises on the 1st and 15th at 1:18 and
-12:28 a. m., respectively; and on the 29th, at 11:34 p. m. His diameter
-increases from 16.2″ to 16.8″. His motion is direct, amounting to about
-2° 43′. He can be found a little north of _Zeta_, the star denoting the
-extremity of the northern horn of the constellation _Taurus_. On the
-16th, at 12:41 a. m. will be 3° 17′ north of the moon.
-
-
-URANUS,
-
-Which on the 30th of last month was so near _Beta Virginis_, has moved
-about 1° 35′ farther to the east; but can be more readily pointed out
-by its proximity to this than to that of any other star. Uranus is an
-evening star, setting at the following dates: 1st, at 9:10 p. m.; 15th,
-at 8:17 p. m.; 30th, at 7:20 p. m. Diameter, 3.6″. On the 22nd, at 9:35
-p. m. is 2° 25′ north of the moon; and on the 23rd is 3° 5′ north of
-Mercury, at 8:00 a. m., an hour at which neither planet can be seen by
-the unaided eye.
-
-
-NEPTUNE,
-
-Last, but by no means least of the heavenly bodies, gives us this month
-more than the usual variety, which, however, is not saying much for the
-spice it affords. But it has a direct motion of 10° 42′, and a retrograde
-motion of about 1′. On the 14th, at 11:00 p. m. it is in quadrature (90°
-west of the sun); on the 26th, at 5:00 a. m. it is stationary, and on the
-14th is 1° 25′ north of the moon.
-
-
-FOR SEPTEMBER.
-
-
-THE SUN
-
-“Crosses the line” on the 22nd at 10:13 a. m.; in other words, enters
-the sign _Libra_, giving us a clearly marked time for the beginning of
-another season—Autumn—which lasts 89 days, 18 hours, 29 minutes, nearly.
-His greatest elevation above the horizon in latitude 41° 30′ is about 56°
-28′, an indication that his time above the horizon is decidedly shorter
-than it was last June, when his elevation was a little more than 71° 57′.
-And this also is confirmed by the times of his rising and setting, which
-are as follows: On the 1st, rises at 5:28 a. m., and sets at 6:32 p. m.;
-on the 15th, rises at 5:41 a. m., and sets at 6:09 p. m.; on the 30th,
-rises at 5:56 a. m., and sets at 5:43 p. m. Theoretically, on the 22nd,
-the day and night should each be exactly 12 hours long; but practically
-the daylight is longer than the darkness, on account of the refraction of
-light by the earth’s atmosphere, which has the effect of bringing into
-view the sun before it actually “rises,” and of detaining it in sight
-after it has “set.” Twilight also affords us so much additional light
-that we may safely assert that in any given place on the earth’s surface
-there is much more “daylight” than “night.” For example, on the 30th,
-daybreak occurs at 4:22 a. m., and twilight ends at 7:18 p. m., thus
-giving three hours and nine minutes in which to lengthen our daily toil,
-if we choose so to do. In the same latitude, and in different latitudes,
-as was shown in THE CHAUTAUQUAN for June, the length of twilight varies,
-so that in some instances the entire night is only twilight. Are these
-facts any indication that we should be awake longer than we sleep? or
-that we should labor more hours than we rest? Should we be always
-
- “Up and doing,
- With a heart for any fate,
- Still achieving, still pursuing”?
-
-
-THE MOON.
-
-The man who attends to his neighbor’s business generally has his hands
-full. So has the man who attends to the motions of his neighbor, the
-moon. By the time he investigates her parallax, diameter, distance,
-revolution on her axis, sidereal and synodic revolutions, the form of
-her orbit, her phases, discusses her physical properties, determines
-her heat, height of her mountains, size of her craters, describes her
-librations, decides upon the effect she exercises on the weather, and a
-thousand more or less of other things, he had better settle down and make
-it the business of his life. And if he does, he may be able to show some
-good results of his labors. It is well for us that not any single man,
-but many men, have given our satellite so much attention; for it is only
-by the uniting of the results of their researches that we are enabled
-with comparative ease to predict what business our neighbor has on hand,
-and when and how she will perform her duties. Thus, we find that she will
-this month present the following phases: On the 5th, at 5:47 a. m., full;
-on the 12th, at 3:08 a. m., last quarter; on the 19th, at 4:29 a. m., new
-moon; on the 27th, at 5:13 a. m., first quarter. She will rise on the
-15th at 1:39 a. m., and set on the 1st and 30th at 1:36 a. m. and 1:18 a.
-m., respectively. At 12:54 p. m., on the 10th, will be nearest the earth
-(in perigee), and on the 25th, at 12:54 (exactly fifteen days later),
-farthest from the earth, or in apogee. Greatest elevation on the 12th,
-amounting to 66° 54⅔′; least elevation on the 26th, equaling 30° 8′.
-
-
-MERCURY
-
-Will be evening star till the time of its inferior conjunction on the
-19th, after which it will be morning star. It appears stationary on
-the 6th, and also again on the 28th. On the 19th it is 1° 34′ south of
-the moon. Its apparent diameter increases from 8.4″ to 10.4″, and then
-diminishes to 7.4″ at the close of the month. It sets on the 1st at 7:08
-p. m.; on the 15th at 6:05 p. m.; and rises on the 30th at 4:37 a. m.
-
-
-VENUS
-
-Reaches her greatest distance east of the sun, 46° 6′, on the 29th, at
-7:00 a. m. Her diameter decreases from 30.8″ to 22″; and her direct
-motion amounts to 27° 40′ 55.2″. On the 15th, at 1:08 p. m., she is 2°
-26′ north of the moon. She rises on the 1st, 15th and 30th, at 2:00,
-1:59, and 2:11 a. m., respectively.
-
-
-MARS
-
-Still retains his position as evening star, setting on the evening of
-the 1st, 15th and 30th in the same order, at 8:08, 7:36 and 7:11. His
-diameter decreases from 4.8″ to 4.6″. Direct motion amounts to about 18°
-40′ 12″ of arc. He is 2° 20′ south of the moon on the 22nd, at 6:48 a. m.
-
-
-JUPITER
-
-Is morning star, rising at the following times: 1st, at 3:55 a. m.; 15th,
-at 3:16 a. m.; 30th, at 2:32 a. m. Its motion is direct, and equals about
-5° 45′ 14″ of arc. Its diameter increases one second, being on the 30th
-31″. On the 16th, at 8:30 p. m. is 4° 55′ north of the moon.
-
-The satellites of Jupiter, four in number and designated as 1, 2, 3, 4,
-outwardly from the planet, are frequently used to find the longitude. To
-do this, however, requires the use of a telescope. By observing the time
-at which one of these satellites passes into or emerges from the shadow
-of its primary, and comparing this time with the recorded time of the
-same event in Washington City, for example, one can determine whether
-he is east or west of this city, and how many degrees. On the 14th No.
-1 enters the shadow of Jupiter at 4:46 a. m., Washington mean time.
-Suppose the observer at Allegheny Observatory should note the same event
-as occurring at exactly 57 minutes 50.84 seconds after four, Allegheny
-Observatory time. He would find the difference of the two times to be
-11 m. 50.84 s., which reduced to longitude by multiplying by 15 (since
-one hour of time equals 15° of arc) gives the difference of longitude 2°
-57′ 40.3″. And since the ingress occurred at Allegheny Observatory at
-an earlier hour (by its local time) than by Washington local time, it
-follows that the latter place is 2° 57′ 40.3″ east of the former.
-
-
-SATURN
-
-Continues as in the last two or three months among the morning stars,
-rising as follows: 1st, at 11:22 p. m.; 15th, at 10:30 p. m.; 30th, at
-9:33 p. m. His diameter increases from 16.8″ to 17.8″. His motion is
-direct, and equal to 1° 7′ 25″. On the 12th, at 9:17 a. m. he is 3° 28′
-north of the moon; and on the 16th, at 10:00 a. m. 90° west of the sun,
-that is, in quadrature.
-
-
-URANUS
-
-Makes a direct motion of 1° 43′ 22″ during the month. Its diameter
-reaches its minimum for the year, 3.48″, on the 20th. On the 19th, at
-4:13 a. m. it is 2° 14′ north of the moon. It begins the month as an
-evening, but closes it as a morning star. It is, however, most of the
-time above the horizon in daylight. On the 1st it rises at 6:54 a. m. and
-sets at 7:06 p. m.; on the 30th it rises at 5:24 a. m., and sets 5:30 p.
-m.
-
-
-NEPTUNE,
-
-On the contrary, is above the horizon most of the month during the night,
-rising on the 1st at 9:37 p. m.; on the 15th at 8:43 p. m.; and on the
-30th at 7:44 p. m. Its motion is about 20′ 52″ retrograde, and its
-diameter nearly constant at 2.6″. On the 10th, at 5:20 a. m., appears 1°
-33′ north of the moon.
-
-
-
-
-RISE HIGHER.
-
-By HELEN G. HAWTHORNE.
-
-
- Soul of mine,
- Would’st thou choose for life a motto half divine?
- Let this be thy guard and guide
- Through the future, reaching wide;
- Whether good or ill betide,
- Rise higher!
-
- From the mire
- Where the masses blindly grovel, rise higher!
- From the slavish love of gold,
- From the justice bought and sold,
- From the narrow rules of old,
- Rise higher!
-
- Art thou vexed
- By the rasping world around thee, and perplexed
- By the sin and sorrow rife,
- By the falsehood and the strife?
- To a larger, grander life
- Rise higher!
-
- If thou findest
- That the friends thy heart had counted truest, kindest,
- Have betrayed thee, why should’st thou
- Wear for this a frowning brow?
- Leave their falsehood far behind;
- Rise higher!
-
- Let each care
- Lift thee upward to a higher, purer air;
- Then let Fortune do her worst;
- Whether Fate has blessed or cursed;
- Little matter, if thou first
- Rise higher!
-
- And at last,
- When thy sorrows and temptations all are past,
- And the grand Death Angel brings
- Summons from the King of Kings,
- Thou shalt still, on angels’ wings
- Rise higher.
-
- * * * * *
-
-I have a friend who wishes me to see that to be right which I know to be
-wrong. But if friendship is to rob me of my eyes, if it is to darken the
-day, I will have none of it. It should be expansive and inconceivably
-liberalizing in its effects. True friendship can afford true knowledge.
-It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.—_Thoreau._
-
-
-
-
-LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.
-
-IN SEVEN DAYS.
-
-By E. E. HALE.
-
-
-The First Day.
-
-“My dear Isabella!”
-
-“My dearest Kate!”
-
-And the two women threw their arms each around the other’s neck, and, so
-embracing, they kissed each other.
-
-“And where are the children?”
-
-The children appeared at once. That tall John, who looked little enough
-like a child, was lifting his sister Caroline from the carriage. Molly
-followed, and it was explained that the elder John, Isabella’s husband,
-had undertaken to bring Dick up from the train on foot and by the horse
-cars, that he might explain to him something of the geography of Boston,
-so that he might be a guide to the rest. Proper fears were expressed that
-they might be lost. But of course they were not lost, and, in due time,
-they also joined the jolly breakfast table, where they found the first
-comers seated.
-
-The reader, if he be bright, already understands what if he be dull shall
-be now explained to him. Kate and Isabella are two mothers of families,
-tenderly attached in early life, who have been parted now in many years.
-Kate’s husband is a prosperous wool merchant in Boston, and she and her
-six children live in Roxbury, one of the pretty suburbs of that old town.
-Isabella and her husband are among the spirited and wise founders of
-Greeley, in Colorado. And, though they have not lived in that town now
-for some years, so that their names will not be found on its enlarging
-directory, all their four children were born there, and until this summer
-no one of the four has ever left Colorado. This summer all of them have
-come eastward, that boys and girls may practice their mountain swimming
-in the bath, well nigh matchless, of the beach well nigh perfect, at
-Narragansett Pier. And it has been arranged by great correspondence
-that, for a week before the hotels at the Pier are open, namely, for the
-second week of June, the whole family shall make a visit in Roxbury, so
-that they may come to know “Aunt Kate,” as Mrs. Dudley has always called
-herself, and Aunt Kate’s six children, who are to them all every whit as
-good as cousins.
-
-All this, as has been said, the thoroughly intelligent reader understood
-as the different characters came forward. It has now been explained to
-readers less intelligent, so that we all start fairly together.
-
-“George is so sorry to be away. But he had to take an early train to
-Providence, to be sure to be with you at dinner. He has left no end of
-love, and you are to do nothing but rest yourselves to-day.”
-
-The young people of both clans looked amused at the idea of resting on
-a fine morning in June. And, in truth, the plans were soon made for a
-series of expeditions—which the reader will follow or not, just as he
-chooses—in which John Crehere, the father, with the practical assistance
-of Nathan Dudley, the oldest of Kate’s six children, laid out the seven
-days of their visit, so that all parties should, with due regard to
-the demands of pleasure, see in that time, all too narrow, the chief
-LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.
-
-
-First Day.
-
-“You see,” said Nathan, who was rather the historical member of the home
-crowd, and was at home somewhat distinguished for “poking about” in one
-and another corner—“you see, the absolute original landmarks of Boston
-are gone, or as much altered as they could be.”
-
-“When the first people came here, old John Blackstone, and even Winthrop
-and Dudley, our Tom. Dudley, our ancestor, of course it was not called
-Boston. It was called Trimountain, or Tremont, I suppose by people in
-the fishing ships, because at the top of Beacon Hill there were three
-hummocks, like this,” and the boy cut a bit of bread into the shape he
-meant, two protuberances in the side of a hill a little higher.
-
-“And these were Fort Hill, and Copp’s Hill, and Beacon Hill,” said his
-Aunt Isabella, as usual willing to show that she also knew something.
-
-“Not quite yet, Aunt Isabella,” said the boy, modestly enough. “Most
-people think so. And I think most Boston people would tell you so, but
-they would be wrong. The three hummocks were all on Beacon Hill—that’s
-where the State House is now. Oddly enough they are all gone. They dug
-down the highest, where the Beacon was, part of it when they built the
-State House, and the rest afterward, to fill up the old mill pond. And
-the others were so steep that they had to be dug down for streets. But
-when I take you to the State House, and over Mt. Vernon and Somerset
-streets you will have tramped over them all.”
-
-“I really think, mamma,” the boy added, “that at least the boys had
-better go to the top of the State House with me, first of all. You know
-Dean Stanley did.”
-
-It is true that when Dr. Stanley came to Boston, true to the principles
-of Arnold’s school of history, he was eager first of all, to understand
-the precise topography of all he was to see. His first visit, therefore,
-was to the top of the State House, and his last, after his short stay,
-was to the same observatory, that he might be sure he had rightly placed
-all that he had seen.
-
-In our case it need not be said that all the children ridiculed any
-doubts of their ability to climb two hundred and twenty stairs, more
-or less, and also ridiculed that other idea, that they were tired.
-Accordingly, though the two mothers took the morning to talk over the
-events of twenty years by themselves in Mrs. Dudley’s room, and while Mr.
-Crehere went down town to look up some business correspondents, Nathan
-was permitted, to his solid satisfaction, to take the young people to the
-top of the State House, to the Common, and anywhere else he chose. “And
-we will get our lunch where we do our work, mamma,” he said.
-
-“Cousin Nathan,” said his new friend Caroline, who was no more his cousin
-than you are, “be sure that I see a ship, a real three-master, before we
-go away. Steamships I don’t care for.” And he promised.
-
-This article is written in some hope that it may serve as a handy guide
-for visitors to Boston this summer, who may have time to make any of the
-excursions which these young people made during the week of their visit.
-We shall not, therefore, try so much to tell what they saw, as how they
-saw it, in the hope and wish that others may see the same. A street car
-brought the party to the head of Winter Street, and here Nathan brought
-them out of it upon what he called the Lower Mall, on the eastern side
-of Boston Common. Here he put all the girls upon a seat, while the boys
-grouped around him, and with his stick he drew a rough map on the ground.
-
-“We may get parted from each other. But if any one is lost while you
-are in Boston, the streets are just as easy to understand as those of
-Philadelphia or Chicago, after you once know the law of the instrument.
-
-“This hill we are on is the east slope of Beacon Hill. If we had followed
-in the car we could have ridden round it to Cambridge, in this open horse
-shoe which I draw.
-
-“North of us, quite at the north of the town, is Copp’s Hill. We will see
-that another day. The streets around that are in curves also.
-
-“Off here on the southeast was Fort Hill. The streets there bent to
-follow the curve. But that is all dug down.
-
-“Then, of course, in a seaboard town, from every wharf or pier, there ran
-up streets into the town. If you took a fan, and put the center at the
-Postoffice Square, the sticks would be Water Street, Milk Street, Pearl
-Street, Federal Street, and so on. Now all this is just as much according
-to rule as if you made a checker board. Only you must know what the rule
-is.”
-
-“I think it is a great deal nicer,” said Caroline. And Nathan thanked her.
-
-The rule in practice is said to be: “Find out where the place is to which
-you go, and take a horse car running the other way.”
-
-“Now we will go up to the State House.” So they slowly pulled up the Park
-Street walk, up the high steps between the two bronze statues, stopped in
-the Doric Hall to see the statues and the battle flags, and then slowly
-mounted the long stairways which lead to the “lantern” above the dome.
-Fortunately the Legislature had adjourned. When the House is in session
-visits to the lantern are not permitted, lest the trampling on the stairs
-above the Representatives’ Hall might disturb the hearers.
-
-When they had regained their breath, they looked round on the magnificent
-panorama which sweeps a circle of forty miles in diameter, and Nathan
-lectured. His lecture must not be reported here in detail. But the
-main points of it shall be stated, because they give the clew to the
-expeditions which the party made on succeeding days.
-
-They were so high that all the rest of the city was quite below them.
-Nathan was able to point out—almost in a group, they seemed to his
-western friends, used to large distances—Faneuil Hall, the old State
-House, and the Old South Meeting House of Revolutionary times.
-
-“We will do those,” he said, “to-morrow, and then you can see where the
-tea was thrown over, and the scene of the Boston Massacre. That will be a
-good Revolutionary day.”
-
-To the north, with a strip of water between, so narrow, and bridged so
-often that it hardly seemed a deep river, half a mile wide, was the
-monument on Bunker Hill. The Summit was the only point near them as high
-as they were. “We will go there on Friday,” said Nathan, “day after
-to-morrow. And that same day we can see Copp’s Hill, which is the north
-headland of Old Boston, and we can go to the Navy Yard, and Carry shall
-see her ship with three masts.
-
-“Saturday—I don’t know what papa will say—but I vote that we go down
-the harbor. We will see Nahant, which is a rocky peninsula ten miles
-northeast, or Hull, which is about as far southeast; they make the
-headlands of Boston Bay.” And he tried to make out both these points. He
-did show them the outer light-house and the great forts between. And all
-of the Westerners were delighted with their first view of the sea horizon.
-
-“You do not feel the same at Chicago,” said John; “though you do not see
-the other side, you know it is there.”
-
-“Then Sunday,” said Nathan, husbanding his days prudently, “some of us
-can go to Christ Church, where the sexton showed the lantern.”
-
-“And can we not see the church with the cannon ball?
-
- “‘Bears on her bosom as a bride might do,
- The iron breastpin that the rebels threw.’”
-
-This was Caroline’s question. She quoted Dr. Holmes.
-
-“No,” said John, sadly. “We were barbarians, and pulled that church
-down.” And he added savagely, “and no good came to the society that did
-it.”
-
-“That will leave Monday for a good tramp over Dorchester Heights, and
-Tuesday, if you are not tired, we will go to Cambridge, and see Harvard
-College.”
-
-And he showed them how high the “Dorchester Heights,” now in South
-Boston, rose, and how completely they commanded the harbor; so that when
-Washington seized them the English army and navy had to go. He also
-showed them Cambridge and the college buildings, lying quite near them,
-westward, but on the other side of the Charles River. John looked with
-special interest, because he was to take his first examination there for
-Harvard College, before the month was over.
-
-To this plan, substantially, the party adhered. And travelers who
-have more or less time than they, may find it worth while to consult
-this plan, as they lay out their excursions. For in those seven days
-the visitors did, in fact, have a chance to see all the more important
-landmarks of the history of Boston.
-
-As Nathan took them home from the State House he led them down Beacon
-Street. This is a beautiful street, making the north side of Boston
-Common. Where the Common ends, Charles Street crosses Beacon Street
-nearly at right angles. Near this corner, on land now built upon, or
-perhaps crossed by some street, was the cottage of Blackstone, who
-lived in Boston for six or seven years before Governor Winthrop and the
-settlers of 1630 arrived.
-
-They made their first settlement at Charlestown on the other side of the
-river. The records of Charlestown say: “Mr. Blackstone, dwelling on the
-other side of Charles River, alone, at a place called by the Indians,
-Shawmut, where he had a cottage at, or not far from the place called
-Blackstone Point, came and acquainted the Governor of an excellent
-spring, inviting and soliciting him thither.”
-
-Blackstone’s house, or cottage, in which he lived, together with the
-nature of his improvements, was such as to authorize the belief that he
-had resided there some seven or eight years. How he became possessed
-of his lands here is not known; but it is certain he held a good title
-to them, which was acknowledged by the settlers under Winthrop, who,
-in course of time, bought his lands of him, and he removed out of the
-jurisdiction of Massachusetts to the valley of the Blackstone River.
-
-Of Blackstone’s personal history Nathan afterward read them this note, by
-Mr. Charles F. Adams:
-
- “He was in no respect an ordinary man. His presence in the
- peninsula of Shawmut, in 1630, was made additionally inexplicable
- from the fact that he was about the last person one would
- ever have expected to find there. He was not a fisherman, nor
- a trader, nor a refugee: he was a student, an observer, and
- a recluse. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he had
- received Episcopal ordination in England. In 1630 he was in his
- thirty-fifth year. All this is extremely suggestive, for it
- goes to make of him exactly the description of man who would
- naturally be found in company with the scholarly and unobtrusive
- Morell. Further, the probabilities would strongly point to him as
- Winthrop’s authority where Winthrop, in 1631, speaks of a species
- of weather record going back seven years since this bay was
- planted by Englishmen.”
-
-
-The Second Day.
-
-As the various travelers told their times that evening, a certain plan
-was laid out for the next day, in which the two ladies agreed to join.
-And it was finally agreed that they should lunch down town with the
-gentlemen, and should take the elevator at the “Equitable” Insurance
-Company, so that the two mothers might have something to substitute for
-the view the children had had from the State House.
-
-This plan may be recommended to lady travelers. The view is not as
-sweeping on the west as that from the State House. But, on other sides,
-it is equally satisfactory. And you can go up by steam—a great matter
-when you have passed forty years.
-
-But before lunch Nathan took them to the head of State Street, to the
-“Old State House.”
-
-“This,” said he, “is what the Philadelphia girl called the State Street
-Meeting House.”
-
-He had brought them in in a Norfolk horse car, so that they saw the
-building from the southern side. The lion on one side and the unicorn
-on the other dance on their hind legs at the top, with the roof to
-part them. Nathan was careful to show John and the rest that as they
-looked up on the beasts they stood themselves on the very ground of the
-“Boston Massacre” of March 5, 1770. The English troops were in a little
-semi-circle on the north side of the street. Attuchs, the mulatto, and
-the rest of the mob who stoned the troops and snowballed them were in
-the street, or on the southern side. There were then no sidewalks.
-
-The lower part of the “Old State House” is now used for public offices.
-But the upper chambers are restored to much the condition in which they
-were when Sam Adams defied the Governor there, and when Otis made his
-plea in the “Writs of Assistants cases.”
-
-“Then and there,” said John Adams, afterward, “American independence was
-born.”
-
-The “Bostonian Society” occupies these halls, simply that they may be
-open to all visitors, and here the party found many curious mementoes of
-Revolutionary and of older days, and were able to prepare themselves for
-their later excursions.
-
-Before the “Town House” was built this spot was occupied as the market
-place, being the earliest in the town. The first town house was erected
-between 1657 and 1659, of wood. It was destroyed in the great fire of
-1711. In the following year, 1712, a brick edifice was erected on the
-same spot. This the fire of 1747 consumed, and with it many valuable
-records were lost. The present Old State House was erected the following
-year, 1748, but it has undergone many interior changes, the exterior,
-however, presenting nearly the same appearance as when first erected.
-From 1750 to 1830 Faneuil Hall was used as a town house, and the first
-city government was organized there. In 1830 the city government removed
-to the Old State House, which was on September 17 dedicated as City Hall.
-But the City Hall has since been removed to School Street.
-
-Leaving the old State House they passed down State Street, where they
-had a chance to see the merchants who were “on ’change,” and to look in
-at the Merchants’ Exchange, and by a short street leading north, came
-into the square between Faneuil Hall, “the cradle of liberty,” as Boston
-people like to call it, and Faneuil Hall Market.
-
-Peter Faneuil, a rich merchant of Huguenot origin, told the town that he
-would build a market house on this spot if they would accept the gift for
-that purpose, and maintain it forever. “The town,” by which is meant the
-town meeting, looked a gift-horse in the mouth, and made some difficulty.
-At the end of a stormy meeting, his proposal was accepted by a majority
-of only seven votes in a vote of seven hundred and twenty-seven.
-
-Mr. Faneuil set to work at once on the building, which, by the original
-plan, was to be but one-story high. But he added another story for the
-town hall, which has made his name famous to all New Englanders. The
-original hall accommodated only 1,000 persons, being but half the size of
-that now standing. He died, himself, just as the building was completed,
-on the third of March, 1743; and it was first opened to public use on the
-fourteenth of March of that year. The whole interior was destroyed by
-fire in January, 1763, and rebuilt by the town and state. In 1806 it was
-enlarged to its present size.
-
-Nathan made them look at the grass-hopper which is the weather-cock
-which is selected in memory of the Athenian cicada. The Athenian people
-selected this as their emblem because they believed they sprang from the
-ground, and they supposed the grass-hoppers did.
-
-The people of Boston long since provided themselves with a much larger
-market house than Peter Faneuil’s. When they did so, they gave up the
-market in Faneuil Hall, and used the basement for other purposes. But
-their lawyers, after a while, recollected that stirring town meeting, and
-the promise of the town to maintain the market “forever.” Clearly enough,
-if the town meant to keep the hall, it must maintain the market. So the
-butchers and fruit men were brought back again, and Mrs. Dudley bade John
-buy some bananas for the party, in the market, that they might keep Peter
-Faneuil well in their memory.
-
-The Historic Hall is over the market, and always open to visitors, and
-here the party spent half an hour in looking at the pictures. Nathan
-told them of the last and only time when he heard Wendell Phillips there.
-It is not the largest hall in Boston, but it is still the favorite hall
-for any public meeting about some public interest, where people are not
-expecting to sit down.
-
-The gentlemen joined the party by appointment here, and they all went to
-lunch together. They then went up the Equitable elevator and mounted the
-tower, so that the ladies might see the sea view. And they finished the
-day’s excursion by going into the Old South Meeting House.
-
-This old meeting house was twice as big as Faneuil Hall of the
-Revolution, so that the crowded town meetings of those days often
-adjourned to the Old South. As the patriots called Faneuil Hall “the
-cradle of liberty,” Gov. Gage called the Old South the “nursery of
-rebellion.” The religious society which formerly occupied it built a
-few years ago a new church in the western part of Boston, and sold this
-meeting house to an association which wished to preserve it as a memorial
-of the history of Boston. The sellers did not wish to have any opposition
-church established in the old building; they therefore put a provision in
-the deed that for twenty years it should not be used for public religious
-purposes. It is probably the only spot in the United States, where, by
-the expressed wish of a church, public worship is forbidden.
-
-The travelers found a great deal to interest them in the meeting house,
-which those travelers will find who use this guide. The boys obtained
-leave to climb up the spire, from which, it is said, that the English
-governor, Gage, saw the embarkation of his troops for Bunker Hill, and
-what he could see of the battle.
-
-
-Third Day.
-
-The next day proved favorable for Nathan’s plans, which involved a visit
-to Bunker Hill monument and the navy yard.
-
-“I had meant,” he said to the girls, “to begin by taking you out to
-Concord, that you might see the bridge over the Concord River, and the
-scene of what we call ‘Concord Fight.’ But, if the day prove hot, it
-would have been tiresome, as we have the monument to climb. For that
-expedition one needs half a day, or better, a day. You know you would
-want to see Mr. Emerson’s house and Mr. Hawthorne’s. We will try that
-next fall.”
-
-They started later, therefore, than the Concord plan would have required.
-A transfer at Scollary Square, the very heart of active Boston, put them
-in a Charlestown car. In Scollary Square stands very properly a statue of
-Winthrop, the founder of Boston, and its first governor; as at the foot
-of the street stands Sam Adams.
-
-Nathan explained to the girls, when they came to river and bridge, that
-at the time of Bunker Hill battle there was no bridge. The English army,
-when it attacked the hill, had to cross in boats, and he showed them on
-the east, the line the boats took, landing where the navy yard now is.
-The forces landed there and waited through a hot day before the attack.
-The battle was fought on a hot June afternoon.
-
-After they came to Charlestown, a short walk brought them to the top
-of the hill, where a large green park takes in all the ground of the
-historic Redoubt. A bronze statue of Prescott seems to welcome the
-visitor.
-
-By an ascent even longer than that they made at the State House, they
-climbed the monument, and earned their sight of the panorama from its top.
-
-Mr. Dudley had given them a note to introduce them to the commander at
-the navy yard on their return. It proved that he was absent. But they
-needed no pass nor introduction. They were very courteously received;
-and, as there happened to be a ship fitting out with stores for the
-Mediterranean Station, Caroline had her chance to see “a three-masted
-ship” nearly ready for sea.
-
-Another ship was in the “dry-dock” for some necessary repairs, and they
-walked about her with that strange feeling of being beneath the level of
-the sea, which they had seen above before they descended the stairway.
-
-
-Fourth Day.
-
-Saturday proved to be a warm day, and Mr. Dudley proposed at breakfast
-that they should carry out Nathan’s plan, and that all hands should go
-to Nahant, the rocky peninsula which bounds the outer harbor on the
-northeastern side. His wife put up a substantial luncheon, which was
-packed in two baskets and carried by the boys.
-
-So equipped, they took the horse car and “transferred” at Sumner Street
-for the steamboat, which would take them to the Lynn Railroad. They could
-have taken the Easton Railroad, but the Lynn Road (so called) runs along
-the water’s edge, and the water sail is longer.
-
-So the young people had their first sniff of sea air from the boat which
-crosses from Old Boston to East Boston, where the railroad begins.
-Caroline had chances enough to see “ships with three masts,” brigs,
-schooners, sloops, barks, brigantines and barkantines, all which the
-learned Nathan explained to her. After a voyage of a mile or two they
-took the narrow guage railway and flew along Chelsea Beach, which gave
-a fine ocean view, and more of the glory of the infinite sea, than the
-steamboat had done. At Lynn they found public carriages waiting for the
-drive to Nahant.
-
-Mr. Willis, in his extravagant way, said that Nahant looked like the open
-hand of a giant who had been struck down in the sea, and that Nahant
-Beach was his arm. A very thin arm he had, a mere thread-paper arm, for
-a big hand. For the beach is only a strip of sand and gravel about two
-miles long, washed by the ocean on both sides. At the southern end, rise,
-abrupt and bold, the rocks of Nahant. They are mostly of trap-rock, which
-has been forced by some volcanic effect of the fiery times, up through
-the hissing sea. They have a reddish color, with stripes of black stone,
-even harder than the rest. And the perpetual washing of the sea has worn
-out clefts and chasms of every strange outline and form.
-
-One of these is the Swallow’s Cave, a long passage through wet rocks,
-covered above by rocks, through which at low tides adventurers can
-clamber. One is the Spouting Horn, where at half-tide, a sea heavily
-thrown in by a stiff eastern gale, bounds back in spray and water, as if
-indeed a sea-god had thrown it up in a great fountain. But the glory of
-Nahant is not in any one of these sights. It is the glory of the infinite
-ocean. Southeast and west you have the sea, and it is no wonder that in
-this perfect sea-climate, so many people are glad to make a summer home.
-
-Mr. Dudley met, by appointment, a Boston friend, after they had crossed
-the beach, who husbanded their time for them in visiting different
-points, and before the afternoon closed, asked them to come back to
-town in his yacht. Their plan had been to take the steamboat, which was
-waiting ready to take all such children of the public as they.
-
-But in the “Sylph” they were able to vary their voyage. Mr. Cradock
-showed them from her deck that nearly south of them, a string of little
-islands shielded the harbor, in a measure, from eastern gales. Of these
-the three most important are the three Brewsters, on one of which is the
-outer light-house. The yacht first ran by these. Then she turned inland
-and he pointed out to them the village of Hull, which on the southeast
-protects the bay, as Nahant on the northeast. He bade the helmsman bring
-the vessel up at Fort Warren, and the young people had then a chance to
-see the arrangements which a great fort makes to repel an enemy. And
-then, as the sun went down they ran swiftly up to Boston, saw the State
-House and Bunker Hill monument against the evening glow, and landed after
-a day of thoroughly satisfactory variety.
-
-
-The Fifth Day.
-
-Fortunately for the sight seers, as Mrs. Crehere thought, the next day
-was Sunday, so much chance was there for a day of rest. But she found
-at breakfast that there were one or two ecclesiastical landmarks which
-were to be counted in with the others, and that, with perfect gravity and
-reverence, the young people had arranged to unite their sight seeing with
-the religious services of the day. To this she made no exception, and in
-the end she and her husband joined the ten young people, and all together
-made an addition, not unacceptable as it proved, to summer congregations
-not crowded.
-
-The first point was King’s Chapel.
-
- “The chapel, last of sublunary things
- That shocks our senses with the name of King’s.”
-
-Such is Dr. Holmes’s description. It is in the very heart of active
-Boston. After the Revolution it was long called “The Stone Chapel,” for
-in those early days stone churches were rare, and nothing bore the name
-of King. Royal biscuit was then called “President’s biscuit.” But after
-people were sure that no King George would return, the Chapel people, who
-were no longer in the habit of praying for the royal family, returned
-to “King’s Chapel” as the historical name of their church, and found
-again the neglected gilded crown and mitre, which had once adorned the
-organ, and restored them to the places from which they had been removed.
-After the service, which interested all the young people, they remained
-in the church to look at the curious old monuments. They were specially
-interested in that of Mrs. Shirley, the lovely wife of Governor Shirley.
-She died just as he was fortifying Boston against the largest fleet which
-France ever sent across the seas. This is the fleet of Longfellow’s
-ballad:
-
- “For the admiral D’Anville
- Had sworn by cross and crown,
- To ravage with fire and steel
- Our luckless Boston Town.”
-
-While Shirley had the whole army of Massachusetts on Boston Common, and
-was bringing every resource to bear to resist the enemy, his heart was
-wrung day by day by the sickness and the death of the young bride, whose
-bust the children saw, and whose epitaph they translated.
-
-Nathan told them that when the King’s Chapel was built there had been no
-quarries of stone opened. The stones for this building were split and
-hewed from boulders. By the time it was finished it was currently said
-and believed that there was not stone enough in the province for another
-church as big! He took them to the back of the church and showed them,
-on a little green, Franklin statue, placed in what was the yard of the
-school-house where he studied as a boy.
-
-King’s Chapel was not popular with the puritan inhabitants of Boston.
-And, because the lower windows are square and look like port holes,
-the street boys of a century and a quarter ago nicknamed it “Christ’s
-Frigate,” somewhat irreverently. On the other side the street was once
-the school-house, where John Hancock and Sam Adams studied. And Nathan
-showed them where the “coast” was in winter, which was obstructed by the
-English officer whom the school boys called to account for his violation
-of their inalienable rights.
-
-They went to church with their friend Mrs. Cradock, whom they had met
-at Nahant the day before, and from her house, in the afternoon, they
-went to Christ Church, which is the oldest church building in Boston now
-standing on the ground where it was built. It was the second Episcopalian
-church erected in Boston, and was built in 1723, several years before
-the present Old South. It is a brick edifice, and has long been known as
-the “North End Church.” In its day it was considered one of the chief
-architectural ornaments of the North End. The old steeple was blown down
-in the great gale of 1804, falling upon an old wooden building at the
-corner of Tileston Street, through which it crashed to the consternation
-of the tenants, who however escaped injury. The steeple was replaced
-from a design by Charles Bulfinch, which carefully preserved the
-proportion of the original. Its chime was the first in New England, and
-began to play its charming tunes in 1744.
-
-The Bible, prayer books and silver now in use were given in 1733 by King
-George I. The figures of cherubim in front of the organ were taken from a
-French vessel by the privateer “Queen of Hungary,” and presented to the
-church in 1746. There is an interesting bust of Washington in the church.
-
-From the steeple of this church the historic sexton hung out the lanterns
-which warned the patriots on the other side of the river that an
-expedition was starting from the English camp, against Concord.
-
-“One if by land—two if by sea,” says Mr. Longfellow, whose history of
-those days is more likely to be remembered well than any other. That
-steeple, as has been said, was blown down in 1804.
-
-As they walked to the Chelsea car, which was to take them home, Nathan
-led them through the Copp’s Hill burying ground. Copp’s Hill has never
-been cut away. Fort Hill is wholly leveled, and Beacon Hill partly so.
-These were the three hills which were the landmarks of old Boston.
-
-
-The Sixth Day.
-
-On Monday morning the Roxbury boys took their cousins to see their
-tennis ground, and it may be believed that all parties there joined in
-one or two games. Mrs. Dudley and Mrs. Crehere went into Boston for some
-necessary shopping, and came back by the Art Museum, where was a good
-“Loan Exhibition.” The loan exhibition in summer is generally filled
-with masterpieces from the private galleries of people who are in their
-country homes. “I would not pay so much for pictures,” said one of these
-noble women, “if the people were not to enjoy them nine-tenths of the
-time.”
-
-But Mrs. Dudley had so arranged her dinner that they might all take a
-street car for “Dorchester Heights” and see the view of the harbor from
-that point, and that the boys, who had had no chance to swim at Nahant,
-might take a sea bath on their return.
-
-Accordingly, about five o’clock they started for South Boston. “Take any
-car for City Point,” was Nathan’s final direction as the party separated.
-“Ask for the Reservoir, and we will meet there.”
-
-“Dorchester Heights” is simply the name, which only old fashioned people
-would understand, of the hills in what is now “South Boston,” now
-surmounted by the “Blind Institution” and a public park, in which is one
-of the city reservoirs. Visitors to Boston who are at all interested in
-education will do well to drop a line on arrival, for Mr. Anagnos, the
-chief of the Blind Institution, to ask what is the proper day for a visit
-there. Our friends were obliged to defer this interesting visit till the
-autumn, and they all gathered on the other hill and enjoyed the spectacle
-of the harbor, white with the sails of hundreds of yachts, and all alive
-with the movements of the lolling steamers as they went out, just before
-sunset, on their voyages to every port of the seaboard, not to say of the
-world.
-
-These high hills completely command the harbor, in a military sense. Why
-the English generals did not take possession before Washington did no one
-ever knew. That was the sort of imbecility George III. got by appointing
-men to office because they were his relations. When, at last, the winter
-of 1775-1776 broke up, and no ice had formed strong enough for an attack
-on Boston over the ice, Washington seized these hills. By the road now
-called Dorchester Avenue, which Nathan Dudley showed our friends, he sent
-from the camp in Roxbury (“just behind where we live,” said Nathan) the
-men and munitions. It was all done by night. On the morning of the fifth
-of March the Americans had built a fortification which surprised the
-English officers in Boston as that on Bunker Hill had surprised them nine
-months before. “It was like Aladdin’s lamp,” wrote one of them.
-
-General Howe’s first plan was to assault the works, as Gage had assaulted
-those at Bunker Hill. Howe sent an attacking force to the fort held by
-him on the island. But a storm made this attack impossible. Ward, the
-commander of the American right wing, strengthened his ranks. Thomas, the
-general in command on the heights, asked nothing better than an attack.
-But Howe, at the last, saw that the venture was madness. He entered into
-negotiations with Washington, and, a fortnight after, withdrew fleet and
-army. For several months there was not an English soldier on American
-soil.
-
-The next day, when they visited the Historical Society, Nathan showed
-his cousins the original gold medal which Congress gave to Washington in
-honor of this victory. It was designed by a French artist, and struck
-in Paris. It represents Washington seated on his horse, on Dorchester
-Heights, as the squadron retires. It bears the proud motto:
-
- “_Hostibus primo Fugatis_,”
-
-which may be translated: “The first Flight of the Enemy.”
-
-“Pray how did this medal come here?” said Caroline.
-
-“By the fortune of war,” said her cousin. On this Monday evening, before
-they left the park, which now takes the place of the fortification, they
-looked at the tablet of stone which commemorates the history. They found
-the name of the mayor who put it up, but no allusion to General Ward who
-planned the work, or General Thomas, who carried it out. Such, alas, is
-fame!
-
-When they left the hill the sun was going down. The elders and the girls
-took a car across Dover Street, by which they could go directly home. But
-Nathan led the boys to the public bath house, on one of the beaches; and
-there his western friends had their first experience of the exquisite
-luxury of a swim in the salt sea.
-
-
-The Last Day.
-
-On Wednesday the whole western party was to go to Narragansett Pier,
-and on Thursday the Roxbury party was to start, bag and baggage, for
-Quonochontaug, which is not far from that resort. But it was determined
-that on Tuesday the young people should go to Cambridge, where, at
-Harvard College, John was to make his home for most of the next four
-years.
-
-They took a steam train into Boston, and at the station of the Providence
-road found a street car waiting to take them from Park Square to Harvard
-Square. The ride takes a short half hour. At Harvard Square you are on
-one side of the College Yard, as the region is called, which in colleges
-of more pretense would be named the _Campus_. Buildings of all ages and
-all aspects fill it, from the venerable brick of old Massachusetts, built
-near two centuries ago, in fond memory of Pembroke College in Cambridge,
-down to the last “sweet” devices of modern architecture.
-
-They had an embarrassment of riches before them, that they might rightly
-use their time and gratify every taste of all the party. First of all,
-Nathan led them to the Library, and while under his brother’s guidance,
-the young people looked at some of the curiosities there, he took John to
-the Bursar’s office, to attend to some business about his college room.
-Then they all called on a young gentleman, to whom the Dudleys introduced
-the Creheres, so that they saw the comfort of the college rooms of the
-students. Next they went to Memorial Hall, where are the portraits of the
-old worthies of the state and college, the trophies of many base ball
-victories, and, most interesting of all, if you go at a meal time, some
-five hundred of the young men of to-day, eating with a good appetite.
-From this place they went to the Agassiz Museum, which is so skilfully
-arranged that they will all date back to that hour’s visit a clearer
-knowledge of the great classifications of natural science.
-
-The young people declared that they were not tired even then. Their
-student friend had asked them to rest in his room after these bits of
-sight seeing, and they did so, and then, after a little lunch, went up to
-the Botanic Garden, stopped at the Observatory, and crossed to see the
-house which was lately the home of Longfellow, and in the Revolution,
-that of Washington.
-
-Travelers who have the same lions to “do” in one day may find their order
-a convenient one to follow. And, though these are not landmarks of Boston
-properly, it has seemed wise not to conclude their story without telling
-of their Cambridge expedition.
-
-“And now,” said Nathan, as they took at the door of the Longfellow house
-a car for Boston, “now we have made the beginning, when you come in the
-fall we can show you Boston.”
-
-
-
-
-VANISHING TYPES.
-
-By REV. EDWARD P. SPRAGUE.
-
-
-Abundant evidence is afforded in nature that, beside the familiar forms
-of life of the present, there have been earlier forms, such as are now
-no longer seen. Each great epoch of the earth’s history, as, to a less
-degree, each great continent on the earth’s surface, has had certain
-prevalent and characteristic types; of which some still endure; some have
-wholly disappeared, and some are just now passing out of sight. And among
-all these extinct, persistent, vanishing and recent types, there are
-perhaps none more full of interest, or more worthy of our careful study
-than the ones that are just now passing away.
-
-Something similar to this is to be recognized also in the varying phases
-of human life. There are styles of men, habits of life, peculiarities
-of character, customs, occupations, and conditions which belong almost
-wholly to the present; others which are common to the present and the
-past; and still others which are as strictly part of the long ago, as
-are the megatherium and the plesiosaurus. There are no corresponding
-forms now, and probably never again will be. There can never more be
-the old feudal baron, the chivalrous knight errant, or the trouveres
-and troubadours of mediæval Europe, any more than there can be again
-the ancient worshipers of Jupiter or devotees of Bacchus. Old forms
-of government, old ideas of the divine right of kings, old faith in
-auguries, the old search for the philosopher’s stone and for the elixir
-of life have passed away, never to return.
-
-More recent, however, than these, and more closely related to the
-present, are certain types of life with which our fathers were daily
-conversant, but which promise to seem to our children very strange and
-remote. Not merely does the regular succession of the generations bring
-us at length to the last Revolutionary soldier, and to the last survivor
-of the seemingly exhaustless supply of Washington’s body servants; but
-at the same time the changes which transpire in local and social life
-do serve to make rare, and then wholly to remove, the types of men that
-were only lately distinctively common and prominent. We do well therefore
-to stop in the midst of our hurrying, driving, self-glorifying age, and
-study some of these _Vanishing Types_ of life, character, occupation,
-with varied accompaniments and experiences, which to-day have become or
-are fast becoming things of the past.
-
-A recent writer in one of our great metropolitan dailies comments in a
-pleasant strain on the survival in only humorous papers and poor plays
-of the typical Englishman and typical Yankee, as so long and commonly
-represented. What has become of the John Bull and the Brother Jonathan of
-a few years ago? Were they not true characters at all? If not, who will
-explain the hold they took on the popular fancy, a hold so strong that
-they are not quite abandoned to-day? They must have been fairly faithful
-representatives of certain actual types. Are Englishmen and Americans
-growing different, then, from what they were, or growing like each other,
-that now these two illustrious characterizations have largely disappeared?
-
-As the writer remarks: _Punch_ still has John Bull as a national type;
-but shows a great reserve in the use of him, and continually resorts to
-Britannia as a substitute. Our old friend John, the bluff, stout, honest,
-red-faced, irascible, rural person, has really been supplanted by a more
-modern, thinner, nervous, intellectual, astute type. He is, or was a very
-rude person, and always seemed to take great delight in asserting himself
-in such a way as to produce as much general annoyance and discomfort as
-possible. But he is gone, or is going, and the time is coming when we
-shall regard him as only a survival, a tradition of the past.
-
-And so for English use the Yankee type of Uncle Sam may still serve to
-represent America, although he belongs to the past as much as slavery
-does, or the stage coach. He would be a bold man who would attempt to
-say what our national type is now; but it is safe to say that it is not
-a long, thin, cute Yankee, dressed in a swallow-tailed coat with brass
-buttons, whittling a stick, and interlarding his conversation with “I
-swan,” and “I calc’late.” In fact, if Mr. Lowell were to write “Biglow
-Papers” now, Uncle Sam would hardly serve his purpose as he did during
-the war.
-
-Not only are differences between national types rapidly vanishing into
-the past, so that Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen and Americans no longer
-seem strikingly unlike; but along with these international, the more
-domestic and home types are disappearing also. The distinctive kinds
-of men, and the distinctions which attached themselves inseparably to
-various classes and occupations are passing away.
-
-Take the men to-day of any one town, village or farming district, and I
-fully believe you will find fewer odd and strange characters among them
-than was the case among their predecessors or fathers of a generation ago.
-
-Just this was the complaint of an old farmer who used to delight to
-drop into my study in northern New York, and have, as he called it, “a
-talk with the parson.” He was himself a relic of a past generation, a
-man of marked face and peculiar manner. He had been a school teacher in
-his earlier days, and quite a man of letters among his associates of
-that time, and was very fond of describing in a quaint way that was not
-without discrimination, the life of his youth. While fully admitting the
-greater advantages and easier times of the present, he would always add:
-“But everybody is getting to be just like everybody else now-a-days. Why,
-when I came into this valley every man on all these farms had something
-peculiar about him, some way of standing, or talking, or dressing,
-by which I could have described him so that you would have known him
-the first time you met him. I don’t know,” he would add, “but you may
-think it an improvement, but the men are all alike now, and I miss the
-differences.” And looking at the old man, and feeling that he served as
-a connecting link, a survival of the past into the present, I was ready
-to believe that what he said was true; the older men had more marked
-peculiarities than those of to-day.
-
-Let us look now more particularly at some of the types which were
-distinctive features of the life of a half century ago, but whose
-successors have lost much of that prominence to-day by means of that
-gradual tendency toward uniformity which has since then been working.
-
-First among these and foremost, as distinctive and distinguished, stands
-the “Country Parson” of fifty or more years ago.
-
-No such men are seen to-day; for although the ministry continue, and
-are always to continue, constituting a distinct class in the community,
-they are now in no such ways singular and distinctive as then. Dressed
-always in his clerical black, and in earlier times in the clerical bands
-also, he was known on the street and saluted with reverence as a man by
-himself, set apart from the rest of the community, higher and holier than
-they. His position was unequaled, unapproached even by any other person.
-He was looked up to by all, honored by all, and feared, if not by all,
-by all the children at least. His opinions on matters local and civil,
-personal, social, philosophical and religious had almost the weight of
-absolute and supreme wisdom, which no one might gainsay.
-
-See him enter the plain white “meeting-house” and ascend the lofty
-pulpit, and you recognize the height of his exaltation. In many places
-all the congregation were wont to rise when he came in, and remain
-standing till he had taken his seat; and still more commonly, not one of
-the congregation ever moved from place till he and his family had passed
-out of the church.
-
-Listen to one of his long sermons, as the hour-glass at his side is
-turned possibly for the second time, and in the way the congregation give
-attention, you see evidence of his authority and of his hold upon them.
-He discourses on high themes, abstruse doctrines, and obscure points of
-faith. He discusses his text and subject in a logical and philosophical
-way; defines the doctrine, first by what it is not, and then by what
-it is; divides and sub-divides, and divides again, illustrates with
-analysis and analogies, intersperses with other passages from the Bible,
-and perhaps with occasional Greek or Latin quotations, draws to the
-“conclusion,” adds the “improvement,” goes on as though taking a fresh
-start to his “finally,” and then ends with his “and now last of all.” For
-a full hour, or perhaps two, the congregation have listened, counting it
-a precious privilege so to do; and that which he has advanced will be
-remembered, repeated, talked over, and discussed among them all the week.
-
-Those early clergymen are not by any means to be spoken of slightingly.
-Some of us may know more of science, and be better informed in matters
-of natural history and of the contemporaneous condition of other lands;
-but few of us know as much Hebrew and Greek, few of us are as deeply
-versed in metaphysics, few of us are more vigorous in argument, and none
-of us certainly have such influence in our communities, or could hold
-our congregations for so long services. Those country parsons were men
-of mark; deep theologians; strong in the doctrines; prone, men may think
-to-day, to a narrow and iron-clad theology; but they were veritable
-giants also, and in fast, thanksgiving, and election day sermons did not
-hesitate to handle national themes, point out very specifically and with
-square condemnation, popular sins, and to discuss, and if necessary, pass
-open judgment on the courses and actions of public men.
-
-It is often remarked that the fathers builded first the church and then,
-next and near by, the school-house; and so next to the minister a marked
-man in those older days was the “Village Schoolmaster.”
-
-Occasionally the schoolmaster and the minister were one. Sometimes he was
-a minister who, from the too prevalent affliction of throat disease—a
-judgment, possibly, on account of the long sermons—had exchanged
-preaching for teaching. Oftenest he was a man by himself; and no teacher
-in any public school of to-day quite perpetuates his likeness.
-
-I can not do better in attempting to describe him than to quote from
-Prof. McMaster, in his admirable “History of the People of the United
-States:”
-
-“The master was expected to live with the parents of his pupils,
-regulating the length of his stay by the number of the boys in the family
-attending his school. Thus it happened that in the course of his teaching
-he became an inmate of all the houses of the district, and was not seldom
-forced to walk five miles, in the worst of weather over the worst of
-roads, to his school.
-
-“Yet, mendicant though he was, it would be a great mistake to suppose
-that he was not always a welcome guest. He slept in the best room, sat
-in the warmest nook by the fire, and had the best food set before him at
-the table. In the long winter evenings he helped the boys with their
-lessons, held yarn for the daughters, or escorted them to spinning
-matches and quiltings. In return for his miserable pittance and his
-board, the young student taught what would now be considered as the
-rudiments of an education. His daily labors were confined to teaching his
-scholars to read with a moderate degree of fluency, to write legibly, to
-spell with some regard for the rules of orthography, and to know as much
-of arithmetic as would enable them to calculate the interest on a debt,
-to keep the family accounts, and to make change in a shop.
-
-“Nor was this making change a simple matter. Fifty years ago the silver
-pieces which passed from hand to hand, under the name of small change,
-were largely made up of foreign coins. They had been in circulation long
-before the war for independence, had seen much service, and were none the
-better for the wear and tear they had sustained.
-
-“One of these pieces was known as the four-pence, but passed for six and
-a quarter cents if, as the result of long hoarding, the inscription was
-legible, and the stamp easy to make out; but when worn smooth—and the
-four-pence pieces generally were worn smooth and crossed—no one would
-take them for more than five cents. A larger coin was the nine-pence,
-which passed for twelve and a half cents. The pistareen was worth twenty
-cents. The picayune, a term rarely used north of Mason and Dixon’s
-line, went for six and a quarter cents. But the confusion was yet more
-increased by the language which merchants used to express the price of
-their goods.
-
-“The value of the gold pieces expressed in dollars was pretty much the
-same the country over. But the dollar, and the silver pieces regarded as
-fractions of a dollar, had no less than five different values. In New
-England and Virginia a merchant who spoke of a dollar was understood
-to mean six shillings, or one hundred and eight coppers; but the same
-merchant would, the moment he set foot in North Carolina or New York,
-be content with demanding ninety-six coppers, or eight shillings, as
-the equivalent of a dollar. Sixpence in Massachusetts meant eight and a
-third cents; a shilling meant sixteen and two-third cents; two-and-three
-pence was thirty-seven and a half cents; three shillings was fifty cents;
-four-and-six was seventy five cents; nine shillings was a dollar and a
-half.”
-
-About all these to us strange coins and values the schoolmaster was
-expected to know, and to be able also to instruct his scholars. He
-filled, therefore, a very important place in the life of the village,
-as well as in the experience of the boys under his instruction. Nowhere
-to-day can you find in village schoolmaster, district or town school
-teacher, superintendent of instruction, or learned professor, a figure
-that fills out and continues just the portrait of the typical pedagogue
-of a generation or more ago.
-
-Next after the village schoolmaster, and perhaps outranking him in
-prominence and in distinctive traits, and so deserving to have been
-mentioned sooner, was the “Country Doctor” of the past generation.
-
-Wherever men live, meet with accidents, suffer sickness, grow old and
-die, there in civilized lands the physician is a necessity, and is always
-to be found. Favored as we are in the present by all the progress in
-medical and sanitary science, and attended by the skilled physicians of
-to-day, we can hardly realize the life of the doctor and of the patient
-in the time many of the remedies which are now used to relieve pain were
-unknown, when there were no drug stores except in the larger towns, when
-only a few simple medicines could be easily obtained at the village
-store, along with the tea, sugar, calico, twine and garden seeds that
-made up the stock on the shelves. Then the physician compounded his own
-drugs, rolled out his own pills, made his own tinctures, weighed or
-measured out his own prescriptions, and carried with him on his round of
-calls, and perhaps in his saddle-bags, a most varied and astonishing
-assortment of medicines, a list of which would be remarkable to-day,
-alike for the presence of many that are abandoned, and for the absence of
-still more that are now in common and constant use.
-
-The physician of to-day excels him perhaps in general knowledge, in
-ability to deal with difficult diseases, and to perform delicate and
-successful surgery. He is the man of wider reading and more scientific
-views; he is possibly the better practitioner; but he is by no means the
-distinct character in his way that the country doctor of fifty years ago
-was.
-
-“His genial face, his engaging manners, his hearty laugh, the twinkle
-in his eye, the sincerity with which he asked after the health of the
-carpenter’s daughter, the interest he took in the family of the poorest
-laborer, the good nature with which he stopped to chat with the farm
-hands about the prospect of the corn crops and the turnip crops, made him
-the favorite for miles around. When he rode out he knew the names and
-personal history of the occupants of every house he passed. The farmers’
-lads pulled off their hats, and the girls dropped courtesies to him.
-Sunshine and rain, daylight and darkness were alike to him. He would ride
-ten miles on the darkest night, over the worst roads, in a pelting storm,
-to administer a dose of calomel to an old woman, or to attend a child in
-a fit. He was present at every birth; he attended every burial; he sat
-with the minister at every death-bed, and put his name with the lawyer to
-every will.”
-
-From the consideration of these vanishing or vanished types, a single
-illustration of which alone was usually to be found in any ordinary
-village, we turn now to a class that then, as their successors do now,
-made up the predominant element in every section—the “Country Farmer”—and
-I mean the country farmer of fifty years ago.
-
-The farmer of to-day is a man who lives in a comfortable, perhaps
-handsome house, whose parlor is carpeted and is graced with a piano,
-whose acres are mowed or reaped by the horse-power machine, and grain
-threshed by steam, who drives in a good carriage, and his son has a
-top buggy of his own; whose wife wears silk, and his daughters spend
-their winters in the city. He wears handsome clothes, takes one or
-two agricultural papers, keeps fancy stock, Jerseys and Hollands,
-and occasionally furnishes articles to the press on “Creameries” and
-“Ensilage.”
-
-Not such was the typical farmer of a generation or two ago—a man whose
-comforts were fewer and helps much less, and also a man of stronger
-traits of character, more decided convictions, harder working, and
-probably in proportion fully as successful in accumulating the profits of
-careful industry.
-
-One such I have in mind, an example of the best of his class. He was a
-large man, well built, tall and muscular. He had been educated at the
-common district school of the vicinity, had succeeded his father in
-ownership of the farm, had married early, and became in time the head
-of a large family. No chance visitor ever spent the night at the house
-without being taken out into the kitchen and shown the long line of
-boots, seven pairs arranged in a regularly diminishing row, and all ready
-for the morning.
-
-He was not what would be called an educated man to-day, but he had
-studied the national and the state constitutions; knew all about the
-politics of the country; looked after the interest of the district school
-near his home; attended regular in all seasons and weathers the village
-church, four miles away, and in which also he served as a trustee. He
-was a firm believer in the stanch Calvinism of his fathers; taught his
-children the Westminster Catechism on Sunday afternoons; always voted his
-party ticket straight, and believed with all his heart in his minister
-and in his favorite political leader.
-
-He toiled hard, rising early and going to bed early also. His food was
-simple, beef, pork, salt fish, dried apples, beans, and farm vegetables,
-with milk, butter and eggs in abundance, and bread, if not the whitest,
-yet always sweet, made from the wheat of his own growing, ground into
-flour at his neighbor’s grist mill. His work did not present any great
-variety. In spring there was the regular round of repairing the fences,
-cleaning out the barnyard, ploughing and sowing; followed in due time
-by the long and laborious hoeing the corn and potatoes, and then by the
-mowing the grass with scythes, reaping the grain with sickle or cradle,
-and afterward the threshing on the barn floor by the well-swung flail,
-whose sturdy blows filled all the valley with answering echoes.
-
-In winter there was the cutting, hauling, sawing, splitting and piling in
-the shed the abundant supply of wood that was to keep up the next year’s
-fires in the great fireplace, the huge brick oven, and the kitchen and
-“living room” stoves.
-
-Pleasures and recreations were few; the huskings in the fall, the
-squirrel and rabbit hunts, the evening chats with a neighbor along with
-the apples and mug of cider, the game of checkers by the kitchen fire
-on a stormy day, the occasional larger gathering for an early supper,
-the spelling match, and the singing school. Books were not numerous,
-the weight making up for the lack of variety. There were the Bible,
-Watts’s Psalms and Hymns, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,”
-Rollins’s “Ancient History,” Watts’s “Improvement of the Mind,” Baxter’s
-“Saint’s Rest,” Young’s “Night Thoughts,” and a stray volume of _The
-Spectator_.
-
-Trained by such books, by lessons of hard experience, by intercourse with
-neighbors, and by the sermons of his minister, such a farmer became,
-not the polished man, or versatile, or widely informed, but the man
-of strong character, rugged worth, decided convictions unflinchingly
-adhered to, true, honest, upright, kindly, careful, close perhaps, but
-generous also and helpful. To men of to-day he might seem narrow-minded
-and opinionated. We may smile at some of his ideas and apprehensions, and
-tell humorous stories illustrating his acknowledged inquisitiveness; but
-none the less at heart we must do him honor and admit that more men like
-him were a blessing in the community to-day. Rigid necessity compelled
-him to be carefully economical and exact in his dealings to a degree
-even that verged on parsimony, but he was just in it all, and demanded
-only what was rightfully his own. For the sake of securing that however
-he would, if necessary, be at the trouble once taken, as it is told, by
-a certain New England farmer. A United States surveying party had taken
-a single chestnut rail from his fence, and using it as a signal pole,
-had neglected either to return it to its place or to compensate him
-therefor. Discovering this trespass he started after them, walked ten
-miles in the hot sun, interviewed the chief, informed him that people’s
-property was to be respected, and that he was not a man to be imposed
-upon or frightened. Pleasantly and respectfully met, and asked to state
-the damage, he replied: “Well, seein’ as no cattle got in, there warn’t
-no damage; chestnut rails ain’t of much account anyway, and that one I
-calc’late wasn’t worth more’n ten cents;” and receiving that amount duly
-paid in legal coin of the country, he returned home amply satisfied.
-
-Sketches of vanishing types, such as these, might be almost indefinitely
-continued, but we must be content with simply indicating some of the fit
-subjects.
-
-There was in every village the “Country Shoemaker,” whose shop, close by
-the tavern and the blacksmith’s, was the favorite rainy day resort for
-both boys and men. There the latest news was rehearsed, party slates were
-made or broken, and matters of local interest, or of state and national
-politics received impassioned discussion.
-
-There were also the village “Tailor” and “Cooper,” persons as
-indispensable as the village pump. The gossiping dressmaker went her
-yearly round among the circle of households; and the old-fashioned
-peddler brought silks and city goods to the farmer’s wife, and was always
-welcomed by the farmer himself for the news he brought from other places,
-supplying surprisingly well the place of the modern newspaper.
-
-In almost every New England village situated at all near the sea coast a
-prominent character was the retired Whale Captain, a man of very positive
-character, accustomed to authority, and not always a comfortable neighbor
-or amiable citizen.
-
-Very different also from the farmer of the north was the Southern
-Planter, who was with us only a little while ago, but now as a
-distinctive type is fast vanishing from sight. The product and the pride
-of the southern land, prominent in society and politics, ruling as
-lord over his swarm of dependents, and holding his social, religious,
-and political opinions by a sort of entail with his estate, he forms a
-most interesting subject of study, and will perhaps figure largely as a
-favorite character in the American novel of the future.
-
-Any sketch of olden times ought to make special mention also of the
-“Old Stage Coach and Driver.” The days are not very long passed when a
-journey from here to New York or Philadelphia was a matter of graver
-consideration than is now given to a trip to London and return. Not
-without very serious preparation, fortifying himself for the hardships,
-considering the possible dangers, and perhaps taking a very formal
-farewell of his family, did a traveler set out on his journey; and then
-his progress was painfully slow, and his discomforts painfully many.
-
-The stages, great lumbering vehicles, made perhaps forty miles a day in
-the summer, and not much more than half as many in the winter. In summer
-one was choked by the dust, and in cold weather he froze. “If no accident
-occurred the traveler was put down at the inn about ten o’clock at night.
-Cramped and weary, he ate a frugal supper, and betook himself to bed with
-a notice from the landlord that he would be called at three the next
-morning. Then, whether it rained or snowed, he was forced to rise and
-make ready by the light of a tallow candle, for another ride of eighteen
-hours. After a series of mishaps and accidents, such as would suffice for
-an emigrant train crossing the plains, the stage rolled into New York at
-the end of the sixth day after leaving Boston.” This is not exceptional.
-It was considered something remarkable when the trip from New York to
-Philadelphia was first made in less than two full days.
-
-The mails of that time were carried in these same stages, except in
-the special cases where post-riders hastened through on horseback. So
-small, however, was the mail service at the beginning of this century,
-that Prof. McMaster affirms: “More mails are now each day sent out and
-received in New York, than in Washington’s time went from the same city
-to all parts of the country in the course of half a year. More letters
-are delivered in that city every twenty-four hours than, when Franklin
-had office, were distributed in the thirteen states in a whole year.”
-
-Along with the varied types of character and of occupation that have
-vanished, or are vanishing away, there are many articles of use and of
-ornament, that were once common, but are now hardly to be found.
-
-A pair of old brass andirons that belonged to one’s grandmother are
-to-day an almost priceless heirloom in any family. Old spinning wheels,
-in daily use fifty or more years ago, but for a generation consigned
-to the garret or remote store room, are now brought down and, freshly
-polished and decked with ribbons, made to adorn the parlor or the hall.
-A genuine old sickle is to-day hard to find; the hand fanning-mills
-are becoming rare, and a real flail is almost never heard. How many of
-the young ladies of to-day have ever seen one of the foot-stoves their
-grandmothers used to carry to church, or one of the warming-pans always
-put to use for the benefit of the friend that in winter time occupied
-“the best chamber?” How long is it since the side of every kitchen opened
-into the cavernous depth of the old “brick oven,” the heating of whose
-great dome was such a labor for the adults, but such a delight for the
-children? What too have become of the old tin “Dutch ovens” that were
-used before the open fireplace, and of the iron “bake kettles,” with
-cover for the burning coals, which were sometimes called by this same
-name? While for an old tinder box and flint one will search almost in
-vain unless in some cabinet of carefully guarded relics and antiques.
-
-A very wide question is sometimes raised as to how far the absence of
-such marked types as those of the past indicates an improved age in the
-present, and whether indeed the opposite of this may not be the case.
-It may be argued, and not quite without some show of reason, that the
-tendency to reduce all characters, stations, and kinds of life to a
-largely universal correspondence, and the merging of markedly distinctive
-traits into a general resemblance, is an indication of weakness rather
-than of strength, and that thereby society suffers a loss instead of
-securing a gain. One may well hesitate before refusing to admit that
-there may be some truth in such a view. However, without attempting to
-argue this question, or to draw any inferences from the whole, it is
-enough for the present purpose to show that many of the strong traits of
-the past, like strong features seen in old family portraits, are to be
-recognized only in reduced and softened characteristics to-day, so that
-we do well in the midst of the uniformity of the life of the present to
-pause and recall and honor these vanishing types of the past.
-
-
-
-
-THE COUNCIL OF NICE.
-
-An essay read before the University Circle, of San José, California.
-
-
-“There are four things,” says Hooker, “which concur to make complete the
-whole state of our Lord: His Deity, Manhood, the conjunction of both, and
-the distinction of one from the other.”
-
-“Four principal heresies have withstood the truth: Arians, against the
-deity of Christ (denying that he was co-eternal and co-essential with the
-Father);
-
-“Apollinarians, maiming his human nature (denying that he had a human
-soul);
-
-“Nestorians, rending Christ asunder, and dividing him into two persons
-(one divine and the other human);
-
-“The followers of Eutyches, by confounding in his person those natures
-which they should distinguish (asserting that his human nature was
-absorbed in the divine, and objecting to any distinction between the two).
-
-“Against these there have been four most famous councils:
-
-“1. Nice against the Arians, A. D. 325.
-
-“2. Constantinople against the Apollinarians, A. D. 381.
-
-“3. Ephesus against the Nestorians, A. D. 431.
-
-“4. Chalcedon against the Eutychians, A. D. 451.”
-
-Upon the theme of the first of these great Ecumenical Councils, the
-present paper will be a compilation.
-
-A momentous era has arrived in the history of the church and of the
-world. For the first time a Christian ruler has come to the throne of the
-Cæsars.
-
-With his chosen standard of the cross, Constantine has subdued the
-opposing factions—in the Roman empire, and over his vast realm there
-goes the edict that sets the Christians free from Pagan tyranny and
-persecution.
-
-The church has grown through three centuries of stern conflict with the
-error and darkness, the evils and wrongs of the world, to be a mighty
-power in the earth.
-
-Her course through suffering and toil, along a path tracked with the
-blood of the martyrs, has been a march of victory and conquest. A
-long list of eminent names is on her calendar. But now in the period
-of emancipation and prosperity she is beset by a complication of new
-dangers. Alliance with the state exposes her to a strain of corrupting
-influences. In the removal of compacting pressure from without,
-dissensions spring up within. Factions in the empire having been
-overcome, Constantine finds himself compelled to deal with factions in
-the church.
-
-In Alexandria, the most learned see of Christendom, a difference of view
-and a violent discussion had sprung up on the doctrine of the Trinity.
-The schism extended until the whole church became agitated over the
-question.
-
-Arius, one of the prime movers in it, reasoning upon the relation of the
-terms Father and Son, arrived at the conclusion that the Son, though
-the first born of beings, did not exist from eternity. “The controversy
-turned,” says Dean Stanley, in his “History of the Eastern Church,” “on
-the relations of the divine persons in the Trinity, not only before
-the incarnation, before creation, before time, but before the first
-beginnings of time. ‘There was,’ the Arian doctrine did not venture to
-say _a time_—but ‘there was _when_ he was not.’ It was the excess of
-dogmatism upon the most abstract words in the most abstract region of
-human thought.”
-
-But subtle and abstract as the question was, there was thought to be
-involved in it the root of a perilous departure from sound Christian
-faith. It touched the most central and fundamental doctrine of the
-Christian religion. Hence it engaged the profoundest thought and
-solicitude of the most powerful minds of that age; and the first general
-council was called, in order to bring the united wisdom of the church to
-bear upon the settlement of the question.
-
-The council met at Nice in the year 325.
-
-The place selected was not far from Nicomedia, then the capital of the
-East. The number of bishops from all parts of the empire is supposed
-to have been about 318, with a retinue of presbyters and attendants
-amounting to 2,000.
-
-“There were present the learned and the illiterate, courtiers and
-peasants, old and young, aged bishops on the verge of the grave, and
-beardless deacons just entering on their office. It was an assembly in
-which the difference between age and youth was of more than ordinary
-significance, coinciding with a marked transition in the history of the
-world. The new generation had been brought up in peace and quiet. They
-could just remember the joy diffused through the Christian communities by
-the edict of toleration published in their boyhood. They had themselves
-suffered nothing. Not so the older and by far the larger part of the
-assembly. They had lived through the last and worst of the persecutions,
-and they now came, like a regiment out of some frightful siege or battle,
-decimated and mutilated by the tortures or the hardships they had
-undergone. Most of the older members had lost a friend or a brother. Some
-bore on their backs and sides the wounds inflicted by the instruments
-of torture. Some had suffered the searing of the sinews of the leg, to
-prevent their escape from working in the mines, and several had lost the
-right eye.”
-
-It is said that their authority reposed on their character as an army of
-confessors and martyrs, no less than on that of an ecumenical council.
-
-“In this respect no other council could approach them, and in the
-proceedings of the assembly the voice of an old confessor was received
-almost as an oracle.” Even the emperor himself regarded them with homage.
-
-They came in groups over the Mediterranean, and along the Roman roads
-from the different parts of the vast empire, from Alexandria and far up
-the Nile in Egypt; from Syria, Euphrates, and the distant East; from
-Greece, and Cyprus and Rome; and from the west as far as Spain.
-
-Of the characters present I will copy sketches of a very few:
-
-“The aged Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, was the only one present known
-by the title of pope. Papa was the special address given to the head of
-the Alexandrian church long before the name of Patriarch or Archbishop.”
-
-“Close beside Pope Alexander is a small, insignificant young man of
-hardly twenty-five, of lively manners and speech, and of bright, serene
-countenance. Though he is but the deacon or archdeacon of Alexandria (at
-this time), he has closely riveted the attention of the assembly by the
-vehemence of his arguments. That small, insignificant young man is the
-great Athanasius,” the chief opposer of Arius, and defender of the Nicene
-creed.
-
-“Next to these was an important presbyter of Alexandria, the parish
-priest of its principal church. In appearance he is the very opposite
-of Athanasius. He is sixty years of age, tall, thin, and apparently
-unable to support his stature. He would be handsome, but for the deadly
-pallor of his face and a downcast look caused by weakness of eyesight. At
-times his veins throb and swell, and his limbs tremble, as if suffering
-from some violent internal complaint. There is a wild look about him
-that is at times startling. His dress and demeanor are those of a rigid
-ascetic. He wears a long coat with short sleeves, and a scarf of half
-size, the mark of an austere life, and his hair hangs in a tangled mass
-over his head. He is usually silent, but at times breaks out into fierce
-excitement. Yet with all this there is a sweetness in his voice, and a
-winning, earnest, fascinating manner. This strange, captivating giant
-is the heretic Arius.” He is described as a man of peculiar loveliness
-and purity of character from his childhood, of great personal power
-and influence, and as exerting, at whatever cost of self-sacrifice, an
-uncompromising resistance to the popular worldly policy which he believed
-would degrade and enslave the church in its subordination to the temporal
-power.
-
-Two notable characters, Potammon and Paphnutius, came from the interior
-of Egypt. They had lived a great part of their lives in the desert. Both
-had lost the right eye, and suffered otherwise in the persecution. Bishop
-Paul, from near the Euphrates, had had his hands paralyzed by the searing
-of the muscles with a red-hot iron.
-
-There was Jacob of Nisibis, who had lived for years as a hermit, on
-the mountains, in forests and caves, browsing on roots and leaves, and
-clothed in a rough goat-hair cloak. This dress and manner of life he
-retained after he became a bishop.
-
-From the distant east came John the Persian, Aristaces, son of Gregory
-the illuminator, and founder of the Armenian church, and Eusebius
-the Great, of Nicomedia, were of the number. Also Eusebius, bishop
-of Cesarea, the interpreter, chaplain and confessor of Constantine,
-and the father of ecclesiastical history. One of the most interesting
-characters, of whom many remarkable stories are told, was Spyridion, from
-the island of Cyprus, a shepherd both before and after his elevation to
-the episcopate. Hosius, Bishop of Cordova in Spain, was one of the most
-powerful and revered men in the council. He had been a confessor during
-the persecutions of Maximin. The council was opened by the emperor in
-person. It continued about twenty days.
-
-A creed was first produced which all could sign—one which would doubtless
-_now_ be pronounced full and orthodox by Christians generally. The part
-relating to the Son reads as follows: “I believe in one Lord Jesus
-Christ, the Word of God, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the
-only begotten Son, the first born of every creature, begotten of the
-Father before all worlds, by whom also all things were made,” etc.
-
-But full as this was it did not touch the test point in controversy. That
-point turned upon two Greek words, signifying respectively, “_of the same
-substance_,” and “_of like substance_.” The Arians admitted that Christ
-in his divine nature was of _like substance_ with the Father, but denied
-that he was of the _same substance_.
-
-Athanasius and his party feared that this would lead, not to the denial
-of the divinity of Christ, but to the belief in two Gods instead of one.
-“Polytheism, Paganism, Hellenism was the enemy from which the church had
-just been delivered by Constantine, and this was the error under whose
-dominion it was feared the teaching of Arius might bring them back.”
-These scarred and maimed veterans of Christianity had suffered because of
-their steadfast testimony to the truth that _there is one God_; and here
-in the first great council of the entire church the creed was formulated
-which has stood through the centuries as a protest and guard against such
-distinction of persons in the Trinity as shall make a plurality of Gods.
-The Nicene creed as adopted had the additional clause inserted regarding
-the Son—_of the substance of the Father_.
-
-Arius was condemned as a heretic and sentenced to banishment with
-some other leaders of his party, including Eusebius of Nicomedia. But
-afterward at the entreaty of the Princess Constantia, sister of the
-emperor, they were recalled. For 300 years after the date of its origin
-Arianism was a considerable power, both political and religious, not only
-in the East where it had its birth, but in western and Teutonic nations.
-“The Gothic population that descended on the Roman empire, so far as it
-was Christian at all, held to the faith of Arius. Our first Teutonic
-version of the Scriptures was by an Arian missionary, Ulfilas. The first
-conqueror of Rome, Alaric, the first conqueror of Africa, Genseric, were
-Arians. Theodoric the Great, King of Italy, was an Arian. The Gothic
-kingdoms of Spain and France were the stronghold of Arianism.”
-
-But the orthodox doctrine established at Nice won its way and secured its
-place in the heart of Christendom, which, as Dean Stanley says, “with
-but few exceptions receives the confession of the first council, as the
-earliest, the most solemn, and the most universal expression of Christian
-theology.”
-
-
-
-
-SONNET ON CHILLON.
-
-
- Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
- Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
- For there thy habitation is the heart—
- The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
- And when thy sons to fetters are consign’d—
- To fetters, and the damp vault’s dayless gloom,
- Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
- And Freedom’s fame finds wings on every wind.
- Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
- And thy sad floor an altar—for ’twas trod,
- Until his very steps have left a trace
- Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
- By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface!
- For they appeal from tyranny to God.—_Byron._
-
-
-
-
-AN OCEAN MONARCH.
-
-By G. BROWNE GOODE.
-
-
-The gray old city of Siena, hidden away, almost forgotten amidst
-the hills of Tuscany, contains one object peculiarly interesting to
-Americans. Within its walls Christopher Columbus was educated, and
-hither returning in his days of prosperity, he deposited, doubtless
-with impressive ceremonies, a memento of his first voyage over the sea.
-His votive offering hangs within and over the main portal of the old
-collegiate church, for many years closed, and now rarely visited by
-tourists. Grouped together in a picturesque and very dusty trophy may
-be seen the helmet, armor and weapons of the great navigator, and with
-them the weapon of a warrior who was killed resisting the approach of the
-strange ships—the sword of an immense sword-fish. A sword-fish was no
-novelty to seafaring men accustomed to the waters of the Mediterranean,
-still the beak of this defender of the coast was preserved by the crew of
-Columbus, and for nearly four centuries has formed a prominent feature in
-the best preserved monument of the discoverer of America.
-
-A similar though less impressive memorial hangs in the great hall of the
-Bremen Rathaus, side by side with the clumsy ship-models, the paintings
-of stranded whales, and the trophies of armor which illustrate the
-history of the old Hanse-town (Free City). It is a painting, of the size
-of life, of a sword-fish, taken by Bremen fishermen in the river Weser,
-with a legend inscribed beneath in letters of the most angular type:
-
- “ANNO . 1696 . DEN . 18 . JULI . IST . DIESER .
- FISCH . EIN . SCHWERTFISCH . GENANNT . VON . DIESER .
- STADT . FISCHERN . IN . DER . WESER . GEFANGEN,” ETC.
-
-This swift, mysterious animal seems at a period remote in antiquity to
-have literally thrust itself into the notice of mankind by means of its
-attacks upon the boats in the Mediterranean. Pliny knew it and wrote:
-“The sword-fish, called in Greek Xiphias, that is to say in Latin,
-Gladius, a sword, hath a beake or bill sharp-pointed, wherewith he will
-drive through the sides and planks of a ship, and bouge them so that they
-shall sink withall,” and the naturalists of the sixteenth century knew
-almost as much of its habits as those of the present day. Few fishes
-are so difficult to observe, and a student may, like the writer of this
-article, spend summer after summer in the attempt to study them with few
-results, other than the sight of a few dozen back-fins cutting through
-the water, a chance to measure and dissect a few specimens, and perhaps
-the experience of having the side of his boat pierced by one of their
-ugly swords. Yet, while little is known of their habits, few fishes are
-so generally known by their external characters.
-
-No one who has seen a sword-fish or a good picture of one, soon forgets
-the great muscular body, like that of a mackerel, a thousand times
-magnified, the crescent shaped tail, measuring three feet or more from
-tip to tip, the scimitar-like fins on the back and breasts, the round,
-hard, protruding eyes, as large as small foot balls, and the sword-like
-snout, two, three or four feet in length, protruding, caricature like,
-from between its eyes. This feature has been recognized in almost every
-European language, and while many other fishes have names by the score,
-this has in reality but one. The “Sword-fish” of our own tongue, the
-“Zwaard Fis” of Holland, the Italian “Sifio” and “Pesce-Pada,” the
-Spaniard’s “Espada,” and the French “Espadin,” “Dend” and “Epee de Mer,”
-are variations upon a single theme, repetitions of the “Gladius” of
-ancient Italy, and “Xiphias,” the name by which Aristotle, the father of
-Zoölogy called the same fish twenty-three hundred years ago. The French
-“Empereur,” and the “Imperador” of the Spanish West Indies carry out the
-same.
-
-A vessel cruising in search of sword-fish proceeds to the fishing grounds
-and sails hither and thither, wherever the abundance of small fish
-indicates that they ought to be found. Vessels which are met are hailed
-and asked whether sword-fish have been seen, and if tidings are thus
-obtained the ship’s course is at once laid for the locality where they
-were last noticed. A man is always stationed at the masthead, where, with
-the keen eye which practice has given him, he can readily descry the
-tell-tale dorsal fins at a distance of two or three miles.
-
-The sword-fish has two cousins, the spear-fish and the sail-fish, which
-bear to it a close family resemblance. Their bodies, however, are
-lighter, their outlines more graceful, and their swords more round and
-slender. The latter has an immense sail-like back fin, which it throws
-out of the water while swimming near the surface. An English naval
-officer, Sir Stamford Raffles, wrote home from Singapore in 1822: “The
-only amusing discovery we have recently made is that of a sailing fish,
-called by the natives _Ikan layer_, of about ten or twelve feet long,
-which hoists a mainsail, and often sails in the manner of a native boat,
-and with considerable swiftness. I have sent a set of the sails home, as
-they are beautifully cut, and form a model for a fast sailing boat. When
-a school of these are under sail together they are frequently mistaken
-for a fleet of native boats.”
-
-While there is but one species of sword-fish which occurs in the tropical
-and temperate parts of the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, about New
-Zealand, and in the eastern Pacific from Cape Horn to California
-there are several kinds of sail-fishes, and at least eight species of
-spear-fish. The naturalists of the United States Fish Commission have
-recently discovered that we have along our Atlantic coast a fine species
-of sail-fish, and one or two of spear-fishes, in addition to the true
-sword-fish, which has been known to exist here since the days of the
-Spanish explorers.
-
-It seems somewhat strange that no reference to the sword-fish is to be
-found in the narratives of the voyages of Columbus. The earliest allusion
-in American literature occurs in Josselyn’s “Account of two Voyages to
-New England,” printed in 1674, in the following passage:
-
-“The twentieth day we saw a great number of sea-bats or owles, called
-also flying-fish; they are about the bigness of a whiting, with four
-tinsel wings, with which they fly as long as they are wet, when pursued
-by other fishes. In the afternoon we saw a great fish called the
-Vehuella, or Sword-fish, having a long, strong and sharp fin like a
-sword-blade on the top of his head, with which he pierced our ship, and
-broke it off with striving to get loose; one of our sailors dived and
-brought it aboard.”
-
-Although sword-fish were sold in the New York fish market as early as
-1817, it was not until 1839 that the writers in ichthyology consented to
-consider it an American fish.
-
-The sword-fish comes into our waters in pursuit of food. At least this
-is the most probable explanation of their movements, since the duties of
-reproduction appear to be performed elsewhere. Like the horse-mackerel,
-the bonito, the blue-fish and the squeteagus, they pursue and prey upon
-the schools of menhaden and mackerel which are so abundant in the summer
-months. “When you see sword-fish, you may know that mackerel are about!”
-said one old fisherman to the writer. “Where you see the fin-back whale,
-following food,” said another, “there you find sword-fish.” They feed
-chiefly upon fish which swim crowded together in close schools, rising
-among them from beneath and striking to the right and left with their
-swords until they have killed a number, which they then proceed to
-devour. An old fisherman described to the writer a sword-fish in the act
-of feeding in a dense school of herring, rising perpendicularly out of
-the water until its sword, with a large portion of its body, was exposed,
-then falling flat over on its side, striking many fish as it fell, and
-leaving a bushel of dead ones floating at the surface.
-
-They are most abundant in the region of Cape Cod, or between Montaulk
-Point and the eastern part of George’s Banks, and during July and August,
-though some make their appearance in the latter part of May, and a few
-linger until snow falls. They are seen at the surface only on quiet
-summer days, in the morning before ten or eleven, and in the afternoon
-after four o’clock. Old fishermen say that they rise when the mackerel
-rise, and follow them down when they go.
-
-A sword-fish, when swimming near the surface, usually allows its dorsal
-fin and the upper lobe of its caudal fin to be visible, projecting out of
-the water several inches. It is this habit which enables the fishermen
-to detect the presence of the fish in the vicinity of their vessel. It
-moves slowly along, and the schooner, even with a light breeze, finds no
-difficulty in overtaking it. When excited its movements are very rapid
-and nervous. Sword-fish are sometimes seen to leap entirely out of the
-water. Early writers attributed this habit to the tormenting presence
-of parasites, but such a theory seems unnecessary. The pointed head,
-the fins of the back and abdomen snugly fitting into grooves, the long,
-lithe, muscular body, with contour sloping slowly from shoulders to tail,
-fit it for the most rapid and forcible movement through the water. Prof.
-Richard Owen, the celebrated English anatomist, testifying in court in
-regard to its power, said: “It strikes with the accumulated force of
-fifteen double-handed hammers. Its velocity is equal to that of a swivel
-shot, and is as dangerous in its effects as a heavy artillery projectile.”
-
-Many very curious instances are recorded of their encounters with other
-fishes, or of their attacks upon ships. It is hard to surmise what may be
-the inducement to attack objects so much larger than themselves. Every
-one knows the couplet from Oppian:
-
- “Nature her bounty to his mouth confined,
- Gave him a sword, but left unarmed his mind.”
-
-It surely seems as if the fish sometimes become possessed with temporary
-insanity. It is not strange that when harpooned they retaliate upon
-their assailants. There are, however, numerous instances of entirely
-unprovoked assaults upon vessels at sea, both by the sword-fish, and
-still more frequently by the spear-fish (known to American sailors by
-the name of “boohoo,” apparently a corruption of “Guebucu,” a word
-apparently of Indian origin, applied to the same fish in Brazil). The
-writer’s note-book contains notes upon scores of such instances. The
-ship “Priscilla,” from Pernambuco to London had eighteen inches of sword
-thrust through her planking; the English ship “Queensbury,” in 1871,
-was penetrated to a depth of thirty inches, necessitating the discharge
-of the cargo; the “Dreadnought,” in 1864, when off Colombo, had a
-round hole, an inch in diameter, bored through the copper sheeting and
-planking; the schooner “Wyoming,” of Gloucester, in 1875, was attacked in
-the night time by a sword-fish, which pushed his snout two feet into her
-planking, and then escaped by breaking it off.
-
-One of the traditions of the sea, time honored, believed by all mariners,
-handed down in varied phrases in a hundred books of ocean travel, relates
-to the terrific combats between the whale and the sword-fish, aided
-by the thrasher shark. The sword-fish was said to attack from below,
-goading his mighty adversary to the surface with his sharp beak, while
-the shark, at the top of the water, belabors him with strokes of his
-long lithe tail. Thus wrote a would-be naturalist from Bermuda in 1609:
-“The swoard-fish swimmes under the whale and pricketh him upward. The
-threasher keepeth above him, and with a mighty great thing like unto
-a flaile, hee so bangeth the whale that hee will roare as though it
-thundered, and doth give him such blows with his weapon that you would
-think it to be a crake of great shot.”
-
-Skeptical modern science is not satisfied with this interpretation of
-any combat at sea seen at a distance. It recognizes the improbability of
-aggressive partnership between two animals so different as the sword-fish
-and a shark, and explains the turbulent encounters occasionally seen at
-sea by ascribing them to the attacks of the killer whale, _Orca_, upon
-larger species of the same order.
-
-There can be little doubt that sword-fish sometimes attack whales just as
-they do ships. This habit is mentioned by Pliny, and furnishes a motive
-for all of Edmund Spenser’s “Visions of the World.”
-
- “Toward the sea turning my troubled eye
- I saw the fish (if fish I may it cleepe)
- That makes the sea before his face to flye
- And with his flaggie finnes doth seeme to sweepe
- The fomie waves out of the dreadfull deep.
- The huge Leviathan, dame Nature’s wonder,
- Making his sport, that manie makes to weep:
- A Sword-fish small, him from the rest did sunder,
- That, in his throat him pricking softly under,
- His wide abysse him forced forth to spewe,
- That all the sea did roare like heavens thunder,
- And all the waves were stained with filthie hewe.
- Hereby I learned have not to despise
- Whatever thing seems small in common eyes.”
-
-Baron Sahartur, in a letter from Quebec in 1783, described a conflict
-between a whale and a sword-fish which took place within gun shot of
-his frigate. He remarks: “We were perfectly charmed when we saw the
-sword-fish jump out of the water in order to dart its spear into the
-body of the whale when obliged to take breath. This entertaining show
-lasted at least two hours, sometimes to the starboard and sometimes to
-the larboard of the ship. The sailors, among whom superstition prevails
-as much as among the Egyptians, took this for a presage of some mighty
-storm.”
-
-There are two great sword-fisheries in the world, one on the coast of
-New England, and the other in the waters about Sicily. The former gives
-employment, in different years, to from twenty to forty vessels, and from
-sixty to one hundred and twenty men; the latter to over three hundred
-boats and seventeen hundred men. In Italy the annual product of the
-fishery amounts to about 320,000 pounds, while in New England, counting
-the fish taken incidentally by halibut and mackerel vessels, the yield is
-at least 1,000,000 pounds.
-
-The apparatus used in killing sword-fish is very simple. It consists of
-the “pulpit” or “cresembo,” a frame for the support of the harpooneer
-as he stands upon the end of the bow-sprit, the “lily iron” or “Indian
-dart,” which is attached by a long line to a keg serving as a buoy, and
-is thrust into the fish by means of a pole about sixteen feet in length.
-As the vessel cruises over the schooling grounds a lookout is stationed
-at the masthead, whose keen eye descries the tell-tale dorsal fins at
-a distance of two or three miles. By voice and gesture he directs the
-course of the vessel until the skipper can see the fish from his station
-in the pulpit. There is no difficulty in approaching the fish with a
-large vessel, although they will not suffer a small boat to come near
-them. When the fish is from six to ten feet in front of the vessel, it is
-struck. The harpoon is never thrown, the pole being too long. The dart
-penetrates the back of the fish, close to the side of the high dorsal
-fin, and immediately detaches itself from the pole, which is withdrawn.
-The dart having been fastened, the line is allowed to run out as far as
-the fish will carry it, and is then passed into a small boat, which is
-towing at the stern. Two men jump into this and pull in upon the line
-until the fish is brought in alongside.
-
-The pursuit of the sword-fish is much more exciting than ordinary
-fishing, for it resembles the pursuit of large animals upon land. There
-is no slow and careful baiting and patient waiting, and no disappointment
-caused by the capture of worthless “bait-stealers.” The game is seen
-and followed, outwitted by wary tactics, and killed by strength of arm
-and skill. The sword-fish sometimes proves a powerful antagonist, and
-sends his pursuers’ vessel into harbor, leaking and almost sinking from
-injuries which he has inflicted. I have known a vessel to be struck by
-wounded sword-fish as many as twenty times in one season. There is even
-the spice of personal danger to give savor to the chase. One of the crew
-of a Connecticut schooner was severely wounded by a beak thrust through
-the oak floor of the boat in which he was standing, and penetrating two
-inches into his naked heel. A strange fascination draws men to this
-pursuit when they have once learned its charm. An old sword-fisherman,
-with an experience of twenty years, told me that when he was on the
-fishing ground he fished all night in his dreams, and that many a time he
-had bruised his hands and rubbed the skin off his knuckles by striking
-them against the ceiling of his bunk when he raised his arms to thrust
-the harpoon into imaginary monster sword-fishes.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The home and its apartments should not be treated as a dead thing, where
-we make best arrangement of its fittings, and there leave it. It must
-grow in range and in expression with our necessities, and diverging, and
-developing tastes. The best of decorators can not put that last finish
-which must come from home hands. It is a great canvas always on the easel
-before us—growing in its power to interest every day and year—never
-getting its last touches—never quite ready to be taken down and parted
-with. No home should so far out-top the tastes of its inmates that they
-can not somewhere and somehow deck it with the record of their love and
-culture. It is an awful thing to live in a house where no new nail can
-be driven in the wall, and no tray of wild flowers, or of wood-mosses be
-set upon a window sill. The ways are endless, in short, in which a house
-can be endowed with that home atmosphere which shall be redolent of the
-tastes of its inmates.—_Donald G. Mitchell._
-
-
-
-
-ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.
-
-By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.
-
-
-IX.—A PIONEER ECCENTRIC WOMAN.
-
-This artificial arrangement called society seems to be possible only
-upon unreal standards of truth and morality; it has a system of “white
-lies”—as if any lie _could_ be white and true. It is because children
-haven’t learned the difference between real truth and the “play
-truth” of the world that they are such a holy terror in society. We
-have to squelch their questionings and hide our blushes. Children and
-fools—distinguished puritans!—always tell the truth, we say, and confess
-our false lives in the saying; but occasionally one who is not a fool,
-but who preserves a child’s truth, comes into this masquerade of life and
-insists on recognizing the real persons behind the masks. Heavens, what a
-disturbance! Put him out! He’s an Eccentric.
-
-Give one of these uncomfortable persons the clairvoyant insight into
-character and motives and the clear-speaking tongue or pen; put him on
-a higher moral plane than society about him travels, and two things
-will likely come to pass, viz.: martyrdom for himself and an uplift for
-his neighbors. Such a touch for truth, such a power to convey it, such
-a purpose had Jane Grey Swisshelm, and it’s safe to say that she has
-put more people to bed with uncomfortable bed-fellows in the shape of
-smarting consciences than any other woman of her time.
-
-She was a rare combination of feminine and masculine qualities. Timid
-and courageous; yielding to kindness, hard as steel on questions of
-principle; domestic in all her tastes, public in all her life; slight
-of form and sickly by heredity, for fifty years she “endured hardship
-as a good soldier.” To a fanatical religious nature and a wonderfully
-analytical mind, she brought that childlikeness of conscience, and with a
-rare command of language for a weapon, she became a moral blizzard in a
-half century of upheaval in our political elements.
-
-No one, I think, can read her autobiography without the conviction that
-this life of controversy was foreign to her nature, that the pugnacious
-pen was forced into her hand when it would have preferred to wield the
-pencil of the artist, or even the distaff in a happy home. She was thus
-forced aside from her natural course by an incompatible theology and an
-incompatible marriage. Benevolence was her mastering trait, but her hard
-theology gave no exercise to it. Perhaps better to say in her own words,
-she “obeyed the higher law of kindness under protest of her Calvinistic
-conscience.” Her religion taught her that everything that she liked to
-do and enjoyed in the doing, was, by that token, sinful; and her husband
-and his family by thwarting her in all such enjoyments, unconsciously
-executing her theology against herself, set her upon expiating her
-sinfulness by engaging in the most disagreeable and trying work that
-she could find. Men and women before her have sought “in the world’s
-broad field of battle” relief from disappointment of the heart’s wishes,
-but few have put on the armor to punish themselves for not enjoying
-that disappointment. It is, therefore, to the crucial tenets of her
-Calvanistic faith and the exorbitant demands of her conscience that we
-owe the great work Mrs. Swisshelm did in the cause of humanity. What it
-cost her only God and herself know; but we are not without evidence that
-she got some recompense as she went along, in achievements which must
-have been grateful to the heroic side of her nature.
-
-For in the veins of this slight girl ran the blood of a race of heroes
-and martyrs—a family which fetched its line direct from signers of The
-Solemn League and Covenant. “My kith and kin,” she says, “had died at
-the stake, bearing testimony against popery and prelacy; had fought on
-those fields where Scotchmen charged in solid columns, singing psalms.”
-She hated the devil of her theology, because she considered him a sneak,
-“but I never was afraid of him,” she says—a statement we can well believe
-of one who at the age of six watched an alleged haunted place by night
-to catch a ghost. She never knew the time when she did not believe the
-cast-iron creed of her ancestors; read her Bible, understood all of Dr.
-Black’s metaphysical sermons, and was converted before her third year,
-and completed her theological education before she completed her twelfth
-year. Truly she “had no childhood,” as she says.
-
-Born in Pittsburgh in 1815, she married at the age of sixteen a
-too-well-to-do farmer, and spent most of her life in the country. “I
-spent my best years cooking cabbage,” she says. She taught school much
-of the first ten years of her married life. She found her pen-power and
-her work in 1844, at the age of twenty-nine. Mrs. Swisshelm was one of
-the first, if not the very first, American woman to enter the field of
-political journalism. At this day, when all the avenues of literature
-throng with gifted women, when no considerable daily paper is without
-female contributors and staff writers, and some of our best magazines
-are conducted by women, it is hard to appreciate what it cost a timid,
-devout woman like Mrs. Swisshelm to take that step in 1844; it was in
-her mind voluntary consecration to martyrdom. This call came to her
-during an illness brought on by an attack on her by her husband and his
-mother, so outrageous that she had fled wildly to the woods, and been
-taken up and cared for by kindly neighbors. Her afflictions came to her
-as chastisements for not remembering those in bonds as bound with them;
-specifically for assisting to build a church for the “Black-gagites.” She
-wrote her first attack in an anti-slavery cause, propped up in bed, and
-it was in verse. She states the situation:
-
- No woman had ever done such a thing, and I could never again hold
- up my head under the burden of shame and disgrace which would be
- brought upon me. But what matter? I had no children to disgrace,
- and if the Lord wanted some one to throw into that gulf, no one
- could be spared better than I. No Western Pennsylvania woman
- had ever broken out of woman’s sphere. All lived in the very
- center of that sacred inclosure, making fires by which husbands,
- brothers and sons sat reading the news; each one knowing that she
- had a soul, because the preacher who made his bread and butter
- by saving it had been careful to inform her of its existence as
- preliminary to her knowledge of the indispensable nature of his
- services.
-
-Her articles created a sensation, and no wonder that they did. For,
-although she had but little literary culture, she had simplicity and
-intensity. Her style was modeled on the English of the Bible (which
-she says was for years the only book that she allowed herself to read,
-in her dread of becoming wiser than her plodding husband), and on this
-sturdy stem she grafted the simple, homely, direct illustrations of the
-rural folk around her. Thus, it arrested the attention of learned and
-unlettered alike. But there was more than phraseology in her power. She
-was as intensely in earnest as if she were herself in bonds—that is what
-“remembering them as bound with them” means. She was one of a few who
-_meant it_; one of the kind of “fools” that “hear His word and _do_ it.”
-McDuffee, when he heard that Andrew Jackson had sworn to hang the first
-seceder, said: “Yes, and he’s just dashed fool enough to do it.” She
-felt that two races, the white and the black, were to be rescued from
-the curse of slavery; and for such a cause it was with her as “Hosea
-Bigelow” says, “P’izen-mad, pig-headed fightin’.” She had been reared an
-abolitionist, and that which was bred in the bone had been converted into
-a clear, blazing passion by a year’s residence in Kentucky (1832), where
-she witnessed scenes, the narration of which make that awful chapter in
-her biography entitled “Habitations of Horrible Cruelty.” She says:
-
- For years there had run through my head the words: “Open thy
- mouth for the dumb, plead the cause of the poor and needy.” From
- first to last my articles were as direct and personal as Nathan’s
- reproof to David. Every man who went to the war (_i. e._, against
- Mexico), or induced others to go, I held as the principal in the
- whole list of crimes of which slavery was a synonym. Each one
- seemed to stand before me, his innermost soul made bare and his
- idiosyncrasy I was sure to strike with sarcasm, ridicule, odium,
- solemn denunciation, old truths from the Bible and history, and
- the opinions of good men. I had a reckless abandon, for had I not
- thrown myself into the breach to die there, and would I not sell
- my life at its full value?
-
-I think this keen sense for the weak places in men’s character and
-reasoning, and her reckless assaults thereon were what made her so
-formidable. She always struck for the heart, and rarely missed her aim.
-“Exposing the weak part of an argument soon came to be my recognized
-forte,” she says. With what disregard of everything she rode after the
-oriflamme of humanity let her tell:
-
- Hon. Gabriel Adams had taken me by the hand at father’s funeral,
- led me to a stranger and introduced me as: “The child I told you
- of, but eight years old, her father’s nurse and comforter.” He
- had smoothed my hair and told me not to cry; God would bless me
- for being a good child. He was a member of the session when I
- joined the church; his voice in prayer had smoothed mother’s hard
- journey through the dark valley; and now, as mayor of the city he
- had ordered it illuminated in honor of the battle of Buena Vista,
- and this, too, on Saturday evening, when the unholy glorification
- extended into the Sabbath. Measured by the standard of his
- profession as an elder in the church whose highest judicatory
- had pronounced slavery and Christianity incompatible, no one was
- more vulnerable than he, and of none was I so unsparing, yet as I
- wrote, the letter was blistered with tears; but his oft repeated
- comment was: “Jane is right,” and he went out of his way to take
- my hand and say: “You were right.”
-
- Samuel Black, a son of my pastor, dropped his place as leader
- of the Pittsburgh bar and rushed to the war. My comments were
- thought severe, even for me; yet the first intimation I had
- that I had not been cast aside as a monster, came from his
- sister, who sent me a message that her father, her husband
- and herself, approved my criticism. Samuel returned with a
- colonel’s commission, and one day I was about to pass him without
- recognition, where he stood on the pavement talking to two other
- lawyers, when he stepped before me and held out his hand. I drew
- back, and he said:
-
- “Is it possible you will not take my hand?”
-
- I looked at it, then into his manly, handsome face, and answered:
-
- “_There is blood on it!_ The blood of women and children slain
- at their own altars, on their own hearthstones, that you might
- spread the glorious American institution of woman whipping and
- baby stealing.”
-
- “Oh,” he exclaimed, “This is too bad! I swear to you I never
- killed a woman or a child.”
-
- “Then you did not fight in Mexico, did not help to bombard Buena
- Vista.”
-
- His friends joined him and insisted that I did the Colonel great
- wrong, when he looked squarely into my face, and, holding out his
- hand, said:
-
- “For the sake of the old church, for the sake of the old man, for
- the sake of the old times, give me your hand.”
-
- I laid it in his, and hurried away, unable to speak, for he was
- the most eloquent man in Pennsylvania. He fell at last at the
- head of his regiment, while fighting in the battle of Fair Oaks,
- for the freedom he had betrayed in Mexico.
-
-Her destructive attack on the private character of Daniel Webster, in
-1850, also illustrates her reckless courage and her sagacity. She was
-in Washington pending the fugitive slave bill. Webster was supporting
-the measure—a damaging defection from the anti-slavery side, because of
-his supposed moral as well as intellectual greatness. Mrs. S. discovered
-“that his whole panoply of moral power was a shell—that his life was
-full of rottenness. Then I knew why I had come to Washington.” She
-put the facts into one short paragraph, and published it in her own
-paper, against the advice of all her friends, and even of such stanch
-anti-slavery men as Giddings, Julian, and Dr. Snodgrass. They said it
-was true, and no one would dare to deny it; yet no one had dared to
-make it public; the publication would ruin her and her influence. She
-said: “The cause of the slave hangs on the issue in Congress, and Mr.
-Webster’s influence is against him; his influence would be less if the
-public knew just what he is. I will publish it and let God take care of
-the consequences.” Eccentric conduct, surely! It was published, and it
-did bring ruin—but on Daniel Webster, instead of Jane Grey Swisshelm. It
-killed Webster’s influence with the conscientious part of the Whig party,
-and probably gave the _coup de grace_ to his presidential prospects. She
-was long known as “the woman who killed Webster.”
-
-It was in 1847 that Mrs. Swisshelm took the decisive plunge by founding
-the Pittsburgh _Saturday Visiter_. The sensation created by this
-unprecedented appearance of politics in petticoats she characteristically
-describes:
-
- It was quite an insignificant looking sheet, but no sooner did
- the American eagle catch sight of it than he swooned and fell off
- his perch. Democratic roosters straightened out their necks and
- ran screaming with terror. Whig ’coons scampered up trees and
- barked furiously. The world was falling, and every one had “heard
- it, saw it, and felt it.”
-
- It appeared that on some inauspicious morning each one of
- three-fourths of the secular editors from Maine to Georgia had
- gone to his office suspecting nothing, when from some corner of
- his exchange list there sprang upon him such a horror as he had
- little thought to see. A woman had started a political paper! A
- woman! Could he believe his eyes? A woman! Instantly he sprang to
- his feet and clutched his pantaloons, shouted to the assistant
- editor, when he, too, read and grasped frantically at his
- cassimeres, called to the reporters and press-men and typos and
- devils, who all rushed in, heard the news, seized their nether
- garments and joined the general chorus, “My breeches! oh, my
- breeches!” Here was a woman resolved to steal their pantaloons,
- their trousers, and when these were gone they might cry, “Ye have
- taken away my gods, and what have I more?” The imminence of the
- peril called for prompt action, and with one accord they shouted,
- “On to the breach, in defense of our breeches! Repel the invader
- or fill the trenches with our noble dead!”
-
- “That woman shall not have _my_ pantaloons,” cried the editor
- of the big city daily; “nor my pantaloons,” said the editor of
- the dignified weekly; “nor my pantaloons,” said he who issued
- manifestoes but once a month; “nor mine,” “nor mine,” “nor mine,”
- chimed in the small fry of the country towns.
-
- Even the religious press could not get past the tailor shop, and
- “Pantaloons” was the watchword all along the line. George D.
- Prentice took up the cry, and gave the world a two-third column
- leader on it, stating explicitly, “She is a man all but the
- pantaloons.” I wrote to him, asking a copy of the article, but
- received no answer, when I replied in rhyme to suit his case:
-
- “Perhaps you have been busy
- Horsewhipping Sal or Lizzie,
- Stealing some poor man’s baby,
- Selling its mother, may be.
- You say—and you are witty—
- That I—and ’tis a pity—
- Of manhood lack but dress;
- But you lack manliness,
- A body clean and new,
- A soul within it, too.
- Nature must change her plan
- Ere you can be a man.”
-
-Mrs. Swisshelm was scourged into the woman’s rights agitation as she had
-been into the anti-slavery struggle, by her own troubles, brought on her
-again by her husband.
-
-The house left to her by her parents she wished to sell. Under the laws
-of Pennsylvania a wife could not alone give title, and her husband in
-this case refused to sign the deed unless the purchase money were given
-to him to be put into improvements on his mother’s estate, where all his
-wife’s earnings had so far been put out of her reach. Upon the death of
-her mother, whom she idolized and had nursed tenderly for some weeks
-against the opposition of her husband, the latter filed a claim against
-the mother’s estate for his wife’s wages as nurse. Of these applications
-of the law she writes:
-
- I do not know why I should have been so utterly overwhelmed by
- this proposal to execute a law passed by Christian legislators
- for the government of a Christian people, a law which had never
- been questioned by any nation or state or church, and was in
- full force all over the world. Why should the discovery of its
- existence curdle my blood, stop my heart-beats, and send a flush
- of burning shame from forehead to finger-tips? Why blame him for
- acting in harmony with the canons of every Christian church? Was
- it any fault of his that “all that she (the wife) can acquire
- by her labor, service, or act during coverture belongs to the
- husband?” Certainly not!
-
- It occurred to me that all the advances made by humanity had
- been through the pressure of injustice, and that the screws had
- been turned on me that I might do something to right the great
- wrong which forbade married women to own property. So, instead of
- spending my strength quarreling with the hand, I would strike for
- the heart of that great tyranny. I studied the laws under which
- I lived and began a series of letters on the subject of married
- women’s rights to hold property.
-
-The result of the agitation thus begun was an amendment to the statute
-in 1848, securing to married women the right to hold property. The
-predictions of evils to follow from this introduction of “an apple of
-discord into every family,” made by sage and serious men then, sound
-marvellously like some of the warnings we hear from objectors to woman
-suffrage now. But Mrs. Swisshelm refused to join the organized suffrage
-movement, and had many hot debates with its organs as to method, not as
-to principles; she herself, curiously enough, predicted evils to flow
-from woman suffrage, similar to those her critics had predicted would
-flow from granting property rights.
-
-She opposed the Washingtonian temperance movement, scornfully rejecting
-the plan of reforming drunkards by coddling them; waged warfare against
-the encroachments of the Church of Rome; and on more than one occasion
-successfully resisted the tyranny of trade unions. To defeat the latter
-she herself learned and taught other women the art typographic, and
-became independent. It is a notable fact that she was driven into this
-contention, also, by her own troubles with union printers. She seems to
-have been generally a conscript, not often a volunteer to fight, but the
-result always was to advance the interests of oppressed classes more than
-her own interests. It was to establish a precedent in behalf of other
-female correspondents that she applied for and secured a seat in the
-reporter’s gallery in the Capitol, Washington, being the first woman who
-ever sat there. She was then (1850), as for many years before and after,
-a correspondent of the New York _Tribune_.
-
-In 1847, after twenty years of vain efforts to “live up to the lights”
-of her mother-in-law, Mrs. Swisshelm and her husband parted, she taking
-their only child and going to Minnesota to live with her sister.
-
-Her Minnesota experience was almost tragic. Before reaching there she
-was informed that Governor Lowrie allowed no abolition sentiments in
-St. Cloud. “Then there is not room there for General Lowrie and me,”
-stoutly replied the little crusader. General Lowrie was the territorial
-governor under Buchanan’s administration; he was a Mississippian who
-kept slaves in Minnesota, and ruled the territory with so high a hand
-that he was called dictator. When Mrs. Swisshelm started the St. Cloud
-_Visiter_ she invited the governor, among others, to subscribe, and
-received from him a letter promising it “a support second to that of no
-paper in the territory, if it will support Buchanan’s administration.”
-To the confusion of her friends, Mrs. Swisshelm accepted the terms, and
-frankly announced in the paper that General Lowrie owned everybody in
-Minnesota, and so she had sold herself and the paper to him and would
-support Buchanan’s administration—its object being, as she understood it,
-the subversion of all freedom in the United States, and the placing of a
-master over every northern “mud-sill” as over the Southern blacks; that
-Governor Lowrie had promised to support the paper in great power and
-glory for this, and she was determined to earn her money. It was simply
-the unconventional, blunt truth-telling of a child applied to a lying
-system of politics, and it cut like a knife.
-
-Lowrie swore vengeance. “Let her alone, for God’s sake!” said one who
-knew her career. “Let her alone, or she will kill you. She has killed
-every man she ever touched. Let her alone.” He did not, and she did kill
-him with the truth. To his threats she returned the promise that she
-should continue to support Buchanan until she had broken him down in
-everlasting infamy. Her office was sacked one night and a notice left
-that if she revived the paper she would be tied to a log and cast into
-the Mississippi. The issue could not be avoided. An indignation meeting
-was called, and Mrs. Swisshelm said “I will attend and speak.” She made
-her will, settled her business, wrote a history of the trouble to testify
-if she could not, and employed a fighting man to attend the meeting by
-her side, and shoot her square through the brain if there were no other
-way to prevent her falling into the hands of the mob. Mrs. Sterns, a
-Yankee woman, held her arm, saying, “We will go into the river together;
-they can’t separate us.” So this descendant of the old Covenanter martyrs
-made her first speech to the, to her, doubtless, sweet music of a howling
-mob, stones and pistol shots.
-
-The _Visiter_ was reëstablished on new type, by a stock company, and the
-first issue brought down on them a libel suit from Governor Lowrie, to
-compromise which Mrs. Swisshelm published a retraction, which released
-the owners from $10,000 bonds. She then bought the material, suspended
-the bonded _Visiter_, and issued the St. Cloud _Democrat_. Its first
-issue rang the death-knell of Governor Lowrie and border ruffianism in
-Minnesota. It was useless to sue her for libel, and she was too well
-protected to fear force. The state election in 1859, when Governor
-Lowrie was a candidate for Lieutenant-Governor, turned on the policy of
-border ruffianism, press-breaking, and woman mobbing. “The large man who
-instituted a mob to suppress a woman of my size [_i. e._, 100 lbs.], and
-then failed, was not a suitable leader for American men,” and Lowrie was
-snowed under, and not long after was taken to an insane asylum. The next
-year Mrs. Swisshelm felt honored at being burned in effigy in St. Paul by
-her enemies, as “the mother of the Republican party in Minnesota.” She
-afterward lectured two years in the northwest.
-
-Then came the terrible civil war. Mrs. Swisshelm engaged in hospital
-work, bringing to it the consecration, indomitable energy and eccentric
-gumption that she displayed in politics and business. She walked through
-the red tape and professional etiquette which were killing more than
-bullets were, as she had through conventional chains. She says: “It was
-often so easy to save a life, where there were the means of living, that
-a little courage or common sense seemed like a miraculous gift to people
-whose mental powers had been turned in other directions.” In one hospital
-she found gangrene, and to her call for lemons, specific for it, she was
-gravely told by the surgeon that he had made a requisition a week before
-for them, and could not get them. She telegraphed the _Tribune_:
-
- Hospital gangrene has broken out in Washington, and we want
- _lemons!_ LEMONS! LEMONS! No man or woman in health has a right
- to a glass of lemonade till these men have all they need. Send us
- lemons!
-
-The next day lemons began to pour into Washington, and soon into every
-hospital in the country. Governor Andrew sent two hundred boxes, and
-at one time she had twenty ladies with ambulances distributing lemons.
-Gangrene disappeared.
-
-She felt about equal anger and contempt for masculine indifference and
-the mushy inefficiency of women who flocked to Washington to nurse in
-the hospitals. She sarcastically says the vast majority of the women
-who succeeded in getting into hospitals were much more willing to “kiss
-him for his mother” than to render the soldier any solid service; they
-“were capable of any heroism save wearing a dress suitable for hospital
-work. The very, very few who laid aside their hoops—those instruments of
-dread and torture—generally donned bloomers and gave offense by airs of
-independence.”
-
-Mrs. S. was one of three women who followed Grant’s advance upon the
-Wilderness. Her courage, endurance and good sense never showed to better
-advantage than during the Petersburg battles.
-
-Mrs. Swisshelm’s marital experience was but an episode to her true
-career—the counter-irritant that brought out her character. Its
-unhappiness was due to four causes: 1. Religious differences. Both sides
-were fanatical, and her husband’s people felt a call to give her no
-rest till they had got her “converted and saved” by their theological
-scales. 2. It was a sad case of mother-in-law, on the husband’s side.
-3. The brains, character and courage were all on one side. No woman had
-a higher reverence for strong manly character, and she was married to
-a male shrew and weakling. But above all she belonged to the last half
-of the nineteenth century in her ideas of woman’s sphere, and he to the
-last half of the eighteenth, in his. Aside from this, they loved each
-other, and after their separation each bore high testimony to the right
-intention and purity of the other.
-
-Few women of this day appreciate how much of their freedom to work and
-think they owe to such pioneers as Jane Grey Swisshelm. Few men can be
-made to see how much of the great advance of American life is due to the
-nobler, broader womanhood made possible by the self-immolation of such
-pioneers. They made their impression on the point most needing change
-and strength, if our society and government were to become pure, strong
-and enduring. For it has become a law of sociology that the condition of
-its women is the measure of the civilization and possible growth of any
-people. Mrs. Swisshelm did more than her share to lengthen that measure
-for this people, and, happily, lived to see the fruits of her work. But
-it was a desolate life for a woman, for all that.
-
-
-
-
-THE IMPERIAL COLLEGE IN PEKING.
-
-By REV. GEO. W. SMYTH, President of Fouchow College.
-
-
-Among the many interesting places to be seen in the old and strange city
-of Peking, that which must claim the chief attention of every visitor
-intent on noting the changes which the last twenty-five years have
-wrought in this ancient empire is the Túng Wên Kuan, or College of United
-Literatures. It is an imperial college in which Chinese students are
-taught the principal languages and literatures of modern Europe. Their
-studies are in Chinese and in one or other of the western languages, and
-hence doubtless its high-sounding but significant name. The students are
-government cadets, paid from the public treasury, and preparing to enter
-the consular and diplomatic service of their country in foreign lands.
-A short account of the origin, purpose and methods of this school may
-not be uninteresting, as showing how great a change has come over the
-high official mind of this country in the last quarter of a century.
-The change, indeed, was the result of necessity, but it is not on that
-account any the less real, and the movement it inaugurated can not now be
-stopped.
-
-The war of 1860, which so nearly destroyed the present dynasty, and
-showed the ruling classes at Peking the greatly superior power of the
-West, necessitated a great change in the foreign policy of the empire.
-Hitherto they had complacently looked upon foreigners, subjects and
-sovereigns alike, as uncouth barbarians, who were to be excluded from
-the capital, or allowed to enter it only on admitting their subjection
-and vassalage to the Celestial ruler. But the war which came so near
-overthrowing the dynasty and bringing down the whole fabric of government
-crashing about their ears, convinced even the proudest of the mandarins
-that further resistance would be destruction, and that China, whether
-she would or not, must step out of her seclusion, and take an open place
-among the nations of the world. She must henceforth enter into treaty
-relations with the kingdoms of the West, treat them as equals, trade
-with them on reasonable terms, receive their ambassadors, and submit
-herself to the public laws of the civilized world. New methods had to be
-devised to meet these unusual conditions, and the first thing done was
-to establish the Tsungli Yamên, or office for the transaction of Foreign
-Affairs. In the following year a school was opened for the training of
-interpreters, and out of this grew in time the well equipped Imperial
-College of to-day. In 1865 this school was raised to the rank of a
-college by adding a scientific department. With this view new buildings
-were erected, and steps taken toward engaging the services of a competent
-corps of foreign professors. In a memorial to the throne presented
-by Prince Kung in 1866, that enlightened statesman thus declares the
-scope and motives of this undertaking: “What we desire,” he says, “is
-that students shall go to the bottom of these subjects (that is, the
-astronomical and mathematical sciences), for we are firmly convinced
-that if we are able to master the mysteries of mathematical calculation,
-physical investigation, astronomical observation, the construction of
-engines, the engineering of water courses, this, and this only, will
-assure the steady growth and power of the empire.” The prince had to meet
-many objections, and after stating that the nations of the West learn
-from each other, daily producing something new, and that even Japan has
-recently sent men to England to acquire the language and science of that
-country, he adds: “Now, when a small nation like Japan knows how to enter
-on a career of progress, what could be a greater disgrace than for China
-to adhere to her old traditions, and never think of waking up?”
-
-It was some time before the college was thoroughly organized. W. A. P.
-Martin, D.D., once a missionary of the American Presbyterian Church at
-Ningpo, was appointed president. Other appointments followed as speedily
-as the fitting men could be found, till the plan contemplated was
-realized.
-
-This, then, is the Imperial College at Peking. What does it do? What
-is taught there, and what are the influences of its training? While in
-Peking this summer I was fortunate enough to visit it, to see something
-of its working, and to gain some familiarity with its purposes and
-plans. The learned president, Dr. Martin, courteously showed me over
-the buildings, and told me of the work they were doing. The college
-buildings adjoin the foreign office or Tsungli Yamên. They are in no
-sense imposing, being ordinary Chinese structures of one story, without
-attempt at adornment or splendor of any sort whatever. The rooms are
-small and plain, containing nothing that is not needed for the immediate
-work of teaching. The room of the president is a very plain one for
-so high an officer. The departments of chemistry and physics are well
-supplied with the instruments and chemicals needed for their work. The
-professor of astronomy, who is also professor of mathematics, showed me
-a fine equatorial telescope just arrived from Grubb, one of the most
-celebrated makers in Europe. The rooms of the language professors are
-in keeping with the rest, small and bare, but sufficiently well adapted
-for the purposes to which they are put. The languages taught are four,
-English, French, German, and Russian, the English receiving far more
-attention than the others. The full course extends over a period of eight
-years, and in that time the students are led from “reading, writing
-and speaking,” through all the intermediate departments to “astronomy,
-geology and mineralogy, political economy and the translation of books.”
-After completing the course, those so disposed may remain in the college
-or be sent abroad, at the option of the government, for the pursuit of
-special studies, with a view to professional use. Many so remain. Last
-year one man left who had been in attendance for eighteen years.
-
-The work done is as thorough as it can be. It can not be said that the
-students make as much progress as foreign students would make in much
-less time, but the slowness is due not more to the difficulties of a
-foreign language than to the utter strangeness of the subjects pursued.
-I was fortunate in being there on Wednesday, when the students of the
-higher English classes read essays of their own before the president
-and the English professor. Some of those I heard were very creditable,
-especially one on the subject of currency. He seemed to have thought for
-himself, to have a fair understanding of the subject, and would have
-delighted the fiscal reformers of America by the soundness of his hard
-money principles. He expressed great dissatisfaction with the currency
-of China, and hoped for a speedy and thorough reform. So does every man
-who travels in this strange country. Inside the walls of Peking there is
-one way of reckoning money, outside there is another; a few miles off one
-may find a third, and so on, _ad infinitum_. The currency of China is
-the most bewildering subject on the face of the earth. The rest of the
-essays did not impress me so much by the thoughts they expressed (indeed,
-there was little originality in any of them), as by their fair command of
-English style. The writers had evidently some mastery of the intricacies
-of the English idiom. I confess some of the themes disappointed me. They
-were taken from somewhere or other in the ancient classics, instead of
-being characteristic of the subjects they were studying. But it is hard
-to avoid this. The students know very little of the literature of the
-languages they are studying, and it is almost impossible, I am told, to
-induce them to take the great foreign works from the library and attempt
-to read them for themselves. They have not yet reached the state of
-intelligent enthusiasm which refuses to think a language known before a
-fair acquaintance is made with its literature. But this, too, will come
-in time. As to the students personally, a few of them impressed me as
-intelligent men, and as anxious to do their work well. The great trouble
-with them, the one which must seriously interfere with their studies,
-since it can not but narrow and distort their intellectual sympathies,
-is their seemingly invincible pride. I was told that scarce any but the
-Cantonese students care to take the slightest notice of their professors
-when they meet them on the street. Think of the difficulties of teaching
-such men! They probably look upon their instructors as far beneath
-themselves, and possibly think of the languages they are studying as the
-speech of barbarians. With such material, and with such dull and sullen
-prejudices to fight against, the professors must be regarded as having
-accomplished much. They could do more were their students men of liberal
-minds, eager to acquire knowledge for its own sake, and pursuing it with
-a generous enthusiasm. It is not easy to do your best work where you fail
-to rouse the sympathies of the student and make him feel something of the
-ardor which a liberal mind ever feels in the acquisition of knowledge.
-The Chinese are not an enthusiastic people, and except in a very few
-cases, it is impossible to make them such in learning of foreign things.
-They like to know as much as suits their imperative needs, and but few
-care enough about more to study with eager diligence. This struck me as
-being true of many of the students of this Peking college.
-
-Beside teaching there is here another department of the first
-importance—that of translating and publishing foreign books. Several
-important works have already been translated by the professors of
-the college, or by the students under their supervision. Wheaton’s
-“Elements of International Law,” Woolsey’s “International Law,” Faucett’s
-“Political Economy,” Bluntschli’s “Droit International Codifié,” the
-“Code Napoleon,” Kerl’s “English Grammar,” and Tytler’s “Universal
-History;” these are the chief works hitherto translated. In addition,
-several compilations have been made, such as “Natural Philosophy,”
-“Chemical Analysis,” “Mathematical Exercises,” and “Mathematical
-Physics.”
-
-The printing office is a commodious building, with several presses,
-several fonts of movable Chinese, and one of English type. When I was
-there one great book had just been finished, and another was just
-being printed. No more remarkable books have ever been issued from the
-government press, and if they are prophetic of the near future we may
-look for its coming with no little hope.
-
-The book just published is a report on education in the West, by Dr.
-Martin. It is the result of a recent examination of the chief schools
-of learning in America and Europe. The report is quite full, giving an
-account of the principal classes of schools, elementary and professional,
-of the two continents, and closing with an exhibit of the present state
-of our own Michigan University. I wish there were space to speak of it at
-length, but the mere catalogue of some of the titles of its chapters will
-show its scope and purpose as well as the most elaborate description.
-Among the principal headings are such as these: “Elements Common to the
-Education of all Western Nations;” “Classification of Schools;” “Primary
-Schools;” “Education of Women;” “Education of the Blind and Deaf;”
-“Literary and Scientific Associations;” “The Nations Learning from Each
-Other;” “Rise and Progress of Science;” “Educational Statistics.” Beside
-these there is an account of professional schools of all classes. These
-will give some conception of the character of this most significant work.
-It is published with a preface by one of the ministers, by order of the
-Council for Foreign Affairs.
-
-Who may estimate the influence of such a work as this, published and
-sanctioned by such high authority? The educational system of the West
-could have no more favorable introduction, as no foreigner in the empire
-is more highly esteemed than the learned author. It was fitting that such
-a book should come from the pen of Dr. Martin. In his translations of
-Woolsey’s and Wheaton’s treatises on international law, he had already
-shown the Chinese the public law of the nations of the West, and in this
-he describes the educational system on which their intellectual life is
-based. Others, it is true, have already taught the Chinese much, but it
-is scarcely injustice to say that from no one could this work come with
-such weighty authority as from the president of their own highest western
-school. It may be regarded as destined to play no unimportant part in
-shaping the intellectual life of the China of the future.
-
-The other book, a much larger one, is an exhaustive treatise on anatomy,
-in ten volumes, by Dr. Dudgeon, a professor in the college, and a member
-of the London Missionary Society in Peking. He has been in charge for
-many years of the London Mission Hospital, and has long been engaged in
-the preparation of this great work. One of the conditions on which it was
-published was that the authorities should retain one hundred and fifty
-copies for their own use. How great a change this indicates, and how
-eloquently it speaks for the future of medical science in China, none
-but the older missionaries can adequately appreciate. Twenty years ago,
-few even of the most sanguine, could have believed that in the ancient
-capital itself, almost under the very shadow of the Imperial Palace, the
-work of an English medical missionary would be printed at the public
-expense, and official sanction be given to this recent innovation of
-the once universally feared and detested foreigner. Yet so it is. It is
-needless to speculate on what its influence must be on the future of
-medical education in this ancient empire.
-
-Such is some of the work done in this most interesting school. It
-would be a pleasing task to note the changes which its very existence
-indicates, and speak of what its influence must be on the future. But
-this paper, being too long already, with a single further remark I will
-bring it to a close. The president of this great school is a Christian
-man, once a missionary of the Presbyterian Board, and still interested in
-all missionary work. In accepting his new position he gave up neither
-his faith nor his interest in the evangelization of the land. This is a
-matter of great moment, and it can not but be a theme for rejoicing that
-the highest foreign school in the empire is under the presidency of such
-a man. Of course he is not permitted to teach Christianity directly,
-but his influence and life are on the side of Christian principles, and
-Christianity will suffer no injustice at his hands. China is slowly
-opening her doors to the introduction of Western learning. She cares
-nothing as yet for our religion, but our science she will have. Is it
-not then important that it should be given her by Christian men, and
-not by such as him who, in the Japanese University at Tokio once told
-his students, that in the West Christianity was the religion of only
-women and babes? If Christian educators can take a leading part in this
-movement now, they may be able to hold it when it becomes more general,
-and thus the Chinese, in receiving science may the more readily accept
-that best of all gifts, a pure and undefiled Christianity. This must be
-the hope of all men interested in the future of China, and patiently
-waiting for the time when the religion of Christ shall cover the whole
-earth.
-
-
-
-
-EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.
-
-By WALLACE BRUCE.
-
-
-In the providence that regulates human affairs there seems to have been
-no ordained quiet for the exiled Stuarts, but the quiet of the grave.
-During the early and unpopular reigns of the imported “House of Hanover”
-the Jacobite party eagerly watched and weighed every opportunity for
-restoring the ancient line. The throne of England was too great a prize
-to be readily abandoned. Some of the attempts to regain the glory and
-power which had departed from these Ichabod princes seem more like a
-romance than real history.
-
-The Chevalier de St. George, whom we saw in the story of “Rob Roy,”
-retired to Italy after his unsuccessful enterprise of 1715, “where the
-sufferings of his father for the Roman Catholic religion gave him the
-fairest right to expect hospitality.” He was at this time thirty years of
-age, and, following the suggestions of his counselors, fixed his choice
-of a wife on the Princess Clementina Sobieski, daughter of the Prince
-of Poland. The romantic history of the Chevalier in pursuit of a throne
-was now to be paralleled in the getting of a wife. This young lady was
-accounted one of the greatest fortunes in Europe. She was granddaughter
-of that King John Sobieski, who defeated the Turks before Vienna. The
-dazzling expectations of the Pretender gratified the ambition of her
-parents, and they agreed to conduct her privately to Bologna, with a view
-to the marriage. The preparation became known to the British Court. The
-Emperor of Austria, at the request of England, arrested the bride as she
-passed through Innspruck, and detained her as prisoner in a cloister.
-
-A bold attempt for the release of the Princess was contrived and executed
-by Charles Wogan—a devoted partisan to the Stuart cause. “He obtained a
-passport from the Austrian ambassador, in the name of Count Cernes and
-family, stated to be returning from Loretto to the low countries. Major
-Misset and his wife personated the supposed count and countess; Wogan
-was to pass for the brother of the count; the Princess Clementina, when
-she should be liberated, was to represent the Count’s sister, which
-character, in the meantime, was enacted by a smart girl, a domestic of
-Mrs. Misset. Captain Toole, with two other steady partisans, attended on
-the party of the supposed Count, in the dress and character of domestics.
-They arrived at Innspruck on the evening of the 27th of April, 1719, and
-took lodging near the convent. It appears that a trusty domestic of the
-princess had secured permission of the porter to bring a female with him
-into the cloister, and conduct her out at whatever hour he pleased. This
-was a great step in favor of their success, and taking advantage of a
-storm of snow and hail, Mrs. Misset’s domestic was safely introduced
-into the cloister, and the princess, changing clothes with her, came out
-at the hour by which the stranger was to return. Through bad roads and
-worse weather the liberated bride and her attendants pushed on until they
-quitted the Austrian territories, and entered those of Venice. On the
-second of May, after a journey of great fatigue, and some danger, they
-arrived at Bologna.”
-
-The Jacobites drew many happy omens from the success with which the
-romantic union of the Chevalier de St. George was achieved, although
-after all it may be doubted whether the Austrian Emperor, though obliged
-in appearance to comply with the remonstrances of the British Court, was
-either seriously anxious to prevent the Princess’s escape, or extremely
-desirous that she should be retaken. By this union the Chevalier
-transmitted his hereditary claims, and with them his evil luck, to two
-sons. The first, Charles Edward, born the 31st of December, 1720, was
-remarkable for the figure he made during the civil war of 1745-6; the
-second, Henry Benedict, born the 6th of March, 1725, for being the last
-male heir, in the direct line, of the unfortunate House of Stuart. He
-bore the title of Duke of York, and, entering the Church of Rome, was
-promoted to the rank of Cardinal.
-
-This interesting betrothal and marriage, condensed from Scott’s
-picturesque narrative in the “Tales of a Grandfather,” serve as a
-connecting link between our last paper, which dealt historically with
-the affair of 1715, and the present paper which deals with the affair of
-1745. It is, moreover, simple politeness to our readers to introduce the
-parents, who are passing from the stage, before presenting the son, whose
-fortunes were destined to be more romantic than his ancestors, and whose
-name will survive in song and poetry as the “Prince Charlie from over the
-sea.”
-
-“Waverley” reveals the true state of Scotland during the middle of the
-eighteenth century. In fact, the titles of the chapters present almost
-a history in themselves. While it reveals in every page the great power
-of the novelist in portrayal of character, in discerning the motives
-which influence the actions of individuals, in the poetic description of
-scenery, in elevated tone and fitting and graceful dialogue, it differs
-from his greater and later works as the “Hypatia” of Charles Kingsley
-differs from the “Romola” of George Eliot. It is not so much an inner
-growth as an algebraic demonstration; each chapter being _plus_ to
-the one that precedes it. In the early part of the story he conducts
-Waverley step by step through his boyhood to the choice of a profession.
-He then introduces him to the Highlands, and deals with the customs and
-manners of the people in a succession of chapter-essays. He gives us a
-border-raid; he portrays the “Hold of a Highland Robber;” describes the
-chief and his mansion; introduces us to a Highland feast; treats us to
-a display of Highland minstrelsy; and thus the story moves on step by
-step, so many _stadia_ a day, like the march of Julius Cæsar through
-Germany, or the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks under Xenophon. But
-in spite of this step-by-step process, which marks the first work of Sir
-Walter in prose fiction, no volume of the series presents more vividly or
-graphically the historic features of the times to which it is related.
-
-The wild and fierce Highlanders, who stalked to and fro in pages of the
-“Fair Maid of Perth,” are greatly modified and toned down in “Waverley.”
-Civilization has girdled their mountain fastnesses. They have been taught
-to acknowledge law, or at least to respect and fear it. The patriarchal
-system, however, still continues. The chief is the leader in war, and
-their arbitrator and protector in peace. The whole income of the tribe
-is paid to the chief, and helps to support his rude hospitality. In the
-mansion of Fergus MacIvor, Waverley is introduced to the surviving and
-modified customs of this northern Gælic people. The description of the
-feast and the music of the bard, chanting the deeds of their ancestors,
-are worthy of special mention. “A huge oaken table extended through the
-whole length of the hall. The apparatus for dinner was simple, even to
-rudeness, and the company numerous, even to crowding. At the head of the
-table was the chief himself, with Waverley, and two or three Highland
-visitors of neighboring clans; the elders of his own tribe sat next in
-rank; beneath them their sons and nephews, and foster-brethren; then the
-officers of the chief’s household, according to their order, and lowest
-of all the tenants who cultivated the ground.”
-
-“Even beyond the long perspective, Waverley might see upon the green, to
-which a huge pair of folding doors opened, a multitude of Highlanders
-of a yet inferior description, who nevertheless were considered as
-guests, and had their share of the cheer of the day. In the distance,
-and fluctuating round the extreme verge of the banquet, was a changeful
-group of women, ragged boys and girls, beggars, young and old, large
-greyhounds, terriers and pointers, and curs of low degree; all of whom
-took some interest in the main action of the piece. Some pains had been
-bestowed in dressing the dishes at the upper end of the table. Lower
-down stood immense joints of mutton and beef, which resembled the rude
-festivity of Penelope’s suitors. But the central dish was a yearling
-lamb roasted whole. It was set upon its legs, with a bunch of parsley in
-its mouth, and was probably exhibited in that form to gratify the pride
-of the cook, who piqued himself more on the plenty than the elegance of
-his master’s table. The sides of the poor animal were fiercely attacked
-by the clansmen, some with dirks, others with the knives which were
-usually in the same sheath with the dagger, so that it was soon rendered
-a mangled and rueful spectacle. Lower down still, the victuals seemed of
-a still coarser quality, though sufficiently abundant. After the banquet
-the chieftain made a signal for the pipes to cease, and said aloud,
-‘Where is the song hidden, my friends, that MacMurrough can not find it?’
-The family bard, an aged man, immediately took the hint, and began to
-chant with low and rapid utterance a profusion of Celtic verses, which
-were received by the audience with all the applause of enthusiasm. As
-he advanced in his declamation, his ardor seemed to increase. He had at
-first spoken with his eyes fixed upon the ground; he now cast them around
-as if beseeching, and anon as if commanding attention, and his tones rose
-into wild and impassioned notes, accompanied with appropriate gestures.
-The ardor of the poet seemed to communicate itself to the audience. Their
-wild and sun-burnt countenances assumed a fiercer and more animated
-expression; all bent forward toward the reciter; many sprung up and waved
-their hands in ecstasy, and some laid their hands on their swords.”
-
-It was in such halls as these that the cause of the Pretender was
-cherished. The Lowlanders were for the most part disposed to peace. The
-relation of landlord and tenant had gradually lost its feudal character.
-The payment was in pounds sterling and not in warlike service. The result
-of the Pretender’s adventure might therefore have been foretold at the
-outset, but it was brilliant while it lasted, and he had the pleasure of
-giving a few feasts in Holyrood—the palace of his ancestors. It will be
-remembered that he landed with seven followers in Moidart on the 25th
-of July, 1745. The place was well chosen for concealment, being on the
-main land south of the islands of Skye. He opened communication with the
-clans in the neighborhood, but at first received little encouragement. By
-wise measures and cordial address his numbers grew slowly. An association
-was drawn up and signed by the chiefs who had taken the field, in which
-the subscribers bound themselves never to abandon their prince while he
-remained in the realm, or to lay down their arms, or make peace with
-government, without his express consent. He marched to Perth with his
-little army, where the Chevalier first found the want of money. When he
-entered that town, he showed one of his followers a single guinea of the
-four hundred pounds which he had brought with him from France; but the
-towns and cities north of the Tay supplied men and money, and for a time
-his fortune was in the ascendant.
-
-The English troops at that time in Scotland were under a second rate
-commander, Sir John Cope. He moved north to Inverness and left Edinburgh
-undefended. The Pretender captured Edinburgh, and entered it the 17th
-of September. He began his march on foot, but, on account of the crowd
-who pressed upon him to kiss his hand, he was compelled to call for his
-horse as he approached the eastern entrance of the palace. His personal
-appearance was prepossessing. His graceful manners, noble mien and ready
-courtesy “seemed to mark him no unworthy competitor of the crown. His
-dress was national. A short tartan coat, a blue bonnet with a white rose,
-and the order and emblem of the thistle, seemed all chosen to identify
-him with the ancient nation he summoned to arms.” It was indeed a proud
-moment, but the bubble was soon to burst. After a few successful battles,
-and an ill-timed excursion into England, the army was disbanded, and the
-unfortunate Wanderer was compelled to flee for his life, disguised as
-a servant. He sought refuge in a cavern where seven outlaws had taken
-up their abode. With these men he remained about three weeks, and when
-the hour of his departure came they said: “Stay with us; the mountains
-of gold which the government have set upon your head may induce some
-gentleman to betray you, for he can go to a distant country and live on
-the price of his dishonor; but to us there exists no such temptation.
-We can speak no language but our own—we can live nowhere but in this
-country, where, were we but to injure a hair of your head, the very
-mountains would fall down to crush us to death.” On the 20th of September
-he embarked in a French frigate, and reached Morlaix in Brittany the 29th
-of September.
-
-If there ever was truth in the words, “there is a divinity that doth
-hedge a king” it finds illustration in the thirteen months that Charles
-Edward spent on this expedition in Scotland. No history or romance
-recounts such perils of flight, concealment and escape. The secret of
-his concealment was known to persons of every age, sex, and condition,
-but no individual from the proudest Earl to the meanest outlaw would
-stoop to give up their leader, even for the promised reward, which would
-have purchased the half of Scotland north of the Forth. That the Prince
-was bold and generous, in this campaign, no person can doubt; and if
-Charles the First had possessed as much humor as his amiable descendant,
-he might have preserved his head which was an “unco’ loss” to the whole
-Stuart line. After the victory at Preston, the Pretender sent word to the
-Edinburgh preachers to preach the next day, Sunday, as usual; and the
-Rev. Neil M’Vicar offered the following prayer: “Bless the king! Thou
-knowest what king I mean. May the crown sit long on his head. As for that
-young man who has come among us to seek an earthly crown, we beseech
-thee to take him to thyself and give him a crown of glory.” It is said
-that when the Prince heard of M’Vicar’s prayer he laughed heartily, and
-expressed himself quite satisfied.
-
-I have spoken of this novel being true to history. It could hardly have
-been otherwise when we consider the opportunities Scott had for studying
-all the facts. In the closing chapter of “Waverley” he says: “It was
-my accidental lot, though not born a Highlander, to reside, during my
-childhood and youth, among persons who cherished a lingering though
-hopeless attachment, to the House of Stuart; and now, for the purpose of
-preserving some idea of the ancient manners of which I have witnessed
-the almost total extinction, I have embodied in imaginary scenes, and
-ascribed to fictitious characters, a part of the incidents which I then
-received from those who were actors in them. Indeed, the most romantic
-parts of this narrative are precisely those which have a foundation in
-fact. There is scarce a gentleman who was ‘in hiding,’ after the battle
-of Culloden, but could tell a tale of wild and hair-breadth ’scapes, as
-extraordinary as any which I have ascribed to my heroes. The accounts
-of the battle at Preston and skirmish at Clifton are taken from the
-narrative of intelligent eye-witnesses, and corrected from the ‘History
-of the Rebellion’ by the late venerable author of ‘Douglas.’ The Lowland
-Scottish gentlemen, and the subordinate characters, are not given as
-individual portraits, but are drawn from the general habits of the
-period, of which I have witnessed some remnants in my younger days, and
-partly gathered from tradition.”
-
-“Guy Mannering,” the next in sequence, is rather a portrayal of character
-than a historic picture. It gives us a glimpse of gipsey-life in Galloway
-true to fact, and also reveals the traits of the hardy smugglers that
-invested its shores. The characters stand out by themselves with
-little or no background. Here is Dandie Dinmot, with his numerous dogs
-and children; Attorney Pleydell, with his old-time courtesy; Dominie
-Sampson, a cyclopædia of worthless erudition—a man to be laughed at and
-loved—possessing a fund of knowledge, but no wisdom; Guy Mannering, a
-courtly gentleman, deep and undisturbed as a tropic sea; two sweet young
-ladies and their lovers, who are at last happily married; Meg Merrilies,
-as generous and sensible a gipsey as ever lived; Dirk Hatterick, as false
-a sea rover as ever hoisted sail; and Glossin, a fawning scoundrel, whose
-course through life was like the trail of a serpent. The book is in fact
-a drama rather than a novel, or rather both in one—a dramatic romance.
-Coleridge regarded it as one of the greatest of Scott’s novels, and
-mentions it in this connection with “Old Mortality.”
-
-In “Redgauntlet” we find a continuation of the smuggler trade, and
-are also introduced to the Pretender, who has not improved either in
-appearance or character since we last saw him in “Waverley.” His friends
-and supporters for the most part consist of the very dregs of society. In
-his blind adoration for a person not to be named with respect, the Prince
-lost the confidence of friends who had risked their all to support his
-title. In a cup of dissolute pleasure he dissolves the pearl of his good
-name. If he had died at the head of his army of adherents in Scotland,
-or after his return to France, he would have survived in history as a
-worthier man. “He proved to be one of those personages who distinguish
-themselves during some singular and brilliant period of their lives, like
-the course of a shooting star at which men wonder, as well on account
-of the briefness, as the brilliancy of its splendor. A long trace of
-darkness overshadowed the subsequent life of a man who, in his youth,
-shewed himself so capable of great undertakings; the later pursuits and
-habits of this unhappy Prince are those painfully evincing a broken
-heart, which finds refuge from its own thoughts in sordid enjoyments.”
-
-The man was also in the hands of persons full of wild plots and political
-impatience. They formed schemes wholly impracticable. They invited him in
-1750 to London; but he was soon convinced that he had been deceived, and
-after a stay of five days he returned to the place from which he came. He
-died at Rome the 31st of January, 1788, and was royally interred in the
-Cathedral Church of Frescati, of which his brother was bishop.
-
-After his death his brother, the last direct male heir of the House of
-Stuart, made no assertion of his right to the British throne, but had
-a beautiful medal struck, in which he was represented in kingly garb
-with the motto in Latin, “King by the grace of God, but not by the
-will of the people.” He finally received an annuity of 4,000 pounds a
-year given to him by George the Third, and on his death he bequeathed
-to George the Fourth all the crown jewels, which James the Second had
-carried along with him to the Continent in 1688. He died at Rome, June
-1807, in the eighty-third year of his age. The volumes of “Waverley” and
-“Redgauntlet,” taken in connection with Scott’s “Tales of a Grandfather,”
-give the most complete history of this unfortunate struggle.
-
-“The Antiquary” and “Saint Ronan’s Well” present a postscript of manners
-and customs, which seems tame from a historic standpoint, after living
-so many centuries in the company of heroes and princes. Scott speaking
-of “The Antiquary” says: “It wants the romance of ‘Waverley’ and the
-adventure of ‘Guy Mannering;’ yet there is some salvation about it,
-for if a man will paint from nature he will be likely to amuse those
-who are daily looking at it.” He also says in his introduction of “The
-Antiquary:” “‘Waverley’ embraced the age of our fathers, ‘Guy Mannering’
-that of our youth, and ‘The Antiquary’ refers to the last ten years of
-the eighteenth century. I have in the last two narratives especially,
-sought my principal personages in the class of society who are the last
-to feel the influence of that general polish which assimilates to each
-other the manners of different nations. Among some of the same class I
-have placed some of the scenes, in which I have endeavored to illustrate
-the operation of the higher and more violent passions; both because
-the lower orders are less restrained by the habit of suppressing their
-feelings, and because I agree with my friend Wordsworth, that they seldom
-fail to express them in the strongest and most powerful language. This
-is, I think, peculiarly the case with the peasantry of my own country,
-a class with whom I have been long familiar. The antique force and
-simplicity of their language, often tinctured with the oriental eloquence
-of Scripture, in the mouths of those of an elevated understanding, give
-pathos to their grief, and dignity to their resentment.” The pathos and
-eloquence in the homes of the fishermen justify Scott’s criticism, and
-the picture which he has drawn of the old grandmother will survive in our
-memory as one of the most dramatic in the Waverley series.
-
-There are two references in “The Antiquary” to contemporary history,
-which ought not to be entirely overlooked; one where the Antiquary
-describes the excitement of preparation in Edinburgh against the
-anticipated French invasion, when almost every individual was enrolled
-either in military or civil capacity. Beacons were erected along the
-coast to summon the newly organized army of defense when occasion
-required, and Scott humorously refers, in one of his letters, to the
-appearance he himself made decked out in regimentals. Near the close
-of “The Antiquary” the signal light blazes out by mistake the 2d of
-February, 1804; the person, who kept watch on the commanding station
-of Home Castle, being deceived by some accidental fire in the county
-of Northumberland. The only historical allusion in “St. Ronan’s Well”
-relates to the Reign of Terror and to Napoleon Bonaparte at Acre.
-
-The twenty-six novels and five poems of Sir Walter, therefore, unite the
-two greatest events of Europe—the wars of the Crusades, and the exploits
-of Napoleon and the French Revolution. In “Count Robert of Paris” we
-see Constantinople in her glory, under the rule of the crafty Alexius.
-We hear the tread of armed hosts passing and repassing along the great
-highway of the world. In “The Betrothed” we see England aroused by the
-voice of her eloquent Archbishop. In “The Talisman” we see the craft
-of Saladin opposed to the discordant army of Richard the Lion-hearted.
-In “Ivanhoe” we find Saxon and Jew pressed down under the heel of the
-Norman. We see Scotland rescued from the oppression of England in
-“Castle Dangerous” and the “Lord of the Isles.” We note the state of the
-Highlands in 1402 in the “Fair Maid of Perth,” and trace the wiles and
-craft of the French Emperor in “Louis the Eleventh,” and in “Anne of
-Geierstein.” We visit with “Marmion” the Battle-field of Flodden, we see
-the light glimmer in the Chancel of Melrose as we turn the pages of “The
-Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and wander with James the Fifth in disguise
-through the wild passes of the Trosachs. In the “Monastery” and “Abbot”
-we read the history of the Catholic and Protestant struggle in Scotland,
-we weep with the unfortunate Mary, and glory in the triumph of Knox. In
-“Kenilworth” we see the power and weakness of the Virgin Queen, and look
-into the sad eyes of Amy Robsart sacrificed upon the altar of ambition.
-
-We see the London of James the First in the “Fortunes of Nigel;” we
-hear in “Rokeby” the echo of the battle of Marston Moor; we follow the
-struggle of Argyle and Montrose in the “Legend;” and talk with the young
-exile, Charles the Second, in the groves of “Woodstock.” In “Peveril of
-the Peak” we find the King upon his throne, surrounded by Buckingham
-and the most desolate court of Europe. In “Old Mortality” we sympathize
-with the Covenanters, a people devout and sincere in their character, as
-they were unpractical in their conduct. In “The Pirate” we note some of
-the surviving customs of old Scandinavia. In the “Bride of Lammermoor”
-we see the decay of a noble House. “The Black Dwarf” is related to the
-fierce discussion in Scotland at the time of the national Union. “Rob
-Roy” introduces us to the Pretender in the Affair of 1715. “The Heart of
-Midlothian” gives us a picture of Edinburgh; and so our historic chain,
-composed of poetic links, brings us down to the beginning of our own
-century. No wonder that Scott has been styled the Great Magician, when,
-by the lifting of his wand, he was able to make the heroes of neglected
-history burst their cerements.
-
-I sat one evening on the banks of the Tweed amid the ruins of Dryburgh
-Abbey, by a plain monument in St. Mary’s Aisle; the soft moonlight,
-streaming through broken casements, added solemnity and beauty to the
-peaceful sylvan scene. I recalled the ruins of Kenilworth Castle, far off
-on another poetic stream, and the pageant of history which there passed
-before England’s Elizabeth; and I thought how much grander the procession
-of Eight Hundred Years, which passed in long review before the mental
-vision of the great novelist and poet, now resting beneath the quiet
-stars. The ivy still rustles in the breeze; the gray ruins again gleam
-in the moonlight, and, reader, the years can never lift their furrows of
-care between me and that twilight picture hallowed by the poetic memory
-of a noble man.
-
-
-
-
-ALASKA—ITS MISSIONS.
-
-By the REV. WM. H. LEWIS.
-
-
-No one familiar with the spiritual obstacles that missionaries encounter
-expects that characters that shall be Christian from highest principle,
-and through and through, will be formed in the first, or even the second
-generation of converts, as a rule, though every mission field furnishes
-shining exceptions to this rule. We shall not be disheartened, then,
-when we come to look into the history of Alaska, if the present state of
-society there is found to be slightly savage still.
-
-Dall, in his work, “Alaska and its Resources,” speaking of the Indian
-character, says: “They are hospitable, good humored, but not always
-trustworthy. They will steal, and have sometimes attacked small vessels
-in the straits.… They sometimes have as many as five wives, though one or
-two is the usual number. Drunkenness is a common vice among them. They
-have an uncontrollable passion for alcohol, which is plentifully supplied
-them by the whalers and traders. They hate the Russians, and will not
-trade with them.… Their customs in regard to the treatment of the old and
-infirm are, from a civilized point of view, brutal and inhuman.… When an
-old person was sick for more than seven days the others put a rope around
-his body and dragged him by it around the house over the stones. If this
-did not kill or cure, the sick person was taken to the place of the
-dead.… Here the individual was stoned or speared, and the body left for
-the dogs to devour, the latter being themselves eaten by the natives.”
-Of the Aleuts proper he says: “Since the time of their first intercourse
-with the Russians, their character, habits, mode of life, and even their
-very name, have been totally changed. Originally they were active,
-sprightly, and fond of dances and festivals. Their mode of worship
-partook more of the character of religion than that of any of the tribes,
-which still remain unchanged. Ground into the very dust by the oppression
-of ruthless invaders, their religious rights, gay festivals and
-determined character have all passed away. A shade of melancholy is now
-one of their national characteristics. All speak some Russian, and many
-of them can converse fluently in that language. The Aleuts are light, and
-nearly the same color as the Innuits of the Northwest. Their features,
-perhaps from the great admixture of Russian blood, are more intelligent
-and pleasing. They are all nominally Greek Catholics, but there is very
-little knowledge of the principles of true Christianity amongst them.
-While further advanced than any other native American tribe, they are far
-from civilized, except in dress, and require careful guardianship and
-improved methods of education to preserve them from the rapacity of the
-traders. The reality of their devotion to a religion which they do not
-comprehend may well be doubted.” He then quotes Veniamínoff’s description
-of the native character, with the comment that it is marked by partiality
-confessed, and that it is mainly due to his goodness of heart and love
-for the people.… In another place, speaking of mission work not Russian,
-he says; “In the evening, the Indians, old and young, gathered in the
-fort yard and sang several hymns with excellent effect. Altogether, it
-was a scene which would have delighted the hearts of many very good
-people who know nothing of Indian character, and as such will doubtless
-figure in some missionary report. To any one who at all understood the
-situation, however, the absurdity of the proceeding was so palpable
-that it appeared almost like blasphemy. Old Sakhuiti, who has at least
-eighteen wives, whose hands are bloody with repeated and most atrocious
-murders, who knows nothing of what we understand by right and wrong, by a
-future state of rewards and punishments, or by a Supreme Being—this old
-heathen was singing as sweetly as his voice would allow, and with quite
-as much comprehension of the hymn as the dogs in the yard. Indians are
-fond of singing; they are also fond of tobacco; and, for a pipeful apiece
-you may baptize a whole tribe of them. Why will intelligent men still go
-on, talking three or four times a year to Indians on doctrinal subjects
-by means of a jargon which can not express an abstract idea, and the use
-of which only throws ridicule on sacred things, and still call such work
-spreading the truths of Christianity? When the missionary will leave the
-trading posts, strike out into the wilderness, live with the Indians,
-teach them cleanliness first, morality next, and by slow and simple
-teaching lead their thoughts above the hunt or the camp—then, and not
-until then, will they be competent to comprehend the simplest principles
-of right and wrong.”
-
-The history of the early dealings of the Russian expeditions with the
-natives is one of continued outrages and retaliations. Almost every
-record of voyages for discovery or trading from 1648-1800 tells of
-atrocities committed by the sailors, and of wholesale massacres by the
-natives. The sole purpose of these expeditions was gain, and no attempt
-was made even to conciliate, much less to evangelize, the Indians. It
-was not until 1793 that a ukase was issued by the Empress of Russia,
-authorizing the introduction of missionaries into the American colonies,
-but unfortunately the same ukase ordered the shipment thither of convicts
-from Russia, and was obeyed in the proportion of a hundred convicts
-to one missionary. In 1794 (May) Shílikoff brought over 190 emigrant
-convicts, two overseers and eleven monks, and Ióasaph, elder of the
-Augustine Friars, was invited to settle in the colony. All the monks
-were obliged to support themselves by constant work, as no provision was
-made for them by the government, and Ióasaph complained bitterly of the
-treatment they received from the Shílikoff Trading Company’s officials.
-At the same time, in 1795, one year after his landing, he reported the
-conversion of 1,200 natives, thus quite justifying the hard criticisms
-quoted above. The census of this colony of Kadiák in the same year gave
-a population of 3,600 natives. In 1796 Father Ióasaph was made bishop
-by imperial ukase, and returned to Irkútsk to receive his consecration.
-Father Iuvenáti was murdered by the natives for attempting to put down
-polygamy. The first Russo-Greek Church was built at Kadiák during this
-year. In 1799 Bishop Ióasaph, with a company of clergy, set sail for his
-new diocese in the ship “Fenie,” which was lost at sea with all on board,
-and from this time to 1810 only one monk was left in the colonies. On the
-10th of June, 1810, Captain Golófnin brought one priest to Sitka in his
-sloop of war “Diana,” and in 1816 Father Sòlokoff arrived from Moscow,
-and took charge of all the mission work in the colonies. There were at
-the death of Governor Baránoff in 1819 five colonies of the company in
-the Aleutian Isles, four on Cook’s Inlet, two on Chujách Gulf, and one
-on Baránoff Island, in Sitka Bay, with three priests in charge, three
-chapels and several schools, where, however, nothing was taught except
-reading and writing in the ecclesiastical characters. Father Mordóffski
-reached Kadiák in 1823, and in 1824 the real history of the mission
-begins with the arrival of the noble and devoted Innocentius Veniamínoff,
-the Russian Selwyn, at Unaláshka, and the commencement of his life-long
-labors among the Aleuts. He was made bishop and transferred to Sitka in
-1834, and the record of his life gives all that there is to be said about
-the progress of religious work among the natives, so far as the Russian
-Church is concerned, up to the time of the transfer of the territory
-to the United States. Mr. Dall’s estimate of his labors is well worth
-quoting here to counterbalance some other quotations that have been made
-from his book. He says, “Whatever of good is ingrained in their (the
-natives’) characters may be in great part traced to the persevering
-efforts of one man. This person was the Rev. Father Innocentius
-Veniamínoff, of the Irkútsk Seminary, since Bishop of Kamchatka. He alone
-of the Greek missionaries to Alaska has left behind him an undying record
-of devotion, self-sacrifice and love, both to God and man, combined with
-the true missionary fire.”
-
-John Veniamínoff was born September 1st, 1797, graduated from the
-seminary at Irkútsk in 1817, and was ordained in May of that year. He was
-advanced to the priesthood in 1821, made Bishop of Kamchatka in 1840,
-and took the title of Innocent. In 1850 his see was made archiepiscopal,
-and in 1868 he was recalled to Russia and made successor of Philaret as
-Metropolitan of Moscow. In 1823 he offered himself as a missionary, and
-was sent by his bishop to Unaláshka. The following extracts from his own
-published account of his mission (“The Founding of the Orthodox Church in
-Russian America,” St. Petersburg, 1840) will give the best idea of what
-he had to do, and how well he did it:
-
- Although the Aleuts willingly embraced the Christian religion,
- and prayed to God as they were taught, it must be confessed
- that, until a priest was settled amongst them they worshiped one
- who was almost an unknown God. For Father Macarius, from the
- shortness of time that he was with them, and from the lack of
- competent interpreters, was able to give them but very general
- ideas about religion, such as of God’s omnipotence, His goodness,
- etc. Notwithstanding all of which the Aleutines remained
- Christians, and after baptism completely renounced Shamanism,
- and not only destroyed all the masks which they used in their
- heathen worship, but also allowed the songs which might in any
- way remind them of their heathen worship to fall into disuse, so
- that when, on my arrival amongst them, I through curiosity made
- inquiry after these songs, I could not hear of one. But of all
- good qualities of the Aleutines, nothing so pleased and delighted
- my heart as their desire, or to speak more justly, _thirst_, for
- the Word of God, so that sooner would an indefatigable missionary
- tire of _preaching_ than they of _hearing_ the Word.
-
-But Veniamínoff, true missionary that he was, was not content with his
-quiet, peaceful labors among the Aleuts. There was a fierce tribe that
-hunted the Russians like wild beasts in the neighborhood of Sitka, and
-to them he determined to carry the gospel. He began to get ready for
-his mission to these Koloshes in 1834, but was detained a year, and at
-last, ashamed of himself for his cowardice, he resolved that immediately
-upon the close of the Christmas holidays he would take his life in his
-hand and go. “Four days before I came to these Koloshes,” he says, “the
-small-pox broke out among them. Had I begun my instruction before the
-appearance of the small-pox they would certainly have blamed me for
-all the evil which came upon them, as if I were a Russian Shaman or
-sorcerer, who sent such plagues amongst them. But glory be to God, who
-orders all things for good.” (Think of thanking God for opening such _a
-door of entrance_, a door from whose opening in such a place any one but
-a man of iron nerves and complete self-surrender would have fled away
-and thanked God for his escape!) “The Koloshes were not what they were
-two years previously” (when he _meant_ to come among them). “Few were
-baptized then, for, while I proclaimed the truth to them, I never urged
-upon them, or wished to urge upon them, the immediate reception of holy
-baptism, but, seeking to convince their judgment, I awaited a request
-from them. Those who expressed a desire to be baptised I received with
-full satisfaction.” After sixteen years of missionary toil in such a
-field Veniamínoff was sent to St. Petersburg to plead for help for the
-mission. The Czar proposed to the Synod to send him back as a bishop, but
-that body objected, because, though he was an excellent man, he had “no
-cathedral, no body of clergy, and no episcopal residence.” “The more,
-then, like an apostle,” said the Czar, and he was consecrated. No sooner
-was he consecrated than he was impatient to get back to his see, and on
-April 30th, 1842, he writes: “At last, thank the Lord God, in America!
-Our doings since we came to Sitka (September 26th) have not yet been
-very important. A mission was sent to Noushtau, which will reach its
-destination not sooner than the _middle_ of _next June_. December 17th
-a sort of Theological School was opened, containing now twenty-three
-persons, creoles and natives. The theological student I. T. was sent
-to Kadiák to learn the language, and in four months has had wonderful
-success. The monk M. has been preaching to the Koloshes, and ⸺ has about
-eighty candidates for holy baptism, and asks it for them; but I do not
-care to be over hasty with them. The more and the better they are taught,
-the more can they be depended upon. I went this spring to Kadiák to
-examine into the affairs of the Church there, and was comforted beyond
-expectation. The church is full every holy day, and Lent was kept by more
-than four hundred of them, some coming from distant places.”
-
-_April 5, 1844._—“The children here (at Sitka) between the ages of
-one and eighteen are very numerous. In the Theological School, in the
-Company’s School, and in two girls’ schools, there are about one hundred
-and forty, and yet I gathered about one hundred and fifty others.” He
-reports four hundred children under instruction, and thirty-five adults
-baptized at their own request. 1845.—The Kwichpak Church numbered two
-hundred and seventy natives and thirty foreigners. Priests visited the
-Kenai and Koetchan tribes, staying with them some months and baptizing
-several converts. And so the good bishop went on from year to year, as
-the Russian Mouravieff says, “Sailing over the ocean, or driving in
-reindeer sledges over his vast, but thinly settled diocese, thousands
-of miles in extent, everywhere baptizing the natives, for whom he has
-introduced the use of letters and translated the gospel into the tongue
-of the Aleutines.”
-
-“The good bishop has little to say of himself. We are told he became
-master of six dialects, spoken in the field committed to his charge. He
-himself translated, or assisted others in translating, large parts of
-God’s Word and the liturgy of his church for the use of the natives.
-For forty-five years, ten of them as Bishop of Kamchatka, eighteen more
-as its archbishop, he labored on, in season and out of season.” (Hale’s
-“Innocent of Moscow.”) And when, in 1867, Philaret died and Innocent was
-chosen Patriarch of Moscow, one of the first works he undertook was the
-organization of the Orthodox Missionary Society, which was the cause of
-as much good at home in awakening the spirit of missions in the church as
-it was abroad in supporting the work in distant fields. This society in
-1877 raised and expended 141,698.65¾ roubles in missionary work.
-
-The following statistics are taken from a report in the _Mission Journal_
-of Irkútsk: “There are in the diocese of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska,
-including about two hundred Sclaves and Greeks at San Francisco, eleven
-thousand five hundred and seventy two members of the Eastern Church. The
-church buildings are nine—viz., at San Francisco, at Sitka (where there
-are about three hundred orthodox), at Kadiák, at Renai, at Bielkoffsky,
-at Ounalashka, at Nonschatchak, on the Island of St. Paul, and at the
-Michaeloffsky Redoubt at Kwichpak. There are two vacancies among the
-clergy at Sitka and at the Kenai Mission.”
-
-Bishop Iohn succeeded Innocent, but soon returned to Russia. Bishop
-Nestor, a man of ability, went out in 1879. He died in 1880, and has
-had no successor. The most influential Russians left the country when
-the territory was ceded, and interest in the missions has largely been
-withdrawn, so that in the last two reports of the Orthodox Missionary
-Society no mention whatever is made of Alaskan Missions.
-
-And this brings us to speak of another work going on there, viz., the
-mission of the Presbyterians. On the 10th of August, 1877, the Rev.
-Sheldon Jackson and Mrs. McFarland reached Fort Wrangel as the first
-missionaries of the Presbyterian body to Alaska. Mr. Jackson reports
-that one of the first sights he saw was an Indian ringing a bell to call
-the people to school. The Indian was Clah, from Fort Simpson, and about
-twenty pupils attended. The Lord’s Prayer was recited in Chinook jargon
-(a mixture of French-Canadian, English, and Indian words), and the long
-meter doxology was sung at closing. The book stock inventoried four
-Bibles, four hymn books (Moody and Sankey), three primers, thirteen First
-Readers, and one wall chart. Twelve thousand dollars were raised as a
-special fund by Mr. Jackson’s efforts at home, and two other missionaries
-were sent out in 1878. In 1880 one missionary and one teacher went
-to Alaska. In 1879 the mission buildings were erected, and the First
-Presbyterian Church of Fort Wrangel organized. The mission includes
-a church building, a Girls’ Industrial Home and school houses, with
-stations among the Chilcats, Hydahs and Hoonyahs, neighboring tribes.
-There are at present three ministers and five male and female teachers at
-the different stations.
-
-To provide for the Swedes and Germans in the employ of the Russian
-American Fur Company, a Lutheran minister was sent to Sitka in 1845 and
-remained till 1852. He was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. Nintec, preaching in
-Swedish and German, who remained until the transfer in 1867, when, his
-support being withdrawn by the Russian government, he returned to Europe.
-
-A Roman Catholic bishop, with one priest, also came to Fort Wrangel in
-1879 to establish a mission, but it is believed that the work has now
-been stopped and the priest withdrawn.
-
-It must be remembered that all that has been cited of the missions so far
-has only to do with the Indians in the neighborhood of Sitka and Fort
-Wrangel, along the southern coast, and on the Lower Yukon. So far, the
-great continent, with its vast and almost unexplored interior, has only
-been trimmed around the edges. Full 40,000 of the possible 60,000 natives
-are yet without Christianity, and one might as well establish a mission
-in Cuba to evangelize Spain, or in the Jerseys to reach the Mahometans,
-as to sit down in a mission at Sitka and hope to reach the scattered
-tribes of Alaska. If we should send missionaries to that neighborhood
-it would only be to make of it a Fort _Wrangel_ indeed, but the whole
-country is open to us, and on the Grand Yukon and its tributaries and
-among the Eskimos of the northern coast there is work enough, yet
-untouched, for all the men the church could send.
-
-Here, then, in as small a compass as possible, is the field, its
-past history and its present condition; a few Greek priests, whose
-congregations are decreased by removals and will eventually die out;
-eight or ten Presbyterians, men and women, who confine their labors to
-Sitka and Fort Wrangel, and have enough to do there; and one clergyman
-of the Church of England, on a river 2,500 miles long, whose banks from
-end to end are his parish; 11,000 members of the Greek Church, 700 or
-800 Presbyterians, and between 2,000 and 3,000 Church of England folk
-familiar with her services and loving her ritual; and at the very least
-calculation 5,500 natives that might be reached and cared for, and
-_should_ be cared for. Here is a chance to show the people of America
-that the church does know how to deal with the Indian question. There
-will be a clear field and no favor for several years to come. A fund of
-$15,000 appropriated by Congress in 1878 for educational purposes, but
-never called for, might be claimed by any party proving to Congress by
-their works that they meant to educate the people. A government of some
-sort, military perhaps, will soon be established. Prospectors after
-everything valuable will overrun the country as soon as it is safe and
-profitable to do so. What shall be done by Christian people for all these
-heathen souls?
-
-
-
-
-OUR NAVAL FORCE.
-
-By LIEUTENANT G. W. MENTZ, U. S. Navy.
-
-
-Beside torpedoes and fortifications there should be always at hand for
-the defense of our coasts, a sufficient number of as good iron-clads and
-torpedo boats as any nation in the world possesses, vessels that can go
-to sea, so that we can meet the enemy with the same kinds of weapons he
-opposes to us, and with enough of them to prevent the first hard blows.
-Then with this as a nucleus, and our ship-builders and our mechanics
-skilled in the work necessary to keep up such an establishment, we could
-build up a sufficiently large navy as the war progressed.
-
-If we wait until war is upon us before we provide ourselves with such
-modern weapons, and such as every nation of any importance, except
-ourselves, possesses, our officers and men would have to fight with
-weapons with which they are unfamiliar, while their opponents are trained
-in their management.
-
-It requires time to learn to handle the new weapons of naval warfare,
-which are very different and much more complicated than those of the
-days of wooden frigates and smooth-bore guns, such as our navy is still
-composed of, and that is another reason why we should keep up a navy in
-time of peace. Torpedo and torpedo-boat attacks, for instance, depend
-almost entirely upon the _skill_ in their management. We have no such
-things as torpedo-boats and whitehead torpedoes, etc., and our officers
-have had no experience or practice with such weapons.
-
-Germany, the leading military nation of the world, has the proper idea
-of preparing her navy for war in time of peace. Beside being provided
-with the best and most effective weapons, all her naval force, active
-and reserve, are exercised each summer and the men and officers are
-trained in their duties on board the vessels, and with the weapons they
-will have to use in time of war. Then, each article, from a sailmaker’s
-needle to a gun is kept ready at the naval stations, all the articles
-belonging to one ship being labeled with the ship’s name, and all kept
-together so that they can instantly be put on board. The German Admiralty
-has recently reported that the whole naval force can be put in effective
-working order, for offensive or defensive movements, in one week’s time.
-It was only by similar preparations with her army in time of peace, that
-she was enabled, so promptly, to meet and to conquer France in 1870.
-
-But let us glance at the kind of weapons which would be used against
-us in a foreign war, and with which we are unprovided and with which
-we must supply ourselves. Except the United States, every nation of
-any maritime importance possesses immense war vessels. There are some
-vessels which have an average speed of sixteen miles an hour; which
-have their batteries and their machinery protected by solid iron of a
-thickness of two feet, or of steel and iron combined of one and a half
-feet thickness; whose battery, or armament rather, consists of a few
-_very_ heavy guns, capable of sending a mass of metal weighing one ton a
-distance of eleven miles, several guns of less weight and power, a number
-of revolving cannon, a dozen or two dozen torpedoes, two torpedo-boats,
-each of these fitted with four torpedoes and a revolving gun; whose crews
-are supplied with rapid, accurate and distant-firing small arms (muskets
-and pistols). In addition to all this, these vessels are rams, and are
-themselves most powerful weapons of war, and could cut in two and sink
-any ship they struck. These vessels, when complete, with their guns,
-ammunition, crews, provisions and coal, everything in fact on board,
-weigh from 9,000 to 13,000 tons. About twenty-seven feet of the depth of
-such a vessel while she floats is beneath the surface of the water, and
-the whole ship is divided into fifty or more water-tight compartments, so
-that if any two compartments are filled with water the ship will still
-float. These iron-clads (more properly armor-clads) do not have this two
-feet thickness of iron all around the ship, only the vital parts, the
-engines and boilers, etc., and that part of the ship where the great guns
-are fought, are so protected. The armor consists of a belt eight to ten
-feet wide (deep) and from one to two feet thick; half of its width or
-depth is below the surface of the water and half is above. The machinery,
-engines and boilers in a war vessel are put in the ship as low down as
-possible, the farther below the surface of the water the better, as below
-the surface of the water a shot is not effective, that is, for a greater
-depth below the surface than one or two feet.
-
-The machinery then is protected from shot on the sides and underneath.
-To protect it from shot on top, a steel deck of three inches thickness
-is built in the ship immediately over the engines and boilers, the deck
-inclining toward the sides of the ship, so that if a shot did strike the
-deck it would be deflected upward and away from the engines and boilers.
-This deck is also placed below the surface of the water, if practicable.
-
-The guns of such a ship are generally placed in a citadel and on the deck
-underneath the citadel. The citadel is clad with iron or steel, and the
-guns on the deck beneath are protected by the belt of armor spoken of
-above.
-
-The amount of metal that the guns can fire from one side of such a ship
-is anywhere from 6,700 to 8,960 pounds. The shot composing this mass of
-metal travel through the air with a velocity of 1,800 feet per second,
-and travel nine miles in about twenty-five seconds. When a shot weighing
-one ton and traveling with such velocity strikes an object squarely, the
-object must indeed be strong to withstand the shock.
-
-What resistance to such a force could the walls of a wooden ship give, or
-even those of ten-sixteenths of an inch of steel or of seven inches of
-iron? Yet there is no United States war vessel with a greater thickness
-of side than seven inches of iron. Most of our monitors have only 5″
-armor.
-
-The people of this country have reason to be proud of the deeds of their
-navy in the past, and many a time has the “ruler of the seas” lowered his
-flag to the stars and stripes. But those victories were gained with ships
-the equal of any in the world, and with guns which had no superiors and
-with crews and officers well trained and accustomed to the use of their
-weapons. Is it so now with our navy? No. We would go into battle with
-the odds all against us. The sides of our ships are as pasteboard to the
-high-power guns of the present time.
-
-Our guns are as much use against two feet of iron armor, or its
-equivalent in steel, as a pop-gun is against a stone wall, and would make
-just about as much impression. And, although we have just as brave,
-patriotic and skillful men and officers in our navy to-day as we ever
-had, they are not skilled or trained in the use of the proper weapons, in
-the management of modern weapons—such as their opponents will use against
-them.
-
-The possession of these instruments of war would make all governments
-very careful and respectful in their treatment of us and increase the
-probabilities of their never being used in actual warfare. The annual
-cost would not amount to the one millionth of the amount of damage
-Brazil, or Italy, or Germany, or France, or England, or Chili even could
-do us in the same length of time if we are without them.
-
-Our navy costs about $15,000,000 yearly, about half of that sum is for
-the pay of officers and men, and it is misapplied, because they are
-being trained in the use of weapons which are no longer effective, and
-our people are not getting the proper return for their money. But the
-fault is their own and the navy is not to blame. The cause of the great
-change that has taken place in the last twenty years in the weapons of
-naval warfare is due to the use of iron and steel, instead of wood, in
-the construction of ships, and, although the navy has asked the country
-repeatedly for modern ships and guns, the people have not seen fit to
-grant them.
-
-This is what our navy consists of: Of high-power rifle guns, such as
-almost every nation possesses, we have one, recently finished, and which,
-owing to lack of experience, required _one year_ to construct.
-
-Of cruising vessels, fit only to destroy merchant vessels of slow speed,
-we have thirty-six, four of which are of iron, whose sides are about one
-half inch thick. None of these vessels would be able to engage the battle
-ships of any maritime nation.
-
-For coast defense, we have nineteen iron-clads; many require extensive
-repairs, and it would take time to put them in condition. None of them
-have sides of a greater thickness than seven inches of iron, and they
-could not withstand the blows of modern guns.
-
-Of guns for the whole fleet, we have, beside the one mentioned above,
-eighty-seven converted rifle guns worth retaining, but they are only of
-fair power. The other guns in the navy, 2,577 in number, are, according
-to a late report of the Secretary of the Navy, “in no real sense suited
-to the needs of the present day.”
-
-Of torpedo-boats such as every other navy has, we have _none_ nor have we
-any torpedo-boats, except the “Alarm.”
-
-Of the personnel, there are, all told, officers, seamen, apprentices and
-marines, 11,918.
-
-Of reserves, we have none but the merchant marine, and merchant sailors
-require considerable training to fit them for war purposes, and none of
-them are trained for such a purpose now.
-
-This force is to protect 10,000 miles of sea coast, the lake coast, the
-second largest merchant marine in the world, the amount of property is
-incalculable, and the interests of 55,000,000 of people. Our country
-is rich and prosperous, and the treasury is fairly bursting with the
-money we have saved. Every year we put away in its vaults $100,000,000,
-for which we have no present use. Our resources in metal in the ore,
-and in everything connected with the material of ship building and gun
-building is almost beyond comparison with any other country. With one
-year’s surplus of revenue we could build a navy that would cause the
-most powerful nations to fear and respect us, and which would be the
-surest harbinger of peace. But our people are beginning in a slow way
-to realize that we need a reorganization of the navy, and Congress has
-appropriated the money for the building of four new vessels. These are
-to be of steel, and are for the purpose of protecting our shipping, our
-citizens abroad, and to police the seas in time of peace and to prey upon
-the enemy’s commerce in time of war. They will have high speed, about
-seventeen miles an hour, and (if Congress appropriates the money) they
-will have high-power modern rifle guns which will compare favorably with
-the guns of similar size of other nations. But they will not be _battle_
-ships, nor coast defense ships. Their sides will be about ten-sixteenths
-of an inch thick, and, although of steel, that thickness will not resist
-a shot from a high-powered rifle gun. These four vessels have been named
-the “Chicago,” “Boston,” “Atlanta” and “Dolphin.” The “Dolphin” is now
-afloat, having been launched Saturday, April 12th, at Chester, Pa., at
-the works of John Roach & Co. The same firm is building the other three
-new vessels. They will all be finished one year from now. The guns for
-the armament are being constructed, some at the Washington Arsenal, some
-at Cold Springs, N. Y., and some at South Boston, Mass. They are all to
-be of steel, and this metal, which is used throughout in the construction
-of the ships and guns, if possible is to be manufactured in the United
-States, however, it may be necessary to send to England for the tubes for
-the larger sized guns. The building of these vessels and guns has given
-an impetus to the steel industry in our country and has been the means
-of giving employment and experience to our mechanics, which almost alone
-repays for the outlay in money.
-
-Building ships and guns in our own country, and of our own metal, and
-with our own workmen, increases our resources just so much, and adds just
-so much to our war strength; and adds just so much, too, to the interest
-the people of the country take in their defenses, in their navy. The
-employment affects thousands of families; not only are the ship builder,
-the gun constructor and the skilled mechanics employed by them benefited,
-but the miners, and all those engaged in transporting the ore and the
-coal from the mines to the workshops, and _their_ families are benefited.
-We have grown to be a great manufacturing country, and the skill and
-ingenuity of our mechanics in the manufacture of some articles are
-recognized by all. Many of our manufactured articles are in use in every
-part of the world. We are unrivaled in our labor-saving machines, because
-it requires, to think out and invent the sewing machine, the agricultural
-machine, etc., etc., something which the mechanics of other countries do
-not possess, superior mental ability, due to our free institutions and
-general education. Here is a field for our mechanics, _the manufacture of
-all war material_. Why should not _we_, instead of Mr. Krupp, supply the
-world with guns? Why should not _we_, instead of Mr. Yarrow, of England,
-supply the world with torpedo-boats, etc., etc.?
-
-We have supplied other nations with muskets; an American invented the gun
-which fires a hailstorm of 1,200 bullets per minute, and which bears his
-name, the Gatling gun; and our fellow countryman is supplying the world
-with revolving cannon, but _not_ from the United States. Every one of
-our manufacturing industries has been assisted by the government by high
-tariff on similar articles of foreign manufacture. But that would not be
-the kind of assistance the manufacture of war material would need to boom
-it along. All that would be necessary for the government to do for that
-industry is to accept and adopt such articles for the use of our army and
-navy as are proved to be valuable, and to provide itself liberally with
-them, and cease doing as it did with the Hotchkiss gun, purchase one or
-two, and drive the inventor to a foreign land, where his invention is
-better appreciated.
-
-It is humiliating to every patriotic man and to every mechanic in our
-land, and a disgrace to the American people that we, a manufacturing
-country, a country full of mechanical genius, a country full of iron ore
-and of coal, a rich country, should go to other nations to buy steel
-plates to use as armor for our monitors, and steel for the tubes of our
-guns. That is what we have recently done, and the “Alert” is now bringing
-us some steel plates made in England. Why should not our manufacturers
-get the large profit there is in the manufacture of weapons of war? All
-they need is a little encouragement from the government, and orders would
-soon come in from foreign governments, for it can not be doubted that
-our superior mechanics in a very short time would produce a superior
-style of weapon. There is at present no demand by our government for
-such articles, while in England there is _constant_ demand for them;
-our mechanics are inexperienced, and governments which have a need for
-such material, and which _do_ prepare for war in time of peace, purchase
-from those skilled and experienced in their make. Our government, by
-encouraging such an industry, would be but providing itself with the best
-of weapons, and would be putting the country in a secure state of defense.
-
-Germany, ten years ago, adopted a scheme for the improvement of her navy,
-which before that time was of little consequence, and part of the policy
-was, to build her own armor-clads, and everything pertaining to the navy
-in her own country, and she has so far succeeded that her navy, though
-not the largest, is one of the _best_ in the world, and was all created
-by her own people, and at a small annual expenditure. Now, the private
-dock-yards in Germany that build some of the new ships of the navy are
-building war vessels for other countries. It is unnecessary to say that
-Germany’s wealth and natural resources are not nearly as great as our own.
-
-At the opening of Congress in 1872, the President, in his message, called
-attention to this subject in the following few but apt and unequivocal
-words:
-
- I can not too strongly urge upon you my conviction that
- every consideration of national safety, _economy_, and honor
- imperatively demands a thorough rehabilitation of our navy.
-
- With a full appreciation of the fact that compliance with the
- suggestions of the head of the Department and of the advisory
- board must involve a large expenditure of the public money, I
- earnestly recommend such appropriation as will accomplish an end
- which seems to me so desirable.
-
- Nothing can be more inconsistent with true public economy than
- withholding the means necessary to accomplish the object intended
- by the constitution to the national legislature. One of these
- objects, and one which is of paramount importance, is declared by
- our fundamental law to be the provision for the “common defense.”
- Surely nothing is more essential to the defense of the United
- States, and of _all_ our people than the efficiency of our navy.
-
- We have for many years maintained with foreign governments the
- relations of honorable peace, and that such relations may be
- permanent is desired by every patriotic citizen of the republic.
-
- But if we heed the teachings of history we shall not forget that
- in the life of _every_ nation emergencies may arise when a resort
- to arms can alone save it from dishonor.
-
-The Secretary of the Navy commences his annual report for the same year
-with this earnest appeal in behalf of the navy:
-
- The condition of the navy imperatively demands the prompt and
- earnest attention of Congress. Unless some action be had in its
- behalf it must soon dwindle into insignificance. From such a
- state it would be difficult to revive it into efficiency without
- dangerous delay and _enormous expense_. Emergencies may at any
- moment arise which would render its aid indispensable to the
- protection of the lives and property of our citizens abroad and
- at home, and even to our existence as a nation.… The mercantile
- interests of our country have extended themselves over all
- quarters of the globe. Our citizens engaged in commerce with
- foreign nations look to the navy for the supervisory protection
- of their persons and property. Calls are made upon the Department
- to send vessels into different parts of the world, in order
- to prevent threatened aggression upon the rights of American
- citizens and shield them in time of civil commotion in foreign
- lands, from insult or personal indignity. It is to be deplored
- that in many such instances it has proved impossible to respond
- to these calls, from the want of a sufficient number of vessels.
-
- These things ought not to be. While the navy should not be large,
- it should _at all times_ afford a nucleus for its enlargement
- upon an emergency. Its power of prompt and extended expansion
- should be established. It should be sufficiently powerful to
- assure the navigator that in whatsoever sea he shall sail his
- ship he is protected by the stars and stripes of his country.
-
-Notwithstanding such messages from the highest authority in our land,
-only _some_ of the money necessary to build four new cruisers has been
-appropriated by Congress. Our people must instruct their representatives
-in Congress to provide them with the means to put them and their
-country in a secure state of defense, else that body, composed of many
-politicians and few statesmen, will never show that they have any other
-welfare at heart than their own reëlection, and the getting or retaining
-of their party in power.
-
-
-
-
-THE COMING SUMMER MEETINGS AT CHAUTAUQUA.
-
-
-The advance number of the _Assembly Herald_ for 1884, already in
-the hands of many of our readers, contains a well arranged, though
-necessarily condensed, program of the exercises for July and August at
-this well known and increasingly popular summer resort. The tens of
-thousands who expect both pleasure and profit from spending part of
-the season there, will be glad to have some notice beforehand of the
-rich things in preparation for them. For our friends who have already
-acquaintance with the place and the persons who have brought it into such
-favorable notice, it is enough to say, there is, in the schedule before
-us, unmistakable evidence that the motto of those in the management of
-Chautauqua is still _Excelsior_. The attractions of the place itself
-have by manifold improvements been constantly increasing. Means have not
-been wanting, and their outlay has been generous—science and art, under
-skillful direction, have done much, never to mar the beauties of nature,
-but rather to unveil features of exquisite loveliness that were partially
-concealed. The grandeur of the noble forest trees that tower above the
-neat cottages is even more majestic since the occasional openings show
-them to better advantage, and afford glimpses of the cerulean vault,
-or floating clouds against which they seem to thrust their branches.
-The native flora, of great richness, has, whenever practicable, been
-protected, while many carefully tended exotics display their modest
-beauty or shed sweet fragrance on the air. The little patches of lawn
-are becoming more beautiful, and the larger one extending from the hotel
-Athenæum to the lake, is arranged with taste, and kept in fine condition.
-The hotel itself is very commodious, furnished and kept in the best
-style. From its spacious verandas there is a delightful view of the lake
-and the landscapes adjacent to it. There are accommodations for about
-five hundred guests, who at moderate cost can, if they will, enjoy all
-the conveniences, comforts and luxuries furnished at the best hotels in
-the large cities.
-
-The places for all public meetings, concerts and class lectures are in
-good order, and many interesting and valuable additions have been made
-to the museum, among which are mentioned a cast of the arch of Titus;
-several new statuettes, just received from the British Museum; also casts
-of the Siloam inscriptions, and of the Moabite stone. Much valuable
-information may be gathered, as well as a pleasant recreation enjoyed
-in the museum. The grounds and principal buildings are provided with
-electric lights, so that there is no groping around in the dark, as was
-the case at our first visits to “The Fair Point,” as the retreat was then
-called.
-
-But “Chautauqua” has a meaning far beyond what belongs to the place,
-charming as the site is, and beyond the material improvements that
-have been made. It is often, and not inaptly, spoken of as an “idea,”
-a thought or conception of a desired object, and the way to reach it.
-The thought, however vague at first, had life and power in it, took
-form, and was cherished till a new system was evolved—one that at first
-proposed more complete normal instruction and thorough preparation for
-Sunday-school work. But the _idea_ soon so expanded as to take in
-everything pertaining to the proper development and culture of human
-beings. From the first inception of this grand work that, in eleven
-years, has extended into every state in the Union, and influenced many
-kindred educational enterprises, there has been no standing still.
-The idea having thorough possession of the minds that entertained it,
-“progress” has been the watchword, and, fortunately, the management has
-been in such competent hands that the advance movements have always
-been in the right direction. The trustees and other business officers
-have approved themselves as wise counselors, and been liberal in their
-personal sacrifices of the time and means necessary to forward the
-enterprise, while the Superintendent of Instruction and President of
-the association have demonstrated to all their rare qualifications for
-the responsible positions they occupy. With faith in the enterprise, a
-worthy object in view, and the resolute purpose to accomplish it, all
-obstacles have been overcome, and a marvelous fertility of invention
-shown in the methods adopted. It is not too much to say that all the
-important measures proposed and adopted have been found both practicable
-and useful. Skilled architects have wrought in the Assembly, but their
-united efforts did not make it. Chautauqua, as it is to-day, confessedly
-far surpassing the most sanguine hopes of its founders, was never made.
-It was born and grew. It has vital elements; and whereunto it may yet
-grow, no one can tell. It is already, though in its youth, a university
-in fact, as well as by the charter obtained from the legislature. It
-employs some thirty or more able professors, selected because of their
-known ability and success as teachers in the several departments to which
-they are assigned.
-
-We take note of a few things in their order:
-
-_The Teachers’ Retreat_, under the personal direction of some of the
-foremost educators of the age, will open July 12. It is specially for the
-benefit of secular teachers, and a large number of them are interested
-in it. The time thus spent in counsel and delightful social intercourse,
-without interfering with the needed rest, recreations and pleasures of
-the summer vacation, will lead to a higher appreciation of their work,
-with a knowledge of the best methods of accomplishing it, and make their
-return to the school room a delight.
-
-_The Chautauqua School of Languages_ includes Hebrew, Greek,
-Latin, French, German, Spanish and English. This school is not for
-undergraduates alone, as the instruction is given in a way to illustrate
-the best methods of teaching. Students, if prepared, may profitably
-pursue the study of several languages at the same time, but are not
-registered as beginning more than one. As all having experience in the
-matter know, much depends on starting right, and any one, of fair ability
-and a firm purpose, with the help and direction furnished at Chautauqua,
-can, in due time, become an accomplished and thorough linguist.
-
-_The School of Theology_, J. H. Vincent, D.D., President, is to commence
-its first session July 12. It will be an attraction to many. The studies
-and topics for discussion, we see, are arranged not alone for beginners,
-but to allure ministers of experience to review first principles, and
-extend their acquaintance with truths that the wisest know but in part.
-
-_The School of Elocution_—open from July 12th to the 25th—will be in
-charge of Prof. Cummock, a gentleman of culture, and thoroughly fitted
-for his position. Too many offer themselves to read and speak in public
-who know almost nothing of English phonation, and were never trained to
-pronounce the language distinctly and forcibly. If two-thirds of the
-average clergymen of the country, who are not wanting in ability, could
-be persuaded to seek, in their summer vacations, such instructions in
-voice culture and manner, as are now offered them, it would add much to
-their present efficiency, and make the Sabbath services a delight to
-their hearers.
-
-_The Sunday-School Normal Department_ retains its prominent place in the
-program, and the managers have made a wise selection of the persons to
-whom the work is committed.
-
-_Chautauqua Music_, both instrumental and vocal, has always been of a
-high order, and a source of much pleasure to those in attendance. From
-the grand organ, chorus choir, Tennesseeans, skillful directors and
-distinguished soloists that are promised, we may expect special richness
-in that part of the feast of fat things.
-
-The lectures in the Amphitheater and Hall of Philosophy will be by men of
-acknowledged ability, equal to the best that have been on the platform
-before them. By such men to such audiences no second rate productions
-will be presented.
-
-Recreations are recognized as desirable, and provided for—such as will
-please all and injure none. Nothing innocent and elevating is forbidden.
-Those who enjoy good society, and the friendly intercourse of cultured
-people, find that at the Assembly in the grove thoroughly refining
-influences are prevalent, and seem never to tire of praising the resort.
-
-Although some imitations have been attempted, the original Chautauqua is
-unrivaled, the cheapest, most accessible, and for many reasons the most
-enjoyable summer resort in all the land. If you are a stranger, get the
-program as published in the _Assembly Herald_, study it, and in due time
-report in person on the ground. You will then know, and unless different
-from most well disposed persons, you will not need a second invitation to
-come.
-
-
-
-
-GOING TO EUROPE.
-
-
-Stowed away among the cherished plans of most people is generally a
-European trip. Sometimes the plan is vague, to be sure. Sometimes the
-probabilities are that it will never in the world be carried out. However
-that may be, it is a good thing for which to plan. Learning something
-about the conditions and details of European traveling gives not a little
-of the relish of the actual trip, and a preparatory journey on paper does
-much to educate us to travel—as important a training, by the way, as
-traveling.
-
-The value of this practice was admirably illustrated last summer at
-Chautauqua by Dr. Vincent, in his introduction to the first tourist’s
-trip beyond the sea. He said:
-
- When I was a boy I took a trip to Europe without leaving home. I
- imagined myself traveling all over the continent of Europe, going
- to Egypt and Palestine. I cut out a lot of paper and gave it
- value as money, foreign money and American money, and every once
- in a while I would take it up and imagine it covering the expense
- of the trip. I would read a little, and imagine myself going
- almost everywhere. I said to myself: “If I can ever go to Europe
- I shall certainly go,” and I went.
-
- I have often said to myself, if I were a teacher, knowing the
- power of the imagination over children, I would take my school on
- a trip to Europe, and when they grew weary with the recitations
- and of the monotonous tasks or other routine of school life, I
- would say: “Now let us have a bit of fun, let us go to Europe.”
- I have thought of how much geography, history and architecture I
- could bring out on a trip to Europe! What demand there would be
- all the while for the knowledge of arithmetic! How many things
- I could teach a lot of youngsters in the average school room in
- the way of an imaginary trip to Europe that should last several
- weeks or months! And what an opportunity we have, what facilities
- we have for the furtherance of a scheme like this, in the
- photographs, the engravings and books of travel, and all sorts of
- things that abound everywhere, by which little people might go
- with you, and be glad all the while they went, and learn all the
- more because they were glad.
-
- And then how much more intelligent the traveler would be in
- his maturer years! Men and women who imagine themselves going
- to Europe become much more intelligent observers on a trip to
- Europe. It pays double value to them.
-
-Imaginary trips beyond the sea may teach two very important things: How
-to travel and how to observe. It is impossible for a novice to make a
-European trip with the ease with which one would journey about the
-United States. One must encounter strange customs, trying climates, new
-languages, endless interesting sights. He will be on the verge of losing
-his baggage, dire calamity! he will have his trunk ransacked, he will be
-charged extra for over-weight, he will have to wait and fight and worry
-his way unless fortified by a knowledge of what he must go through with,
-and of how to act under all circumstances. He will miss much that he
-wants to see, and see much in which he is not particularly interested,
-unless his trip is thoroughly planned and he knows accurately what he is
-going to see and where to go to see it.
-
-To study up for a European trip begin with your pocket-book, and ask,
-“Can I afford it?” The voyage is of course the first item. The different
-lines which cross the Atlantic—no less than twelve in number—are very
-nearly uniform in their charges, in their accommodations, and in their
-provisions for the safety of their passengers. A first-class passage over
-and back may be put at $140, but as steerage passenger one may go for
-about $60. The expense of traveling in Europe varies with the caution,
-tastes and habits of the person. Supposing that you are willing to walk
-much, to go to second-class hotels, to ride in second or third-class
-carriages, and take very little luggage, you may make your trip for from
-$2 to $3 per day, and in that way, too, you have the advantage of seeing
-and hearing very much that the more expensive and, in consequence, more
-exclusive style of traveling denies. More than half of the unpleasantness
-of traveling second-class in Europe is in the disagreeable sound of the
-word “second-class.” On the Continent the associations of the third-class
-carriage are by no means unpleasant—nearly all students and many
-professional men travel in that way. It is, too, the only way in which to
-come in contact with the people and study their habits:
-
-First-class traveling may be estimated at about $7 per day in Great
-Britain, and $6 on the Continent. The items which must be added to the
-usual hotel expenses and car and carriage rates consist largely of fees
-to servants in the hotels and restaurants, and to the guards, porters
-and guides that seem to be essential to each traveler. It is said that
-many servants on the Continent receive no wages except the fees from
-travelers. It is not strange then that the result is that in order to
-receive any respectable attention one must pay often and liberally. A
-not inconsiderable part of the day’s expense is the little fee which is
-required at the gate of churches, castles, museums, parks, and where-not.
-
-It may be roughly estimated that a tour of three months through England,
-Scotland, France, Germany, Holland and Italy can be made for $650. Of
-course this is making no allowance for purchases, which latter, it is
-well to warn lovers of bric-a-brac, are a continual snare to pocket-books
-and incumbrance to luggage.
-
-If you can afford the trip, then pack your trunk. Apropos of this
-operation it is well to remember that much luggage is a continual
-annoyance and expense. In France you can carry but fifty-five pounds
-free; for all over that amount you must pay. On the railways of Germany,
-Holland, Italy and Switzerland no luggage, as a rule, is free. The
-truth is, you must submit to expense and trouble for every vestige over
-what you can carry in your hand. A sorry outlook for Americans, who
-are accustomed to the generous outfit which our capacious “Saratogas”
-allow. The useful little “steamer trunks,” about twenty-five inches in
-length, eighteen in width and fourteen deep, hold considerable property
-if they be well packed, and one can easily arrange to leave all the ocean
-paraphernalia, including the steamer chairs—a _sine qua non_ to ocean
-travel, by the way—at the port of landing, until their return. Perhaps
-the best plan is to take only necessary clothing—very little finery and
-all the small conveniences which are requisite for comfortable living at
-home. A very useful and formerly essential part of your outfit will be
-your passport. Although not now absolutely necessary, except in Russia
-and Portugal, it is a very convenient document, as it secures many
-privileges to its possessor. It does seem strange to be obliged to carry
-a paper testifying that you are yourself but in the masses of humanity
-which throng Europe it is not surprising that it is sometimes necessary
-to be identified. In the United States the Secretary of State has the
-power of granting passports. In order to procure one an affidavit of
-citizenship, with papers of naturalization, if a naturalized citizen,
-must be forwarded. This must be accompanied by the affidavit of a
-witness, and an oath of allegiance to the United States, all these duly
-made and sworn before a justice of the peace. With these go a description
-of your person, in which your age is given, your height, the color of
-your eyes and hair, the size of your nose and mouth, the length of your
-chin, your complexion and the shape of face.
-
-On reaching Europe it will be necessary to secure the indorsement,
-or _visa_, as it is called, of the American minister, or consul, and
-afterward of the minister of the country to be visited. The last item of
-business to worry you before you leave is to put your funds into a shape
-in which you will have no trouble. The “letter of credit” is undoubtedly
-the favorite method, as by it any amount may be drawn at almost any
-place a tourist will visit. Several banking houses of New York furnish
-them. Napoleons are current in all parts of the Continent, and English
-sovereigns pass in Belgium, Holland and Germany. _Circular notes_ of from
-£10 to £20 and upward may be obtained and are available throughout Europe.
-
-These matters arranged, there is a much more important one to occupy your
-attention—to plan your trip. The indefinite purpose of tourists, their
-hap hazard efforts to see everything, involves them too often in a jumble
-of misconnections, lost days, out-of-the-way trips, and unnecessary
-expense, where a careful arrangement of their plan beforehand would have
-saved them time, trouble and money. Plan your trip. If you can go for
-but six weeks or three months, do not try to see all Europe and part of
-Asia in that time. Be content to “do” thoroughly a smaller territory,
-and be assured that you will be the gainer. It is well to invest in a
-guide-book—a stout, latest edition, reliable guide-book—Harper’s or
-Appleton’s is best—and select your trip. Decide exactly where you want to
-go, and what you want to see. If you are interested in paintings, prepare
-an outline of the European schools of painting, with the examples of each
-that will be found on your route. Put down on your chart the subjects of
-these pictures, and an outline history of the artists. Thus equipped you
-can study and enjoy the work without wasting time in learning historical
-details. It is wise to know something of the history of each locality
-which you visit, to be familiar with the palaces, cathedrals and museums
-of the cities, and the government, customs and employments of the people.
-Nor is it at all difficult to learn these things. Books of travels,
-delightful magazine papers, newspaper letters teem with information which
-can all be utilized on an imaginary European trip. It would be wiser
-if many people who spend much time in acquiring a slight smattering of
-French, German and Italian in order to make their way understandingly
-on the Continent would let the language go and study the countries,
-their cities and their people. Better, because English is spoken at
-all the leading European hotels and by most guides, and at nearly all
-points interpreters may be found to assist in making any necessary
-arrangements. Of course the greatest amount of good can only be gained by
-one commanding the languages, but where there must be a choice between a
-smattering of them and general information on what one is about to see,
-by all means choose the latter.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Through the whole course of life it is right to hold, and to have held
-in a preëminent degree, the kindest language toward our parents, because
-there is the heaviest punishment for light and winged words; for Nemesis,
-the messenger of Justice, has been appointed to look after all men in
-such matters.—_Plato._
-
-
-
-
-C. L. S. C. WORK.
-
-By Rev. J. H. VINCENT, D. D., SUPERINTENDENT OF INSTRUCTION.
-
-
-July is one of the C. L. S. C. vacation months.
-
- * * * * *
-
-“Memorial Day,” Sunday, July 13. Read Paul’s wonderful words about
-“Charity” in 1st Corinthians, xiii.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Salutations—sincere and abundant—to all the members of the Circle who
-have opportunity this month of meeting in the green woods or by the
-lake-side at one of the “Summer Assemblies.” Hold “Round-Tables.” Talk
-and plan, and then report the new things you think of. If you can not go
-to any of the great Assemblies, hold a comfortable little “C. L. S. C.
-Grove-Rest” or “Go-to-the-Grove” picnic in your own neighborhood. One
-such humble gathering may be the seed of a grand Assembly one of these
-days.
-
- * * * * *
-
-A member of the class of ’87 asks concerning the mountain known as
-Quarantania. This is a high bluff on the west of the Jordan, near the
-north end of the Dead Sea, and believed to be the Mountain of Temptation.
-
- * * * * *
-
-“Hand Book of Abbreviations and Contractions, current, classical and
-mediæval; also of secret, benevolent, and other organizations, legal
-works of the United States and Great Britain, and of the Railroads of the
-American Continent.” By the Rt. Rev. Samuel Fallows, A.M., D.D. Chicago:
-The Standard Book Company.
-
-A _multum in parvo_ for the general reader. The title fully unfolds the
-character of the volume.
-
- * * * * *
-
-“A Complete Hand Book of Synonyms and Antonyms, or synonyms and words
-of opposite meaning. With an appendix.” By the Rt. Rev. Samuel Fallows,
-A.M., D.D. Chicago: The Standard Book Company.
-
-This compact, neatly printed, well-bound volume is one of the most
-valuable of the “Standard Hand-Book Series,” edited by Bishop Fallows,
-of Chicago. For the English reader or writer desiring carefully to
-discriminate between words and phrases, anxious to use language most
-appropriately, we know of no single volume equaling this hand-book for
-utility and general adaptation to his needs.
-
- * * * * *
-
-To a member of the circle who is really a very large-hearted and noble
-man, as I have since found him, but who is “decidedly opposed to teaching
-religious truths in schools of any kind,” and who objects to being
-required to read the “Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation,” I have made
-the following reply, which I insert here, as it may meet similar cases:
-
-_My Dear Sir_:—Your letter of December 27 is before me. We have provided
-a college outlook, a college outlook which touches every department
-in the realm of culture. We give a bird’s eye view of this vast world
-which appeals to every faculty of the soul. We touch the physical man,
-the physical world in which he lives, above among stars, below among
-stones, about among plants and animals. We study history, the history
-of the earth as revealed in science, the history of man as unfolded in
-the traditions and records of the race. We study political and social
-economy. We also study somewhat (to a very limited degree) the phenomena
-and laws of man’s moral and spiritual being. _It would be a strange
-course of study that ignored faculties as real, as universal, and as
-persistent in their operations as the religious faculties._ We avoid
-scrupulously everything that tends to the promotion of sectarianism in
-thought or spirit, but we believe in that profound philosophy, which all
-leading educators of life have recognized, that “the fear of the Lord
-is the beginning of wisdom.” A culture of muscle alone is a one-sided
-culture. The culture of the reason alone is equally one-sided. A culture
-of memory alone is folly. The true culture is a culture of body, mind
-and heart, the soul in its entirety, with its many-sided relations to
-the truths which belong to those relations: God, neighbor, home, life,
-nation, time, eternity. The C. L. S. C. would indeed be a most narrow
-and bigoted thing if it were to refuse attention to the religious world.
-Now concerning Dr. Walker’s work on “The Plan of Salvation,” the name is,
-I confess, quite misleading. It is a book written forty years ago, by
-one of the ablest intellects of America. No American religious book has
-had a wider circulation. It is profoundly philosophical, and it gives a
-most original view of the old Jewish history; and a man’s education who
-calls himself an infidel is incomplete without reading that book. There
-is not the slightest tinge of sectarianism about it. It is a vigorous
-classic which every student of the English tongue should read. Hundreds
-of our readers, who are not members of any evangelical church, and who
-are skeptical in their tendency, have read the book with great delight,
-and though prejudiced somewhat against the title, have given words of
-testimony to its wonderful power as a literary production, to say nothing
-about the vigor of its arguments. You say you “find sermons in stones,
-and _good in everything_.” Can you not, _if you find good in everything,
-find good in a philosophical book written by a mighty intellect,
-acknowledged by the scholars of the past forty years_? “The Plan of
-Salvation” is not a discussion of the way a soul is to be saved. It is
-a discussion of the philosophy underlying the biblical history. You can
-not afford not to read it, even if you decline to prosecute our course
-of study. I am a little surprised that a broad man should be “decidedly
-opposed to teaching religious truths in schools of any kind.” What would
-a culture be that ignored the religious? One of the strongest arguments
-that I ever read in favor of the Bible as a text-book for study, was
-written by Huxley, who pleaded fervently for it as _a book for study in
-every secular school_. I do not “compel” you to read Walker’s book; I do
-not say you MUST buy the book. You may read any book on any phase of the
-question, Roman or Protestant, according to the tendency of your faith.
-_Something_ on that line you must read to complete our broad survey.
-
-
-
-
-THE C. L. S. C. COURSE FOR 1884-’85.
-
-
-Beginner’s Hand Book in Chemistry, Prof. Appleton.
-
-Scientific Readings in THE CHAUTAUQUAN: “The Circle of the Sciences;”
-“Huxley on Science;” “Home Studies in Chemistry,” by Prof. J. T. Edwards;
-“Easy Lessons in Animal Biology,” Dr. J. H. Wythe; “The Temperance
-Teachings of Science;” “Studies in Kitchen Science and Art.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-Barnes’s “Brief History of Greece.”[A]
-
-“Preparatory Greek Course in English;”[B] Wilkinson.
-
-“College Greek Course in English;” Wilkinson.
-
-Chautauqua Text-Book No. 5, “Greek History;”[A] Vincent.
-
-“Cyrus and Alexander;” Abbott.
-
-Historical Readings in THE CHAUTAUQUAN: “Ancient Life in Greece;” “Greek
-Mythology.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-“The Art of Speech,” volume one; Dr. L. T. Townsend.
-
-General Readings in THE CHAUTAUQUAN: “Talks About Good English.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-“The Character of Jesus;” Horace Bushnell.
-
-“How to Help the Poor;” Mrs. James T. Field.
-
-“History of the Reformation;” Bishop J. F. Hurst.
-
-Sunday Readings in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Readings in _Our Alma Mater_:[C] “Lessons in Every-Day Speech,” Prof. W.
-D. MacClintock; “Lessons in Household Decoration,” Miss Susan Hayes Ward;
-“Lessons in Self-Discipline—Memory, Thinking, Selection of Books,” etc.
-Official Communications to Members.[D]
-
-[A] Not to be read by the classes of ’85, ’86 and ’87.
-
-[B] Not to be read by the classes of ’85 and ’86.
-
-[C] The _Alma Mater_ is sent free to all members of the C. L. S. C. who
-are recorded at Plainfield, N. J., and whose annual fee is paid.
-
-[D] To recorded members several other valuable documents are forwarded
-without additional expense.
-
-
-
-
-LOCAL CIRCLES.
-
-
-If we change our order this month and begin the gossip from our letters
-with the “University Circle,” of =San José, Cal.=, it is only because
-we wish to call particular attention to the thrifty growth of our work
-on the Pacific coast. Mrs. Fields, the competent secretary of that
-branch, sends us this pleasant report of the San José work: “Colleges
-and universities are no longer confined to the east. They spring up
-like Jonah’s gourd with the westward moving star of empire, and are
-only checked by the setting of that star in the great western ocean.
-California boasts of its grand State University at Berkeley, which she
-thinks rivals Harvard and Ann Arbor, and we of San José point to our
-university with its commodious buildings, its noble president, Dr. C.
-C. Stratton (widely known also as president of our Pacific Coast C. L.
-S. C.), its excellent faculty, and hundreds of earnest students, and
-feel that it is an institution of which any city or state might well be
-proud. In the shadow of this university there very naturally has arisen a
-Chautauqua circle. There are no unfriendly comparisons and inhospitable
-exclusiveness, no neighborhood jealousies or rivalries between ‘the
-University of the Pacific’ and that little branch of the great ‘People’s
-University,’ known as the ‘University Circle.’ Two of the oldest and
-most honored professors in the former institution, together with all the
-ladies of the faculty, are members of the circle. They freely give their
-time and genial presence to the semi-monthly meetings of the C. L. S.
-C. whenever it is possible for them to do so, and by their wide range
-of knowledge add greatly to the interest and profit of these occasions.
-The rest of the members of the University Circle are neighbors and
-friends who are greatly interested in the reading, and who believe in
-the value of association and mutual helpfulness. They are mostly middle
-aged people, though there is a sprinkling of gray hairs on some brows,
-and here and there is a bright young face. They count twenty when all
-told, and usually have a good representation present. The meetings are
-held in the different homes, so that to each falls his allotment of these
-hospitable pleasures. One evening there was ‘a chiel amang ’em takin’
-notes,’ who felt sure that this University Circle ought to let its light
-shine for the benefit of the whole Chautauqua family, and these notes
-are herewith presented: ‘Eighteen Chautauquans present in the cheerful
-double parlors of Mrs. G. A gentle-faced member of the Society of Friends
-presided, and illumined the circle with her beaming smile and her bright,
-suggestive leadership. The members recited from slips of paper, each
-naming a theme numbered in the order of their occurrence in the lesson,
-and distributed previously among the class. Each person, while studying
-the whole lesson carefully, had made special preparation on his or her
-own topic. This brought a great deal of careful research and fresh
-thought to bear on the lesson, and every one seemed thoroughly prepared,
-from the tall, scholarly Prof. M., with his slight, professional stoop,
-arising from a long habit of digging among Greek roots, down to the
-bright young girl who had brought her fine new classical atlas and was
-ready to point out all localities and routes of travel named in the
-lesson. The various themes were taken up in order, eliciting considerable
-discussion, bits of comment and remark, with ever and anon a seed-thought
-of spiritual application from the gentle Quakeress. If THE CHAUTAUQUAN
-were not crowded with good things this report might be made of indefinite
-length, but it shall be brought to a speedy close. It needs not to be
-added that the onlooker went away saying: How beautiful, how rational,
-how Christian a method of spending an evening! Who can estimate the
-power for good which such a circle exerts upon its members and upon the
-community which is so fortunate as to possess it!’”
-
-An interesting plan has just been carried out by the =Montreal, Canada=,
-circle. They have held an open meeting, where a _resumé_ of the winter’s
-work was given by the president, and the objects of the society were
-explained for the benefit of outsiders. An admirable plan, we should
-think it would prove. A _resumé_ of one winter’s work in the C. L. S.
-C. must impress a candid person of the genuine merit in the scheme, and
-necessarily would enlarge the borders of the Circle’s influence. They
-do things well in Canada. That famous Toronto Central Circle impresses
-this truth upon us afresh each time we receive a report from them. This
-month they send an admirable program of their regular monthly meeting, at
-which, in addition to a lecture by Prof. Hutton, of University College,
-on “Phases of Roman Life and Literature with some Modern Analogies,”
-reports from local circles were called for, a Round-Table conference on
-the work was held, and a half hour was spent in singing Chautauqua songs,
-every one who could sing being specially invited to come and join.
-
-The C. L. S. C. movement has reached the beautiful village of
-=Strondwater=, near Portland, =Maine=, where they have a small but
-enthusiastic circle of seven members. Their weekly meetings are pleasant
-and profitable, and they enjoy to the utmost their studies in Greek and
-Roman History and Literature. From the neighboring state of New Hampshire
-is reported the “Parker’s Falls Circle” of =Newmarket=, another “little
-pentagon of ladies” holding occasional meetings, conducted on the
-conversational plan. They write that they are so situated that they can
-not well have regular meetings, but all enjoy the course, and hold fast
-to the motto, “Do not be discouraged.”
-
-In October of 1883 the “Longfellow Circle” was organized at =North
-Cambridge, Mass.= From their report we find that they have over twenty
-members, whose exercises are varied to avoid monotony. A committee of
-three arrange a program for each month, which is printed by hectograph
-and circulated among the members. They have observed the memorial days
-of Longfellow, Shakspere and Addison, and find their meetings very
-interesting.
-
-At =West Newton, Mass.=, where there is a flourishing circle of forty
-who show a great deal of interest and pride in the work, Shakspere’s day
-was observed with a very interesting program, in which we are pleased to
-notice that tableaux took a prominent part. This circle sends us word
-that this is their first year’s experience with a local circle, but that
-they have enjoyed it so much that they will certainly continue it again
-another winter.
-
-From =Chelsea, Mass.=, is a suggestive account of the origin of their
-circle: “In 1880 three members of one family heard of the C. L. S. C. and
-immediately seized the idea and joined the class of 1884. In the fall of
-1882 they discovered that an elderly lady of their church had been to
-Chautauqua that year, and was also an ’84 member, full of enthusiasm.
-In 1883 three of their group enjoyed Framingham from beginning to end,
-while the fourth spent the season again at Chautauqua. Result—in October,
-1883, was organized the ‘Mt. Bellingham Local Circle,’ with fourteen
-live members, among whom are the four irrepressibles, of ’85, while the
-rest are proud of belonging to the ‘Pansy Class.’ We have just become
-acquainted with a sister circle of some ten members connected with the
-Central Congregational Church, and have enjoyed an evening together.
-We meet on the first Monday and third Wednesday of each month, while
-the ‘Pansy Circle’ meets fortnightly on Monday evening. This gives us a
-chance to make visits without interfering with the regular work of either
-circle.”
-
-At =Shirley, Mass.=, a circle was organized in December, 1883, with
-a membership of seven. Much interest is felt, and the meetings are
-thoroughly enjoyed.
-
-From historic =Plymouth, Mass.=, the secretary of the “Plymouth Rock
-Circle” writes: “Having been very quiet and studious the past winter, and
-not having increased in numbers, we thought it best to invite some of our
-friends to a Chautauqua supper. Accordingly, on the evening of May 12
-quite a goodly number entered the prettily decorated Grand Army Hall,
-and were soon seated at the well filled tables. The supper seemed to be
-enjoyed, also the program which followed. Some of our guests were so well
-pleased that they think of becoming members of the class of ’88.”
-
-The tide of Chautauqua enthusiasm reached =Brighton, Mass.=, last fall,
-and on October 8, 1883, a local circle was organized. It was called the
-“Union Circle of Brighton and Allston,” as the members come from both
-places. At the meetings of the circle they review the readings of the
-intervening two weeks, and for that purpose questions are prepared on
-the different subjects by the members. The circle is composed of eleven
-members, one of whom is vice president of the class of ’87 of the New
-England Branch of the C. L. S. C.
-
-At =Lawrence, Mass.=, the circle is doing excellent work. Prof. Richards
-gave them three lectures in November, and Rev. W. F. Crofts another
-January 21. The Round-Tables have been well attended and thoroughly
-appreciated. The circle laments the loss of one of their members, Mrs. C.
-E. Daniels, a devoted Christian and an enthusiastic worker in the C. L.
-S. C., who sailed with her son on the ill-fated “City of Columbus.” Her
-place can not be easily filled, and her sad fate has cast a gloom over a
-large circle of relatives and friends.
-
-From =Gloucester, Mass.=, a member writes: “We are still alive as a
-circle and at work. We feel that the true C. L. S. C. spirit is here. We
-meet once a month and study unitedly sections of the month’s readings. We
-have found this year’s course more in accordance with our need than any
-previous year’s. We number not quite a dozen regular members, all of whom
-expect to forward their memoranda by July 1.”
-
-The “Vincent Circle,” of =Troy, N. Y.=, remembered the bard of Avon’s
-day. Each member of the large circle received the neatly printed program
-with this stirring call to duty attached: “Don’t fail to attend this
-extra meeting. Come with true Shaksperean enthusiasm. Have a half score
-of quotations on tongue’s end. Bring a friend with you, and ‘Chautauqua
-Songs.’ Invite members of other circles.”
-
-A report comes from =Brocton, N. Y.=, one of Chautauqua’s neighbors,
-of the really remarkable work going on there: “In our _sixth_ year of
-reading in the C. L. S. C. we number twenty-five members. We have kept
-up our weekly gatherings in class through the winter with a good degree
-of interest, feeling that there is an influence of power in the work,
-and its surroundings, which lifts us above the common level of life
-into a purer and nobler atmosphere. The graduates of 1882 are formed
-into a class of the ‘Hall in the Grove,’ and have most of the winter
-been reading Blackburn’s ‘Church History.’ We are all hoping to live to
-celebrate the Founder’s Day.”
-
-A very enjoyable social reunion was recently held by the circle at
-=Syracuse, N. Y.= From the newspaper report we learn that there were
-about one hundred and fifty past and present members of the C. L. S. C.
-there. The Syracuse professors of the public schools and university have
-shown great kindness to this circle. The principal of one of the schools
-is at present president of the circle. Through the kindness of the Board
-of Education one of the school buildings was thrown open to the club
-for their reunion. We notice on the program of exercises carried out, a
-humorous poem by Mrs. Frank Beard, and an address from Mr. W. A. Duncan
-on “The Chautauqua Idea,” as well as several addresses by well known
-Syracuse educators.
-
-=Prattsburgh, N. Y.=, has a circle but one year younger than that of
-Brocton. They write: “Our local circle organized October 1, 1883, for
-its fifth year’s work, with eighteen regular members, an increase over
-former years. We have representatives in each of the six classes; one
-graduate of ’82 and two of ’83 still remaining true to the local circle.
-Our meetings are held weekly at the homes of the members, and though in a
-measure informal, we find them both interesting and profitable.”
-
-In the college town of =Ithaca, N. Y.=, a circle has, of course,
-splendid opportunities of getting assistance from Cornell University,
-opportunities which the large circle of forty there improves. This
-society spent a very interesting evening with Shakspere—the first
-memorial day they have had the pleasure of celebrating.
-
-The =Oswego= and =Scriba, N. Y.=, circles joined in a reunion in the
-spring, at which they carried out a fine program, and were served
-afterward with a sumptuous repast. From =Fulton, N. Y.=, comes a very
-enthusiastic report: “The ‘Lawrence’ C. L. S. C. of this village is
-a flourishing and enthusiastic circle, numbering about forty regular
-members, and nearly as many honorary members. It was organized in October
-1883, and was the outgrowth of a small circle of eight which had been
-formed the year previous. During 1883 these classes met separately,
-as two distinct circles, but at the commencement of the present year
-they consolidated, and now form a large class of earnest, interested
-students. We have observed the memorial days, giving a short sketch of
-the individual and extracts from his writings, interspersed with music.
-In March we had the rare treat of listening to a lecture by Dr. Vincent,
-he being one of the lecturers of our village ‘Popular Lecture Course.’
-After the lecture the Chautauquans gave him a reception, and all had the
-pleasure of being personally introduced to him. He gave us an inspiring
-talk upon the theme of which he never tires, and intensified our love
-for this noble course, and increased our desire to do more and better
-work, feeling that though it may be superficial in comparison to a
-regular college course, it is elevating in its influence and character,
-and enables those of us who have left youth and school days far back
-in the past, to feel that we are not retrograding, but at least can be
-within hailing distance of those who are fresh and thorough in the same
-subjects. We have retained nearly every one of our original members, and
-are constantly gaining new ones. Already can we see the influence of the
-C. L. S. C. work in our thriving village in the increase of literary
-societies, and a growing desire for a more solid class of reading. We
-feel that the Chautauqua Idea is of heavenly birth, and have faith that
-each circle is a link in a chain that will encircle the earth.”
-
-The “Tremont Social Circle,” of =New York City=, has been in existence
-only since December, but their membership is large, and their
-associations have been very pleasant. They celebrated both Longfellow’s
-and Shakspere’s days; the latter with tableaux, with the admirable
-supplement of a brief synopsis of the play, from which the subjects were
-taken, before each piece.
-
-The “Spare Moment Circle” is reported this month from =New York City=.
-They are finding much profit in their readings. There seems to be little
-union work among the New York circles. One member writes: “We hear there
-is but one other circle existing in New York City. There must be a number
-of members reading alone, who would be pleased to join a local circle,
-and who would, no doubt, be desirable members. Would you kindly notice in
-THE CHAUTAUQUAN as early as convenient that there is a circle connected
-with the Central M. E. Church, 7th Avenue and 14th Street, New York
-City?” There are several New York circles and several “lone readers.”
-An effort should be made by some one to hold a general reunion at which
-an organization could be effected and plans laid for occasional joint
-meetings. Such organizations are in successful operation in several
-cities where there are a number of circles.
-
-New circles have been reported from =West Philadelphia= and =Sugar Grove,
-Pa.= Also at =Chester, Pa.=, there is a thriving circle of between forty
-and fifty members. The circle is divided into sub-circles, meeting
-weekly, with a reunion of the entire circle monthly. At the weekly
-meetings a regular teacher leads in the lesson, and the different members
-have essays on subjects bearing on the readings. At the monthly meetings
-each member contributes ten written questions on the readings of the
-previous month, which are asked promiscuously by the president. Generally
-there is also a lecture and music by outside talent, and the circle
-has met with kindest encouragement from all outsiders. They celebrated
-Longfellow and Shakspere days, each in turn.
-
-In the “Pansy Circle,” at =Frankford, Philadelphia=, they have wisely
-made practical Mr. Blaikie’s excellent hints on getting strong, and spend
-the latter part of each evening in dumb-bell drill and other gymnastic
-exercises. This circle was formed last fall, and all told numbers
-thirty-five members, active and local.
-
-The circle at =Bradford, Pa.=, is still progressing. A few of their
-members have left the town, but nothing discouraged the rest are keeping
-up their work.
-
-April 17th the Alumni Association of =Pittsburgh, Pa.=, held their annual
-meeting. One of the features of the evening was a paper on “The C. L. S.
-C.,” by a prominent lady member. A general survey of the aims and methods
-of the organization was given, and a glance taken at the home work. The
-writer stated that: “Pittsburgh has the honor of being in the advance in
-adopting the new departure, the ‘Central Circle’ having been projected at
-Chautauqua but a few days after the organization of the parent circle.
-At the first few meetings held, more than three hundred members were
-enrolled. The ‘Central Circle’ has ever since maintained more or less
-healthy existence. It has proved of great service in providing a home for
-such Chautauquans as were not able to attend any of the local circles. It
-has also by its regular monthly meetings brought into contact members of
-the different local circles, thus making them mutually helpful. Around
-this original ‘Central Circle’ have grown up not a few hopeful daughters,
-both in Pittsburgh and Allegheny, of which the mother organization has
-just cause to be proud. Lawrenceville boasts one of the most efficient
-local circles to be found anywhere. ‘South Side Circle’ is not only
-prosecuting the regular course with vigor, but has recently ambitiously
-attached a school of languages. The members are tugging away at Latin
-roots. The ‘Emerson,’ ‘Woodlawn’ and ‘Vincent’ circles, in Allegheny,
-are moving steadily forward. The ‘Allegheny Circle’ of ’87 seems to be
-worthy of special mention. It is composed of twenty earnest, enthusiastic
-members, who intend to graduate—ladies and gentlemen in about equal
-numbers, representing occupations as various, probably, as their number
-will permit. The ‘Mt. Washington Circle’ has twenty-one names enrolled
-at Plainfield—seven gentlemen and fourteen ladies, residents of three
-different wards, and representing five religious denominations. One
-feature of membership, of which we feel somewhat proud, in which I
-fear we are alone among the circles of these cities, is that we have
-one member who, if permitted to finish the course, will add another to
-the only too small list of graduates under twenty years of age.” The
-“Allegheny Circle” of ’87, of which the writer speaks, often favors us
-with programs and interesting reports. One of the latest was of their
-evening with France.
-
-=Washington, D. C.=, gives us three breezy reports this month. A member
-from the “Foundry M. E. Church Circle,” organized in 1882, writes:
-“The four Chautauqua circles of this city have been doing excellent
-work, and their prospect for the future grows brighter and brighter
-as the Chautauqua Idea of self education becomes better known to the
-people. During the existence of our societies Dr. J. H. Vincent has
-paid us a number of visits, each time preaching and lecturing to large
-congregations in Foundry Church. His lectures and sermons never fail to
-exert a good influence, for it is a noticeable fact that each time we
-are honored with his presence our circles have the greatest increase
-in membership. We trust he can find it convenient to be with us more
-frequently in the future. The ‘Foundry’ C. L. S. C. is the largest in
-the city. The officers of the circle constitute a board of instructors;
-at the meetings each instructor takes charge of but one topic. If there
-remain other subjects of discussion they are distributed among individual
-members so that our lessons are always very satisfactorily discussed.
-After the recitations we have a literary exercise, consisting of
-readings, essays, recitations, debates, etc. We always take pleasure in
-observing each memorial day with an appropriate program. The C. L. S. C.
-of this city is yet only in its infancy, but as its members and friends
-become more enthusiastic for its success we hope to accomplish much for
-it in the near future.” The second comes from the “Pansy Circle,” of
-whom we have never before had the pleasure of hearing, and opens with an
-excellent plan: “In addition to our weekly meetings, where we discuss the
-subjects for the week’s reading, we have a monthly gathering. We began
-work late in the year, so that we have had but three such. At the first,
-Professor O. T. Mason, of Columbia University, gave us a lecture-talk on
-Vegetable Biology, which was delightful to all. The second entertainment
-was a lecture by Professor Cleveland Abbe, the scientist of the Signal
-Bureau, and he selected the topic ‘Thunder Storms, and the few things
-we know about them.’ He concluded an hour’s talk with a suggestion,
-which he said we should hear more of later. It was to this effect: The
-Signal Office needed many observers—those who were able to understand and
-appreciate this work—and they had proposed to have one or more in every
-county in the States. He had thought it a good idea for the Chautauquans
-to be invited to do such work in connection with their studies. The
-purpose expressed gave our little ‘Pansy Circle,’ although composed of
-ladies, considerable pleasure, and you may hear more of this, if we do.
-We spent our last monthly meeting celebrating Shakspere’s day, members of
-the circle reading selections from the ‘Merchant of Venice,’ and giving
-us all great enjoyment. Closed the evening with general conversation
-about the great dramatist.”
-
-The “Meridian” Chautauqua Circle, of =Washington, D. C.=, is now in
-its second year, throughout which period the interest has been great,
-notwithstanding the smallness of the circle; there being nine active and
-three local members. At the last weekly meeting was held the Shaksperean
-celebration. The exercises consisted, in part, of a brief sketch of his
-life and works, the question of their authenticity, citations of wit
-and wisdom, an argument relative to the sanity of Hamlet, together with
-selections from his plays. Among the decorations were sketches of his
-birthplace, the desk at which he studied “Little Latine and less Greeke,”
-his seal, his epitaph, and a portrait of the author. After the literary
-exercises a supper was served.
-
-At =Sudlersville, Md.=, there is a pleasant circle of two, which sends
-word that “Having for the first time observed information in the March
-number of THE CHAUTAUQUAN encouraging the report of two as a local
-circle, we, the ‘Eureka Circle,’ take great pleasure in reporting with
-the multitude of others.”
-
-=Snow Hill, Md.=, claims to have the finest C. L. S. C. on the Peninsula.
-“Of our twenty members one is a clergyman, two are lawyers, and six
-are school teachers. The study of Biology was facilitated by the use
-of a splendid microscope of 600 diameter power. We have a regular
-organization, a board of officers, and after the usual preliminaries of
-a formal assembly, the program. Three readers, one in each book, are
-appointed, a ‘commentator’ listens to each, then epitomizes the matter,
-and comments upon the manner. An examiner has been previously appointed
-in each study, whose business it is to prepare five written questions;
-these are thrown together and drawn by the members, who answer whatever
-falls to their lot.”
-
-The “Bryant” C. L. S. C., of =Toledo, Ohio=, is a flourishing circle of
-about twenty-five members, part of whom are “regular” and part “local.”
-A lively interest has been manifested, and many warm discussions held
-concerning some of the characters studied about. Addison’s day was
-celebrated in a very quiet manner, at a regular meeting of the circle.
-
-The C. L. S. C. of the Third Presbyterian Church of =Cincinnati, Ohio=,
-had an unusually pleasant meeting on April 23. Although they have been
-organized for nearly two years, they have never before celebrated a
-Memorial Day. We trust their pleasant experience will lead to more
-frequent “special occasions” in the future.
-
-The celebrations of Shakspere’s and Addison’s days were combined at
-=Springfield, Ohio=, and a very successful meeting was the result. This
-circle was organized in 1878, and the class of ’82 are happy to read
-the “White Seal Course” with the other classes, while they read the
-“Crystal Seal” alone. All the Memorial Days have been observed this year,
-commencing with Garfield’s and closing with Shakspere’s and Addison’s,
-but they claim that their Chautauqua picnic, given annually in June, is
-the jubilee of their C. L. S. C. year.
-
-From the _Toledo Evening Bee_ we learn that a very delightful evening
-was spent by the members of the =Bryan, Ohio=, C. L. S. C., in memory
-of William Shakspere. The circle here has been holding regular meetings
-since October, 1881. There are now sixteen members. Among the “days” none
-are more pleasant than Arbor Day. It does not receive much attention, we
-fear, but here is one circle at least that planted a tree. From =Amelia,
-Ohio=, a letter comes, saying: “In our little town we have a small C. L.
-S. C., and as you wanted all circles reported to THE CHAUTAUQUAN, we give
-ours as the ‘Elm-tree Circle.’ We are but four girls studying together,
-but a circle of one hundred could not be more enthusiastic. On Arbor Day
-we planted a tree and named it ‘Vincent.’ We hope that in another year we
-can report a much larger circle.”
-
-The sixth annual reunion of the circle at =Norwalk, Ohio=, was held on
-April 23. They have thirty members enrolled, and are reading the books
-of the seal course in the circle, while the books in the regular course
-are read at home. The exercises at their reunion were conversational
-entirely. The questions of the authorship of what are known as
-Shakspere’s plays, and which is Shakspere’s best play, being informally
-argued until the party were summoned to supper. The circle expect to
-resume their conversations another year.
-
-From =Cincinnati= we have an encouraging account of the good things
-the circles have been enjoying there. The topics discussed at their
-Round-Table are particularly good. “The second Round-Table of the C. L.
-S. C. of Cincinnati and vicinity was held at Christie Chapel on April
-22. An essay was read on ‘Stray Leaves from a Chautauqua Journal,’ and
-one on ‘Tent Life at Chautauqua.’ Then followed some impromptu talks on
-Chautauqua, and some experiences, amusing and otherwise, were related.
-The second topic of the evening was ‘The advantages of the study of the
-classics in the original, and as we study them in translations, in the
-C. L. S. C. Course.’ The discussion of this was fully participated in
-by the members, and a goodly meed of praise was given to the C. L. S.
-C. Classical Course. On April 24, at the invitation of the Grace Church
-Circle, the other circles were treated to a very fine lecture by their
-pastor, Rev. A. L. Reynolds. His subject was, ‘The Survival of the
-Fittest.’ The fifth annual reunion of the C. L. S. C. of Cincinnati and
-vicinity was held at Grace M. E. Church on Friday evening, May 9. It was
-a most enjoyable affair, and brought together members from some sixteen
-circles in and around the city, including Cheviot, Elmwood, Madisonville,
-Athens and Ironton, Ohio, and Covington and Newport in Kentucky.”
-
-A very delightful thing it is to have a C. L. S. C. home, a room that
-belongs to your circle, where you may surround yourself with the emblems,
-mottoes and banners of your brotherhood, and with the implements for
-successful work. Such a home belongs to the circle of =Lima, Ind.=, of
-which they write: “We have a large and handsome room for our meetings. At
-present it is modestly furnished, but money is in the treasury to be used
-in making the room more attractive with bright rugs, fanciful screens and
-pictures.” This circle succeeded in doubling its numbers last summer
-by holding a Chautauqua reception, at which the attractiveness of the
-work was so well shown that no trouble was experienced in increasing the
-circle.
-
-=Petersburg, Ind.=, reports a circle of seven members; =Rushville, Ind.=,
-one of twenty-two; and =Liberty, Ind.=, one of eleven. All three are
-energetic, faithful bodies, up in their readings, loyal to the customs of
-the C. L. S. C., and full of enthusiasm.
-
-A brief history of “Alpha Circle,” of =Quincy, Ill.=, has lately been
-sent us. This circle was formed in January, 1883, with thirteen members.
-Eleven were added the following season. At the close of the studies in
-June, 1883, a literary and musical feast was prepared at the home of
-one of the members. Fifty invitations were sent out to the members and
-interested friends of the circle. A public meeting was held in September,
-for the purpose of explaining the objects and aims of the Circle, and
-an effort was made to organize others. At least two societies resulted
-from this meeting: the ‘Beta’ Circle, composed entirely of ladies; they
-are great workers, and are giving the subjects very thorough attention;
-beside this, a small circle has been organized in the neighboring
-township—=Melrose=. The circle has had several little excursions, etc.,
-and spent the fourth of July most delightfully in the woods on Bredewig’s
-Alps. The ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’ Circles joined in observing Longfellow’s
-day. Seventy-five invitations were sent out to friends, and the program
-was highly interesting. The meetings of the circle are very interesting.
-
-=Alton, Ill.=, also has a circle with a steady membership of twelve.
-
-On Longfellow’s day the three circles at =Sycamore, Ill.=, held a
-delightful service in the poet’s honor; essays, music and recitations
-made up the program. One of the circles at Sycamore reports: “Our first
-meeting was held November 14, 1882, when we organized a class with twelve
-members; now we have sixteen, four of whom are local members only. We
-have good officers and most of our class are doing very thorough work,
-though we are nearly all busy housekeepers and mothers. We grow more
-and more in love with the work. We have lively and free discussions on
-all topics studied, and meet every week, rain or shine.” The “Dunlap”
-local circle was organized in the fall of 1883, and consists of some
-thirty members, mostly of the class of ’87, but with two members who
-have completed the four years’ course. Considerable enthusiasm prevails.
-Each meeting has been well attended, and all who started in with the
-course are steadily pursuing it. April 21 a “Shaksperean Social” was
-held. A program was presented consisting of music, essays and readings.
-Refreshments were served to some forty members and their friends. Every
-one went home more enthusiastic Chautauquans than ever. A “Cicero” night
-was recently held, and a “Virgil” night is the next on the program.
-
-At =Memphis, Tenn.=, the South Memphis local circle of the C. L. S. C.
-is composed of fourteen active members, beside several who are only
-local members. There is a good average attendance, and each one takes an
-active part. The meetings are begun with roll call, followed by reading
-of minutes, songs, and a full program of essays, readings, and “talks.”
-These latter are really essays memorized and recited without notes. The
-circle is very earnest in its work.
-
-A few ladies of =Prairieville Center, Mich.=, belonging to classes 1886
-and 1887, would acknowledge some of the pleasure brought into their busy
-lives by Chautauqua. Last year, as a nucleus, four ladies met once a
-week, read or held informal conversations on the lesson; now they are
-officered and dignified by the title of the “Kepler Circle,” including
-five farmers’ wives, one school teacher and one gentleman—five members,
-two local. As yet they have had no help, such as observance of memorial
-days or lectures, but are trying by personal influence to help on the
-work.
-
-=Atlas, Mich.=, has a live C. L. S. C. organized in March, though
-several of the members began the course in October. There are eight
-regular members and ten local ones, who will probably take up the full
-course next year.
-
-Dr. Vincent has kindly sent us a very remarkable report of the results
-of the circle work at =Detroit, Mich.= We have given much of the letter,
-for it shows vividly how much individual growth oftentimes is due to
-the thoughtful reading of good books. The writer says of the circle:
-“Nine persons met on October 1st, and formally organized. The growth
-both in numbers and interest was small during the first month, but
-continuing, we have held up to date twenty-one meetings, at which two
-hundred and twenty-two persons have been present; we keep a record
-of each evening’s work, and also a visitors’ list, trying to have a
-visitor each evening, which has generally ended in a new member. We open
-with singing, responsive reading, roll call with quotations, literary
-exercises, question box, Round-Table. For the first three months we were
-obliged to use ‘Gospel Songs,’ but, thanks to Miss Kimball, we now have
-the Chautauqua song books and are learning to enjoy them. By unanimous
-consent the responsive service consists of a selection of Scriptures
-by the leader, each member bringing her Bible. It has been our aim to
-conduct ‘Pansy’ Circle on as near the Chautauqua principle as possible;
-now for a few results. At the commencement of this season a neighbor
-was induced to visit the circle, with the promise of exemption from
-questions, etc. To-day that lady is a member of the general Circle,
-and an active member of the local, and from formerly being in such ill
-health that she was in a fair way of losing her mind, she has now quite
-recovered, and it is due to the C. L. S. C. Another member, who does not
-profess religion, was offered a copy of Ingersoll’s works, by a fellow
-workman, but it was refused, with the statement that he had a better
-book to read, which proved to be Walker’s ‘Philosophy of the Plan of
-Salvation.’ That book has done wonders, bringing into active Christian
-life several hitherto backward ones. Another member told me that having
-lacked educational advantages, and feeling the need of them, she made it
-a subject of prayer, but for a long time seemed to have no answer, until
-an apparently accidental call on a friend discovered to her the C. L.
-S. C., and now she is one of our most enthusiastic members. There are
-many other cases worthy of mention, where the C. L. S. C., working like
-leaven, transforms individuals into active factors in life’s warfare.
-It is indeed a glorious cause, and I am never weary of sounding its
-praises. We are a household altogether Chautauquan, singing the songs
-with our children; indeed, we have a six months’ old girl who will not be
-quieted by me unless I sing ‘The Winds are Whispering,’ and our boy looks
-anxiously forward to the time when he can join the Circle. May your life
-be spared to see the ingathering from the grand Idea.”
-
-About the middle of last February six ladies and one gentleman met at
-the house of a lady interested in the C. L. S. C. workings, to see if a
-circle could not be started in =Markesan, Wis.= It was not until March
-11 that they had a regular working meeting. They call the circle the
-“Climax,” and now have fourteen enthusiastic regular members, and five
-local members. Shakspere day was observed with an interesting program,
-consisting of roll call, response to be a gem of thought from Shakspere,
-a biographical sketch of his life, a paper on his eccentricities, songs,
-and several readings.
-
-Monona Lake Assembly has aroused enthusiasm for the C. L. S. C. work
-among very many of its visitors. Another tribute to its good influence
-comes from a friend writing of the origin of the oldest circle at =Eau
-Claire, Wis.=: “In 1882 one of our circle visited the Assembly at Monona
-and came back full of enthusiasm, which resulted in the organization
-of a circle. We started with six members. It took us some time to get
-acquainted with the method of instruction, and to gain the necessary
-discipline for memorizing (we are none of us very young). We have never
-increased our original membership, because we found that six who
-were congenial could work profitably together. Our circle, with one
-exception, visited Monona last summer. We gained a fresh inspiration from
-the ‘Round-Table.’ Last fall two other societies were organized, one
-consisting of members of the Congregational Church, numbering eighteen,
-and professing great pleasure in their work. The other society consists
-of young ladies, graduates of the high school. They have a membership of
-ten; they feel great satisfaction in the work. They are all young, fresh
-minds, and enjoy that advantage over our circle, but they can’t exceed us
-in enthusiasm. When the societies multiplied we gave our little society
-a name. We are now known as the ‘Alpha Society.’ We often bless good Dr.
-Vincent in our hearts for originating and developing the plan of C. L. S.
-C. work. I recently met a Chautauquan from a little town of a few hundred
-people—=Knapp=. She said: ‘We have only a little circle of six. We are
-farmers’ wives, and are very busy, but we do enjoy our reading. We can
-see we are doing better work this year than we did last year, so we feel
-encouraged.’”
-
-=Iowa= never fails to send us fresh and interesting items. This month two
-circles organized in October of 1883 are reported, one from =Corydon= of
-ten members, and another of fifteen members from =Humboldt=. In both the
-interest is good and the work growing.
-
-=Anamosa, Iowa=, has a circle of fourteen now on its second year of
-work. The secretary writes: “Our hearts and minds are aglow with genuine
-Chautauqua enthusiasm. It has all been full of suggestive life and
-interest. We have kept all the Memorial Days, and followed out its
-principles and precepts.” At their Longfellow memorial the circle kindly
-opened their doors to their friends, hoping by this means to extend
-the field of C. L. S. C. work in the town. A well written article in
-a local paper on the work done, shows how thoroughly its influence is
-appreciated: “When one has passed an evening with such a club, that has
-been faithfully kept up year by year, not for social delight but for hard
-study of history, philosophy, _belles lettres_ and the evidences of the
-Christian religion, he realizes the worth of it and since music, good
-music too, is ever added to the mental labor as joint refiner of mind and
-heart, he approves the ‘club’ as one of the finest social and literary
-organizations that has ever blessed this city.”
-
-A capital subject for a talk or essay is this, which we find on the
-program of the Shakspere exercises at =Shanandoah, Iowa=: “How Shakspere
-is regarded by literary men.”
-
-At =Carthage, Missouri=, a “Chautauqua Anniversary” was recently held by
-the two-year-old circle there. Between forty and fifty were present. The
-literary exercises were followed by an elaborate supper. The subjects of
-the evening’s toasts were the Memorial Days, taking them in order.
-
-The various local circles of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific
-Circle of =Kansas City, Missouri=, united in a service commemorative of
-Shakspere. The church in which the exercises were held was handsomely
-decorated for the occasion with flowers and plants, and with three
-elegant banners prepared for and presented to the circle in Kansas City
-by the Columbus Buggy Company, of Columbus, O. The gift of these was
-prompted by the Milton Memorial Services held by these circles several
-months since, at which the donors were present. Beside the circles of
-Kansas City and the Wyandott circle, a large audience was present to
-listen to the exercises. The local circles of Kansas City are the “Kansas
-City Circle,” the “Dundee,” the “Central Circle” and the “Clyde Circle,”
-the “Ladies’ Forest Avenue Circle,” and a circle on Summit Street.
-
-In a letter from a circle in =New Orleans, La.=, we find some interesting
-points. The circle selects topics for discussions at their meetings. Each
-member is required to bring in thoughts, statistics or quotations bearing
-upon the subject. Popular topics are taken, as for example, one given at
-a recent meeting was “The Higher Education of Women.” The idea is a good
-one. Such discussions give an agreeable change from so much historical
-and scientific reading. Among their officers they have a chaplain who
-conducts the opening exercises of the evening; another excellent plan.
-Just now they are meeting a difficulty which comes to many circles.
-The writer says: “The majority of the circle are of class of ’85. They
-commenced the course as _young_ members, with no outside interests, and
-now at their maturity are branching off to their respective callings; one
-an ordained Episcopalian minister, in a distant parish; another leaves
-this summer to finish a collegiate course for the Presbyterian ministry,
-and others go elsewhere, yet we may feel assured, never to lose interest
-in the C. L. S. C.” Losing the tried, trusty “stand-bys” of a society
-is generally one of the most dangerous trials it goes through. Only a
-persistent putting of the shoulder to the wheel will carry it over, but
-that _always_ does it.
-
-From =Cañon City, Col.=, a lady writes: “We have organized a little
-circle of about ten members and have worked hard up to this time to
-demonstrate to ourselves our interest and determination to prosecute
-the studies. For housekeepers who have long been out of the discipline
-of students the work pushes us so that we, as yet, have not been able
-to read anything additional to the course. One of our number prepares
-questions on the lessons and acts as president or referee. These
-questions are on slips of paper, and each member draws one, on which to
-gather information to report to the class at the next meeting. Enough
-to say thus far we enjoy our reading very much, and hope it is but the
-beginning of a systematic study, which will end only with life.”
-
-A friend sending us the program of the Longfellow celebration at
-=Durango, Colorado=, writes: “I send you a copy of our Longfellow
-program. While it may suggest nothing new as a literary program, it may
-be a satisfaction to lovers of the C. L. S. C. to hear that in this new
-frontier town of Southwestern Colorado, sandwiched between the Ute and
-the Navajo Reservations, the ‘Chautauqua Idea’ has taken root.” One
-exercise of the evening we do not remember to have seen before in any
-report: “The exercise—quotation guesses—was a pleasant little diversion.
-The president distributed slips of paper amongst the members, each slip
-containing a line from some one of Longfellow’s poems. Each slip was
-numbered, and as the president called the number the member holding
-that number would read the sentiment from her slip and finish it in the
-language of the poem from which it was taken. The evening’s entertainment
-closed with a banquet, and everyone went home feeling better acquainted
-with Longfellow and more deeply in love with the C. L. S. C.”
-
-The pastor of the M. E. Church at =Idaho Springs, Col.=, last fall called
-a meeting to organize a club in the interest of good reading. “When the
-people came together some friends of the Chautauqua Idea were found;
-three or four of them had been regular or local members of the C. L. S.
-C., and it was decided that we form a branch of that great home college.
-We have a membership of about twenty. We frequently have a half-dozen
-visitors, but we do not consider our meetings public; they have been
-very interesting, and the interest is unabated. We have adopted various
-methods of examination on the required reading, but none seem to us so
-good as that of giving to each person present a written question; this
-being by him answered is then discussed by any person who so desires. We
-strive to be informal, and since we have become acquainted, are able to
-express ourselves on the subjects being discussed better than at first.
-Since the first of January we have recruited by taking in some desirable
-local members, thereby filling the places of those who have dropped out
-of the ranks by the pressure of other business. We can see the good
-effects of our circle on our little town in many ways already. With one
-or two exceptions we belong to the class of 1887; at the end of April, in
-our first year, we report ourselves as making good progress.”
-
-
-
-
-C. L. S. C. TESTIMONY.
-
-
-_Massachusetts._—I want to say for the encouragement of any who urge
-objections to the C. L. S. C. course, that I took it up to please my
-wife, but ’twas but a short time before I was earnestly reading and
-studying to please myself. It seemed quite an undertaking, but, though
-we are forty years old, and have four children, we have found time to
-keep abreast of the work as carried on by the Circle. We (myself and
-wife) are of the class of ’86, and began reading together, but the next
-year, ’83, there was a circle formed, and we joined. You would only have
-to glance into our sitting room to-night to learn that we are disciples
-firm and true in this course and its kindred branches; my wife and myself
-reading French History, two older children at the other end of the room
-reading the Home College Series, while the two youngest (seven and ten)
-are reading the course of the C. Y. F. R. U., and the benefits, the
-blessings and the pleasure we gain from all of this can never be counted
-in time. We are enthusiastic over the C. L. S. C., because we can see and
-feel some of its benefits already. We know the forty minutes a day pays
-better interest than any similar time spent in any secular business. We
-know its value can not be computed by any known tables. We recommend it
-to everybody, and we feel ’twill grow here among us. It is succeeding
-everywhere, it must succeed, and must produce good results, for “We study
-the Word and the Works of God.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-_Massachusetts._—I am quite an invalid, so I take the reading slowly and
-in small doses, but I can not begin to tell the good it has done me.
-
- * * * * *
-
-_New Jersey._—Life seems to me to have been lifted on a higher plane
-since my association with the C. L. S. C. I know I am a better wife, I
-love my Christian work better, I am better acquainted with the Master,
-and as the intellect is cultivated, the soul is pushed out into greater
-depths and heights and breadths.
-
- * * * * *
-
-_Pennsylvania._—I enjoy the reading and study more than I can express,
-believing that its influence is elevating. I regret that I can not enjoy
-the advantages of a local circle. I did try to interest some in my own
-neighborhood, but did not succeed.
-
- * * * * *
-
-_Pennsylvania._—It is helping me regain what I lost under the pernicious
-influence of novel reading. It fills many moments, that would have
-been spent in idle dreaming, with rare pleasure in the acquirement of
-knowledge. Its purifying influence is making life more real and earnest.
-I belong to a small circle numbering six members. Two of the number read
-last year, and were instrumental in the organization of the circle this
-year. We are all enthusiastic members, meeting regularly each week. We
-have real social meetings, with no formality or coldness, and they are a
-source of great benefit and enjoyment to us all.
-
- * * * * *
-
-_Pennsylvania._—You may send me about twenty-five “Popular Education”
-circulars, and the same number of “Spare Minute Course” tracts, and I
-will try to aid the C. L. S. C. by distributing them, and speaking a
-word for it. I have not been able to do much for it yet, but it has done
-a great deal for me. The first year, and up to February of this year,
-I did the reading all alone. Sometimes it was very discouraging, but
-every month when THE CHAUTAUQUAN came, and I read the letters from other
-members, the circles and others, my enthusiasm received an impetus that
-carried me on into the next month, and so on through the year. I do not
-pretend to keep up with the class. Do not think I had finished over half
-the required readings at the close of the year. But, if the only object
-of the C. L. S. C. was to have the reading done, I might have done it.
-My conception of the “Chautauqua Idea” is growth. It has been a means of
-growth to me. I have grown intellectually, morally and spiritually. It
-destroyed a taste for light reading, and created an appetite for real
-knowledge, giving enlarged views of life and life’s work.
-
- * * * * *
-
-_Indiana._—This is my third year of work, and I feel much more zealous
-than at the start. No early training can take the place of such a course
-as this, yet with a foundation how easy it all appears when we once get
-at it. It is wonderful how the interest grows. I go out but little,
-my friends find my C. L. S. C. books scattered around when they come
-in. At first they attracted little attention, and I failed to create
-much interest in them by speaking, but as time goes on and they still
-see the same thing they begin to wonder and ask questions, until now
-I am frequently asked to explain “the whole plan,” and find willing
-hearers. There are four of us in this place who pay the annual fee, but
-I succeeded in getting several more to subscribe for THE CHAUTAUQUAN. In
-another year I hope we shall have an interesting class. “We four” are not
-formally organized, but our sympathy brings us closely together wherever
-we meet. I have the complete set of C. L. S. C. books—could not get along
-without them.
-
- * * * * *
-
-_Wisconsin._—I tried for years, ten years at least, to arrange a course
-of reading for myself (before I ever heard of the C. L. S. C., too), that
-would be _practical_ and instructive at the same time; though I made many
-attempts I always found it impossible to pursue the courses of study I
-selected, but I never gave up the effort. My thirst for knowledge has
-always been so great I never am happy unless I feel that every day I
-have made some improvement, or acquired some knowledge that will be of
-lasting benefit. So when I had the opportunity of joining the C. L. S. C.
-I hailed it with delight and gratitude, and never think of its founders
-without thanking them in my inmost heart for the good it has done, and
-the good it promises in the future.
-
- * * * * *
-
-_Wisconsin._—These two years of C. L. S. C. work have been the happiest
-of my life. Our studies lighten our cares, encourage our Christian faith,
-and give the future a bright and encouraging outlook. We see the good
-influence even in our children; if they do not fully appreciate, they are
-enthusiastic in their admiration of Chautauquans, and are always glad
-when it is our turn to have the society.
-
- * * * * *
-
-_Missouri._—I presume this year will end my four years’ course; there
-are a number of books which I had not the time to read, but I shall keep
-on taking THE CHAUTAUQUAN and reading all I can, for my whole soul is in
-it, and I have gained more information and practical knowledge through
-this systematic course of reading than I have in twice the length of time
-before. I think we shall gain members here to the C. L. S. C., and I
-shall do all I can. I think we ought to have a strong circle here. I work
-in the railroad shops, and I read THE CHAUTAUQUAN to the men nearly every
-noon.
-
- * * * * *
-
-_Colorado._—I am, like many another member of the C. L. S. C., a “busy
-mother,” but I have always been able to find time for my required
-reading, and for a good deal more that seemed to be suggested by the
-readings. To say the course of systematic reading is a delight to me, is
-to but feebly express my appreciation. It is a continual benefit, and an
-abiding stimulus to self-culture. The study of astronomy in last year’s
-course started me on what has since been the greatest pleasure I have
-ever known, that of learning the face of the heavens, till I know the
-stars, and really greet them each night as dear, familiar friends. The
-air is so clear here, and our evenings so uniformly cloudless, it is a
-constant source of enjoyment.
-
- * * * * *
-
-_Texas._—I am a lone member, having found no one yet to join me in
-reading, yet I prize the course so highly that nothing but necessity
-would induce me to relinquish it. Last year, in much physical weakness
-and suffering, I partially accomplished the course, and felt a kind
-Providence had given me this to turn my mind from gloomy thoughts. How I
-wish the young, the middle-aged and the old would give time for the good
-thoughts, knowledge and discipline it contains.
-
-
-
-
-EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.
-
-
-THE C. L. S. C. COURSE FOR 1884-5.
-
-Students and graduates of the C. L. S. C. will examine with interest
-and with much satisfaction the course of study for next year printed
-in this number. It does not appeal to the jealousy but to the pride
-of the alumnus to know that Alma Mater is providing better things for
-the student of to-day than she did for him. Certainly the work of next
-year is so constituted as to yield most satisfactory results. It is
-neither too wide nor too narrow; neither too deep nor too shallow. It is
-admirably arranged, embracing most important and attractive subjects, by
-authors of highest qualifications for their work.
-
-That which impresses us most is the scope and thoroughness of each
-department. Let him who has imagined that this work is “smattering”
-surface work, scrutinize the single department of Greek in next year’s
-study. True, there are not four or six years of drill in translating the
-language, but we do not hesitate to say that the student who _studies_
-the works prescribed here will know more of the Greek life and thought
-than the average graduate after his six years’ translating. He will also
-be able to stand comparison with the latter in his acquaintance with the
-Greek literature. Nor is this designed as a criticism of the work done by
-the college, but as a word to that particular critic of the C. L. S. C.
-
-In the department of science the titles of the text-books themselves
-indicate that the C. L. S. C. is abreast of the times in repudiating
-the absurd notion that science can be learned by the memorizing of
-descriptions and definitions. Such titles as “Home Studies in Chemistry,”
-“The Temperance Preachings of Science,” and “Studies in Kitchen Science
-and Art,” bespeak the scientific method which requires the observation
-and arrangement of facts and phenomena by the learner himself.
-
-We are glad to note the liberal attention bestowed upon our English in
-the curriculum of the coming year. “The Art of Speech,” by Dr. Townsend,
-“Talks about Good English,” in THE CHAUTAUQUAN, and “Lessons in Every Day
-Speech,” by Professor MacClintock, are a quantum of English quite beyond
-the fashion of these times. No study has been so inexcusably neglected
-by our schools of every grade. Just now there are signs of repentance in
-some quarters. President Eliot of Harvard is pleading for its admission
-to a place equal with Greek and Latin. If what should be will be, not
-many years hence will witness it so.
-
-Prominent also, as heretofore, is the aim to keep before the C. L. S.
-C. both the moral and the religious. No one can read “The Character
-of Jesus,” by Bushnell, without mental and moral profit, without the
-awakening of a deeper homage of soul for the world’s Redeemer. Then there
-is Mrs. Field’s work on that perplexing, every-day question, “How to
-Help the Poor.” Bishop Hurst’s “History of the Reformation” is among
-the very best works on that eventful period in church history. These
-are to be supplemented by the continuance of those well-chosen Sunday
-Readings in THE CHAUTAUQUAN. Beside these classified departments we are
-promised a series of articles on miscellaneous subjects, such as Memory,
-Self-Discipline, Thinking, Selection of Books, etc. Taken altogether, a
-course of study for a year which, faithfully pursued, is an education
-in itself. We predict for the C. L. S. C. a year of increased interest,
-pleasure and profit.
-
-
-THE WALL STREET TROUBLES.
-
-The panic in Wall Street has not extended to the whole country in the
-same form and intensity as the great crises of 1857 and 1873; but, no
-doubt, the effect of the shock at the money center will distribute
-itself gradually over the entire country. The country is not any worse
-off now than it was at the beginning of May; it is, rather, better off,
-because an evil has been uncovered and a remedy applied. We did not
-think ourselves on the verge of ruin on the first of May, nor do we now
-know that we were. The evil we have discovered in action we knew to
-be in existence then. But having been forced to take medicine for the
-sickness, we shall experience some inconvenience from the drastic dose.
-It is hardly possible to make an 1873 over again. None of the factors
-of a great general depression exist (so far as we can see); but the
-cure of the speculative disorder, from which the whole economical body
-must more or less suffer, may be exasperatingly difficult. All chronic
-maladies yield very reluctantly to medical treatment; and our economic
-maladies are equally stubborn. The seat of the present trouble is the
-organization of railroad property and its management; the principal
-owners and managers of railroads are speculators in their own property.
-This disorder has existed from the beginning of such property. It is a
-twist which the property was born with. It has tortured the patient for
-fifty years. And to this date no one has applied any adequate remedy.
-Reformers abound, but the patient does not hesitate to call them quacks;
-and, denying that there is any serious trouble, it asks to be let alone.
-
-We can estimate the evil by a comparison of three groups of figures.
-Take first the figures which show the cost of railways. Take next the
-figures for the nominal capital in stocks and bonds; add the figures
-which show net income. It is not necessary here to give the actual
-figures in either group. The fact is that the net income is less than a
-fair interest on the actual cost of the roads, and perhaps not one per
-cent. on the nominal value as shown by capitalization. A road has cost
-five millions; the nominal value is twenty millions; the net income is
-six per cent. on four millions. Take out a dozen corporations which
-are wholesomely managed, and the rest of the companies are, in varying
-degrees, bankrupt as to their nominal capitals and unprofitable as to
-their actual cost. Speculation trades upon the delusion that the roads
-are presently, or in some “sweet by-and-by,” to pay dividends upon all
-their capital. To economize this delusion, the speculative owners of the
-lines carefully conceal the facts about the condition of their property,
-or pour out these facts in a torrent of apparent losses—according as
-they themselves are long or short of the property. The real condition
-of a railroad property can not be known except when it is bankrupt. At
-other times railroad book-keeping is too confusing for average brains,
-and exuberant hope makes the future out of the “astonishing growth of the
-country.” To remove the railroad property from the sphere of speculative
-manipulation is the pressing demand of all legitimate interests vested
-in such property. Until this is done this kind of property will be a
-squalling baby in the financial household, falling into convulsions
-periodically and alarming and distressing the whole family of industries
-and investments.
-
-It is understood that the largest fortunes in the country are made by
-magnifying this kind of property. It is known that a panic seldom
-strikes its fangs into the manipulator. It is believed that the public
-is usually the bitten party in the gambling circle. But in the present
-case it is not probable that any but the Wall Street men have much
-suffered, or that any fortunes have been made in the street. What has
-had to be done is to distribute through the street a large aggregate of
-losses incurred since 1881. The sum total exceeds five hundred millions,
-according to some statisticians. This sum is divided into two parts:
-1st, losses from July 1881 to January 1883, estimated at three hundred
-millions; 2nd, losses from January 1883 to May 1884, estimated at two
-hundred millions. We mean losses as measured by the fall in market price
-of railroad paper of all kinds. It is believed that before 1883 the
-public at large had suffered a loss of perhaps two hundred millions, that
-since that the said public has had little to do with the Wall Street
-market, and that the street (including all the men doing business on the
-stock market) has had to distribute a loss of three hundred millions.
-It is presumed that the public has, since January 1883, recovered from
-its losses, but the street is in the agony of its punishment. It was
-inevitable that some of the losses should be thrown on the banks; and
-through these losses the panic directly reached the public, in the
-double form of impaired confidence and stringency. The country has
-borne both evils with good sense. The impairment of confidence did not
-become general distrust: the stringency, which for a day or two made
-money worth four or five hundred per cent. per annum, passed off in a
-week. The fact that the troubles concerned one kind of property only,
-and was localized in Wall Street, was quickly understood by the country
-at large. The wounded banks were relieved by their neighbors, and the
-brokers on whose books the bad balances are found have been left to
-settle up their business as they may be able to manage it, while business
-in general goes on as before, with, however, a considerable increase of
-caution. The first effect of this caution will be depressing. Nor is it
-to be denied that considerable depression already existed in legitimate
-trades. The trouble is not serious, but it is annoying. At bottom it
-is based on an excess of enterprise in a part of the manufacturing and
-trading public. Anxious to be rich, they aim at impossible growth in
-business. They make certain kinds of goods in larger quantities than the
-public will consume them. This trouble may be called over-production or
-under-consumption; it does not much matter. Whatever name we give it, the
-thing is self-corrective, and involves no large disaster. It compels men
-to content themselves with less than they wish, teaches us that we can
-not all be millionaires, cuts down our ambition for social importance or
-ostentation, but it does not tend toward a crash. It is painful to go
-slow when we desire to go fast; but the breaking of bones occurs when
-fortuitous combinations permit us to drive on like Jehu. It may be dull,
-but it is safe to be dull in the economical world. It is the roaring
-activity of prosperous times that makes our financial ruin.
-
-
-SOME POINTS ON THE GENERAL CONFERENCE.
-
-The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held in
-Philadelphia last May was in several respects remarkable. It was in
-the first place a picturesque body for the eye of a moral artist.
-The “war horses” of older days were there with the sound stentorian
-neigh which one expects to hear at a camp meeting. Probably there were
-more of these than in recent sessions of the body. There was William
-Taylor from everywhere, Ram Chandra Bose from India, and the venerable
-men of a former generation who are called Trimble and Curry. But the
-moral picturesqueness of the Conference lay rather in the variety and
-independence of young Americans from all sections. There was a very
-lively Bear from Wall Street, a still livelier lay preacher from New
-Jersey, a choice collection of young pastors from all over Zion, and
-a sprinkling of college men and newspaper men, bankers, railroad men
-and physicians, ex-generals, ex-chaplains, and farmers. The face of the
-body was so variegated and its separate limbs so independent that some
-spectators said it was not a body at all because it had no community of
-life and no head. Its independence of traditions and its refusal to be
-led by anybody added to the picturesqueness of the assembly. Nothing
-could be thrust down its throat. It threw all the men who successively
-tried to lead it. It voted with reference to an order of ideas and
-aspirations which no one can find written down in the press of the
-denomination. We believe there was but a single caucus, and that was
-a gathering of the colored delegates. It was a piece of most adroit
-management. It will probably be the last of that series of caucuses; and
-if it had been held half a day sooner, it would have defeated its own
-purpose. The white delegates would have defeated anybody who had asked
-them to go into a caucus. A very manly and self-respecting independence
-of dictation or management was in the air.
-
-Another striking fact was the form which the independence of the body
-took on—the results which it reached. It might be called the Missionary
-Reform Conference. From the first it was clear that this branch of church
-work would receive a push forward on new lines. The single large debate
-of the session was over the proposition to locate a regular bishop
-in India. The bishops opposed it vigorously. The special adherents
-of “presbyter writ large” opposed it. And yet the measure received a
-majority of votes, and was defeated only by “dividing the house” and
-getting a lay majority against it to kill a clerical majority for it.
-After that defeat by a formal device for distributing a minority so as
-to give it veto power, the Conference had its own way. It made Chaplain
-McCabe Missionary Secretary, and elected William Taylor a Missionary
-Bishop for Africa, and it lifted Daniel Curry, who had led the movement
-for an Episcopal residence in India, sheer over the heads of all the
-editorial staff and set him down in the chair of the _Quarterly Review_.
-Each of these facts means more than meets the eye. Chaplain McCabe is the
-prince of collection-takers. The best man in the church to raise money
-is set to increasing missionary collections. William Taylor has been a
-bishop for thirty years—a bishop _de facto_—he is now bishop _de jure_
-in Africa. We doubt whether he will confine himself to Africa; but it
-will certainly require all of Africa to hold him. The Liberian grave-yard
-ceases to be the Methodist Africa. Bishop Taylor will lay siege to the
-whole continent—the Nile, the Soudan, the Congo, the Cape, as well as
-Liberia. Nor is this all. He believes in self-supporting missions,
-and will give a great impetus to the movement toward self-directing
-independence in all missions. Some time or other a mission must become a
-church; that time, many believe, is at hand in India, Africa and Europe.
-The reversal of judgment in Dr. Curry’s case is a conspicuous proof of
-the independence of the Conference. Eight years ago he was retired from
-the _Christian Advocate_ at New York for insubordination. Part of his
-offense was a singular freedom of pen on this same subject of missions.
-For example, he once wrote (concerning the return visits of missionaries
-in the other hemisphere): “We need a few graves of missionaries in
-heathen soil,” or words of this significance. The General Conference was
-persuaded to vote him out in 1876; but the act emancipated the paper, and
-under Dr. J. M. Buckley it is independent in a wider sense than Dr. Curry
-ever dared to make it. And now with the burden of seventy-five years
-upon him, Dr. Curry succeeds the other venerable Daniel as the editor of
-the chief and only universal organ of the denomination. “Whedon on the
-Will” will probably cease to be the conspicuous feature of the _Quarterly
-Review_, and if it should drop out of the “course of study” for young
-ministers, the loss might be a gain.
-
-The choice of the Conference for new bishops will probably be approved
-after some experience. Bishops Ninde and Mallalieu are probably
-universally popular selections. Bishops Walden and Fowler are yet to be
-approved by the intelligence of the denomination. But from one point of
-view the last two are better selections than the former. Bishops Ninde
-and Mallalieu have to be seasoned to a life of travel and hardship. They
-have lived in the study; and men past fifty (Bishop Mallalieu is 56)
-usually break down in the Methodist Episcopacy. The other pair of new
-bishops have long been inured to travel; and their physical preparation
-for the hard work before them may prove, on trial, that these were
-_almost_ the best selections that could have been made. If Ninde and
-Mallalieu should soon follow Kingsley, Thompson, and the two Havens,
-the effect would probably be to direct the choice of the denomination
-in future elections to men accustomed to real itineracy. But, after
-all, on that view, or any other proper view, the largest bishop chosen
-by the last General Conference is the one who must write “Missionary”
-before his title. William Taylor has long been a bishop; his church
-has merely recognized, at rather a late hour, a fact which has long
-been conspicuous. Whether or not there is a great bishop, or more than
-one, among the other group of four remains to be proved by their work.
-There is little doubt that the judgment of the Conference was perplexed
-in the matter of voting Dr. J. H. Vincent into the Episcopacy, and so
-voting him out of that vast work which he supervises as the head of the
-Sunday-school organization. His friends will see in the vote of 178
-for bishop, a proof that the Conference wanted him on the platform;
-they will see in the fact that for his old place the Conference gave
-him 316 ballots—_all but nine_ of its votes—the reason why he was
-not made bishop. The figures are in both cases the highest possible
-compliment—both votes were complimentary.
-
-
-CHAUTAUQUA OUTLOOK FOR 1884.
-
-It is fitting that, in this last number of the Chautauquan year, we
-should remind our readers that the gathering of our students and teachers
-is at hand, and that the opening of the sessions of our schools and
-the breaking of silence on our platform are to occur this year under
-auspicious circumstances. Our columns afford indications that the
-class of this year is unusually large; our correspondence shows that
-the interest of the public in our work is enlarging its boundaries;
-the program for the sessions is the richest and most attractive ever
-furnished. Dr. Vincent has taken great pains in the selection of topics,
-teachers and lecturers. Old and tried men and women remain in the force,
-and it has been increased by addition of talents approved by excellent
-work and good fame in other fields. The Chautauqua Idea is still
-peculiarly Chautauquan. No other place or organization does its work. It
-is a school for all—a university in which, by joining self-instruction
-with the schools and platform of Chautauqua, a man or woman of any age
-may pursue knowledge in almost any field with profit and pleasure. The
-original impulse to this work of ours was given by providing for the
-wants of those who had not good advantages in early life; but it has been
-found in the actual work that an arrangement of subjects and lectures
-could be made which enables any man to add to his knowledge and quicken
-his interest in personal study. It has come to pass that our best patrons
-and friends are those who have graduated in other schools, while we
-continue to increase the usefulness of Chautauqua for those in whose
-behalf it was founded. The success of the “Idea” along the whole line is
-not merely a satisfaction; it is a promise and a prophecy. There is every
-reason to believe that its broad, philanthropic, refining and elevating
-tendencies will continue to develop new methods of giving knowledge to
-all. But, of course, a benevolent enterprise like ours depends upon the
-sustained interest and enthusiasm of its friends. We are just as liable
-to flag in this as in any other benevolent work. It is not carried on
-to make money; money is made to carry it on. All the conditions of
-failure which must surround an undertaking which has not the force of
-self-interest behind it, exist of course in this large and expensive
-enterprise. Therefore we may properly remind the friends of Chautauqua
-that their patronage and coöperation in many ways are essential still,
-and must always be, to its progress. We make these suggestions, not from
-any doubt of the fidelity and perseverance of our friends, but, to recall
-attention to the fact that the Chautauqua Idea is a philanthropic and not
-a commercial one. Chautauqua does not exist to enrich any one, but to
-increase knowledge and spread culture in the land. It has no antagonisms,
-and need not have, but it can not dispense with the active zeal of its
-numerous friends.
-
-The managers have done their whole duty in making preparations for the
-approaching campaign. Let every high private emulate their industry
-and zeal. Bring your friends to the Lake. Remember that we want the
-coöperation of the sober, thoughtful and earnest people. The Chautauqua
-season is not a picnic; it is a season of rest, because a change of
-scene and occupation always refreshes mind and body. But our patrons
-are expected to bring their heads with them—and their consciences—that
-when they return home they may carry back new force and larger power to
-influence their neighbors. Chautauqua is ready to receive its pupils and
-guests. It has wide arms and a generous heart. The season will be what
-its patrons choose to make it. We are confident that they will choose to
-make it the best of the series.
-
-
-
-
-EDITOR’S NOTE-BOOK.
-
-
-The fourth volume of THE CHAUTAUQUAN closes with the present number. In
-the month of August we shall issue at Chautauqua the _Assembly Daily
-Herald_, with its numbers of invaluable lectures, its racy reports
-and varied sketches of Chautauqua life. For the advantage of our
-friends we make an attractive combination offer of the fifth volume
-of THE CHAUTAUQUAN, and the _Assembly Daily Herald_, for $2.25. See
-advertisement.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Among the great figures missed at the Republican National Convention
-this year was that of ex-Senator Roscoe Conkling. Not having admired him
-politically, we are the more free to express our respect and admiration
-for the courage with which he declined a seat on the supreme bench, and
-the splendid success he is achieving at the bar. A certain intense ardor
-which marks him as a man give assurance of still higher success and
-permanent fame in his profession.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The unveiling of an imposing statue of Martin Luther, in Washington, is
-one of the events which reminds us of the granite character of Luther;
-and in the same breath set us thinking of the solidarity of humanity.
-Luther is a great way from home in Washington, four centuries after his
-birth; but he is among his own people and as much alive as he ever was.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The cap-sheaf of official negligence is put on in the case of a bank
-which wallows for years, perhaps, certainly for months, in insolvency,
-and is never in all the time honestly and thoroughly examined by the
-various persons whose duty it is to know the facts.
-
- * * * * *
-
-“Men were giants in those days.” The five hundredth anniversary of the
-death of John Wyclif was celebrated in England in May last. The Bishop of
-Liverpool preached, dissenters of all denominations were represented. The
-public was told again that Wyclif was the first Englishman to maintain
-the supremacy of the Scriptures. The Lord Mayor of London presided over a
-great conference, and a fund was founded to print and circulate Wyclif’s
-works. After five centuries of all kinds of progress that man’s memory is
-still as fresh as a May morning.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The State Superintendent in New York has decided that no religious
-exercises are in order in public schools. The schools are for all, and
-until some common system of religious instruction is agreed upon, there
-should be none. This is the substance of the decision, and we can not
-help thinking it sound. Religious instruction is amply provided in other
-ways; and in order that Protestant and Catholic children may study
-together in peace, it seems wisest to let each class be religiously
-instructed elsewhere, according to the wishes of their parents.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The most effective speech in the late Methodist Episcopal General
-Conference was made by a colored delegate, the Rev. Dr. Taylor of
-Kentucky. The effectiveness came of the fact that he had not only
-considered what he had to say, but also meditated on the best way of
-saying it. We are often told that oratory is a lost art. Is it not a
-faded art merely because speakers give too little attention to the manner
-of their speech?
-
- * * * * *
-
-Charles O’Conor, the greatest jury pleader of the century, died in May,
-at the age of eighty. Four years before his death, having been very ill,
-he had the pleasure of reading the longest obituary notice that any
-convalescent ever perused with personal interest. His power over juries
-was such that cases were often given up by the other side in advance
-of the pleading. He was an Irish Catholic whose warmest friends were
-American Protestants.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Several additions have been made to the evidence that it does not
-destroy women to educate them. Professor Seelye of Amherst is among the
-new witnesses. We are at a loss to know why it ever needed testimony.
-Professor Seelye gravely says that some hard-worked women students
-were carefully examined by a competent woman and found to be perfectly
-healthy! When our readers recover from their astonishment let them enter
-their girls for the C. L. S. C.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The new scheme for registering time seems to encounter a resistance which
-in physics is called the _vis inertia_. Most towns of any size—except
-the largest cities—still maintain local time. We respectfully hint
-to the almanac makers, that they have a great opportunity to spread
-intelligence on this subject. It will not be long before all towns within
-the meridional divisions will have common time. Why protract the agony of
-computing a dozen times a day the differences between several standards
-of time in the same community?
-
- * * * * *
-
-They continue to find Charley Ross. One was found last month. But each
-time it is not the true Charley Ross. What an amount of agony his parents
-have suffered! What a mercy were the knowledge that the boy died long
-ago! But reflect, too, on the uses of that tragedy. Thousands of children
-are watched over with more diligence because that tragedy recurs daily to
-the minds of parents as a solemn warning.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Psychologic classification is getting into disorder. Sir William Thompson
-has defined a “Magnetic Sense,” and a critic of him says: “We might as
-well be logical and liberal, and add to the present senses the touch
-sense, the self sense, the power sense, the logical sense, and the
-psychic, muscular, and electro-magnetic senses.” We suppose it is a wise
-thing to be “liberal;” but it is better to be accurate, and this use of
-the word _sense_ is not accurate.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The nomination by the Chicago Republican Convention of the Hon. James G.
-Blaine, of Maine, for President, and Senator John A. Logan, of Illinois,
-for Vice President, seems likely to precipitate a political contest over
-the tariff. Mr. Blaine and the platform on which he stands speak for
-protection, while the opposition will favor free trade.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Members of the Class of ’84 who expect to be at Round Lake, N. Y., on C.
-L. S. C. Day (Wednesday, July 10), and who wish to receive their diplomas
-there, should report to Miss Kimball, at Plainfield, N. J., by July 10.
-
- * * * * *
-
-We burn up, in this country, three hundred and fifty-nine hotels in a
-year. In the last eight years the aggregate is set down by the National
-Board of Underwriters as two thousand eight hundred and seventy-two. Here
-is another wound in the economic body through which our life-blood is
-pouring in a great stream, and nothing will stanch the wound but a better
-moral character in the people. Unsafe buildings are built for the most
-part by people who are smart and wicked.
-
- * * * * *
-
-All over the country Salvation-army captains, lieutenants and corporals
-are getting into trouble, and the organization is falling into disgrace.
-The movement may as well be voted a failure. It is, however, the only
-religious failure of any importance in the last two decades. In London,
-where it is held in vigorous hands by General Booth, it is still a
-respectable success; but no one else has been able to work it on a large
-scale. Petty successes here and there do not disprove the general rule of
-failure.
-
- * * * * *
-
-In Baltimore, last month, the fourth floor of a warehouse fell and six
-persons lost their lives. Accidents in buildings are becoming far too
-numerous. In such cases, as well as in broken banks, we have a proof
-that our complex civilization requires a higher grade of conscientious
-character—or more of it—than we are producing. Our brains are good
-enough; we want better morals.
-
- * * * * *
-
-It is reported from Europe that Prince Napoleon and his son Victor are
-both “running” for the office of Emperor of France. The office does not
-exist at present, and there is no prospect of its being created—the
-gunpowder facilities are lacking. But father and son are said to be
-quarreling over the matter. If France wants a monarch she now has a
-chance to get a gentleman in the person of the Count of Paris, who was
-with our army of the Potomac for some months, and has written a capital
-book on the civil war in our country.
-
- * * * * *
-
-It was a pleasant thing to see the Governor of Pennsylvania taking the
-lead in the Methodist General Conference when the resolutions against
-polygamy came up for discussion. Governor Pattison was a lay member of
-the body, and made a vigorous speech in favor of energetic measures to
-suppress this evil.
-
- * * * * *
-
-A distinguished Israelite of New York said to a reporter last month
-that he expected to see the synagogues opened for religious services on
-Sunday. The movement would begin with the religious use of both sacred
-days; but it will probably end in the general neglect of the seventh day.
-The inconvenience of having a different Sabbath from the rest of the
-people is doubtless a great embarrassment to the religious teachers of
-the Hebrews.
-
- * * * * *
-
-It is a proper prayer, “Remember not against me the sins of my youth.”
-But it is as well for young people to remember that human society does
-not readily forget our errors. And somebody has said that “God can afford
-to forgive when men can not afford to forget.” Perhaps he is not quite
-right; to forgive is not to give a man an office or a farm. We have
-forgiven all who have wronged us, if we are good Christians, but that
-does not oblige us to indorse their notes.
-
- * * * * *
-
-An ungracious thing is the fault-finding with Mr. George I. Seney,
-because, before the late troubles in Wall Street, he gave away some two
-millions of money to philanthropic uses. People who never give away
-things seem to think that, having given largely, Mr. Seney should have
-rolled himself into a safe nest and remained there. It occurs to us that
-no man has a better right to risk his own money than the man who has
-acquitted himself generously of his obligations to humanity. We have seen
-no proof that Mr. Seney was guilty of even an irregularity in the conduct
-of his business, or that he is not able to meet all his engagements.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Mr. Ferdinand Ward is the most picturesque and romantic figure in the
-late crisis in monetary New York. His success in Wall Street, by which
-a poor youth laid his hands on a dozen or more millions of other men’s
-money, appropriately climaxed by his enforced visit to the cell formerly
-tenanted by William M. Tweed, is a romance of rascality; and yet no
-one can tell just how he succeeded in using the cupidity of mankind to
-blind their eyes to the plainest principles of finance. The scheme was
-simple enough: Loan $70,000 on securities worth $100,000. Then take the
-securities to a bank and hypothecate them for $90,000. To a thief the
-profit is just $20,000. But the genius lies in concealing the simplicity
-of the business.
-
- * * * * *
-
-It was not strange that General Grant was deceived by young Ward. No one
-supposes that the General is an acute and expert man of business. But
-men who ought to be acute and expert men of business—for that is their
-calling—were as completely deceived as General Grant. There are always
-hindsight philosophers and small-eyed sons of detraction to seize such
-an occasion as the late panic to criticise great and good men. General
-Grant’s vindication lies in the fact that there are very few moneyed men
-in New York whom Ferdinand Ward did not deceive.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The zeal with which some persons labor to make benevolence unpopular is
-one of the worst manifestations of human nature. Why can not the critics
-remember that very few men ever catch the disease of giving away large
-amounts of money? So uncommon a disorder ought to be given the benefit of
-a corner of that mantle of charity which is usually employed to cover a
-multitude of sins.
-
- * * * * *
-
-One of the most remarkable statements we have lately seen was made by
-the president of a brewers’ convention recently held at Rochester, N. Y.
-He said: “Our hope is based on the fact that prohibition can not last
-in a progressive state.” We have tried to analyze this “hope,” and the
-result is this: A progressive state is one in which the drink-sellers
-are powerful enough to overthrow prohibition. _Progress_ has a peculiar
-signification in the drink-seller’s dictionary. We are at a loss to
-conjecture what truly progressive elements of a population should rise up
-to put down prohibition.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Among our reformers no class deserves more support than those who seek to
-improve the health of mankind. Some of them have exaggerated the value
-of this or that means; but the end they seek is a very useful one. We
-are coming to agreement on everything but food and sleep. We shall agree
-about these by-and-by. Plenty of sleep _in the night_—and wholesome
-food _in moderation_—these are two articles of the coming man’s health
-creed. The italicised words express the best evidence on the subject of
-longevity. A recent writer says that gluttony kills more people—who it
-may be said by parenthesis know no better—than tobacco and drink. Eating
-too much is the next evil to be reformed; then sleeping too little.
-
- * * * * *
-
-One of the beautiful customs of Brooklyn, N. Y., is to have a parade of
-the Sunday-school children of all denominations on one of the first warm
-days of May. This year fifty thousand children were in line, and the city
-kept holiday. The custom would bear transportation to other cities and
-towns.
-
-
-
-
-TALK ABOUT BOOKS.
-
-
-We have a new candidate for the honorable position of expounder and
-teacher of English.[E] It is for those who desire to learn, and have no
-teacher; for the tens of thousands whose school advantages have been
-limited, or mis-improved, and who are now studying out of school, and
-seek by self-exertion to acquire the culture and practical knowledge
-they need. It will not be found in the technical sense a grammar, but a
-series of familiar and most entertaining letters, in which the author
-discusses the principles and usage of the English language. The style
-is conversational, and remarkable for its perspicuity. The vigorous
-sentences are clear as sunbeams, and as purely English as Cobbett
-himself. The editor’s well considered and generally incisive notes are
-good reading, and add much to the value of the work.
-
-One of the most able, scholarly and exhaustive commentaries on the New
-Testament is now in process of publication by Funk & Wagnalls, New York.
-It is a translation, with notes by American editors, of the expositions
-and critical analyses of the well known German scholar and exegete,
-Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer. The whole work may require ten or more
-volumes of fair size, eight of which are promised during the year.
-The one on the “Epistles to The Corinthians”[F] is now before us. As
-a philologist Meyer has certainly but few equals, and his grammatical
-expositions of the Greek text give evidence of much patient research,
-acute discernment, and a thorough comprehension of the subjects
-discussed. The work will prove an invaluable aid to all who critically
-study the New Testament in the original language, and even lay readers
-may, if they will examine, find much that is refreshing in the author’s
-incisive criticisms, and clear, concise statements of evangelical
-doctrines.
-
-An ingenious portfolio[G] has been invented by a member of the
-Philadelphia bar, for those who may not have studied thoroughly the
-laws of thought and composition, yet wish to know how to work up a
-subject. On the side of a neat little slate are placed certain typical
-questions which are to be applied to the subject of contemplation, and
-space is given under each to jot down the points to be considered under
-each heading. Thus in one’s pocket may be carried a scientific outline
-by which one may classify immediately the scraps of illustration, the
-fancies or thoughts which they pick up on any given subject.
-
-Miss Emily Raymond, of Toledo, has written a very pleasing,
-comprehensive, and satisfactory account of the Chautauqua Idea and its
-home. This little volume, entitled “About Chautauqua,” is probably the
-most complete report yet given of this modern movement. The price of the
-book is 50 cents. Address Miss Raymond, 48 Bush Street, Toledo, O.
-
-A collection of first-class short stories by American authors has been
-begun by Charles Scribner’s Sons.[H] They are being gathered from the
-great number of stories which have been sent out in the leading magazines
-of the country during the last twenty years, and promise to make a
-remarkably entertaining collection. Many of the foremost writers of
-fiction of the day are in the list of authors.
-
-The entertaining volume, “Our Famous Women,”[I] will be, we think, a
-decided success. Thirty of the prominent women of the times are discussed
-most pleasantly in as many easy and appreciative essays. The papers are
-not critical or comprehensive, but gossipy, entertaining, and very well
-written. One finds in most of them exactly the facts they want about
-such favorites as Mrs. Burnett, Louisa M. Alcott, Rose Terry Cooke,
-Harriet Prescott Spofford, Mary A. Livermore, etc. As far as possible,
-the writers have been wisely chosen from the ranks of the famous women
-themselves. The book will be worth a great deal to women who are trying
-to win position and a livelihood by their own exertions. Its heroines
-are striking examples of what bravery, earnestness, cheerfulness and
-faithfulness will do in a life.
-
-Another volume of Charles Scribner’s Sons’ new edition of “Ik Marvel”
-is out. “Rural Studies,” first published in 1867, has been revised and
-reissued under the title of “Out-of-Town Places.”[J] The book was not
-more timely fifteen years ago than it is now; perhaps it will be even
-more useful now, for the last fifteen years have taught us more of beauty
-and its uses than we had ever before had time to learn. Mr. Mitchell’s
-little book gives many capital suggestions to farmers and owners of
-country places about practical improvements. It is not a book for
-horticulturists, or for fancy stock or high-art farmers, but it will be
-very useful to people who by their own labor and planning are trying to
-beautify their homes.
-
-A good book on etiquette—and, as it often happens, a very ordinary one—is
-pretty sure of finding a wide circle of readers in America. A sensible,
-reliable guide-book into the mysteries of the best society has lately
-been published by the Harpers.[K] We like it. The writer knows exactly
-what her readers need and is competent to supply their want clearly and
-reliably. What more could be asked of the writer of a book on etiquette?
-
-Uncle Remus[L] has become the representative of a vanishing type of
-American life. It is a matter of congratulation that so much of his
-humor, shrewd sense and peculiar dialect has been saved to us in “His
-Songs and His Sayings,” a little book which, though we are apt to
-consider it merely humorous, really has much material for interesting
-study. The aim of the author was as he says: “To preserve the legends [of
-the plantation] in their original simplicity, and to wed them permanently
-to the quaint dialect—if indeed it can be called a dialect—through the
-medium of which they have become a part of the domestic history of every
-Southern family.”
-
-
-BOOKS RECEIVED.
-
-How the Bible was Made. By Rev. E. M. Wood, D.D. Cincinnati: Walden &
-Stowe. 1884.
-
-The Exodus and Other Poems. By Rev. T. C. Reade. Cincinnati: Printed by
-Walden & Stowe for the author. 1884.
-
-Quicksands. From the German of Adolph Streckfuss. By Mrs. A. L. Wister.
-Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1884.
-
-Standard Library: The Fortunes of Rachel. By Edward Everett Hale. New
-York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1884.
-
-Standard Library: Chinese Gordon. By Archibald Forbes. New York: Funk &
-Wagnalls. 1884.
-
-There was Once a Man. A Story. By R. H. Newell (Orpheus C. Kerr). New
-York: Fords, Howard & Hurlburt, for Our Continent Publishing Co. 1884.
-
-A Palace Prison; or, The Past and The Present. New York: Fords, Howard &
-Hurlburt. 1884.
-
-Rapid Ramblings in Europe. By W. C. Falkner. Philadelphia: J. B.
-Lippincott & Co. 1884.
-
-One Thousand Popular Quotations. Compiled by J. S. Ogilvie. New York: J.
-S. Ogilvie & Co.
-
-Ballads and Verses Vain. By Andrew Lang. New York: Charles Scribner’s
-Sons. 1884.
-
-Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book. By George Eliot. New York: Harper &
-Brothers. 1884.
-
-Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel. By Ignatius Donnelly. New York: D.
-Appleton & Co. 1884.
-
-[E] A Grammar of the English Language in a Series of Letters. By William
-Cobbett. With notes by Robert Waters. New York: James W. Pratt. 1883.
-
-[F] Critical and Exegetical Hand-Book to the Epistles to the Corinthians.
-By Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, Th.D. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1884.
-
-[G] The Adult Kindergarten; or the Educational Problem Solved, for Public
-Life, Private Life, and School Life Uses. By a member of the Philadelphia
-Bar. Price, 50 cents. The Townsend Publishing Co., Philadelphia.
-
-[H] Stories by American Authors. Price per volume, 50 cents. New York:
-Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1884.
-
-[I] Our Famous Women. Hartford, Conn.: A. D. Worthington and Company.
-1884.
-
-[J] Out-of-Town Places, with Hints for their Improvement. By the author
-of “Wet Days at Edgewood.” A re-issue of “Rural Studies.” New York:
-Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1884.
-
-[K] Manners and Social Usages. By Mrs. John Sherwood. New York: Harper &
-Brothers, Franklin Square. 1884.
-
-[L] Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings. The Folk-lore of the Old
-Plantation. By Joel Chandler Harris. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1884.
-
- * * * * *
-
-=ERRATA.=—On page 544 of the June number of THE CHAUTAUQUAN, for “Henry
-VII.,” in Question 3, read Henry VI.; for “1609,” in Question 39, read
-1690; for “George IV.,” in the answer to Question 47, and in Questions 48
-and 49, read George III. On page 551, for “from which comes companion,”
-read from _comes_, companion.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Transcriber’s Notes:
-
-Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
-
-Page 559, “comman ding” changed to “commanding” (He is tall and
-commanding)
-
-Page 559, “tresspassers” changed to “trespassers” (immunity from outside
-trespassers)
-
-Page 560, “fir st” changed to “first” (implied in their first belief)
-
-Page 576, “Musem” changed to “Museum” (the Art Museum)
-
-Page 576, “Bursa’s” changed to “Bursar’s” (to the Bursar’s office)
-
-Page 578, repeated word “and” removed (and then ends with)
-
-Page 582, “Rathhaus” changed to “Rathaus” (the Bremen Rathaus)
-
-Page 582, “scimeter” changed to “scimitar” (the scimitar-like fins)
-
-Page 583, “pressage” changed to “presage” (took this for a presage)
-
-Page 583, “coast of New England, and the other in the waters about” was
-originally and erroneously printed at the foot of page 584.
-
-Page 584, “Calvanistic” changed to “Calvinistic” (her Calvinistic
-conscience)
-
-Page 586, “watchward” changed to “watchword” (“Pantaloons” was the
-watchword)
-
-Page 590, “Xenophen” changed to “Xenophon” (ten thousand Greeks under
-Xenophon)
-
-Page 591, “Brittainy” changed to “Brittany” (reached Morlaix in Brittany)
-
-Page 597, “cannon” changed to “common” (to be the provision for the
-“common defense.”)
-
-Page 600, “Autonyms” changed to “Antonyms” (A Complete Hand Book of
-Synonyms and Antonyms)
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, July 1884,
-No. 10, by The Chautauquan Literary and Scientific Circle
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHAUTAUQUAN, JULY 1884 ***
-
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-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, July 1884, No. 10, by
-The Chautauquan Literary and Scientific Circle
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
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-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, July 1884, No. 10
-
-Author: The Chautauquan Literary and Scientific Circle
-
-Editor: Theodore L. Flood
-
-Release Date: July 26, 2017 [EBook #55208]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHAUTAUQUAN, JULY 1884 ***
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-
-
-<h1 class="faux">The Chautauquan, July 1884</h1>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 522px;">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="522" height="800" alt="Cover" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="tnote">
-<div class="center"><small><b>Transcriber’s Note:</b> This cover has been
-created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</small></div>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_557" id="Page_557">[557]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="maintitle"><span class="smcap">The Chautauquan.</span></div>
-
-<p class="center"><i>A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF
-THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.</i></p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Vol. IV.</span> <span class="spacer">JULY, 1884.</span> No. 10.</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<h2>Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.</h2>
-
-<p><i>President</i>—Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio.</p>
-
-<p><i>Superintendent of Instruction</i>—Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven,
-Conn.</p>
-
-<p><i>Counselors</i>—Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.; Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.;
-Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.</p>
-
-<p><i>Office Secretary</i>—Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.</p>
-
-<p><i>General Secretary</i>—Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.</p>
-
-<hr class="double" />
-
-<h2>Contents</h2>
-
-<div class="tnote"><b>Transcriber’s Note:</b> This table of contents of this periodical was created
-for the HTML version to aid the reader.</div>
-
-<table summary="Contents">
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">The White House</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#THE_WHITE_HOUSE">557</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Sunday Readings</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="indent2">[<i>July 6</i>]</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#JULY6">560</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="indent2">[<i>July 13</i>]</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#JULY13">560</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="indent2">[<i>July 20</i>]</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#JULY20">560</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="indent2">[<i>July 27</i>]</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#JULY27">561</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Growth</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#GROWTH">561</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Tenement House Life in New York</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#TENEMENT_HOUSE_LIFE_IN_NEW_YORK">561</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">The Cañons of the Colorado</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#THE_CANONS_OF_THE_COLORADO">564</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">The Courts of Three Presidents</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#THE_COURTS_OF_THREE_PRESIDENTS">566</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Astronomy of the Heavens</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="indent2">For July</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#ASTRONOMY_JULY">569</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="indent2">For August</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#ASTRONOMY_AUGUST">570</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="indent2">For September</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#ASTRONOMY_SEPTEMBER">570</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Rise Higher</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#RISE_HIGHER">571</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Landmarks of Boston in Seven Days</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#LANDMARKS_OF_BOSTON">572</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Vanishing Types</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#VANISHING_TYPES">577</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">The Council of Nice</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#THE_COUNCIL_OF_NICE">580</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Sonnet on Chillon</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#SONNET_ON_CHILLON">582</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">An Ocean Monarch</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#AN_OCEAN_MONARCH">582</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Eccentric Americans</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="indent2">IX.—A Pioneer Eccentric Woman</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#ECCENTRIC_AMERICANS">584</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">The Imperial College in Peking</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#THE_IMPERIAL_COLLEGE_IN_PEKING">587</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Eight Centuries with Walter Scott</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#EIGHT_CENTURIES_WITH_WALTER_SCOTT">589</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Alaska—Its Missions</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#ALASKA_ITS_MISSIONS">592</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Our Naval Force</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#OUR_NAVAL_FORCE">595</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">The Coming Summer Meetings at Chautauqua</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#THE_COMING_SUMMER_MEETINGS_AT_CHAUTAUQUA">597</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Going to Europe</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#GOING_TO_EUROPE">598</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">C. L. S. C. Work</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#C_L_S_C_WORK">600</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">The C. L. S. C. Course for 1884-’85</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#THE_C_L_S_C_COURSE_FOR_1884-85">600</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Local Circles</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#LOCAL_CIRCLES">601</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">C. L. S. C. Testimony</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#C_L_S_C_TESTIMONY">606</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Editor’s Outlook</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#EDITORS_OUTLOOK">607</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Editor’s Note-Book</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#EDITORS_NOTE-BOOK">610</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td><span class="smcap">Talk About Books</span></td>
- <td class="tdr"><a href="#TALK_ABOUT_BOOKS">612</a></td>
- </tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="THE_WHITE_HOUSE">THE WHITE HOUSE.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Mrs. PATTIE L. COLLINS</span>.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>When Washington was in its infancy, and the patriots of
-that early day bethought themselves of the propriety of building
-a residence for the President, it was with some difficulty
-that they could decide what it should be called. In truth, this
-seemed a more serious question than location, expense, or
-architecture. Anything that suggested monarchies or kingdoms,
-such as the word “palace,” could not be entertained;
-not a trace of the effete despotisms of the Old World should be
-tolerated, even in our nomenclature. At last “Executive
-Mansion” was settled upon as a proper title. Any gentleman,
-provided it was sufficiently pretentious, might style his house
-a “mansion,” and the chosen executor of laws for the nation
-was not therefore set apart and above his fellow countrymen,
-when installed as chief magistrate. In the course of a few
-years, when only its blackened walls were left standing as mute
-witnesses that our British cousins still loved us, so much
-paint was required to efface the marks of the destroyer, when
-it was restored, that it gleamed white as snow in the distance,
-and naturally, nay almost inevitably, came to be called the
-“White House” by popular consent. And by this pretty,
-simple name the home of the Presidents will doubtless continue
-to be known as long as republican institutions endure.
-It is as different as possible in external appearance from the
-habitations of royalty in European cities; no iron-barred windows,
-better fitted for a fortress than ordinary outlook, no
-gloomy, gray walls, chilly and forbidding, frowning down upon
-you, no squalid tenements thronged with degraded specimens
-of humanity press upon its outskirts to accentuate the beauties
-of the one and the miseries of the other. Instead of this, the
-White House rises fair and inviting from an elevation which
-seems just sufficient to bring it into relief as a conspicuous feature
-of the landscape. Its north front looks toward Pennsylvania
-Avenue, commanding a view of Lafayette Square—itself
-a most interesting spot, containing the celebrated equestrian
-statue of Jackson, by Clark Mills, and grouped about it the
-cannon captured at the battle of New Orleans—while around
-it stand some of the many historic residences of the capitol.
-To the east and west of the President’s grounds, respectively,
-may be seen the Treasury, and the War, State and Navy Departments;
-the southern aspect is the most charming of all;
-flowers, trees and emerald lawn, with the music of falling
-water make up a picture as bewildering in loveliness as it is
-arcadian in simplicity, its boundary line being the Potomac,
-shining in the distance like a bit of blue sea, but disfigured by
-no great iron hulks or other sea monsters; only a modest little
-excursion steamer, now and then a tall three-masted schooner
-lazily rocking and glancing skyward, impatient to set sail.</p>
-
-<p>With these surroundings a President must be singularly oblivious
-to the voices of nature, art and patriotism if he does not
-find about his temporary abode everything to minister to his
-higher nature.</p>
-
-<p>At present, on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, the
-President usually receives from twelve to one o’clock; Tuesday
-and Friday are Cabinet days, and Monday he claims as absolutely
-his own. Of course if a Secretary, Senator or Representative
-should present himself upon urgent business, that would
-not admit of delay, the rule would be violated, but not otherwise.</p>
-
-<p>The official etiquette of the White House remains about the
-same from generation to generation, but the social regime
-varies very much, according to the tastes of the temporary
-occupants. If, by a combination of fortuitous circumstances,
-an unpretending woman of limited education and provincial
-habits finds herself suddenly thrust into a position for which
-she is wholly unprepared by previous training, she fills it more
-or less acceptably, as she has tact and adaptability. These
-seem qualities which have not of late years been conspicuously
-characteristic of the “first ladies” of the land, no matter what
-their previous station; unless, indeed, an exception be made
-in favor of a certain beautiful woman, who was herself a more
-priceless treasure than any the White House contained.</p>
-
-<p>A visitor going for the first time to the White House would
-suppose at a casual glance that it was a gala day, and all the
-world was thronging thither. It is rather surprising to learn
-that it is always the same. There are fine ladies and gentlemen
-who come in great state, foreigners of all nations, rustics
-from the depths of the forest, the perfectly blasé, the ignorant
-clown, the ubiquitous, irrepressible American child—all running
-rampant over the President’s house. Perhaps it would
-be just as well to go back to the very beginning, when this
-surging crowd presents itself at the main entrance. Few, fortunately,
-make the mistake of the intoxicated straggler who
-found his way into the grounds, and perceiving the three
-harmless gilded shells used in the way of very questionable
-ornamentation in front of the mansion, thus accosted a door-keeper:
-“Old man in?” Receiving only a look of dazed inquiry
-by way of reply, he continued, “Old ten per cent. money
-bags, I say?” At this juncture it dawned upon the official, so
-far as his sense of shocked dignity permitted him to receive
-any impression, that this besotted wretch actually supposed
-himself at a pawnbroker’s shop! But a much prettier story
-than this can be told of these empty shells: Formerly the birds
-built their nests in them, and now that the holes have been
-filled so that they can not, they yet come and perch and twitter
-and circle around their former dwelling-place.</p>
-
-<p>Eight persons are required to stand guard at the entrance;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558">[558]</a></span>
-not all at once, but to alternate and keep a sufficient number
-on duty. An imperative necessity has drawn the line of demarcation
-for White House sight-seers. Entering the hall they
-are ushered at once into the East Room, and having inspected
-it to their heart’s content, return by the same way they came,
-unless choosing to ascend to the waiting room on the second
-floor, and risk an opportunity of seeing the President. In this
-case, to a student of human nature a rare opportunity for study
-is presented. Hardened, chronic office-seekers, schemers,
-conscienceless plotters, shabby women, forlorn, dismal, nay,
-often heart-broken, pert, self-assured youth, and even the
-small boy, with ragged jacket, one illy-adjusted suspender and
-rusty shoes walks in with an air that could only have been begotten
-by the consciousness that he was a part of the republic.
-Much patience brings the vigil of each to a close, and if the
-business be simply to shake hands with the President, that
-ceremony is speedily accomplished. At present it would be
-something like this: Entering as other people go out (for the
-other people are always there, going out before you, and coming
-in after you), a tall gentleman, very grand and very
-dignified, quite like a gigantic icicle—but no, that comparison
-is derogatory—let us say like Pompey’s Pillar—stands Chester
-A. Arthur. He glances at your card mechanically, he takes
-you by the hand most indifferently, and in an inexpressible
-broad voice, without a single inflection, he says, “It is a very
-pleasant day.” You may say that you are charmed to have
-an opportunity to pay your respects to Mr. President, or any
-such nonsense that comes uppermost, but it is not of the least
-consequence what you say, or whether you say anything at all.
-That is all, and you may salaam yourself out of the side door.</p>
-
-<p>The East Room is used for all public receptions. It is of
-noble proportions, eighty feet in length by forty in width,
-and twenty-two in height. It was originally intended as a
-banqueting hall, but the first authentic account of its use was
-that Dolly Madison found it an excellent place for drying
-clothes. Under its present aspect it would scarcely appear to
-be well adapted to that purpose. A rich carpet of those soft
-tints that seem to melt into each other covers the floor. The
-walls and ceiling are all white and gold; glancing into the
-immense mirror you find it reproduces an endless vista of
-panels and columns lost in space. The windows are draped
-with lace curtains, and in warm weather the breeze comes up
-fresh and sweet direct from the river, blowing them about at
-will—just as it does the curtains of other people! But something
-else happens to these curtains, too, that is not so pleasant,
-and from which other people’s, as a rule, are exempt. But a
-short time since an employe of the White House called my attention
-to the fact that here and there a figure had been entirely
-cut out by a souvenir-thief. This apartment, as well as
-several others in the mansion, has been recently done over by
-Tiffany, and greatly improved; it has now very much the appearance
-in general effect of the “Gold Salon” of the Grand
-Opera House in Paris. It contains only two pictures; one of
-Washington, purchased as the original, by Gilbert Stuart, but
-of doubtful authenticity, and the Martha Washington painted
-in 1878 by Andrews, an Ohio artist. This latter shows the
-same refined, high-bred features that even the crudest representation
-of her portrays, and the flowing train and satin petticoat
-are quite regal. The dress was copied from a Parisian
-costume made for a New York lady to wear at the Centennial
-tea party in Philadelphia in 1876, and purports to be an exact reproduction,
-but with a not unusual nineteenth century skepticism,
-I confess that I boldly decline the sleeve as an anachronism, and
-leaving the queenly robe out of the question, do not hesitate
-to say that in my opinion the hand was borrowed—perhaps
-from a Greek statue. Certainly it is not the strong right hand
-which accomplished the prodigious amounts of spinning,
-weaving, and the like, usually ascribed to this wonderful matron;
-but it is a tiny, symmetrical, extremely pretty hand, in
-the delineation of which the artist was probably true to his instincts
-rather than history, and in consideration of the happy
-result, the departure from fact to fancy deserves to be condoned.</p>
-
-<p>The Green Room, which derives its name from the prevailing
-color of its decoration, is next in order to the East Room.
-It contains a portrait of Mrs. Hayes, by Hunt, in an elaborate
-wooden frame, carved and presented by young ladies from the
-Cincinnati School of Design; it represents luscious bunches of
-grapes and graceful foliage, a design which, it has been sarcastically
-observed, in this connection is singularly inappropriate—since
-it wreathes the very high priestess of temperance
-like the fabled bacchanalian god. There are also crystal vase
-of exquisite workmanship, selected by Mrs. Lincoln, a grand
-piano, costly cabinets and candelabra, and a bronze clock
-which is said to be a little childish about keeping time. That
-is to say, it will do well enough for presidential and diplomatic
-time, but not for running trains on single track. It was presented
-by Napoleon to Lafayette, and by him to Washington.
-Another much-prized antique is a claw-footed round table of
-mahogany, inlaid with brass, and known to be at least one
-hundred and seventy years old. A cover almost envelops it,
-quite hiding its rich color and fine polish; the reason for this
-being that once upon a time a vandal borrowed some of the
-brass ornamentation and forgot to return it.</p>
-
-<p>The Blue Room is very much prettier than its title is suggestive.
-It is here that foreign ministers present their credentials.
-The furniture, with its gilded framework, and upholstered in
-a silk damask of blue and gold, is in harmony with the curtains,
-the carpets, and the decorated ceiling. It is oval in form
-and the general effect is very beautiful, especially by gas-light.</p>
-
-<p>The Red Parlor is used for general receptions, both by the
-President and the ladies of the household. This was the last
-room occupied by Lincoln in the White House. He left it on
-that fateful 14th of April, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and
-Speaker Colfax. The tiled mantel represents the style of 1200;
-this also is some of the high art—Tiffany decoration. And in
-truth the entire furnishing shows a singular, but not inharmonious,
-conglomeration. The candlesticks, dating back to
-Monroe’s time, the gold pitcher and bowl presented by Elkington
-&amp; Co., of London, after the Centennial, a wonderful screen
-embroidered in silk and beads, from the Austrian Government
-during Grant’s administration, vases from France, upon whose
-delicate surface are portrayed the conviction and sentence of
-Charlotte Corday, a curious cabinet, of which the entire front
-is formed of brass tacks and pin heads, and many other things,
-but the most interesting and probably the most highly prized
-is the clock used by Lincoln in his private office during the
-war. A portfolio of engravings, a pot of flowers, and a single
-book occupy a small table. It is a refreshing oasis, a glimpse
-of something real and altogether home-like, that rests one after
-so much overpowering richness and antiquity combined.</p>
-
-<p>The State Dining Room is furnished in green. The heavy
-curtains with bright borders and lambrequins are themselves
-pretty enough to excuse their shutting off the river view. The
-table will seat forty persons as it is, but when arranged in the
-form of a cross, fifty-four. Only three state dinners are ordinarily
-given during a season, but nine were interspersed
-through the last. A sideboard contains wine glasses of every
-shape, size and description. Some one laughingly explained
-his by saying: “You know when the little friends of the President’s
-daughter come to see her, he likes for them to have a
-real good time, and these are for their dolls’ tables.”</p>
-
-<p>Apropos of the wine question, a colored employe, seeing a
-visitor taking a copious draught of ice-water just within the
-vestibule, and return from his explorations through the East
-Room soon after, complaining of being sick, exclaimed in a
-triumphant voice: “Boss, I tole you dat stuff wuz only fit to
-wash clothes in.” Turning to me he added, “Dat’s so, missus,
-’cept to cool your head when you got a ra’al bad headache,
-and can’t git no cabbage leaves to wrap ’round it.”</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559">[559]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>It is said to be quite a general impression that the expense
-of state dinners is borne by the government. This is not true,
-and President Arthur keeps his own horses, coachman, and
-cook.</p>
-
-<p>The table is ornamented by a center-piece for flowers, the
-bottom of which represents a miniature lake, and mirrors the
-floral beauties above and around it. The President’s chair is
-on one side, at the middle. In speaking of this I am reminded
-of a young American girl, who, like myself, was upon a certain
-occasion being shown through one of the numerous abodes of
-a crowned head. Entering the <i>salon</i> in which foreign ambassadors
-were received, we perceived that the throne chair stood
-upon a sort of dais which was entirely covered with superb crimson
-velvet. This adventurous little spirit inadvertently let fall
-a profane footstep upon the sacred fabric, when she was immediately
-reprimanded in an awful voice and solemnly admonished
-to keep a respectful distance. Proceeding further in this
-princely residence, we reached the dining room. The king’s
-chair, like our President’s, stood in the middle, and unlike it
-was of entirely different and of more elaborate workmanship
-than the others. Whilst the extremely loyal and obsequious
-attendant was looking in another direction, young America
-silently and swiftly drew out the chair from its place and seated
-herself with a comical assumption of dignity that was very
-amusing, a perilous position, which even she was not audacious
-enough to maintain more than a few seconds.</p>
-
-<p>A door from the dining room leads directly to the conservatory,
-a perfect wonderland of perfume and color. It seems as
-if all the wealth of Flora had been gathered here; forests of
-ferns, banks of azaleas, roses in endless profusion and variety,
-and priceless exotic children of the tropics without number.
-One stands almost breathless with admiration before the exquisite
-orchids; and here is a plant with thick, polished leaves,
-heavy clusters of scentless blossoms, from the southern coast
-of Africa, named for its discoverer, Prof. Rudgea, while not far
-off the medinella waves slowly and sadly its long red clusters,
-as if sighing for its native Japan. Ensconced here and there
-are receptacles for goldfish, and even a coral bank is to be
-discovered among the drooping ferns and falling water. It is
-difficult to come away from these fairy regions to prosaic
-places, but there is another nook near by into which prying
-eyes must peep, and after all the transition is not so very trying,
-since it is into the family dining room, which is a charming
-picture in itself.</p>
-
-<p>There is something so attractive in this warm, bright looking
-spot, that I must confess to a fascination here stronger than
-that inspired by the tiles, mosaics and bric-a-brac found elsewhere.
-Perhaps every feminine heart is sensitive to the dainty
-beauty of china, cut glass, and richly chased vessels of silver
-and gold, but the most unsusceptible would be moved to
-warmer enthusiasm over the set of Limoges faience, manufactured
-by the order of Mrs. Hayes. It consists of five hundred
-pieces, representing the fauna and flora of America, and each
-is a delicious study, bearing the impress of true artistic skill.
-The designs were all made by Mr. Theodore Davis, whose studio
-is upon one of the most romantic portions of the New Jersey
-coast. There, in his happy home, surrounded by wife,
-children and mother, far removed from the turmoil of the outer
-world, and borrowing inspiration from sea, sky and air, he labors,
-and sends forth the admirable results to an appreciative
-people. This china is a rich legacy to the White House families.</p>
-
-<p>The grand corridor is hung with portraits of former Presidents;
-that portion of it from which the private stairway ascends
-is cut off for the exclusive use of the household. A marvelous
-light falls through the western window upon the cabinets
-with their treasures, the many flowering plants and inviting
-easy chairs. But even here history must intrude; a marble
-table of hexagon shape is said to have been the property of
-General Jackson, and tradition asserts that broken places here
-and there in the smooth surface are the traces of his seal ring
-when his hand was brought down with that terrible emphasis
-peculiar to him on certain occasions.</p>
-
-<p>The elevator which was put in for “Grandma Garfield,” she
-never returned to the White House to use. The dreariest
-place, perhaps, under the roof, is the shabby, forlorn little
-cloak room, in which Minister Allen fell dead last January a
-year ago, at the New Year’s reception.</p>
-
-<p>It is not an uninteresting spectacle, to stand just within the
-vestibule on Cabinet day, and observe the arrival of the nation’s
-arbiters, sandwiched between the throng. Perhaps a
-slight murmur is heard, and strangers turn toward the entrance.
-It might be a pleasant-faced countryman in his plain black
-clothes, but instead it is the Honorable Secretary of the Interior.
-Next, a stylish coupé, with an iron-gray horse, from
-which Postmaster-General Gresham and his chief clerk alight.
-The Postmaster-General is in the stalwart prime of life.
-He is tall and commanding, with strongly marked features.
-Immediately following him is a British tourist, with a glass
-screwed in his eye, who pauses to ask, before entering the
-East Room, “What do you call that cold-looking place there?”
-Then the Spanish Minister enters and passes so slowly up the
-stairway that one is involuntarily reminded of the inevitable
-<i>manana</i> (to-morrow) of his people, not one of whom has
-ever been in a hurry since the beginning of time. No matter
-what the service required of these children of the sun, unless
-a compelling power supplements the order, “<i>Manana, manana</i>,”
-is the response.</p>
-
-<p>Another carriage rattles over the pavement, and a pale, spare
-man, with a white fringe under his chin, and close cropped
-hair, with a mysterious gloom upon his countenance, and bent,
-as if, like Atlas, he upbore the world upon his shoulders—passes
-with such an air as has never been known outside of the
-State Department. There they all have it in greater or less
-degree, messengers, clerks, and assistant secretaries. It is
-indescribable, but it is admirable. Even the high-stepping
-bay horses appear to be distinctly conscious of their position.</p>
-
-<p>Next in order comes Attorney-General Brewster, who is without
-doubt the most gorgeous man in Washington. I say gorgeous
-advisedly. He wears an immense expanse of buff vest,
-a dark necktie, illuminated by a pin of diamonds clustering
-around a ruby center, light drab pantaloons, and lace ruffles
-about his wrists.</p>
-
-<p>Secretary Folger has the aristocratic appearance which is the
-legitimate birthright of those wonderful old Nantucket families
-and their descendants. I need not ask you to pause longer at
-the entrance; the other notabilities are out of town to-day.</p>
-
-<p>But after all its artistic finish, its rich decoration, the luxury
-apparent at a glance, there is a sense of something lacking in
-this grand habitation. All of these fine apartments leave the
-impression that they are mere show-places, not the habitual
-resorts of a family. One of my pet theories is that people’s
-houses always look like them—they transfer a portion of their
-personality to everything with which they come habitually into
-contact. Well, this is nobody’s home; it belongs to the government,
-and is illustrative of the national wealth and taste,
-but of no individual peculiarities. The question has often
-been debated of erecting another residence, which shall
-literally be the President’s home, while the present mansion
-shall be devoted exclusively to public receptions and official
-affairs. Then, and not till then, will the Chief Magistrate
-taste occasional immunity from outside trespassers, and enjoy
-a well earned repose.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse">Angel of Patience! sent to calm</div>
-<div class="verse">Our feverish brows with cooling palm;</div>
-<div class="verse">To lay the storms of hope and fear,</div>
-<div class="verse">And reconcile life’s smile and tear;</div>
-<div class="verse">The throbs of wounded pride to still,</div>
-<div class="verse">And make our own our Father’s will!—<i>Whittier.</i></div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560">[560]</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="SUNDAY_READINGS">SUNDAY READINGS.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3 id="JULY6">[<i>July 6.</i>]</h3>
-
-<p>It is true that the task which God lays upon us all is the
-same—the unceasing surrender of their own wishes to the
-higher aims which he successively sets before them. But with
-men of passionate temperament and selfish habits, who are
-therefore at every turn exposed by circumstances to violent
-temptation, their natural wishes are, for the most part, so obviously
-sinful that, though the struggle of renouncing them
-may be hard, the duty of doing so is clear and pressing. And
-when such turn to God, their falls in attempting the Christian
-walk are often frequent enough, or at least their battles with
-temptation severe enough, to teach them the evil and weakness
-of their own heart. With men, on the other hand, of calm,
-pure and affectionate disposition, and trained in conscientious
-habits, so many of their wishes are for things harmless, or even
-good in themselves, that it is less easy to see why and how
-they are to be given up. Such men, just, kindly, and finding
-much of their own happiness in that of others, live, for the most
-part, in harmonious relations with those around them, and
-have little to disturb their consciences beyond the fear of falling
-short in the path of duty on which they have already entered.
-But they are exposed to many perils, more insidious,
-because less startling, than those which beset their more
-fiercely tempted brethren. They are in danger of depending
-too much on the respect and love which others so readily yield
-them; of valuing themselves on a purity which, if ever one
-of struggle, has come to be one of taste; of prizing intellectual
-clearness above moral insight and vigor; of mistaking the
-pleasure they feel in the performance of duty, for real submission
-to the will of God; and above all, of shrinking from new
-truths which would, for the time, confuse their belief, and break
-up the calm symmetry of their lives.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>For … different natures require and receive a very different
-discipline from God. Sometimes it is by outward affliction
-that God speaks to souls, thus sinking into the lethargy of
-formalism; and the loss of friends, or health, or influence suddenly
-seems to cut off, as it were, half the means of serving
-him, and to rouse long-forgotten temptations to rise up against
-his will. Sometimes, on the other hand, he speaks to them
-inwardly, by opening their eyes to heights of holiness which
-they had never before steadily contemplated. They now suddenly
-perceive that many of the fancied duties which have till
-now occupied their lives and satisfied their consciences, have
-long ceased to be duties, and have come to be mere habits or
-pleasures; and that while they have been thus living in self
-love, unseen and unrepented of, they might have been coming
-to the knowledge of the higher obligations to which they have
-been so blind, but which were all implied in their first belief
-if they had but continued to read it with a single eye.—<i>From
-Susanna Winkworth, in “Tauler’s Life and Times.”</i></p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3 id="JULY13">[<i>July 13.</i>]</h3>
-
-<p>Especially, too, if they be distracted and disheartened (as
-such are wont to be) by the sin and confusion of the world; by
-the amount of God’s work which still remains undone, and by
-their own seeming incapacity to do it, they will take heart from
-the history of John Tauler and his fellows, who, in a far darker
-and more confused time than the present, found a work to do
-and strength to do it; who, the more they retired into the recesses
-of their own inner life, found there that fully to know
-themselves was to know all men, and to have a message for all
-men; and who by their unceasing labors of love proved that
-the highest spiritual attainments, instead of shutting a man up
-in lazy and Pharisaic self-contemplation, drive him forth to
-work as his Master worked before him, among the poor, the
-suffering, and the fallen.</p>
-
-<p>Let such take heart, and toil on in faith at the duty which
-lies nearest to them. Five hundred years have passed since
-Tauler and his fellows did their simple work, and looked for
-no fruit from it, but the saving of one here and there from the
-nether pit. That was enough for which to labor; but without
-knowing it, they did more than that. Their work lives, and
-will live forever, though in forms from which they would have
-perhaps shrunk had they foreseen them. Let all such therefore
-take heart. They may know their own weakness; but
-they know not the power of God in them. They may think
-sadly that they are only palliating the outward symptoms of
-social and moral disease; but God may be striking, by some unconscious
-chance blow of theirs, at a sort of evil which they
-never suspected. They may mourn over the failure of some
-seemingly useful plan of their own; but God may be, by their
-influence, sowing the seed of some plan of his own, of which
-they little dream. For every good deed comes from God.
-His is the idea, his the inspiration, and his its fulfillment in
-time; and therefore no good deed but lives and grows with the
-everlasting life of God himself. And as the acorn, because
-God has given it “a forming form,” and life after its kind,
-bears within it not only the builder oak, but shade for many a
-herd; food for countless animals, and last, the gallant ship itself,
-and the materials of every use to which nature or art can
-put it and its descendants after it throughout all time; so does
-every good deed contain within itself endless and unexpected
-possibilities of other good, which may and will grow and multiply
-forever, in the genial light of him whose eternal mind
-conceived it, and whose eternal spirit will forever quicken it,
-with that life of which he is the giver and the Lord.—<i>From
-Rev. Charles Kingsley, in “Preface to Tauler’s Sermons.”</i></p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3 id="JULY20">[<i>July 20.</i>]</h3>
-
-<p>It astonishes all thought to observe the minuteness of God’s
-government, and of the natural and common processes which
-he carries on from day to day. His dominions are spread out,
-system above system, filling all height and latitude, but he is
-never lost in the magnificent. He descends to an infinite detail,
-and builds a little universe in the smallest things. He
-carries on a process of growth in every tree and flower and
-living thing; accomplishes in each an internal organization,
-and works the functions of an internal laboratory, too delicate
-all for eye or instrument to trace. He articulates the members
-and impels the instincts of every living mote that shines in the
-sunbeam. As when we ascend toward the distant and the
-vast, so when we descend toward the minute, we see his attention
-acuminated and his skill concentrated on his object; and
-the last discernible particle dies out of our sight with the same
-divine glory on it, as on the last orb that glimmers in the skirt
-of the universe.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The works of Christ are, if possible, a still brighter illustration
-of the same truth. Notwithstanding the vast stretch and compass
-of the work of redemption, it is a work of the most humble
-detail in its style of execution. The Savior could have
-preached a sermon on the mount every morning. Each night
-he could have stilled the sea, before his astonished disciples,
-and shown the conscious waves lulling into peace under his
-feet. He could have transfigured himself before Pilate and the
-astonished multitudes of the temple. He could have made
-visible ascensions in the noon of every day, and revealed his
-form standing in the sun, like the angel of the apocalypse.
-But this was not his mind. The incidents of which his work is
-principally made up, are, humanly speaking, very humble and
-unpretending. The most faithful pastor in the world was never
-able, in any degree, to approach the Savior, in the lowliness of
-his manner and his attention to humble things. His teachings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_561" id="Page_561">[561]</a></span>
-were in retired places, and his illustrations drawn from ordinary
-affairs. If the finger of faith touched him in the crowd,
-he knew the touch and distinguished also the faith. He reproved
-the ambitious housewifery of an humble woman. After
-he had healed a poor being, blind from his birth—a work
-transcending all but divine power—he returned and sought
-him out, as the most humble Sabbath-school teacher might
-have done; and when he had found him, cast out and persecuted
-by men, he taught him privately the highest secrets of
-his Messiahship. When the world around hung darkened in
-sympathy with his cross, and the earth was shaking with inward
-amazement, he himself was remembering his mother, and
-discharging the filial cares of a good son. And when he burst
-the bars of death, its first and final conqueror, he folded the
-linen clothes and the napkin, and laid them in order apart,
-showing that in the greatest things he had a set purpose also
-concerning the smallest. And thus, when perfectly scanned,
-the work of Christ’s redemption, like the material universe, is
-seen to be a vast orb of glory, wrought up out of finished
-particles.—<i>Horace Bushnell.</i></p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3 id="JULY27">[<i>July 27.</i>]</h3>
-
-<p>He who would sympathize must be content to be tried and
-tempted. There is a hard and boisterous rudeness in our
-hearts by nature, which requires to be softened down. We
-pass by suffering gaily, carelessly; not in cruelty, but unfeelingly,
-because we do not know what suffering is. We wound
-men by our looks and our abrupt expressions without intending
-it, because we have not been taught the delicacy, and the
-tact, and the gentleness, which can only be learned by the
-wounding of our own sensibilities. There is a haughty feeling
-of uprightness which has never been on the verge of falling,
-that requires humbling. There is an inability to enter into
-difficulties of thought which marks the mind to which all things
-have been presented superficially, and which has never experienced
-the horror of feeling the ice of doubt crashing beneath
-the feet. Therefore, if you aspire to be a son of consolation;
-if you would partake of the priestly gift of sympathy;
-if you would pour something beyond commonplace consolation
-into a tempted heart; if you would pass through the
-intercourse of daily life with the delicate tact which never inflicts
-pain; if to that most acute of human ailments, mental
-doubt, you are ever to give effectual succor—you must be content
-to pay the price of the costly education. Like him, you
-must suffer—being tempted.</p>
-
-<p>But remember it is being tempted in all points, <i>yet without
-sin</i>, that makes sympathy real, manly, perfect, instead of a
-mere sentimental tenderness. Sin will teach you to <i>feel</i> for
-trials. It will not enable you to judge them; nor to help them
-in time of need with any certainty.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Lastly, it is this same human sympathy which qualifies
-Christ for judgment. It is written that the Father hath committed
-all judgment to him, <i>because</i> he is the Son of Man.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The sympathy of Christ is a comforting subject. It is, besides,
-a tremendous subject; for on sympathy the awards of
-heaven will be built.… A sympathy for that which is
-pure implies a repulsion of that which is impure. Hatred of
-evil is in proportion to the strength of love for good. To love
-intensely good is to hate intensely evil.… Win the
-mind of Christ now, or else his sympathy for human nature
-will not save you from, but only insure, a recoil of abhorrence
-at last.—<i>F. W. Robertson.</i></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse">Hast thou not learned what thou art often told,</div>
-<div class="verse">A truth still sacred and believed of old,</div>
-<div class="verse">That no success attends on spears and swords</div>
-<div class="verse">Unblest, and that the battle is the Lord’s?—<i>Cowper.</i></div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="GROWTH">GROWTH.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By EMILY J. BUGBEE.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i8">Grow as the trees grow,</div>
-<div class="verse">Your head lifted straight to the sky,</div>
-<div class="verse">Your roots holding fast where they lie,</div>
-<div class="verse i8">In the richness below,</div>
-<div class="verse i8">Your branches outspread</div>
-<div class="verse">To the sun pouring down, and the dew,</div>
-<div class="verse">With the glorious infinite blue</div>
-<div class="verse i8">Stretching over your head.</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i8">Receiving the storms,</div>
-<div class="verse">That may writhe you, and bend, but not break,</div>
-<div class="verse">While your roots the more sturdily take</div>
-<div class="verse i8">A strength in their forms.</div>
-<div class="verse i8">God means <i>us</i>, the growth of His trees,</div>
-<div class="verse">Alike thro’ the shadow and shine,</div>
-<div class="verse">Receiving as freely the life-giving wine</div>
-<div class="verse i8">Of the air and the breeze.</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i8">Not sunshine alone,</div>
-<div class="verse">The soft summer dew and the breeze</div>
-<div class="verse">Hath fashioned these wonderful trees,</div>
-<div class="verse i8">The tempest hath moaned.</div>
-<div class="verse">They have tossed their strong arms in despair,</div>
-<div class="verse">At the blast of the terrible there,</div>
-<div class="verse i8">In the thunder’s loud tone.</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i8">But under it all</div>
-<div class="verse">Were the roots clasping closer the sod,</div>
-<div class="verse">The top still aspiring to God,</div>
-<div class="verse i8">Who prevented their fall.</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i8">Come out from the gloom</div>
-<div class="verse">And open your heart to the light</div>
-<div class="verse">That is flooding God’s world with delight,</div>
-<div class="verse i8">And unfolding its bloom.</div>
-<div class="verse i8">His kingdom of Grace</div>
-<div class="verse">Is symboled in all that we see,</div>
-<div class="verse">In budding and leafing of tree</div>
-<div class="verse i8">And fruit in its place.</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="TENEMENT_HOUSE_LIFE_IN_NEW_YORK">TENEMENT HOUSE LIFE IN NEW YORK.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>New York City, which is the soul and center of a series of
-cities which may be called the Metropolitan District, has not far
-from a million and a half of people, nearly all of whom reside
-upon an island of rocky formation, surrounded by deep water.
-Within recent years a district to the north of the island has
-been annexed to the city, and city protection and privileges
-partly extended to it, and new parks have just been legalized
-there, but little that has yet been done in the outlying districts
-and cities has been effectual to thin out the population of the
-great central city, whose inhabitants are gathered from all
-races.</p>
-
-<p>The island of New York extends over thirteen miles along
-the North River, and it is densely built up as far as 70th Street,
-on that river, and on the East River it is almost solidly built up
-to Harlem, which is six or seven miles from the point of the
-city at the Battery. The middle of the island, to the extent of
-nine hundred acres, is occupied by the Central Park and other
-parks, and broad driveways or boulevards take up considerable
-of the unoccupied or partially occupied portion, so that
-the time is admitted to be near at hand when all this island
-will be covered with houses. The character of these houses
-is already indicated by the tall flats, apartment houses, or tenement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_562" id="Page_562">[562]</a></span>
-houses which are rising, apparently in the country parts,
-out of the green fields, and some of these are six, seven and
-eight stories high. Extensive apartment houses, in which the
-floors are rented or sold, are also being constructed in the vicinity
-of the park, sometimes to the height of nine, ten and
-even twelve stories.</p>
-
-<p>It would therefore appear that the future residence of the
-New Yorker is to be some kind of a tenement structure after
-the fashion prevailing on the continent of Europe. For some
-of these costly tenements the rent is as high as six thousand
-to eight thousand dollars per annum. The cheapest tenements
-on New York island probably cost twenty dollars a month.
-Although a bridge has been built at enormous expense to connect
-New York and Brooklyn, it is a mere convenience, and
-has exercised no influence on the general character of New
-York island. While Brooklyn is growing, Harlem relatively
-is growing faster, at the northern end of New York island.
-The elevated railroads, of which there are four parallel to each
-other up and down the length of the island as far as the park,
-and three the whole length of the island, or to Harlem River,
-have rather exercised a recalling influence to the city from the
-suburbs, and the tendency is to extend New York across the
-Harlem River rather than across the Hudson or the East rivers
-and the bay, which are often embarrassed by fog, ice, and
-storm.</p>
-
-<p>The New York manufactures have so expanded that the operatives
-do not go from the city to the country parts to do a
-day’s labor, but come from the country parts into New York to
-earn a living. The protective tariff has transferred the foreign
-commerce of New York to foreign nations, while it has made
-New York City our largest manufacturing city. These manufactories
-compressed on that small island necessarily partake
-of the tenement house character, and it has been necessary for
-the legislature to pass laws prohibiting the making of cigars in
-the tenement houses where the people live. A few years ago
-I was requested to visit some of these cigar tenements in the
-vicinity of Tompkins Square, and further uptown, and I found
-an extraordinary condition of things which has not yet been
-checked by legislation, because after the prohibitory law was
-passed it was found to be defective in phraseology, and has to
-be reënacted. In these tenements could be seen a whole family,
-men, women and children, living and working their tobacco,
-and at the same time cooking, sleeping, eating and entertaining,
-with the tobacco spread over the floor to be dried at
-night, the children walking on it, and the vapors of the tobacco
-filling the lungs of the sleepers. In the morning the
-man got up and began to cut, trim and fill cigars, and put
-them on the bench before him, and there he sat all day, for at
-least six days in the week, seldom going out to let the rooms
-be aired, and some of these buildings, from four to six stories
-high, were nothing but pigeon cases of such tobacco tenements.</p>
-
-<p>It is to be doubted whether the law can reach such cases,
-because detection would always involve an intrusion into the
-living apartments of families, and would make in time such
-hostility that the law itself would have to be repealed. As in
-Lyons, France, and in Belgium, where the silk weavers, the
-lace makers, etc., take their work home, there is no doubt a
-tendency in New York City to live and toil on the same premises.
-The population of New York is made up from most of
-the laboring nations, and each of these brings its own habits,
-and expects to exercise them freely in this free country. The
-vices of European laboring society have been imported with
-the virtues. The city electing its officials by suffrage modifies
-its usages and government in the direction of these new elements,
-and the foreigner soon picks up from his demagogues
-and the small newspapers published in his own language aggressive
-ideas, which some think are rapidly becoming a great
-defensive system, some day to plague the metropolis.</p>
-
-<p>Whatever we native Americans think about the foreign
-methods of living in New York, those methods are as natural
-to the immigrants as it is for us to occupy a whole house. Indeed,
-the American in such cities as New York is becoming of
-necessity the imitator of the foreigner, because the rent of a
-whole establishment on that cramped island is out of the reach
-of any but the well employed and independently prosperous.</p>
-
-<p>As this article may come to eyes which have never seen the
-great city, I will convey to you some slight notion of the structure
-of New York island. This island is made of gneiss rock,
-or hard granite, which apparently extended in ribs or ridges,
-sometimes depressed, sometimes high, and in places like
-islands, and between these ridges and islands sand and gravel
-have been deposited, so that when you come to lay out a street,
-to lay pipes under the street, or to excavate for a house, you
-may strike solid rock, or you may find quicksand, and therefore
-the cost of building on the island is greater than almost
-anywhere on the globe. Probably the steam drills employed
-to blast on New York island exceed in number all the steam
-drills in the entire United States. Most of our cities are built
-on clay or sandy soil, and a cellar can be excavated in two or
-three days, whereas I have seen building lots in New York, only
-a hundred feet by twenty to twenty-five feet wide, which took
-months, or indeed a whole building season, to get the rock
-out, and when the cellar is excavated it is like a great trough
-or hole made in solid stone. Naturally, a man who has been
-at such expense to start his house looks into the air for his recompense.
-With that solid foundation in the stone he has procured
-from the cellar he begins to build a tower instead of a
-house, and to let it out in floors, and for each of these floors
-he expects to receive higher rent than is elsewhere paid for a
-large and complete house.</p>
-
-<p>A friend of mine who recently failed disastrously, showed
-me one of these new flat houses he had put up. It was three
-lots broad, each lot one hundred feet deep, making a front of
-seventy-five feet. Each of these lots he held to be worth $30,000,
-making $90,000 for the situation, though it was not on a
-fashionable street, but rather up a side street. He then raised
-one upon another seven apartments on each side of the entrance,
-and over the entrance were six bachelor apartments,
-each consisting of only one room, a bed alcove, and a bath
-closet. Consequently, there would be in such a building twenty
-tenants, of whom fourteen would be families. These fourteen
-paid from $1,800 to $1,300 apiece. Each had the same number
-of rooms, in the same space, the rents only being modified
-by the position of the floor. The lower floors of course rented
-higher than the upper floors. Generally speaking, each living
-place consisted of a parlor and a side room, either library or
-sitting room, a bath room, and a servant’s bath also, about
-three bed rooms, beside a servant’s bed room, a dining room,
-a kitchen, pantries and wardrobes. The only economy in such
-living lies in the reduction of the number of servants, and in
-the less expense of furnishing. The proprietor has to keep an
-engineer, an assistant engineer, a porter and assistant, and perhaps
-a housekeeper, and of course a watchman. Elevators
-front and rear accommodate the landlords and the servants.
-Such a building, exclusive of the ground, probably cost $150,000,
-and therefore it would be hard work to make ten per cent.
-upon it after paying salaries, taxes, etc. The bachelor apartments
-rented from $50 to $30 per month.</p>
-
-<p>Now this stylish apartment house looks out at the rear upon
-a series of common tenement houses, where in old brick or
-frame buildings a dense mass of people look out of the back
-windows on their more aristocratic neighbors. These latter
-houses perhaps have a pole erected in the back yard which is
-as high as the house, and from every floor proceed to this pole
-clothes lines, attached there by pulleys, and whatever is
-washed is affixed to the line and run out by the pulley to dry.
-Most of the people in these back apartments live in one room,
-or at most in two, and there the good man arises in the morning,
-takes his early breakfast and goes out with his truck or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_563" id="Page_563">[563]</a></span>
-dray, or hies him off to work and does not return again till
-night. The wife arises and sends the children off to school,
-and then she proceeds to wash or iron, or do other work, cooking
-her meals meantime, and supplying the children at noon,
-and the old man at night. Perhaps in that room or two live
-half a dozen people. They may even have a sub-tenant. There
-must be more or less exposure, more or less bad air, more or
-less indifference to the decencies of life, and yet it is surprising,
-on the whole, how much cleaner and better these people
-live than might be expected. This to some extent arises from
-the happy construction of the blocks in the new or uptown
-quarter of New York. Many of our American cities have deep
-blocks and alleys, or inferior streets, running up between them.
-The ground is too precious in New York to be sacrificed in
-such lanes, so the back yards touch each other, and the houses
-are built high stooped, the basement being the first story, and
-through the basement hall the slops, ashes, etc., are carried
-to the front street and there left for the scavenger and the ash-man
-to come and remove them. Consequently, each of these
-uptown blocks is one great court, open to the sun and to the
-sky. New York streets across town are only two hundred feet
-apart, and therefore the lots are of uniform depth.</p>
-
-<p>The old Dutch city and its English successor in the lower
-part of the island covered a triangular space not a mile long,
-and about a mile wide. In the course of time Broadway was
-opened right up the center of this triangle, and streets called
-East Broadway and West Broadway were thrown in a course
-generally parallel to the two rivers, and the attempt was continued
-to make a more or less rectangular city, and finally, at
-the distance of more than two miles up, a real rectangular metropolis
-was secured by opening broad avenues, of which there
-are about twelve lengthwise of the whole island, and these are
-crossed by streets running in number up to 220th, and in the
-course of time in the annexed portion they will run to something
-like 300th Street. Although the city is thus expanded,
-business and population are very tenacious of the old and
-crowded situations. As it is impossible to draw the money and
-finance out of Wall Street, so it is next to impossible to alter
-the situation of the market houses, the railroad freight depots,
-the express offices, the steamboat piers, the ferries, and even
-the manufactories. As an immense portion of what is manufactured
-in New York is not sold to the people of the city, but
-for export, it remains a consideration to manufacture, prepare
-and pack goods down in the dense, lance-shaped point of the
-island. Consequently business, tenements, folly, manufactories,
-everything grow denser as you go down town, and the east
-side of the city is especially given up to the Germanic races.
-At that point there is a protuberance of the city into the East
-River, overlapping the city of Brooklyn, and the avenues here
-are not numbered, but being to the east of First Avenue they
-take the names of Avenues A, B, C and D.</p>
-
-<p>Here you find the tenement houses in their glory. Grand
-Street is the great artery of that side of the town.</p>
-
-<p>Fifty years ago there were but 200,000 inhabitants on this
-island; thirty-five years ago there were but 500,000; twenty-five
-years ago there were but 800,000 people; fifteen years ago
-there were 950,000. By the census of 1880 the population of
-the island was put down at over 1,200,000. It will not be far
-wrong to call it in general terms a million and a half. But the
-stable population of New York bears no comparison with its
-transient and daily population. It is immediately surrounded
-by two millions more of people who depend upon the city, and
-who can leave it at all hours of the night by ferries. It is the
-resort of sixty per cent. of all the ocean vessels in the country,
-with their crews. It contains the offices of nearly every corporation
-in the United States, all of which, after they have attained
-a certain stability or prominence, keep a commission
-house or branch office on New York island.</p>
-
-<p>The morals of New York City are therefore to a great extent
-beyond the reach of mere administration, and have to be lenient
-according to the temptation and the concourse. Marriage
-itself is subordinate in such a hive, to society and necessity.
-The American elements of the population generally adhere to
-their traditions and decencies, but there is a native American
-generation in New York, begotten of foreign parents, which
-knows no other country than this, but is as different from Americans
-of the old time as we differ from the American Indians.
-From this secondary growth New York derives most of its
-mechanical, laboring, and artisan class. These, like their
-forefathers, adhere to the tenement house method of life.
-They do not understand the necessity of a whole house, which
-has to be furnished, cleaned and warmed, when they spend so
-much of the day and night elsewhere, either at work or pleasure.
-So does the American element, which goes from the country to
-New York, content itself with a room. As for the poor, as
-their families increase they have no resort but the tenement
-house.</p>
-
-<p>The latest history of New York City says that 500,000 people
-in New York, or more than one-third, live in tenement houses,
-and that the densest blocks in London do not compare, in the
-number of inhabitants, with the same space in the dense quarters
-of New York. A single block is referred to on Avenue
-B, which has fifty-two tenement houses, the population of them
-amounting to nearly 2,400 persons. One single house in New
-York is said to have 1,500 inhabitants, and often a house with
-twenty-five feet front accommodates 100 souls. Of course height
-is the great point to give such area. If you enter New York
-and walk toward the east side through the streets which run so
-close together, but which are all happily of fair width, and all
-straight, you will see row after row of red brick houses, generally
-built to the height of five or six stories. In themselves
-they are rather neat to look at, except for the signs of population
-at every window, where on a hot and steaming day everybody
-seems to press to get the air. You can see the baby at
-the breast, the hunchback elder child, the man rolling cigars,
-the Chinaman washing, the woman running her sewing machine,
-the musician practicing on the bugle, the dentist, perhaps, filling
-teeth in a tenement house at modest rates to suit. You
-may also see some quiet old German smoking his pipe and
-reading science, unaware that anything is much worse than it
-generally is in the world. These houses have a common entrance
-below, sometimes in the middle, generally at the side.
-Through this entrance pours in and out the population going
-above; the stairways are generally narrow, the steps worn almost
-through, sometimes loungers and children are playing in
-the halls, and our fastidious habits are much shocked at the
-necessary familiarity engendered.</p>
-
-<p>Yet it is to be remembered that as one’s day is, so is his
-strength, even in the matter of smells, and while there are tenement
-evils there are also tenement house virtues. The close
-sociability engenders another species of Christianity. The policeman
-is near at hand to correct any evils. While the summers
-are dreadfully hot, the winters are also long and cold,
-and the two things most needed in a tenement house are coal
-and sunlight.</p>
-
-<p>The tenement house laws have been made at Albany by the
-landlords of these houses, many of whom are rapacious and
-merciless. Not a single day is given by law, I understand, to
-a tenant who does not pay the rent. The landlord is permitted
-to put his agent or constable in any apartment and set the
-things on the sidewalk, whatever may be the disaster or the disease
-within. Many of these tenement houses have been built
-up by the sales of liquor and beer, and probably the majority
-of our Irish saloon-keepers project a corner in which they do
-business into a tenement house above, and they both provide
-the rum and collect the rent. Possibly the men above stairs
-drink away their wages in the saloon below, while the women
-work at something to keep the rent up.</p>
-
-<p>In some cases, especially among the more rural Irish, the
-shanty in the suburbs is substituted for tenement house life.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_564" id="Page_564">[564]</a></span>
-As you walk along some of the newly filled streets, composed
-of great rocks which have been blasted in one spot to fill up
-another spot, you will look down into a former meadow, now a
-mere hole surrounded by four dungeon walls of stone, and
-there you will see three or four shanties pitched together on
-suffrance, made of old boards taken out of some fence or from
-dry goods boxes. Unaware of anybody being about, you can
-sit there and hear the whole domestic menage going on; see
-Patrick, very drunk, sociably quarreling with his wife, who is
-not far behind him in her potations. They perhaps keep a cow
-somewhere down there under the planks, and this cow is being
-milked more or less all the time, and if the milk can not be
-sold it helps to support the life of the squatters.</p>
-
-<p>Again, you will go into some far quarter of this island, many
-miles from the business centers, and to your surprise you will
-there find another species of tenement house, showing that
-this system of herding together and economizing room is the
-fate of this city at least. There seems to be no future for the
-tenement house system. The laws passed by our state legislature
-with reference to this city are more apt to be in favor of
-the tenement house proprietor than of the tenant. The tenants
-hardly know where the legislature is, while the tenement house
-owner is informed by his lawyer or lobbyist of what is going
-on. As far as philanthropy goes, it despairs of accomplishing
-anything in the midst of such a dense population. Of course,
-when things become outrageous, the police report them to the
-Board of Health, or the tenants take the law into their own
-hands.</p>
-
-<p>This gregarious life leads to great independence of character
-among the women; the average survivor of the tenement house
-is no puny, frightened creature, but a very active animal, ready
-to scratch, retort, appeal to law, and loves and marries as she
-wishes. There is some natural deviation from virtue, as from
-cleanliness, yet the recuperative principle in women, as in men,
-is at least redeeming, and it is to be doubted whether the vices
-in the tenement houses exceed those in the fashionable streets.</p>
-
-<p>It is believed here that the worst class of people New York
-possesses are the Bohemians from northern Austria. This degraded
-race was at one time, or until the emperors destroyed
-it politically, the repository of most of the vices of Europe.
-Among the Bohemians you find the domestic virtues at the
-lowest ebb, and socialism at its lewdest. A manufacturer was
-recently telling me of two Bohemians in his employment who
-grew weary of their wives, and without any other marriage,
-and without quarrel, they agreed, men and women, to change
-partners, and continue to live and work together. At a
-recent strike of cigar makers in this city, a working woman
-who stripped tobacco was set upon by three men and knocked
-down because she preferred to take lower wages rather than
-keep idle and support some of the demagogue patrols.</p>
-
-<p>New York, however, has no such dens to-day as it had forty
-years ago, when the Five Points was in the height of its orgies.
-Through that old swampy quarter of the city broad streets have
-been cut, and manufactories have been established. I have
-my doubts whether, at this moment, the worst features of New
-York’s population are not to be found in some of the rougher
-suburbs off the island. The draft riots of 1863 assisted the
-peace and order of New York by bringing about a collision between
-the very bad elements and the law. The police, who are
-generally hated by the vicious as the visible representatives of
-the law, received from that moment a degree of discipline
-which has ever since been kept up, and the militia regiments
-of New York City have been provided with large armories, and
-are in a fair state of discipline.</p>
-
-<p>Of course, in such a rank soil as this island, the gentler virtues
-do not grow, but my observation of some rural districts,
-many hundred miles from this city, is that they are far below the
-tenement house quarter in intelligence, and not above it in morals.
-The matter of virtue is to a large extent involved in the
-race; it will take a long time to debauch, utterly, people descended
-from the British and Germanic races. Fortunately, we
-have not had much immigration from the south of Europe, but
-the Italian quarter is attracting some attention, as possibly the
-worst we possess. The Chinese in New York are self-reliant,
-and a good many of them have shown a decided bias to be
-Christianized. I lived near a church, two or three years ago,
-where I one day observed a large number of Chinese, and
-glancing up at the church I saw that it was a Baptist one. On
-inquiry I found that a Chinaman who attended the Sunday-school
-of that church had been murdered by some semi-American
-roughs, and his classmates had come to pay the last honors
-to him. Like Americans, they came in cabs, and came
-filing out of that church quiet, uncomplaining, injured specimens
-of our common brotherhood.</p>
-
-<p>Legally, a tenement house in New York is one house occupied
-by more than three families living independently of each
-other, and doing their cooking on the premises. All tenement
-houses are compelled to have fire-escapes built outside of the
-house, of iron. There is one quarter of New York City where
-300,000 persons are said to live on a square mile. Observers
-now say that not one-third, but one-half of the population of
-New York City lives on the tenement house plan.</p>
-
-<p>A superficial observer here would think that the greatest
-misery on the globe was to be found in this tenement house quarter,
-yet I think that much of this sympathy will be thrown
-away, because in the large majority of cases the people who
-live under this system would not exchange it for any other.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="THE_CANONS_OF_THE_COLORADO">THE CAÑONS OF THE COLORADO.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center smaller">A lecture delivered on Saturday, April 26, in the National Museum, Washington,
-D. C., by Major J. W. Powell, Director of the U. S. Geological Survey.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>The lecturer at the outset stated that the valley of the Columbia
-River might be divided into two portions; the lower
-third lying but little above the sea level, the other two-thirds
-of the valley area drained by the Colorado and its tributaries
-being five to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea.</p>
-
-<p>On the summit and sides of the mountain were thousands of
-lakes of clear water, which received their supply from the
-masses of snow which are collecting throughout the winter on
-the mountain ranges, filling the gorges and half burying the
-forests. In summer the snow melted and poured down the
-mountain sides in millions of cascades, eventually forming the
-Colorado River, which grew into a mad torrent ere it reached
-the Gulf of California. Eventful indeed would be the history
-of these waters if traced from their starting point. Some of
-these streams ran across arid plateaus, being fed in their course
-by intermittent showers. Each year their channels became
-deeper and deeper, cutting their way out of solid rock. Every
-river, brook, creek and rill ran into a cañon, so that these vast
-areas were traversed by a labyrinth of deep gorges hewn out
-of the rock by the ever-flowing streams. If the Colorado plateau
-had been in such a country as the District of Columbia,
-the land lying adjacent to the river courses would have been
-washed down by the rains and streams, and instead of cañons
-there would now be a broad system of valleys. It was an error
-to regard that Colorado plateau as a region of great erosion
-or degradation. It was a vast system of cañons, caused by the
-water eating its way through the hard rock, with lofty stone
-walls on either side.</p>
-
-<p>Major Powell said that in 1867 and 1868 he had explored the
-Grand River and other tributaries of the Colorado, and these
-expeditions thrilled him with a desire to explore the vast
-cañons of the Colorado River itself. Accordingly in May,
-1869, he started for this purpose with a small party of men and
-four boats from a point a few miles below where now the Union
-and Pacific Railroad crosses Yukon River. The first forty or
-fifty miles of their course was through low cañons, cut through
-the green and alcove lands of that region. Their course was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_565" id="Page_565">[565]</a></span>
-southward. As they descended the river, a mountain seemed
-to stand athwart their path, and into this mountain the river
-penetrated. They followed around the base for a hundred
-miles or so, meeting the river beyond. Now, why had not the
-river flowed <i>round</i> the mountain instead of cutting its way
-<i>through</i>? The answer was exceedingly simple. Because the
-river was there before the mountain, and had the right of way,
-keeping steadfastly on its southward course, across which the
-lands had been gradually elevated. These land upheavals
-had taken place very slowly, enabling the river to force its
-passage as the land rose inch by inch.</p>
-
-<p>At last they reached the junction of the Grand and the Green
-rivers—the head of the Colorado River—some three thousand
-feet below the general surface of the country. At that point
-the cañon was about three thousand feet in depth. One of the
-boats had been lost, and one of the men had left them before
-reaching this point. The walls of the cañon here were about
-half a mile high. One of these they determined to scale at a
-point a little below their camp, where there was a gorge—a
-natural break in the wall. Half way up further progress
-seemed impossible, but by crawling round a narrow ledge of
-rock they were enabled to resume their toilsome climb. From
-this point they could see the river fifteen hundred feet below
-them, wildly rushing and tossing, and at the same distance
-above them was the cañon’s brink that seemed to blend with
-the sky. Again the wall was found to have broken down, but
-by crawling up a fissure so narrow that they could press against
-the hinder side with their backs, while forcing with hands and
-feet their steep and dangerous path upward, they finally
-emerged into the upper world, where they could look out at
-the broad expanse of landscape. Away to the north were
-orange and azure cliffs, two and three thousand feet high; to
-the west were the Wasatch Mountains, and a plateau with a
-hundred dead volcanoes on its back, while to the east was another
-group of dead volcanoes. Thirty or forty miles away in
-the same direction were seen forests of green and masses of
-gray volcanic rock clothed with patches of snow; green, gray
-and silver, resplendent in that noon-day sun. To the south
-was a labyrinth of cañons.</p>
-
-<p>On the following day they commenced the exploration of the
-Colorado River. From this starting point it was about seven
-hundred miles to the foot of the Grand Cañon. Through the
-entire series of cañons the river tumbled down more than 5,000
-feet. The lecturer here stated that the fall of the Mississippi
-from Cairo down was about four inches to the mile, and of the
-Ohio some eight inches, and that the Colorado carried about
-as much water as the Ohio at Louisville. In some places the
-river was wide, and here its fall did not exceed that of the
-Ohio or Upper Mississippi. The fall in Marble Cañon, however,
-was from ten to three hundred feet to the mile! The
-boats, with the exception of the one in which he and Major
-Powell traveled, were about twenty-two feet long and decked,
-so that there were three water-tight compartments in each boat.
-His boat, in which were two other men, was only sixteen feet
-in length. This led the way, while the other boats, laden with
-provisions, etc., followed. The roar of the water in the cañon
-could be heard a long way off. The chief difficulty in navigating
-was riding the waves, which differed greatly from that of
-the sea. In the case of the latter the water remained, simply
-rising and falling, while the <i>form</i> alone rolled on; but in the
-former the water of the wave rolled on, the form being fixed.
-As long as the boat could be kept on the waves, all was well,
-but the great tendency was to drift into the whirlpool in the
-center. Three miles below the junction of the Grand and the
-Green rivers appeared a series of rapids and falls, and nearly
-two weeks were spent in running through this difficult portion
-of the river. Having passed through Cataract Cañon, they encountered
-Narrow Cañon, where the river for seven miles
-rushed down a steep declivity. Seven miles again below a
-stream came in on the right side. Up this the leading boat
-went, and one of the men, in reply to a query from another in
-one of the boats following, as to the nature of the water in this
-new stream, called out, “A dirty devil,” and by that name
-it was designated on the maps. It was a stream of red mud,
-having along its course hot mineral springs. The odor was
-fetid and foul, resembling, as the lecturer graphically described
-it, “One of those alabaster boxes of ointment with which they
-used to anoint abolitionists in the brazen days of yore.” Below
-Narrow Cañon was Glen Cañon, stretching for a hundred and
-fifty miles through homogeneous sandstone of a beautiful
-color, its walls often perpendicular and indented with glens,
-alcoves and caves. The latter were formed by the rain-showers
-running down the sides of the wall, and slowly eating them
-away. At the foot of the homogeneous sandstone was a soft,
-friable, crumbling sandstone, and through this the river had
-cut some fifty miles of its course. In the next cañon—Marble
-Cañon—was a series of cataracts and rapids which made progress
-very difficult. Here the falls were too steep to be “run,”
-and the boats were therefore let down by a line. First one was
-lowered, then the second passed down to and beyond the first,
-and then the third past the first and second.</p>
-
-<p>When these falls had been passed, they found themselves at
-the head of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, which was about
-two hundred and seventy miles long, varying from five to six
-thousand feet in depth. Here they stopped several days to
-examine the cañon before entering it. Where the rocks were
-sandstone the river was comparatively quiet, but where limestone
-prevailed it presented a much more threatening appearance.
-In some places the river was very narrow, the entire
-volume of water being compressed into a width of not more
-than fifty feet. For a distance of twenty or thirty miles a curious
-set of buttresses stood out from the wall of the cañon, and
-between each two of these was a bay where the waters would
-sweep around seething and boiling. Sometimes lofty pinnacles
-of rock rose from the river’s bed, past which the boats darted
-with fearful rapidity. Many days were spent in traversing this
-part of the cañon. The weather was gloomy and much rain
-fell in showers, which in that region had a very different effect
-from those which fall in our own districts. There every drop
-was precipitated—as it were—into one vast rain trough, soon
-causing the waters to swell. At first was heard in the distance
-the patter of the drops on the rocks; then came the noise
-caused by the rills and brooks hurrying their streams to the
-main river, and louder yet the larger creeks and rivulets hurled
-their foaming waters, soon swelling the river itself into a furious
-and maddening torrent. The black clouds overhead appeared
-to be miles above them, mingling with the very skies.
-Through this dark cañon they worked their way, examining
-the rocks, toiling from daylight to dark. They were now living
-on half rations, as the supplies of food were fast decreasing.
-Suddenly was seen a fearful rapid, only three or four hundred
-yards below. A landing was effected and the camp pitched on
-a projecting rock some fifty feet above the water. The boats
-had to be hauled up out of the way of the torrent. In continuing
-the journey on the following morning, great difficulty was
-experienced in rounding this rock. The boats were pitched
-almost against it, and instantly rebounded on the retiring
-water. A few days later Diamond Cañon was reached. Here
-two streams came in, one from either side. A fearful “fall”
-was in sight, which, after long and careful consideration, it was
-determined to “run.” Here three of the men grew faint-hearted
-and left the party. It was afterward learned that they
-had fallen in with Indians and been killed.</p>
-
-<p>The anxiety attending the resolution to “run” this “fall” was
-fearful. The lecturer said that he paced up and down a little
-sand-plot all night without sleeping or resting. In the morning
-rations were given to the deserters, who determined to
-watch the fate of the rest of the party. The “run” was successfully
-made, and it was hoped that the other three would then
-be induced to follow. This, however, they would not do. On<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_566" id="Page_566">[566]</a></span>
-the next day the most difficult point in the entire journey was
-reached, owing to obstructions caused by lava rocks. In one
-place a dam was found, the waters rushing over in a cataract.
-This it was also decided to “run,” on the right hand side. The
-decision was however reversed when the fearful danger of the
-attempt was realized. But already one of the boats had been
-let down to the very head of the fall, where the men were attempting
-to hold it by winding the rope around a great block
-of lava. There was one man who had been a whaler—named
-Bradley—in the boat. The roar of the waters was so deafening
-that no voice could be heard. At length he was seen to
-take out his knife with perfect composure, and in an instant he
-cut the rope, knowing that otherwise the boat would have been
-dashed to pieces by striking heavily against the wall of the
-cañon. A moment later, and he and the boat were hurled
-over the cataract, probably never to be seen again. But a few
-moments later he appeared a few hundred yards below, waving
-his hand. All haste was made to reach him, fearing he
-might be severely bruised, but in the hurry to reach him one
-of the party (the lecturer) fell overboard and was picked up by
-this invulnerable old whaler.</p>
-
-<p>On the next day the foot of the Grand Cañon was reached.
-Thence they went to Virgin River, and from that point to Salt
-Lake, after which they hastened home.</p>
-
-<p>In conclusion, the lecturer said that if all the sands that had
-been eroded by the rivers of that region, and washed into the
-ocean, could be brought into one mass, they would form a
-rock one mile and a half thick, and bigger than New York,
-New Jersey and Pennsylvania put together.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="THE_COURTS_OF_THREE_PRESIDENTS">THE COURTS OF THREE PRESIDENTS.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>THIERS, MACMAHON, GRÉVY.</h3>
-
-<p>We all read in the newspapers how, on the day when the
-Duke of Albany’s lamentable death occurred, M. Jules Ferry,
-the French Prime Minister and Secretary for Foreign Affairs,
-gave a dinner party. An Englishman having expressed astonishment
-that this dinner had not been put off, a Frenchman
-answered by asking whether Lord Granville would countermand
-a banquet in case M. Wilson, M. Grévy’s son-in-law,
-were to die? Our countryman seems to have concluded that
-Lord Granville would not let his hospitalities be interfered with
-by M. Wilson’s decease; and perhaps he was right. M.
-Daniel Wilson holds more effective power than was ever possessed
-by a Dauphin of France; but his father-in-law is only
-the chief of a government, not the head of a court, and M.
-Wilson’s existence has therefore never been brought officially
-to the cognizance of foreign rulers. It does not follow, however,
-that because M. Wilson is a private person, the French
-government is bound to look upon the relations of foreign
-monarchs as being exactly in the same position as this gentleman.
-It is more than probable that if Marshal MacMahon
-were still president, the foreign secretary would not have given
-a dinner on the day when a child of the Queen of England had
-died suddenly on French soil. It is equally probable that
-there would have been no such dinner if M. Thiers or M. Gambetta
-had been president.</p>
-
-<p>Presidents are not all alike. In their views as to the functions
-of a republic—in their opinions as to the amount of
-authority which a republican ruler may exercise over his ministers,
-as to the more or less pomp in which he should live, as
-to the etiquette which he should enforce, and as to the relations
-which he should personally maintain with the rulers of
-other countries, M. Grévy and his predecessors have all differed
-from one another. The three presidents who have governed
-France since 1871 have in fact been so dissimilar in their characters,
-tastes, principles, and objects, that it is really curious
-to compare their various methods of living and ruling.</p>
-
-<p>M. Thiers was seventy-four years old when he became supreme
-ruler of France, after the siege of Paris. After the first
-vote of the Assembly, which appointed him chief of the executive,
-M. Thiers took up his residence at the Préfecture, in the
-apartments which M. Gambetta had vacated.</p>
-
-<p>“Pah! what a smell of tobacco!” he exclaimed, when he
-strutted into the ex-dictator’s study; and presently Madame
-Thiers, her sister Mdlle. Dosne, and the solemn M. Barthélemy
-St. Hilaire, added their lamentations to his. They had been
-going the round of the house, and found all the rooms tenanted
-by hangers-on of M. Gambetta’s government, who had not yet
-received notice to quit, and who hoped perhaps that they might
-retain their posts under the new administration. All these
-gentlemen smoked, read radical newspapers, refreshed themselves
-with absinthe, or beer, while transacting the business of
-the state; and played billiards in their leisure moments. They
-were dismissed in a pack before the day was over; but Madame
-Thiers decided that it would require several days to set the
-house straight; and so M. Thiers’ removal to the Archbishop’s
-palace, where Monseigneur Guibert (now Cardinal), whom he
-afterward raised to the see of Paris, offered him hospitality.
-M. Thiers would, no doubt, have liked very much to sleep in
-Louis XIV.’s bed, and to have for his study that fine room with
-the balcony, on which the heralds used to announce the death
-of one king and the accession of another in the same breath.
-His secretary and faithful admirer, M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire,
-went about saying that it was fitting the “national historian”
-should be lodged in the apartments of the greatest of the
-kings; but this idea did not make its way at all. M. Thiers
-ended by saying that the rooms were too large, while Madame
-Thiers despised them for being full of draughts and having
-chimneys which smoked. Nevertheless, M. Thiers was nettled
-at seeing that the Republicans objected quite as much as the
-Royalists to see him occupy the royal apartments. “Stupid
-fellows!” he exclaimed on seeing a caricature which represented
-him as a ridiculous pigmy, crowned with a cotton
-nightcap, and lying in an enormous bed surrounded by the
-majestic ghosts of the Bourbon kings. Then half-angry, half-amused,
-he ejaculated with his usual vivacity: “Louis XIV.
-was not taller than I, and as to his other greatness I doubt
-whether he would ever have had a chance of sleeping in the
-best bed of Versailles if he had begun life as I did.” Shortly
-after this, M. Mignet meeting Victor Hugo spoke to him in a
-deprecating way about the fuss which had been made over this
-question of the royal apartments. “I don’t know,” answered
-the poet. “Ideas of dictatorship would be likely to sprout under
-that tester.” This was reported to Thiers, who at once cried:
-“I like that! If Victor Hugo were in my place, he would sleep
-in the king’s bed, but he would think the dais too low, and have
-it raised.”</p>
-
-<p>It was quite impossible for Thiers to submit to any of the restraints
-of etiquette. He was a <i>bourgeois</i> to the finger-tips.
-His character was a curious effervescing mixture of talent,
-learning, vanity, childish petulance, inquisitiveness, sagacity,
-ecstatic patriotism, and self-seeking ambition. He was a
-splendid orator, with the shrill voice of an old costerwoman; a
-<i>savant</i>, with the presumption of a schoolboy; a kind-hearted
-man, with the irritability of a monkey; a masterly administrator,
-with that irrepressible tendency to meddle with everything,
-which worries subordinates, and makes good administration
-impossible. He was a shrewd judge of men, and knew well
-how they were to be handled, but his impatience prevented him
-from acting up to his knowledge. He had a sincere love of
-liberty, with all the instincts of a despot. He was most charming
-with women, understood their power, and yet took so little
-account of it in his serious calculations that he often offended,
-by his Napoleonic brusqueness, ladies who were in a position
-to do him harm, and did it.</p>
-
-<p>M. Feuillet de Conches had to give up M. Thiers as hopeless.
-What was to be done with a president who, at a ceremonious
-dinner to Ambassadors and Ministers, would get up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_567" id="Page_567">[567]</a></span>
-from table after the first course and walk round the room, discussing
-politics, pictures, the art of war, or the dishes on the
-<i>menu</i>? Mr. Thiers’ own dinner always consisted of a little
-clear soup, a plate of roast meat—veal was that which he preferred—some
-white beans, peas, or lentils, and a glass saucer
-of jam—generally apricot. He got through this repast, with
-two glasses of Bordeaux, in about a quarter of an hour, and
-then would grow fidgety. “Is that good that you are eating?”
-he would say to one of his guests, and thence start off on to a
-disquisition about cookery. Telegrams were brought to him
-at table, and he would open them, saying, “I beg your pardon,
-gentlemen, but the affairs of France must pass before everything.”
-If he got disquieting news he would sit pensive for a
-few moments, then call for a sheet of paper and scribble off
-instructions to somebody, whispering directions to his major-domo
-about the destination of the missive.</p>
-
-<p>But if he received glad tidings, he would start from his chair
-and frisk about, making jokes, his bright gray eyes twinkling
-merrily as lamps through his gold-rimmed spectacles. After
-dinner there was always a discussion, <i>coram hospitibus</i>, between
-him and Madame Thiers as to whether he might take
-some black coffee. Permission to excite his nerves being invariably
-refused, he would wink, laughing, to his friends, to
-call their attention to the state of uxorious bondage in which
-he lived, and then retire to a high arm-chair near the fire,
-where he soon dropped off to sleep. Upon this, Madame
-Thiers would lay a forefinger on her lips, saying, “Monsieur
-Thiers sleeps;” and with the help of her sister she would clear
-the guests into the next room, where they conversed in whispers
-while the President dozed—a droll little figure with his
-chin resting on the broad red ribbon of his Legion of Honor,
-and his short legs dangling about an inch above the floor. It
-was always very touching to see the care with which M.
-Thiers’ wife and sister-in-law ministered to him. The story
-has been often told of how M. Thiers having been forbidden
-by doctors to eat his favorite Provençal dish of fish cooked
-with garlic, M. Mignet, the historian, used to smuggle some of
-this mess enclosed in a tin box into his friend’s study, and
-what a pretty scene there was one day when Madame Thiers
-detected these two countrymen enjoying the contraband dainty
-together.</p>
-
-<p>M. Thiers had naturally a great notion of his dignity as president
-of the republic, and he was anxious to appear impressively
-on all state occasions; but the arrangements made to
-hedge him about with majesty were always being disconcerted
-by his doing whatever it came into his head to do. His servants
-were dressed in black, and he had a major-domo who
-wore a silver chain and tried to usher morning visitors into the
-president’s room in the order of their rank; but every now and
-then M. Thiers used to pop out of his room, take stock of his
-visitors for himself, and make his choice of those whom he
-wished to see first. Then the most astonishing and uncourtly
-dialogues would ensue:</p>
-
-<p>“Monsieur le Président, this is the third time I have come
-here, and I have waited two hours each time.”</p>
-
-<p>“My friend, if you had come to see me about the affairs of
-France, and not about your own business, we should have had
-a conversation long ago.”</p>
-
-<p>Precedence was always given by M. Thiers to journalists,
-however obscure they might be. Ambassadors had to wait
-while these favored ones walked in. A journalist himself, the
-quondam leader-writer of the <i>National</i> extended the most generous
-recognition to the brethren of his craft, but he also did
-this because he was wide awake to the power of the press, and
-had generally some service to ask of those whom he addressed
-as “my dear companions.” He had such a facility for writing
-that when a journalist came to him “for inspiration” he would
-often sit down and dash off in a quarter of an hour the essential
-paragraph of a leader which he wished to see inserted.
-At the time of the Paris election of April, 1873, when his friend
-the Comte de Rémusat, then foreign secretary, was the Government
-candidate with the insignificant M. Barodet opposing
-him, a writer on the <i>Figaro</i> called at the Elysée and M. Thiers
-wrote a whole article of a column’s length for him. It was
-printed as a letter in leaded type with the signature “An old
-citizen of Paris;” and a very sprightly letter it was, which put
-the issue lying between M. de Rémusat and his radical adversary
-in the clearest light. However, the electors of Paris acted
-with their usual foolishness in preferring an upstart to a man
-of note, and within a month of this M. Thiers resigned in disgust.</p>
-
-<p>Marshal MacMahon accepted the presidency without any
-desire to retain it. If anything seemed certain at the time of
-his accession, it was that Legitimists and Orleanists would soon
-patch up their differences and that a vote of the Assembly
-would offer the crown to Henri V. The Ministry formed under
-the auspices of the Duc de Broglie labored to bring about this
-consummation, and the Marshal was prepared to enforce the
-decrees of the Assembly whatever they might be. At the same
-time he established his household at once on a semi-royal
-footing, as though he intended there should be at least a temporary
-court to remind French noblemen of old times, and to
-give them a foretaste of the pomps that were coming. M.
-Thiers had been a <i>bourgeois</i> president; the Marshal-Duke of
-Magenta was a <i>grand seigneur</i>. Under Madame Thiers’ frugal
-management the £36,000 a year allowed to the president
-sufficed amply to cover all expenses; under the Duchess de
-Magenta’s management the presidential income did not go
-half way toward defraying outlay. The Marshal had a comfortable
-private fortune (not equal to M. Thiers’), but he was
-only enabled to hold such high estate in his office by means of
-the assistance pressed upon him by wealthy relatives.</p>
-
-<p>The first signs of returning splendor at the Elysée were seen
-in the liveries of the new president’s servants. Instead of
-black they wore gray and silver, with scarlet plush, hair powder,
-and on gala occasions wigs. M. Thiers, when he went to
-a public ceremony, drove in a substantial landau, with mounted
-escort of the Republican Guard, and his friends—he never
-called them a suite—followed behind in vehicles according to
-their liking or means. Marshal MacMahon with the Duchess
-and their suite were always enough to fill three dashing landaus.
-These were painted in three or four shades of green,
-and lined with pearl gray satin; each would be drawn by four
-grays with postilions in gray jackets and red velvet caps; and
-the whole cavalcade was preceded and followed by outriders.
-Going to reviews, however, the Marshal of course rode, and
-this enabled him to make a grand display with his staff of
-<i>aides de camp</i>. M. Thiers had a military household of which
-his cousin General Charlemagne was the head; but this warrior
-never had much to do, and it was no part of his business
-to receive visitors. Anybody who had business with M. Thiers
-could see him without a letter of audience by simply sending
-up a card to M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire. Marshal MacMahon,
-on the contrary, was as inaccessible as any king. Visitors to
-the Elysée in his time were passed from one resplendent officer
-to another till they entered the smiling presence of Vicomte
-Emmanuel d’Harcourt, the President’s secretary, and this was
-the <i>ne plus ultra</i>. Against journalists in particular the Marshal’s
-doors were inexorably locked. So far as a man of his
-good-natured temper could be said to hate anybody, the Duke
-of Magenta hated persons connected with the press. For all
-that, he did not object altogether to newspaper tattle, for whilst
-he read the <i>Journal des Débats</i> every evening from a feeling
-of duty, he perused the <i>Figaro</i> every morning for his own
-pleasure.</p>
-
-<p>The sumptuous ordinance of Marshal MacMahon’s household
-was rendered necessary in a manner by the Shah of Persia’s
-visit to Paris in 1873. It is a pity that M. Thiers was not
-in office when this constellated savage came to ravish the
-courts of civilized Europe by his diamonds and his haughtily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_568" id="Page_568">[568]</a></span>
-brutish manners, for it would have been curious to see the little
-man instructing the Shah, through an interpreter, as to
-Persian history or the etymology of Oriental languages. In
-the Marshal, however, Nasr-ed-Din found a host who exhibited
-just the right sort of dignity; and all the hospitalities given to
-the Shah both at Versailles and Paris—the torchlight procession
-of soldiers, the gala performance at the opera, the banquet
-at the Galerie des Glaces—were carried out on a scale
-that could not have been excelled if there had been an emperor
-on the throne. In the course of the banquet at Versailles
-the Shah turned to the Duchess of Magenta and asked her in
-a few words of French, which he must have carefully rehearsed
-beforehand, why her husband did not set up as emperor. The
-Duchess parried the question with a smile; but perhaps the
-idea was not so far from her thoughts as she would have had
-people imagine.</p>
-
-<p>It was a really comical freak of fortune that brought M. Jules
-Grévy to succeed Marshal MacMahon. The story goes that
-during the street fighting of the Revolution of 1830, a law-student
-was kicked by one of the king’s officers, for tearing
-down a copy of the ordinances placarded on a wall. The officer
-was armed, the student was not; so the latter ran away
-and lived to fight another day. For the officer, as it is said,
-was Patrice de MacMahon, and the law-student Jules Grévy.
-M. Grévy is a man of talent and great moral courage, but he
-owes his rise to an uncommon faculty for holding his tongue
-at the right moment. “I kept silent, and it was grief to me,”
-says the Psalmist. M. Grévy may have felt like other people
-at times, an almost incomparable longing to say foolish things;
-but having bridled his tongue he was accounted wiser than
-many who had spoken wisely. Under the empire he practiced
-at the bar, continued to make money, was elected in his turn
-<i>bâtonnier</i>, or chief bencher as we might say, to the Order of
-Advocates, and in 1868 was returned to the Corps Législatif by
-his old electors of the Jura—in which department he had by
-this time acquired a pretty large landed estate. A neat, creaseless
-sort of man, with a bald head, a shaven chin and closely-trimmed
-whiskers, he looked eminently respectable. The
-only reprehensible things about him were his hat and his
-hands. He always wore a wide-awake instead of the orthodox
-chimney-pot, and he eschewed gloves. If his hands were cold
-he put them into the pockets of his pantaloons. Some pretended
-to descry astuteness in this contempt for the usages of
-civilized man, for the wide-awake is more of a radical head-dress
-than a silk hat. But it never occurred to M. Grévy at
-any time since he first achieved success, to regulate his apparel,
-general conduct, or words, in view of pleasing the Radicals.</p>
-
-<p>The Assembly elected after the war at once chose M. Grévy
-for its speaker, and he took up his abode in the Royal Palace,
-from which party jealousies had debarred M. Thiers. But he
-did not alter his manner of life one whit on that account. In
-Paris and Versailles he was to be seen sauntering about the
-streets looking in at shop windows, dining in restaurants, or
-sitting outside a café smoking a cigar and sipping iced coffee
-out of a glass. He had a brougham, but would only use it
-when obliged to go long distances. It often happened that
-setting out for a drive he would alight from his carriage and
-order his coachman to follow, and for hours the puzzled and
-disgusted coachman would drive at a walking pace behind his
-indefatigable master, who took easy strides as if he were not
-in the slightest hurry.</p>
-
-<p>There is one point of resemblance between M. Grévy and
-the Marshal, for M. Grévy is a keen sportsman; but in most
-other things the two differ, though in sum M. Grévy differs
-more from M. Thiers than he does from the Marshal. His
-manner of living at the Elysée is dignified without ostentation.
-His servants do not wear gray and scarlet liveries; but the arrangements
-of his household are more orderly than those of
-M. Thiers could ever be. His servants in black know well
-how to keep intruders at a distance. No mob of journalists,
-inventors and place hunters calls to see M. Grévy in the morning.
-On the other hand, three or four times a week a great
-number of deputies, artists, journalists and officers may be
-seen going into the Elysée as freely as if they were entering a
-club. They do not ask to see the President or the latter’s secretary,
-M. Fourneret, but they make straight for a magnificent
-room on the ground floor overlooking the garden, which has
-been converted into a fencing saloon, and there they find M.
-Daniel Wilson, <i>le fils de la maison</i>. All these <i>habitués</i>, who
-form the court of the Third Republic, keep their masks, foils
-and flannels at the Elysée, and set to work fencing with each
-other as if they were at Gâtechair’s or Paz’s. Presently a door
-opens and the President walks in. For a moment the fencing
-stops, the combatants all turn and salute with their foils, whilst
-the visitors stand up. But, with a pleasant smile and a wave
-of the hand, M. Grévy bids the jousters to go on, and then he
-walks round the room, saying something to everybody, and
-inviting about half a dozen of the guests to stay to breakfast.</p>
-
-<p>M. Grévy has allowed his beard to grow of late, and he is
-almost always attired in evening clothes, with the <i>moiré</i> edge
-of his scarlet <i>cordon</i> peeping over his waistcoat. But for the
-rest he is the same unassuming man as ever, and he takes life
-very easily. Now and then the Cabinet meets at the Elysée
-in the Salle des Souverains, and he presides over it. It is
-worth observing that in this Salle there are the portraits of a
-dozen sovereigns of the nineteenth century, including Queen
-Victoria, but not a symbol of any kind to remind one that it is
-a Republican Government that sits in this room. Even the
-master of the house has more in him of the Constitutional
-Monarch than of the President. The Constitution has conferred
-upon him large powers which he never uses; he seems
-to keep his eye on the portrait of the English Queen whilst his
-ministers discourse. Whatever papers are offered for his signature
-he signs, and then it is <i>Bon jour, Messieurs; au revoir</i>;
-and while the ministers disperse the President makes his way
-to his private apartments, where he finds his daughter and his
-grandchild, in whose company he sometimes takes more delight
-than in that of statesmen.</p>
-
-<p>Now and then there is a dinner at the Elysée, twice a week
-at least there are evening receptions, and about twice in the
-winter there are grand balls. On all these occasions everything
-is done in the best possible style, and the President discharges
-his functions of host with a serenity which disarms all
-criticism. He says nothing much to anybody, but he is the
-same to all. If by chance he falls into deep conversation with
-any particular guest, nobody need suspect that state matters
-are being discussed. The probabilities are that the President
-will be talking about the next performance of his new breechloader
-at Mont-sous-Vaudrey. Moreover, what makes M.
-Grévy more puzzling and interesting at once to those who behold
-him so simple in his palace, is the knowledge which all
-have, that when his time comes for leaving the Elysée he will
-walk out of it as coolly as he went in, without wishing that his
-tenancy had been longer, and certainly without doing anything
-to prolong it. His only anxiety will be to see that his gun-case
-suffer no damage at the door.—<i>Abridged from Temple Bar.</i></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i6">Thus God has willed</div>
-<div class="verse">That man when fully skilled</div>
-<div class="verse">Still gropes in twilight dim,</div>
-<div class="verse">Encompassed all his hours</div>
-<div class="verse">By fearfullest powers</div>
-<div class="verse">Inflexible to him.</div>
-<div class="verse">That so he may discern</div>
-<div class="verse">His feebleness,</div>
-<div class="verse">And e’en for earth’s success</div>
-<div class="verse">To Him in wisdom turn,</div>
-<div class="verse">Who holds for us the keys of either home,</div>
-<div class="verse">Earth and the world to come.</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse right">—<i>Cardinal Newman.</i></div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_569" id="Page_569">[569]</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="ASTRONOMY_OF_THE_HEAVENS">ASTRONOMY OF THE HEAVENS.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Prof. M. B. GOFF</span>.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3 id="ASTRONOMY_JULY">FOR JULY.</h3>
-
-<h4>THE SUN.</h4>
-
-<p>We now enter upon what is usually called the “heated term,”
-in earnest. The “Dog Days” are upon us, that is, we say
-they are; but the statement is a somewhat doubtful one. We
-have the story that the ancients regarded the Dog Star, <i>Sirius</i>,
-in the constellation <i>Canis Major</i>, as the source of “unnumbered
-woes,” because it rose a short time before the sun about
-the season of their year that the hot weather set in, and diseases
-incident to their climate more than usually prevailed.
-It is said that they estimated this period as continuing for
-the space of forty consecutive days, beginning twenty days
-before, and continuing twenty days after what was called the
-heliacal (that is, rising just long enough before the sun to be
-visible) rising of the Dog Star. Now, the difficulty we moderns
-find in fixing the limits of these days is this: The heliacal
-rising of the star for any one place can readily be found; but
-when determined for one place, it would not suit for another in
-a different latitude. Besides, the right ascension of Sirius, on
-account of the precession of the equinoxes, is constantly increasing,
-and hence for the same place these days fall later
-each year, in the course of time occurring even in mid-winter.
-Almanac makers, when they notice them at all, seem to take
-the liberty of treating them to suit their own convenience. For
-example, one of this year’s publications announces that “Dog
-Days” begin on the 21st of July, and end on the 30th of August,
-making, as we see by including one extreme date, altogether
-the forty days claimed by the ancients. But in this latitude,
-on the former date, the star rises at 5:43 a. m., one hour
-and five minutes <i>after</i>, and on the latter date at 3:06 a. m., two
-hours and twenty minutes <i>before</i> sunrise. Others fix the time
-from July 3rd to August 11th (forty days), without any respect
-to the rising of <i>Sirius</i>, which on the former date appears above
-our horizon at 6:51 a. m., or two hours and seventeen minutes
-after, and on the latter date at 4:18 a. m., forty-nine minutes
-before sunrise. Others, again, making an effort, we presume,
-to adapt them to our climate, regard them as continuing only
-thirty-two days, namely, from July 24th to August 24th. Taking
-it all in all, we may as well leave them to the Egyptians
-and Ethiopians, among whom the ideas in regard to them seem
-to have originated, as a superstition of the past ages, taking
-our “heated term” at its usual time, July and August, and
-throwing our “Dog Days,” as some do physic, “to the dogs.”</p>
-
-<p>Whether we account for it by the extreme heat or not, it is
-nevertheless a fact that the sun lags along behind our clocks
-during this entire month; on the 1st, not reaching the meridian
-till 12:03:41 p. m.; on the 15th till 12:05:44 p. m., and on the
-30th till six minutes and nine seconds after noon. The time
-of the sun’s rising on the 1st, 15th and 30th, is 4:33, 4:43 and
-4:56 a. m.; and the time of setting on the same dates is 7:34,
-7:29 and 7:17 p. m., respectively. The 30th day of this month
-will be about forty minutes shorter than the 1st, the latter being
-fifteen hours one minute, and the former fourteen hours and
-twenty-one minutes in length. The time from daybreak to the
-end of twilight is, on the 1st, 19 hours 24 minutes. Sun is due
-west on the 30th at 5:29 p. m. Its greatest elevation above the
-horizon in latitude 41° 30′, is 71° 33⅔′.</p>
-
-<h4>THE MOON</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Exhibits the following phases: Full moon, 5:02 a. m. on the
-8th; last quarter, 4:30 p. m. on the 15th; new moon, 7:46 a. m.
-on the 22nd; first quarter on the 29th, at 4:53 p. m. On the
-1st it sets at 12:11 a. m., and on the 30th, at 11:51 p. m. On the
-15th, rises at 11:32 p. m. On the 4th, at 7:54 a. m., and again
-on the 31st at 11:00 p. m. it is at its maximum distance from
-the earth. On the 20th, at 1:36 a. m. is nearest the earth. Its
-greatest elevation, equal 67° 13⅔′, occurs on the 19th; and its
-least elevation, amounting to 29° 42⅔′ on the 5th.</p>
-
-<h4>MERCURY.</h4>
-
-<p>This planet will be morning star till the 13th, after which it
-will be evening star till the end of the month. It rises on the
-1st at 3:41 a. m.; sets on the 15th at 7:41 p. m., and on the
-30th at 8:07 p. m., on which latter date it is possibly visible to
-the naked eye. Its motion during the month is direct, and
-amounts to 62° 30′ 31.5″. On the 17th at 6:00 a. m. it is
-nearest the sun; on the 12th at 1:00 a. m., 6° 20′ north of Venus;
-on the same date, at midnight, is in superior conjunction
-with the sun; that is, it is in a line with the earth and sun, and
-in the order, Earth, Sun, Mercury; on the 23rd, at 3:00 a. m.,
-1° 10′ north of Jupiter; and on the 23rd, at 7:05 a. m., 6° 30′
-north of the moon. Diameter decreases from 5.6″ to 5.4″.</p>
-
-<h4>VENUS.</h4>
-
-<p>A view of Venus during this month through a telescope of
-moderate power would be an interesting sight, since she now
-presents the appearance of our moon in its first or last quarter,
-and thus seems quite different from the simple star that is
-visible to the naked eye. She will be evening star till the 11th,
-at which time she reaches her inferior conjunction, that is,
-reaches a point directly between the earth and the sun; after
-which she will be morning star, not only to the end of this
-month, but for several successive months. Of course, for a
-number of days both before and after conjunction, she will, on
-account of her proximity to the sun, be invisible. We shall
-miss her “beaming countenance,” but we know that she will
-appear again. On the 1st she sets at 8:14 p. m., and rises on
-the 15th at 4:38 a. m., and on the 30th at 3:17 a. m. On the
-21st at 6:28 a. m. she is 1° 11′ south of the moon; and on the
-29th at 11:00 a. m., farthest from the sun.</p>
-
-<h4>MARS</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Has from the 1st to 30th a direct motion of 15° 36′ 32″, and
-although much reduced in apparent diameter, is still quite a
-prominent object in the evening sky, following westward in
-the wake of Jupiter. His diameter decreases from 5.6″ to
-5.2″. He rises in the forenoon, and sets as follows, in the
-evening: On the 1st at 10:47; on the 15th at 10:11; and on the
-30th at 9:31. On the 26th at 5:04 p. m. he is 2° 5′ north of the
-moon.</p>
-
-<h4>JUPITER</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Will be evening star throughout the entire month, though at its
-close approaching so near the sun as to be scarcely visible. He
-sets at the following times: On the 1st at 9:08; on the 15th at
-8:22; and on the 30th at 7:33 p. m. His motion is direct, and
-amounts from the 1st to the 30th, to 6° 17′ 55″. Diameter decreases
-from 30.2″ to 29.6″. On the 23rd, at 3:00 a. m. is 1°
-10′ south of Mercury; and on the same day at 6:34 a. m. is 5°
-21′ north of the moon.</p>
-
-<h4>SATURN.</h4>
-
-<p>This planet is now one of our morning stars, rising on the
-1st at 3:06, on the 15th at 2:17, and on the 30th at 1:25 a. m.
-Motion direct, amounting to 3° 32′ 30¾″. Diameter increases
-from 15.6″ to 16.2″. On the 19th, at 1:01 p. m. is 3° 2′ north
-of the moon.</p>
-
-<h4>URANUS,</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Whose direct motion during the month is estimated at 1° 3′ 26″,
-continues its <i>role</i> as evening star, setting at the following times:
-On the 1st at 11:10; on the 15th at 10:16; and on the 30th at
-9:17 p. m. On the date last named, <i>Beta Virginis</i> will be only
-two minutes south of and will set at the same time as the
-planet. On the 19th, at 2:00 p. m., Uranus will be eleven minutes
-north of Mars; and on the 26th, at 9:57 a. m. will be 2°
-43′ north of the moon.</p>
-
-<h4>NEPTUNE</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Scarcely affords this month material for comment. Its diameter
-at present appears to be 2.6″. Its motion is 40′ 35″, and
-is direct. On the 1st it rises at 1:44 a. m.; on the 15th at 12:49<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_570" id="Page_570">[570]</a></span>
-a. m.; and on the 30th at 11:45 p. m. At 5:27 p. m., on the
-17th, it will be 1° 11′ north of the moon.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3 id="ASTRONOMY_AUGUST">FOR AUGUST.</h3>
-
-<p>The mid-day shadows lengthening northward indicate to us
-northern folks that “Old Sol” has departed on his annual
-southern tour. He now cuts off the day at both ends, on the
-1st rising 25 minutes later and setting 20 minutes earlier than
-on the 1st of July. His change in declination since June 20th,
-beginning of summer, till August 31st, will be a little over 15°,
-and the decrease in the length of the day for the same time,
-will be a trifle less than two hours. He will come to the meridian
-on the 1st, at six minutes and two seconds after 12:00;
-on the 15th at four minutes and eight seconds after 12:00; and
-on the 30th at sixteen seconds after 12:00. On the same dates he
-will rise at 4:58, 5:11, and 5:26 a. m., and set at 7:14, 6:57, and
-6:35 p. m. Daybreak will occur at 3:05, 3:23, and 3:44 a. m.,
-and twilight will end at 9:07, 8:45, and 8:16 p. m. Greatest elevation
-in latitude 41° 30′ will be 66° 18⅔′.</p>
-
-<h4>THE MOON’S</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Phases occur in the following order and time: Full moon on
-the 6th, at 5:58 p. m.; last quarter on the 13th, at 10:00 p. m.;
-new moon on the 20th, at 4:46 p. m.; and first quarter on the
-28th, at 10:34 a. m. The moon rises on the 15th at 12:39 a. m.;
-and sets on the 1st and 31st at 12:30 and 12:43 a. m., respectively.
-On the 16th at 11:00 a. m., nearest the earth; on
-the 28th, at 5:30 p. m., farthest from the earth. Its greatest
-elevation, 67° 4′, occurs on the 15th, and its least, 29° 50.8′ on
-the second day of the month.</p>
-
-<h4>MERCURY</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Reaches its greatest elongation east (27° 21′), very nearly its
-maximum distance from the sun; yet the opportunity for observation
-is not so favorable as on many occasions when the
-elongation is several degrees less. And the reason is, that the
-planet is now moving southward, is in fact on the 23rd, the
-date of its greatest eastern elongation, 1° 16′ south, while the
-sun is still 11° 9′ north of the equator, and sets, therefore,
-only about fifty minutes later than the sun. The time of the
-planet’s setting is for the 1st, 8:07 p. m.; 15th, 7:53 p. m.; 30th,
-7:16 p. m. It has a direct motion of 32° 49′ 39″. Its diameter
-increases 2.6″, namely, from 5.6″ to 8.2″. It is farthest from
-the sun on the 20th, at 6:00 a. m. On the 23d, at 8:00 a. m., 3°
-5′ south of Uranus.</p>
-
-<h4>VENUS</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Again reaches a position of greatest brilliancy on the 17th,
-and during the entire month will be an object of interest to
-early risers. On the 2nd she will appear stationary; and on
-the 17th at 4:37 p. m. will be 23 minutes south of the moon.
-Her diameter will decrease from 49″ on the 1st to 31.8″ on the
-30th. Her time of rising will be as follows: On the 1st, at 3:08;
-on the 15th, at 2:23; and on the 30th, at 2:01 a. m.</p>
-
-<h4>MARS</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Seems to grow “small by degrees and beautifully less,” his
-diameter at the close of the month being only 4.8″. He sets
-at 9:25 on the evening of the 1st; at 8:51 p. m. on the 15th, and
-at 8:13 p. m. on the 30th. On the 24th, at 10:29 a. m. he is only
-10′ south of the moon.</p>
-
-<h4>JUPITER</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">With his huge form and accompanying satellites fare the fate
-of all “lights” terrestrial and celestial, and his “glory” sinks
-into insignificance beside that of his “ruling power,” as he on
-the 7th, at 1:00 p. m. comes in conjunction with the sun and
-changes his relation from that of an evening to that of a morning
-star. On the 1st he sets at 7:26 p. m.; on the 15th rises at
-4:44 a. m.; and on the 30th rises at 4:02 a. m. Is in conjunction
-with and 5° 8′ north of the moon at 2:36 on the morning
-of the 20th.</p>
-
-<h4>SATURN,</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Another of our morning stars, rises on the 1st and 15th at 1:18
-and 12:28 a. m., respectively; and on the 29th, at 11:34 p. m.
-His diameter increases from 16.2″ to 16.8″. His motion is
-direct, amounting to about 2° 43′. He can be found a little
-north of <i>Zeta</i>, the star denoting the extremity of the northern
-horn of the constellation <i>Taurus</i>. On the 16th, at 12:41 a. m.
-will be 3° 17′ north of the moon.</p>
-
-<h4>URANUS,</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Which on the 30th of last month was so near <i>Beta Virginis</i>,
-has moved about 1° 35′ farther to the east; but can be more
-readily pointed out by its proximity to this than to that of any
-other star. Uranus is an evening star, setting at the following
-dates: 1st, at 9:10 p. m.; 15th, at 8:17 p. m.; 30th, at 7:20 p. m.
-Diameter, 3.6″. On the 22nd, at 9:35 p. m. is 2° 25′ north of
-the moon; and on the 23rd is 3° 5′ north of Mercury, at 8:00
-a. m., an hour at which neither planet can be seen by the
-unaided eye.</p>
-
-<h4>NEPTUNE,</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Last, but by no means least of the heavenly bodies, gives us
-this month more than the usual variety, which, however, is not
-saying much for the spice it affords. But it has a direct motion
-of 10° 42′, and a retrograde motion of about 1′. On the
-14th, at 11:00 p. m. it is in quadrature (90° west of the sun);
-on the 26th, at 5:00 a. m. it is stationary, and on the 14th is
-1° 25′ north of the moon.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3 id="ASTRONOMY_SEPTEMBER">FOR SEPTEMBER.</h3>
-
-<h4>THE SUN</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">“Crosses the line” on the 22nd at 10:13 a. m.; in other words,
-enters the sign <i>Libra</i>, giving us a clearly marked time for the
-beginning of another season—Autumn—which lasts 89 days,
-18 hours, 29 minutes, nearly. His greatest elevation above the
-horizon in latitude 41° 30′ is about 56° 28′, an indication that
-his time above the horizon is decidedly shorter than it was
-last June, when his elevation was a little more than 71° 57′.
-And this also is confirmed by the times of his rising and setting,
-which are as follows: On the 1st, rises at 5:28 a. m., and
-sets at 6:32 p. m.; on the 15th, rises at 5:41 a. m., and sets at
-6:09 p. m.; on the 30th, rises at 5:56 a. m., and sets at 5:43 p.
-m. Theoretically, on the 22nd, the day and night should each
-be exactly 12 hours long; but practically the daylight is longer
-than the darkness, on account of the refraction of light by the
-earth’s atmosphere, which has the effect of bringing into view
-the sun before it actually “rises,” and of detaining it in sight
-after it has “set.” Twilight also affords us so much additional
-light that we may safely assert that in any given place on the
-earth’s surface there is much more “daylight” than “night.”
-For example, on the 30th, daybreak occurs at 4:22 a. m., and
-twilight ends at 7:18 p. m., thus giving three hours and nine
-minutes in which to lengthen our daily toil, if we choose so to
-do. In the same latitude, and in different latitudes, as was
-shown in <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span> for June, the length of twilight
-varies, so that in some instances the entire night is only twilight.
-Are these facts any indication that we should be awake
-longer than we sleep? or that we should labor more hours than
-we rest? Should we be always</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i6">“Up and doing,</div>
-<div class="verse">With a heart for any fate,</div>
-<div class="verse">Still achieving, still pursuing”?</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<h4>THE MOON.</h4>
-
-<p>The man who attends to his neighbor’s business generally
-has his hands full. So has the man who attends to the motions
-of his neighbor, the moon. By the time he investigates
-her parallax, diameter, distance, revolution on her axis, sidereal
-and synodic revolutions, the form of her orbit, her phases,
-discusses her physical properties, determines her heat, height
-of her mountains, size of her craters, describes her librations,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_571" id="Page_571">[571]</a></span>
-decides upon the effect she exercises on the weather, and a
-thousand more or less of other things, he had better settle
-down and make it the business of his life. And if he does, he
-may be able to show some good results of his labors. It is well
-for us that not any single man, but many men, have given our
-satellite so much attention; for it is only by the uniting of the
-results of their researches that we are enabled with comparative
-ease to predict what business our neighbor has on hand,
-and when and how she will perform her duties. Thus, we find
-that she will this month present the following phases: On the
-5th, at 5:47 a. m., full; on the 12th, at 3:08 a. m., last quarter;
-on the 19th, at 4:29 a. m., new moon; on the 27th, at 5:13 a. m.,
-first quarter. She will rise on the 15th at 1:39 a. m., and set on
-the 1st and 30th at 1:36 a. m. and 1:18 a. m., respectively. At
-12:54 p. m., on the 10th, will be nearest the earth (in perigee),
-and on the 25th, at 12:54 (exactly fifteen days later), farthest
-from the earth, or in apogee. Greatest elevation on the 12th,
-amounting to 66° 54⅔′; least elevation on the 26th, equaling
-30° 8′.</p>
-
-<h4>MERCURY</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Will be evening star till the time of its inferior conjunction on
-the 19th, after which it will be morning star. It appears stationary
-on the 6th, and also again on the 28th. On the 19th
-it is 1° 34′ south of the moon. Its apparent diameter increases
-from 8.4″ to 10.4″, and then diminishes to 7.4″ at the close of
-the month. It sets on the 1st at 7:08 p. m.; on the 15th at
-6:05 p. m.; and rises on the 30th at 4:37 a. m.</p>
-
-<h4>VENUS</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Reaches her greatest distance east of the sun, 46° 6′, on the
-29th, at 7:00 a. m. Her diameter decreases from 30.8″ to 22″;
-and her direct motion amounts to 27° 40′ 55.2″. On the 15th, at
-1:08 p. m., she is 2° 26′ north of the moon. She rises on the
-1st, 15th and 30th, at 2:00, 1:59, and 2:11 a. m., respectively.</p>
-
-<h4>MARS</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Still retains his position as evening star, setting on the evening
-of the 1st, 15th and 30th in the same order, at 8:08, 7:36 and
-7:11. His diameter decreases from 4.8″ to 4.6″. Direct motion
-amounts to about 18° 40′ 12″ of arc. He is 2° 20′ south
-of the moon on the 22nd, at 6:48 a. m.</p>
-
-<h4>JUPITER</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Is morning star, rising at the following times: 1st, at 3:55 a. m.;
-15th, at 3:16 a. m.; 30th, at 2:32 a. m. Its motion is direct, and
-equals about 5° 45′ 14″ of arc. Its diameter increases one
-second, being on the 30th 31″. On the 16th, at 8:30 p. m. is
-4° 55′ north of the moon.</p>
-
-<p>The satellites of Jupiter, four in number and designated as
-1, 2, 3, 4, outwardly from the planet, are frequently used to find
-the longitude. To do this, however, requires the use of a telescope.
-By observing the time at which one of these satellites
-passes into or emerges from the shadow of its primary, and
-comparing this time with the recorded time of the same
-event in Washington City, for example, one can determine
-whether he is east or west of this city, and how many degrees.
-On the 14th No. 1 enters the shadow of Jupiter at 4:46 a. m.,
-Washington mean time. Suppose the observer at Allegheny
-Observatory should note the same event as occurring at exactly
-57 minutes 50.84 seconds after four, Allegheny Observatory
-time. He would find the difference of the two times to be
-11 m. 50.84 s., which reduced to longitude by multiplying by 15
-(since one hour of time equals 15° of arc) gives the difference
-of longitude 2° 57′ 40.3″. And since the ingress occurred at
-Allegheny Observatory at an earlier hour (by its local time)
-than by Washington local time, it follows that the latter place
-is 2° 57′ 40.3″ east of the former.</p>
-
-<h4>SATURN</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Continues as in the last two or three months among the morning
-stars, rising as follows: 1st, at 11:22 p. m.; 15th, at 10:30 p.
-m.; 30th, at 9:33 p. m. His diameter increases from 16.8″ to
-17.8″. His motion is direct, and equal to 1° 7′ 25″. On the
-12th, at 9:17 a. m. he is 3° 28′ north of the moon; and on the
-16th, at 10:00 a. m. 90° west of the sun, that is, in quadrature.</p>
-
-<h4>URANUS</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">Makes a direct motion of 1° 43′ 22″ during the month. Its
-diameter reaches its minimum for the year, 3.48″, on the 20th.
-On the 19th, at 4:13 a. m. it is 2° 14′ north of the moon. It begins
-the month as an evening, but closes it as a morning star.
-It is, however, most of the time above the horizon in daylight.
-On the 1st it rises at 6:54 a. m. and sets at 7:06 p. m.; on the
-30th it rises at 5:24 a. m., and sets 5:30 p. m.</p>
-
-<h4>NEPTUNE,</h4>
-
-<p class="unindent">On the contrary, is above the horizon most of the month during
-the night, rising on the 1st at 9:37 p. m.; on the 15th at 8:43 p.
-m.; and on the 30th at 7:44 p. m. Its motion is about 20′ 52″
-retrograde, and its diameter nearly constant at 2.6″. On the
-10th, at 5:20 a. m., appears 1° 33′ north of the moon.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="RISE_HIGHER">RISE HIGHER.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By HELEN G. HAWTHORNE.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i12">Soul of mine,</div>
-<div class="verse">Would’st thou choose for life a motto half divine?</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Let this be thy guard and guide</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Through the future, reaching wide;</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Whether good or ill betide,</div>
-<div class="verse i12">Rise higher!</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i12">From the mire</div>
-<div class="verse">Where the masses blindly grovel, rise higher!</div>
-<div class="verse i4">From the slavish love of gold,</div>
-<div class="verse i4">From the justice bought and sold,</div>
-<div class="verse i4">From the narrow rules of old,</div>
-<div class="verse i12">Rise higher!</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i12">Art thou vexed</div>
-<div class="verse">By the rasping world around thee, and perplexed</div>
-<div class="verse i4">By the sin and sorrow rife,</div>
-<div class="verse i4">By the falsehood and the strife?</div>
-<div class="verse i4">To a larger, grander life</div>
-<div class="verse i12">Rise higher!</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i12">If thou findest</div>
-<div class="verse">That the friends thy heart had counted truest, kindest,</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Have betrayed thee, why should’st thou</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Wear for this a frowning brow?</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Leave their falsehood far behind;</div>
-<div class="verse i12">Rise higher!</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i12">Let each care</div>
-<div class="verse">Lift thee upward to a higher, purer air;</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Then let Fortune do her worst;</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Whether Fate has blessed or cursed;</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Little matter, if thou first</div>
-<div class="verse i12">Rise higher!</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse i12">And at last,</div>
-<div class="verse">When thy sorrows and temptations all are past,</div>
-<div class="verse i4">And the grand Death Angel brings</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Summons from the King of Kings,</div>
-<div class="verse i4">Thou shalt still, on angels’ wings</div>
-<div class="verse i12">Rise higher.</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<p>I have a friend who wishes me to see that to be right which
-I know to be wrong. But if friendship is to rob me of my eyes,
-if it is to darken the day, I will have none of it. It should be
-expansive and inconceivably liberalizing in its effects. True
-friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on
-darkness and ignorance.—<i>Thoreau.</i></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_572" id="Page_572">[572]</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="LANDMARKS_OF_BOSTON">LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.<br />
-<span class="smaller">IN SEVEN DAYS.</span></h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By E. E. HALE.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>The First Day.</h3>
-
-<p>“My dear Isabella!”</p>
-
-<p>“My dearest Kate!”</p>
-
-<p>And the two women threw their arms each around the other’s
-neck, and, so embracing, they kissed each other.</p>
-
-<p>“And where are the children?”</p>
-
-<p>The children appeared at once. That tall John, who looked
-little enough like a child, was lifting his sister Caroline from
-the carriage. Molly followed, and it was explained that the
-elder John, Isabella’s husband, had undertaken to bring Dick up
-from the train on foot and by the horse cars, that he might explain
-to him something of the geography of Boston, so that he
-might be a guide to the rest. Proper fears were expressed that
-they might be lost. But of course they were not lost, and, in
-due time, they also joined the jolly breakfast table, where they
-found the first comers seated.</p>
-
-<p>The reader, if he be bright, already understands what if he
-be dull shall be now explained to him. Kate and Isabella
-are two mothers of families, tenderly attached in early life,
-who have been parted now in many years. Kate’s husband is
-a prosperous wool merchant in Boston, and she and her six
-children live in Roxbury, one of the pretty suburbs of that old
-town. Isabella and her husband are among the spirited and
-wise founders of Greeley, in Colorado. And, though they have
-not lived in that town now for some years, so that their names will
-not be found on its enlarging directory, all their four children
-were born there, and until this summer no one of the four has
-ever left Colorado. This summer all of them have come eastward,
-that boys and girls may practice their mountain swimming
-in the bath, well nigh matchless, of the beach well nigh
-perfect, at Narragansett Pier. And it has been arranged by
-great correspondence that, for a week before the hotels at the
-Pier are open, namely, for the second week of June, the whole
-family shall make a visit in Roxbury, so that they may come to
-know “Aunt Kate,” as Mrs. Dudley has always called herself,
-and Aunt Kate’s six children, who are to them all every whit
-as good as cousins.</p>
-
-<p>All this, as has been said, the thoroughly intelligent reader
-understood as the different characters came forward. It has
-now been explained to readers less intelligent, so that we all
-start fairly together.</p>
-
-<p>“George is so sorry to be away. But he had to take an
-early train to Providence, to be sure to be with you at dinner.
-He has left no end of love, and you are to do nothing but rest
-yourselves to-day.”</p>
-
-<p>The young people of both clans looked amused at the idea
-of resting on a fine morning in June. And, in truth, the plans
-were soon made for a series of expeditions—which the reader
-will follow or not, just as he chooses—in which John Crehere,
-the father, with the practical assistance of Nathan Dudley, the
-oldest of Kate’s six children, laid out the seven days of their
-visit, so that all parties should, with due regard to the demands
-of pleasure, see in that time, all too narrow, the chief</p>
-
-<p class="center">LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>First Day.</h3>
-
-<p>“You see,” said Nathan, who was rather the historical member
-of the home crowd, and was at home somewhat distinguished
-for “poking about” in one and another corner—“you
-see, the absolute original landmarks of Boston are gone,
-or as much altered as they could be.”</p>
-
-<p>“When the first people came here, old John Blackstone, and
-even Winthrop and Dudley, our Tom. Dudley, our ancestor,
-of course it was not called Boston. It was called Trimountain,
-or Tremont, I suppose by people in the fishing ships, because
-at the top of Beacon Hill there were three hummocks, like
-this,” and the boy cut a bit of bread into the shape he meant,
-two protuberances in the side of a hill a little higher.</p>
-
-<p>“And these were Fort Hill, and Copp’s Hill, and Beacon
-Hill,” said his Aunt Isabella, as usual willing to show that she
-also knew something.</p>
-
-<p>“Not quite yet, Aunt Isabella,” said the boy, modestly enough.
-“Most people think so. And I think most Boston people
-would tell you so, but they would be wrong. The three hummocks
-were all on Beacon Hill—that’s where the State House
-is now. Oddly enough they are all gone. They dug down the
-highest, where the Beacon was, part of it when they built the
-State House, and the rest afterward, to fill up the old mill pond.
-And the others were so steep that they had to be dug down for
-streets. But when I take you to the State House, and over
-Mt. Vernon and Somerset streets you will have tramped over
-them all.”</p>
-
-<p>“I really think, mamma,” the boy added, “that at least the
-boys had better go to the top of the State House with me, first
-of all. You know Dean Stanley did.”</p>
-
-<p>It is true that when Dr. Stanley came to Boston, true to the
-principles of Arnold’s school of history, he was eager first of
-all, to understand the precise topography of all he was to see.
-His first visit, therefore, was to the top of the State House, and
-his last, after his short stay, was to the same observatory, that
-he might be sure he had rightly placed all that he had seen.</p>
-
-<p>In our case it need not be said that all the children ridiculed
-any doubts of their ability to climb two hundred and twenty
-stairs, more or less, and also ridiculed that other idea, that
-they were tired. Accordingly, though the two mothers took the
-morning to talk over the events of twenty years by themselves
-in Mrs. Dudley’s room, and while Mr. Crehere went down town
-to look up some business correspondents, Nathan was permitted,
-to his solid satisfaction, to take the young people to the top
-of the State House, to the Common, and anywhere else he
-chose. “And we will get our lunch where we do our work,
-mamma,” he said.</p>
-
-<p>“Cousin Nathan,” said his new friend Caroline, who was no
-more his cousin than you are, “be sure that I see a ship, a real
-three-master, before we go away. Steamships I don’t care
-for.” And he promised.</p>
-
-<p>This article is written in some hope that it may serve as a
-handy guide for visitors to Boston this summer, who may have
-time to make any of the excursions which these young people
-made during the week of their visit. We shall not, therefore,
-try so much to tell what they saw, as how they saw it, in the
-hope and wish that others may see the same. A street car
-brought the party to the head of Winter Street, and here Nathan
-brought them out of it upon what he called the Lower
-Mall, on the eastern side of Boston Common. Here he put all
-the girls upon a seat, while the boys grouped around him, and
-with his stick he drew a rough map on the ground.</p>
-
-<p>“We may get parted from each other. But if any one is lost
-while you are in Boston, the streets are just as easy to understand
-as those of Philadelphia or Chicago, after you once know
-the law of the instrument.</p>
-
-<p>“This hill we are on is the east slope of Beacon Hill. If we
-had followed in the car we could have ridden round it to Cambridge,
-in this open horse shoe which I draw.</p>
-
-<p>“North of us, quite at the north of the town, is Copp’s Hill.
-We will see that another day. The streets around that are in
-curves also.</p>
-
-<p>“Off here on the southeast was Fort Hill. The streets there
-bent to follow the curve. But that is all dug down.</p>
-
-<p>“Then, of course, in a seaboard town, from every wharf or
-pier, there ran up streets into the town. If you took a fan, and
-put the center at the Postoffice Square, the sticks would be
-Water Street, Milk Street, Pearl Street, Federal Street, and so
-on. Now all this is just as much according to rule as if you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_573" id="Page_573">[573]</a></span>
-made a checker board. Only you must know what the rule is.”</p>
-
-<p>“I think it is a great deal nicer,” said Caroline. And Nathan
-thanked her.</p>
-
-<p>The rule in practice is said to be: “Find out where the place
-is to which you go, and take a horse car running the other
-way.”</p>
-
-<p>“Now we will go up to the State House.” So they slowly
-pulled up the Park Street walk, up the high steps between the
-two bronze statues, stopped in the Doric Hall to see the statues
-and the battle flags, and then slowly mounted the long stairways
-which lead to the “lantern” above the dome. Fortunately
-the Legislature had adjourned. When the House is in session
-visits to the lantern are not permitted, lest the trampling on
-the stairs above the Representatives’ Hall might disturb the
-hearers.</p>
-
-<p>When they had regained their breath, they looked round on
-the magnificent panorama which sweeps a circle of forty miles
-in diameter, and Nathan lectured. His lecture must not be
-reported here in detail. But the main points of it shall be
-stated, because they give the clew to the expeditions which the
-party made on succeeding days.</p>
-
-<p>They were so high that all the rest of the city was quite below
-them. Nathan was able to point out—almost in a group, they
-seemed to his western friends, used to large distances—Faneuil
-Hall, the old State House, and the Old South Meeting House
-of Revolutionary times.</p>
-
-<p>“We will do those,” he said, “to-morrow, and then you can
-see where the tea was thrown over, and the scene of the Boston
-Massacre. That will be a good Revolutionary day.”</p>
-
-<p>To the north, with a strip of water between, so narrow, and
-bridged so often that it hardly seemed a deep river, half a mile
-wide, was the monument on Bunker Hill. The Summit was
-the only point near them as high as they were. “We will go
-there on Friday,” said Nathan, “day after to-morrow. And
-that same day we can see Copp’s Hill, which is the north headland
-of Old Boston, and we can go to the Navy Yard, and
-Carry shall see her ship with three masts.</p>
-
-<p>“Saturday—I don’t know what papa will say—but I vote that
-we go down the harbor. We will see Nahant, which is a rocky
-peninsula ten miles northeast, or Hull, which is about as far
-southeast; they make the headlands of Boston Bay.” And he
-tried to make out both these points. He did show them the
-outer light-house and the great forts between. And all of the
-Westerners were delighted with their first view of the sea horizon.</p>
-
-<p>“You do not feel the same at Chicago,” said John; “though
-you do not see the other side, you know it is there.”</p>
-
-<p>“Then Sunday,” said Nathan, husbanding his days prudently,
-“some of us can go to Christ Church, where the sexton
-showed the lantern.”</p>
-
-<p>“And can we not see the church with the cannon ball?</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse">“‘Bears on her bosom as a bride might do,</div>
-<div class="verse i2">The iron breastpin that the rebels threw.’”</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>This was Caroline’s question. She quoted Dr. Holmes.</p>
-
-<p>“No,” said John, sadly. “We were barbarians, and pulled
-that church down.” And he added savagely, “and no good
-came to the society that did it.”</p>
-
-<p>“That will leave Monday for a good tramp over Dorchester
-Heights, and Tuesday, if you are not tired, we will go to Cambridge,
-and see Harvard College.”</p>
-
-<p>And he showed them how high the “Dorchester Heights,”
-now in South Boston, rose, and how completely they commanded
-the harbor; so that when Washington seized them the
-English army and navy had to go. He also showed them Cambridge
-and the college buildings, lying quite near them, westward,
-but on the other side of the Charles River. John looked
-with special interest, because he was to take his first examination
-there for Harvard College, before the month was over.</p>
-
-<p>To this plan, substantially, the party adhered. And travelers
-who have more or less time than they, may find it worth
-while to consult this plan, as they lay out their excursions.
-For in those seven days the visitors did, in fact, have a chance
-to see all the more important landmarks of the history of Boston.</p>
-
-<p>As Nathan took them home from the State House he led them
-down Beacon Street. This is a beautiful street, making the
-north side of Boston Common. Where the Common ends,
-Charles Street crosses Beacon Street nearly at right angles.
-Near this corner, on land now built upon, or perhaps crossed
-by some street, was the cottage of Blackstone, who lived in
-Boston for six or seven years before Governor Winthrop and
-the settlers of 1630 arrived.</p>
-
-<p>They made their first settlement at Charlestown on the other
-side of the river. The records of Charlestown say: “Mr.
-Blackstone, dwelling on the other side of Charles River, alone,
-at a place called by the Indians, Shawmut, where he had a cottage
-at, or not far from the place called Blackstone Point, came
-and acquainted the Governor of an excellent spring, inviting
-and soliciting him thither.”</p>
-
-<p>Blackstone’s house, or cottage, in which he lived, together
-with the nature of his improvements, was such as to authorize
-the belief that he had resided there some seven or eight years.
-How he became possessed of his lands here is not known; but
-it is certain he held a good title to them, which was acknowledged
-by the settlers under Winthrop, who, in course of time,
-bought his lands of him, and he removed out of the jurisdiction
-of Massachusetts to the valley of the Blackstone River.</p>
-
-<p>Of Blackstone’s personal history Nathan afterward read
-them this note, by Mr. Charles F. Adams:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>“He was in no respect an ordinary man. His presence in the peninsula
-of Shawmut, in 1630, was made additionally inexplicable from the
-fact that he was about the last person one would ever have expected to
-find there. He was not a fisherman, nor a trader, nor a refugee: he
-was a student, an observer, and a recluse. A graduate of Emmanuel
-College, Cambridge, he had received Episcopal ordination in England.
-In 1630 he was in his thirty-fifth year. All this is extremely suggestive,
-for it goes to make of him exactly the description of man who would
-naturally be found in company with the scholarly and unobtrusive Morell.
-Further, the probabilities would strongly point to him as Winthrop’s
-authority where Winthrop, in 1631, speaks of a species of weather record
-going back seven years since this bay was planted by Englishmen.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>The Second Day.</h3>
-
-<p>As the various travelers told their times that evening, a
-certain plan was laid out for the next day, in which the two ladies
-agreed to join. And it was finally agreed that they should
-lunch down town with the gentlemen, and should take the elevator
-at the “Equitable” Insurance Company, so that the
-two mothers might have something to substitute for the view
-the children had had from the State House.</p>
-
-<p>This plan may be recommended to lady travelers. The
-view is not as sweeping on the west as that from the State
-House. But, on other sides, it is equally satisfactory. And
-you can go up by steam—a great matter when you have passed
-forty years.</p>
-
-<p>But before lunch Nathan took them to the head of State
-Street, to the “Old State House.”</p>
-
-<p>“This,” said he, “is what the Philadelphia girl called the
-State Street Meeting House.”</p>
-
-<p>He had brought them in in a Norfolk horse car, so that they
-saw the building from the southern side. The lion on one side
-and the unicorn on the other dance on their hind legs at the
-top, with the roof to part them. Nathan was careful to show
-John and the rest that as they looked up on the beasts they
-stood themselves on the very ground of the “Boston Massacre”
-of March 5, 1770. The English troops were in a little
-semi-circle on the north side of the street. Attuchs, the mulatto,
-and the rest of the mob who stoned the troops and snowballed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_574" id="Page_574">[574]</a></span>
-them were in the street, or on the southern side. There
-were then no sidewalks.</p>
-
-<p>The lower part of the “Old State House” is now used for
-public offices. But the upper chambers are restored to much
-the condition in which they were when Sam Adams defied the
-Governor there, and when Otis made his plea in the “Writs of
-Assistants cases.”</p>
-
-<p>“Then and there,” said John Adams, afterward, “American
-independence was born.”</p>
-
-<p>The “Bostonian Society” occupies these halls, simply that
-they may be open to all visitors, and here the party found
-many curious mementoes of Revolutionary and of older days,
-and were able to prepare themselves for their later excursions.</p>
-
-<p>Before the “Town House” was built this spot was occupied
-as the market place, being the earliest in the town. The first
-town house was erected between 1657 and 1659, of wood. It
-was destroyed in the great fire of 1711. In the following year,
-1712, a brick edifice was erected on the same spot. This the
-fire of 1747 consumed, and with it many valuable records
-were lost. The present Old State House was erected the following
-year, 1748, but it has undergone many interior changes,
-the exterior, however, presenting nearly the same appearance
-as when first erected. From 1750 to 1830 Faneuil Hall was
-used as a town house, and the first city government was organized
-there. In 1830 the city government removed to the Old
-State House, which was on September 17 dedicated as City
-Hall. But the City Hall has since been removed to School
-Street.</p>
-
-<p>Leaving the old State House they passed down State Street,
-where they had a chance to see the merchants who were “on
-’change,” and to look in at the Merchants’ Exchange, and by
-a short street leading north, came into the square between
-Faneuil Hall, “the cradle of liberty,” as Boston people like to
-call it, and Faneuil Hall Market.</p>
-
-<p>Peter Faneuil, a rich merchant of Huguenot origin, told the
-town that he would build a market house on this spot if they
-would accept the gift for that purpose, and maintain it forever.
-“The town,” by which is meant the town meeting, looked a
-gift-horse in the mouth, and made some difficulty. At the end
-of a stormy meeting, his proposal was accepted by a majority
-of only seven votes in a vote of seven hundred and twenty-seven.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Faneuil set to work at once on the building, which, by
-the original plan, was to be but one-story high. But he added
-another story for the town hall, which has made his name
-famous to all New Englanders. The original hall accommodated
-only 1,000 persons, being but half the size of that now
-standing. He died, himself, just as the building was completed,
-on the third of March, 1743; and it was first opened to
-public use on the fourteenth of March of that year. The whole
-interior was destroyed by fire in January, 1763, and rebuilt by
-the town and state. In 1806 it was enlarged to its present size.</p>
-
-<p>Nathan made them look at the grass-hopper which is the
-weather-cock which is selected in memory of the Athenian
-cicada. The Athenian people selected this as their emblem
-because they believed they sprang from the ground, and they
-supposed the grass-hoppers did.</p>
-
-<p>The people of Boston long since provided themselves with a
-much larger market house than Peter Faneuil’s. When they
-did so, they gave up the market in Faneuil Hall, and used
-the basement for other purposes. But their lawyers, after a
-while, recollected that stirring town meeting, and the promise
-of the town to maintain the market “forever.” Clearly enough,
-if the town meant to keep the hall, it must maintain the market.
-So the butchers and fruit men were brought back again, and
-Mrs. Dudley bade John buy some bananas for the party, in the
-market, that they might keep Peter Faneuil well in their
-memory.</p>
-
-<p>The Historic Hall is over the market, and always open to
-visitors, and here the party spent half an hour in looking at
-the pictures. Nathan told them of the last and only time when
-he heard Wendell Phillips there. It is not the largest hall in
-Boston, but it is still the favorite hall for any public meeting
-about some public interest, where people are not expecting to
-sit down.</p>
-
-<p>The gentlemen joined the party by appointment here, and
-they all went to lunch together. They then went up the
-Equitable elevator and mounted the tower, so that the ladies
-might see the sea view. And they finished the day’s excursion
-by going into the Old South Meeting House.</p>
-
-<p>This old meeting house was twice as big as Faneuil Hall of
-the Revolution, so that the crowded town meetings of those
-days often adjourned to the Old South. As the patriots called
-Faneuil Hall “the cradle of liberty,” Gov. Gage called the
-Old South the “nursery of rebellion.” The religious society
-which formerly occupied it built a few years ago a new church
-in the western part of Boston, and sold this meeting house to
-an association which wished to preserve it as a memorial of the
-history of Boston. The sellers did not wish to have any opposition
-church established in the old building; they therefore
-put a provision in the deed that for twenty years it should not
-be used for public religious purposes. It is probably the only
-spot in the United States, where, by the expressed wish of a
-church, public worship is forbidden.</p>
-
-<p>The travelers found a great deal to interest them in the
-meeting house, which those travelers will find who use this
-guide. The boys obtained leave to climb up the spire, from
-which, it is said, that the English governor, Gage, saw the embarkation
-of his troops for Bunker Hill, and what he could see
-of the battle.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>Third Day.</h3>
-
-<p>The next day proved favorable for Nathan’s plans, which
-involved a visit to Bunker Hill monument and the navy yard.</p>
-
-<p>“I had meant,” he said to the girls, “to begin by taking you
-out to Concord, that you might see the bridge over the Concord
-River, and the scene of what we call ‘Concord Fight.’
-But, if the day prove hot, it would have been tiresome, as we
-have the monument to climb. For that expedition one needs
-half a day, or better, a day. You know you would want to see
-Mr. Emerson’s house and Mr. Hawthorne’s. We will try that
-next fall.”</p>
-
-<p>They started later, therefore, than the Concord plan would
-have required. A transfer at Scollary Square, the very heart of
-active Boston, put them in a Charlestown car. In Scollary
-Square stands very properly a statue of Winthrop, the founder
-of Boston, and its first governor; as at the foot of the street
-stands Sam Adams.</p>
-
-<p>Nathan explained to the girls, when they came to river and
-bridge, that at the time of Bunker Hill battle there was no
-bridge. The English army, when it attacked the hill, had to
-cross in boats, and he showed them on the east, the line the
-boats took, landing where the navy yard now is. The forces
-landed there and waited through a hot day before the attack.
-The battle was fought on a hot June afternoon.</p>
-
-<p>After they came to Charlestown, a short walk brought them
-to the top of the hill, where a large green park takes in all the
-ground of the historic Redoubt. A bronze statue of Prescott
-seems to welcome the visitor.</p>
-
-<p>By an ascent even longer than that they made at the State
-House, they climbed the monument, and earned their sight of
-the panorama from its top.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Dudley had given them a note to introduce them to the
-commander at the navy yard on their return. It proved that
-he was absent. But they needed no pass nor introduction.
-They were very courteously received; and, as there happened
-to be a ship fitting out with stores for the Mediterranean Station,
-Caroline had her chance to see “a three-masted ship”
-nearly ready for sea.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_575" id="Page_575">[575]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Another ship was in the “dry-dock” for some necessary repairs,
-and they walked about her with that strange feeling of
-being beneath the level of the sea, which they had seen above
-before they descended the stairway.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>Fourth Day.</h3>
-
-<p>Saturday proved to be a warm day, and Mr. Dudley proposed
-at breakfast that they should carry out Nathan’s plan,
-and that all hands should go to Nahant, the rocky peninsula
-which bounds the outer harbor on the northeastern side. His
-wife put up a substantial luncheon, which was packed in two
-baskets and carried by the boys.</p>
-
-<p>So equipped, they took the horse car and “transferred” at
-Sumner Street for the steamboat, which would take them to the
-Lynn Railroad. They could have taken the Easton Railroad,
-but the Lynn Road (so called) runs along the water’s edge, and
-the water sail is longer.</p>
-
-<p>So the young people had their first sniff of sea air from the
-boat which crosses from Old Boston to East Boston, where the
-railroad begins. Caroline had chances enough to see “ships
-with three masts,” brigs, schooners, sloops, barks, brigantines
-and barkantines, all which the learned Nathan explained to
-her. After a voyage of a mile or two they took the narrow
-guage railway and flew along Chelsea Beach, which gave a
-fine ocean view, and more of the glory of the infinite sea, than
-the steamboat had done. At Lynn they found public carriages
-waiting for the drive to Nahant.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Willis, in his extravagant way, said that Nahant looked
-like the open hand of a giant who had been struck down in the
-sea, and that Nahant Beach was his arm. A very thin arm he
-had, a mere thread-paper arm, for a big hand. For the beach
-is only a strip of sand and gravel about two miles long, washed
-by the ocean on both sides. At the southern end, rise, abrupt
-and bold, the rocks of Nahant. They are mostly of trap-rock,
-which has been forced by some volcanic effect of the fiery
-times, up through the hissing sea. They have a reddish color,
-with stripes of black stone, even harder than the rest. And
-the perpetual washing of the sea has worn out clefts and chasms
-of every strange outline and form.</p>
-
-<p>One of these is the Swallow’s Cave, a long passage through
-wet rocks, covered above by rocks, through which at low tides
-adventurers can clamber. One is the Spouting Horn, where at
-half-tide, a sea heavily thrown in by a stiff eastern gale, bounds
-back in spray and water, as if indeed a sea-god had thrown
-it up in a great fountain. But the glory of Nahant is not in
-any one of these sights. It is the glory of the infinite ocean.
-Southeast and west you have the sea, and it is no wonder that
-in this perfect sea-climate, so many people are glad to make a
-summer home.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Dudley met, by appointment, a Boston friend, after they
-had crossed the beach, who husbanded their time for them in
-visiting different points, and before the afternoon closed, asked
-them to come back to town in his yacht. Their plan had been
-to take the steamboat, which was waiting ready to take all such
-children of the public as they.</p>
-
-<p>But in the “Sylph” they were able to vary their voyage. Mr.
-Cradock showed them from her deck that nearly south of them,
-a string of little islands shielded the harbor, in a measure, from
-eastern gales. Of these the three most important are the three
-Brewsters, on one of which is the outer light-house. The yacht
-first ran by these. Then she turned inland and he pointed out
-to them the village of Hull, which on the southeast protects
-the bay, as Nahant on the northeast. He bade the helmsman
-bring the vessel up at Fort Warren, and the young people had
-then a chance to see the arrangements which a great fort
-makes to repel an enemy. And then, as the sun went down
-they ran swiftly up to Boston, saw the State House and Bunker
-Hill monument against the evening glow, and landed
-after a day of thoroughly satisfactory variety.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>The Fifth Day.</h3>
-
-<p>Fortunately for the sight seers, as Mrs. Crehere thought, the
-next day was Sunday, so much chance was there for a day of
-rest. But she found at breakfast that there were one or two
-ecclesiastical landmarks which were to be counted in with the
-others, and that, with perfect gravity and reverence, the young
-people had arranged to unite their sight seeing with the religious
-services of the day. To this she made no exception, and in
-the end she and her husband joined the ten young people, and
-all together made an addition, not unacceptable as it proved, to
-summer congregations not crowded.</p>
-
-<p>The first point was King’s Chapel.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse">“The chapel, last of sublunary things</div>
-<div class="verse i1">That shocks our senses with the name of King’s.”</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Such is Dr. Holmes’s description. It is in the very heart of
-active Boston. After the Revolution it was long called “The
-Stone Chapel,” for in those early days stone churches were
-rare, and nothing bore the name of King. Royal biscuit was
-then called “President’s biscuit.” But after people were sure
-that no King George would return, the Chapel people, who were
-no longer in the habit of praying for the royal family, returned
-to “King’s Chapel” as the historical name of their church, and
-found again the neglected gilded crown and mitre, which had
-once adorned the organ, and restored them to the places from
-which they had been removed. After the service, which interested
-all the young people, they remained in the church to
-look at the curious old monuments. They were specially interested
-in that of Mrs. Shirley, the lovely wife of Governor
-Shirley. She died just as he was fortifying Boston against the
-largest fleet which France ever sent across the seas. This is
-the fleet of Longfellow’s ballad:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse">“For the admiral D’Anville</div>
-<div class="verse i3">Had sworn by cross and crown,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">To ravage with fire and steel</div>
-<div class="verse i3">Our luckless Boston Town.”</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>While Shirley had the whole army of Massachusetts on Boston
-Common, and was bringing every resource to bear to resist the
-enemy, his heart was wrung day by day by the sickness and
-the death of the young bride, whose bust the children saw, and
-whose epitaph they translated.</p>
-
-<p>Nathan told them that when the King’s Chapel was built
-there had been no quarries of stone opened. The stones for
-this building were split and hewed from boulders. By the time
-it was finished it was currently said and believed that there
-was not stone enough in the province for another church as
-big! He took them to the back of the church and showed
-them, on a little green, Franklin statue, placed in what was the
-yard of the school-house where he studied as a boy.</p>
-
-<p>King’s Chapel was not popular with the puritan inhabitants
-of Boston. And, because the lower windows are square and
-look like port holes, the street boys of a century and a quarter
-ago nicknamed it “Christ’s Frigate,” somewhat irreverently.
-On the other side the street was once the school-house, where
-John Hancock and Sam Adams studied. And Nathan showed
-them where the “coast” was in winter, which was obstructed
-by the English officer whom the school boys called to account
-for his violation of their inalienable rights.</p>
-
-<p>They went to church with their friend Mrs. Cradock, whom
-they had met at Nahant the day before, and from her house,
-in the afternoon, they went to Christ Church, which is the
-oldest church building in Boston now standing on the ground
-where it was built. It was the second Episcopalian church
-erected in Boston, and was built in 1723, several years before
-the present Old South. It is a brick edifice, and has long been
-known as the “North End Church.” In its day it was considered
-one of the chief architectural ornaments of the North End.
-The old steeple was blown down in the great gale of 1804,
-falling upon an old wooden building at the corner of Tileston
-Street, through which it crashed to the consternation of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_576" id="Page_576">[576]</a></span>
-tenants, who however escaped injury. The steeple was replaced
-from a design by Charles Bulfinch, which carefully
-preserved the proportion of the original. Its chime was the
-first in New England, and began to play its charming tunes in
-1744.</p>
-
-<p>The Bible, prayer books and silver now in use were given in
-1733 by King George I. The figures of cherubim in front of
-the organ were taken from a French vessel by the privateer
-“Queen of Hungary,” and presented to the church in 1746.
-There is an interesting bust of Washington in the church.</p>
-
-<p>From the steeple of this church the historic sexton hung out
-the lanterns which warned the patriots on the other side of the
-river that an expedition was starting from the English camp,
-against Concord.</p>
-
-<p>“One if by land—two if by sea,” says Mr. Longfellow, whose
-history of those days is more likely to be remembered well
-than any other. That steeple, as has been said, was blown
-down in 1804.</p>
-
-<p>As they walked to the Chelsea car, which was to take them
-home, Nathan led them through the Copp’s Hill burying
-ground. Copp’s Hill has never been cut away. Fort Hill is
-wholly leveled, and Beacon Hill partly so. These were the
-three hills which were the landmarks of old Boston.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>The Sixth Day.</h3>
-
-<p>On Monday morning the Roxbury boys took their cousins to
-see their tennis ground, and it may be believed that all parties
-there joined in one or two games. Mrs. Dudley and Mrs. Crehere
-went into Boston for some necessary shopping, and came
-back by the Art Museum, where was a good “Loan Exhibition.”
-The loan exhibition in summer is generally filled with masterpieces
-from the private galleries of people who are in their
-country homes. “I would not pay so much for pictures,” said
-one of these noble women, “if the people were not to enjoy them
-nine-tenths of the time.”</p>
-
-<p>But Mrs. Dudley had so arranged her dinner that they might
-all take a street car for “Dorchester Heights” and see the
-view of the harbor from that point, and that the boys, who had
-had no chance to swim at Nahant, might take a sea bath on
-their return.</p>
-
-<p>Accordingly, about five o’clock they started for South Boston.
-“Take any car for City Point,” was Nathan’s final direction
-as the party separated. “Ask for the Reservoir, and we
-will meet there.”</p>
-
-<p>“Dorchester Heights” is simply the name, which only old
-fashioned people would understand, of the hills in what is now
-“South Boston,” now surmounted by the “Blind Institution”
-and a public park, in which is one of the city reservoirs. Visitors
-to Boston who are at all interested in education will do well to
-drop a line on arrival, for Mr. Anagnos, the chief of the Blind
-Institution, to ask what is the proper day for a visit there. Our
-friends were obliged to defer this interesting visit till the autumn,
-and they all gathered on the other hill and enjoyed the
-spectacle of the harbor, white with the sails of hundreds of
-yachts, and all alive with the movements of the lolling steamers
-as they went out, just before sunset, on their voyages to every
-port of the seaboard, not to say of the world.</p>
-
-<p>These high hills completely command the harbor, in a military
-sense. Why the English generals did not take possession
-before Washington did no one ever knew. That was the sort
-of imbecility George III. got by appointing men to office because
-they were his relations. When, at last, the winter of
-1775-1776 broke up, and no ice had formed strong enough for
-an attack on Boston over the ice, Washington seized these
-hills. By the road now called Dorchester Avenue, which Nathan
-Dudley showed our friends, he sent from the camp in
-Roxbury (“just behind where we live,” said Nathan) the men
-and munitions. It was all done by night. On the morning of
-the fifth of March the Americans had built a fortification which
-surprised the English officers in Boston as that on Bunker Hill
-had surprised them nine months before. “It was like Aladdin’s
-lamp,” wrote one of them.</p>
-
-<p>General Howe’s first plan was to assault the works, as Gage
-had assaulted those at Bunker Hill. Howe sent an attacking
-force to the fort held by him on the island. But a storm made
-this attack impossible. Ward, the commander of the American
-right wing, strengthened his ranks. Thomas, the general
-in command on the heights, asked nothing better than an attack.
-But Howe, at the last, saw that the venture was madness.
-He entered into negotiations with Washington, and, a
-fortnight after, withdrew fleet and army. For several months
-there was not an English soldier on American soil.</p>
-
-<p>The next day, when they visited the Historical Society, Nathan
-showed his cousins the original gold medal which Congress
-gave to Washington in honor of this victory. It was designed
-by a French artist, and struck in Paris. It represents
-Washington seated on his horse, on Dorchester Heights, as the
-squadron retires. It bears the proud motto:</p>
-
-<p class="center">“<i>Hostibus primo Fugatis</i>,”</p>
-
-<p class="unindent">which may be translated: “The first Flight of the Enemy.”</p>
-
-<p>“Pray how did this medal come here?” said Caroline.</p>
-
-<p>“By the fortune of war,” said her cousin. On this Monday
-evening, before they left the park, which now takes the place
-of the fortification, they looked at the tablet of stone which
-commemorates the history. They found the name of the mayor
-who put it up, but no allusion to General Ward who planned
-the work, or General Thomas, who carried it out. Such, alas,
-is fame!</p>
-
-<p>When they left the hill the sun was going down. The elders
-and the girls took a car across Dover Street, by which they
-could go directly home. But Nathan led the boys to the public
-bath house, on one of the beaches; and there his western
-friends had their first experience of the exquisite luxury of a
-swim in the salt sea.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>The Last Day.</h3>
-
-<p>On Wednesday the whole western party was to go to Narragansett
-Pier, and on Thursday the Roxbury party was to start,
-bag and baggage, for Quonochontaug, which is not far from
-that resort. But it was determined that on Tuesday the young
-people should go to Cambridge, where, at Harvard College,
-John was to make his home for most of the next four years.</p>
-
-<p>They took a steam train into Boston, and at the station of the
-Providence road found a street car waiting to take them from
-Park Square to Harvard Square. The ride takes a short half
-hour. At Harvard Square you are on one side of the College
-Yard, as the region is called, which in colleges of more pretense
-would be named the <i>Campus</i>. Buildings of all ages and
-all aspects fill it, from the venerable brick of old Massachusetts,
-built near two centuries ago, in fond memory of Pembroke
-College in Cambridge, down to the last “sweet” devices of
-modern architecture.</p>
-
-<p>They had an embarrassment of riches before them, that they
-might rightly use their time and gratify every taste of all the
-party. First of all, Nathan led them to the Library, and while
-under his brother’s guidance, the young people looked at some
-of the curiosities there, he took John to the Bursar’s office, to
-attend to some business about his college room. Then they
-all called on a young gentleman, to whom the Dudleys introduced
-the Creheres, so that they saw the comfort of the college
-rooms of the students. Next they went to Memorial Hall,
-where are the portraits of the old worthies of the state and
-college, the trophies of many base ball victories, and, most
-interesting of all, if you go at a meal time, some five hundred
-of the young men of to-day, eating with a good appetite. From
-this place they went to the Agassiz Museum, which is so skilfully
-arranged that they will all date back to that hour’s visit
-a clearer knowledge of the great classifications of natural
-science.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_577" id="Page_577">[577]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The young people declared that they were not tired even
-then. Their student friend had asked them to rest in his room
-after these bits of sight seeing, and they did so, and then, after
-a little lunch, went up to the Botanic Garden, stopped at the
-Observatory, and crossed to see the house which was lately the
-home of Longfellow, and in the Revolution, that of Washington.</p>
-
-<p>Travelers who have the same lions to “do” in one day may
-find their order a convenient one to follow. And, though these
-are not landmarks of Boston properly, it has seemed wise not
-to conclude their story without telling of their Cambridge expedition.</p>
-
-<p>“And now,” said Nathan, as they took at the door of the
-Longfellow house a car for Boston, “now we have made the
-beginning, when you come in the fall we can show you Boston.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="VANISHING_TYPES">VANISHING TYPES.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Rev. EDWARD P. SPRAGUE</span>.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>Abundant evidence is afforded in nature that, beside the
-familiar forms of life of the present, there have been earlier
-forms, such as are now no longer seen. Each great epoch of
-the earth’s history, as, to a less degree, each great continent on
-the earth’s surface, has had certain prevalent and characteristic
-types; of which some still endure; some have wholly disappeared,
-and some are just now passing out of sight. And
-among all these extinct, persistent, vanishing and recent
-types, there are perhaps none more full of interest, or more
-worthy of our careful study than the ones that are just now
-passing away.</p>
-
-<p>Something similar to this is to be recognized also in the
-varying phases of human life. There are styles of men, habits
-of life, peculiarities of character, customs, occupations, and
-conditions which belong almost wholly to the present; others
-which are common to the present and the past; and still others
-which are as strictly part of the long ago, as are the megatherium
-and the plesiosaurus. There are no corresponding forms
-now, and probably never again will be. There can never more
-be the old feudal baron, the chivalrous knight errant, or the
-trouveres and troubadours of mediæval Europe, any more
-than there can be again the ancient worshipers of Jupiter or
-devotees of Bacchus. Old forms of government, old ideas of
-the divine right of kings, old faith in auguries, the old search
-for the philosopher’s stone and for the elixir of life have passed
-away, never to return.</p>
-
-<p>More recent, however, than these, and more closely related
-to the present, are certain types of life with which our fathers
-were daily conversant, but which promise to seem to our children
-very strange and remote. Not merely does the regular
-succession of the generations bring us at length to the last
-Revolutionary soldier, and to the last survivor of the seemingly
-exhaustless supply of Washington’s body servants; but at the
-same time the changes which transpire in local and social life
-do serve to make rare, and then wholly to remove, the types of
-men that were only lately distinctively common and prominent.
-We do well therefore to stop in the midst of our hurrying,
-driving, self-glorifying age, and study some of these <i>Vanishing
-Types</i> of life, character, occupation, with varied accompaniments
-and experiences, which to-day have become or are
-fast becoming things of the past.</p>
-
-<p>A recent writer in one of our great metropolitan dailies comments
-in a pleasant strain on the survival in only humorous
-papers and poor plays of the typical Englishman and typical
-Yankee, as so long and commonly represented. What has
-become of the John Bull and the Brother Jonathan of a few
-years ago? Were they not true characters at all? If not, who
-will explain the hold they took on the popular fancy, a hold so
-strong that they are not quite abandoned to-day? They must
-have been fairly faithful representatives of certain actual types.
-Are Englishmen and Americans growing different, then, from
-what they were, or growing like each other, that now these two
-illustrious characterizations have largely disappeared?</p>
-
-<p>As the writer remarks: <i>Punch</i> still has John Bull as a national
-type; but shows a great reserve in the use of him, and
-continually resorts to Britannia as a substitute. Our old
-friend John, the bluff, stout, honest, red-faced, irascible, rural
-person, has really been supplanted by a more modern, thinner,
-nervous, intellectual, astute type. He is, or was a very rude
-person, and always seemed to take great delight in asserting
-himself in such a way as to produce as much general annoyance
-and discomfort as possible. But he is gone, or is going,
-and the time is coming when we shall regard him as only a
-survival, a tradition of the past.</p>
-
-<p>And so for English use the Yankee type of Uncle Sam may
-still serve to represent America, although he belongs to the
-past as much as slavery does, or the stage coach. He would
-be a bold man who would attempt to say what our national
-type is now; but it is safe to say that it is not a long, thin, cute
-Yankee, dressed in a swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons,
-whittling a stick, and interlarding his conversation with “I
-swan,” and “I calc’late.” In fact, if Mr. Lowell were to write
-“Biglow Papers” now, Uncle Sam would hardly serve his
-purpose as he did during the war.</p>
-
-<p>Not only are differences between national types rapidly vanishing
-into the past, so that Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen
-and Americans no longer seem strikingly unlike; but along
-with these international, the more domestic and home types
-are disappearing also. The distinctive kinds of men, and the
-distinctions which attached themselves inseparably to various
-classes and occupations are passing away.</p>
-
-<p>Take the men to-day of any one town, village or farming
-district, and I fully believe you will find fewer odd and
-strange characters among them than was the case among their
-predecessors or fathers of a generation ago.</p>
-
-<p>Just this was the complaint of an old farmer who used to delight
-to drop into my study in northern New York, and have,
-as he called it, “a talk with the parson.” He was himself a
-relic of a past generation, a man of marked face and peculiar
-manner. He had been a school teacher in his earlier days,
-and quite a man of letters among his associates of that time,
-and was very fond of describing in a quaint way that was not
-without discrimination, the life of his youth. While fully admitting
-the greater advantages and easier times of the present,
-he would always add: “But everybody is getting to be just like
-everybody else now-a-days. Why, when I came into this valley
-every man on all these farms had something peculiar
-about him, some way of standing, or talking, or dressing, by
-which I could have described him so that you would have
-known him the first time you met him. I don’t know,” he
-would add, “but you may think it an improvement, but the
-men are all alike now, and I miss the differences.” And looking
-at the old man, and feeling that he served as a connecting
-link, a survival of the past into the present, I was ready to believe
-that what he said was true; the older men had more
-marked peculiarities than those of to-day.</p>
-
-<p>Let us look now more particularly at some of the types which
-were distinctive features of the life of a half century ago, but
-whose successors have lost much of that prominence to-day by
-means of that gradual tendency toward uniformity which has
-since then been working.</p>
-
-<p>First among these and foremost, as distinctive and distinguished,
-stands the “Country Parson” of fifty or more years
-ago.</p>
-
-<p>No such men are seen to-day; for although the ministry
-continue, and are always to continue, constituting a distinct
-class in the community, they are now in no such ways singular
-and distinctive as then. Dressed always in his clerical
-black, and in earlier times in the clerical bands also, he was
-known on the street and saluted with reverence as a man by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_578" id="Page_578">[578]</a></span>
-himself, set apart from the rest of the community, higher and
-holier than they. His position was unequaled, unapproached
-even by any other person. He was looked up to by all, honored
-by all, and feared, if not by all, by all the children at
-least. His opinions on matters local and civil, personal, social,
-philosophical and religious had almost the weight of absolute
-and supreme wisdom, which no one might gainsay.</p>
-
-<p>See him enter the plain white “meeting-house” and ascend
-the lofty pulpit, and you recognize the height of his exaltation.
-In many places all the congregation were wont to rise when he
-came in, and remain standing till he had taken his seat; and
-still more commonly, not one of the congregation ever moved
-from place till he and his family had passed out of the church.</p>
-
-<p>Listen to one of his long sermons, as the hour-glass at his
-side is turned possibly for the second time, and in the way the
-congregation give attention, you see evidence of his authority
-and of his hold upon them. He discourses on high themes,
-abstruse doctrines, and obscure points of faith. He discusses
-his text and subject in a logical and philosophical way; defines
-the doctrine, first by what it is not, and then by what it
-is; divides and sub-divides, and divides again, illustrates with
-analysis and analogies, intersperses with other passages from
-the Bible, and perhaps with occasional Greek or Latin quotations,
-draws to the “conclusion,” adds the “improvement,”
-goes on as though taking a fresh start to his “finally,” and
-then ends with his “and now last of all.” For a full hour,
-or perhaps two, the congregation have listened, counting it a
-precious privilege so to do; and that which he has advanced
-will be remembered, repeated, talked over, and discussed
-among them all the week.</p>
-
-<p>Those early clergymen are not by any means to be spoken
-of slightingly. Some of us may know more of science, and be
-better informed in matters of natural history and of the contemporaneous
-condition of other lands; but few of us know as
-much Hebrew and Greek, few of us are as deeply versed in
-metaphysics, few of us are more vigorous in argument, and
-none of us certainly have such influence in our communities,
-or could hold our congregations for so long services. Those
-country parsons were men of mark; deep theologians; strong
-in the doctrines; prone, men may think to-day, to a narrow
-and iron-clad theology; but they were veritable giants also,
-and in fast, thanksgiving, and election day sermons did not
-hesitate to handle national themes, point out very specifically
-and with square condemnation, popular sins, and to discuss,
-and if necessary, pass open judgment on the courses and actions
-of public men.</p>
-
-<p>It is often remarked that the fathers builded first the church
-and then, next and near by, the school-house; and so next to
-the minister a marked man in those older days was the “Village
-Schoolmaster.”</p>
-
-<p>Occasionally the schoolmaster and the minister were one.
-Sometimes he was a minister who, from the too prevalent affliction
-of throat disease—a judgment, possibly, on account of
-the long sermons—had exchanged preaching for teaching.
-Oftenest he was a man by himself; and no teacher in any
-public school of to-day quite perpetuates his likeness.</p>
-
-<p>I can not do better in attempting to describe him than to
-quote from Prof. McMaster, in his admirable “History of the
-People of the United States:”</p>
-
-<p>“The master was expected to live with the parents of his pupils,
-regulating the length of his stay by the number of the
-boys in the family attending his school. Thus it happened
-that in the course of his teaching he became an inmate of all
-the houses of the district, and was not seldom forced to walk
-five miles, in the worst of weather over the worst of roads, to
-his school.</p>
-
-<p>“Yet, mendicant though he was, it would be a great mistake
-to suppose that he was not always a welcome guest. He slept
-in the best room, sat in the warmest nook by the fire, and had
-the best food set before him at the table. In the long winter
-evenings he helped the boys with their lessons, held yarn for
-the daughters, or escorted them to spinning matches and quiltings.
-In return for his miserable pittance and his board, the
-young student taught what would now be considered as the rudiments
-of an education. His daily labors were confined to
-teaching his scholars to read with a moderate degree of
-fluency, to write legibly, to spell with some regard for the rules
-of orthography, and to know as much of arithmetic as would
-enable them to calculate the interest on a debt, to keep the
-family accounts, and to make change in a shop.</p>
-
-<p>“Nor was this making change a simple matter. Fifty years
-ago the silver pieces which passed from hand to hand, under
-the name of small change, were largely made up of foreign
-coins. They had been in circulation long before the war for
-independence, had seen much service, and were none the better
-for the wear and tear they had sustained.</p>
-
-<p>“One of these pieces was known as the four-pence, but
-passed for six and a quarter cents if, as the result of long
-hoarding, the inscription was legible, and the stamp easy to
-make out; but when worn smooth—and the four-pence pieces
-generally were worn smooth and crossed—no one would take
-them for more than five cents. A larger coin was the nine-pence,
-which passed for twelve and a half cents. The pistareen
-was worth twenty cents. The picayune, a term rarely used
-north of Mason and Dixon’s line, went for six and a quarter
-cents. But the confusion was yet more increased by the language
-which merchants used to express the price of their
-goods.</p>
-
-<p>“The value of the gold pieces expressed in dollars was
-pretty much the same the country over. But the dollar, and
-the silver pieces regarded as fractions of a dollar, had no less
-than five different values. In New England and Virginia a
-merchant who spoke of a dollar was understood to mean six
-shillings, or one hundred and eight coppers; but the same
-merchant would, the moment he set foot in North Carolina or
-New York, be content with demanding ninety-six coppers, or
-eight shillings, as the equivalent of a dollar. Sixpence in
-Massachusetts meant eight and a third cents; a shilling meant
-sixteen and two-third cents; two-and-three pence was thirty-seven
-and a half cents; three shillings was fifty cents; four-and-six
-was seventy five cents; nine shillings was a dollar and
-a half.”</p>
-
-<p>About all these to us strange coins and values the schoolmaster
-was expected to know, and to be able also to instruct
-his scholars. He filled, therefore, a very important place in
-the life of the village, as well as in the experience of the boys
-under his instruction. Nowhere to-day can you find in village
-schoolmaster, district or town school teacher, superintendent
-of instruction, or learned professor, a figure that fills out and
-continues just the portrait of the typical pedagogue of a generation
-or more ago.</p>
-
-<p>Next after the village schoolmaster, and perhaps outranking
-him in prominence and in distinctive traits, and so deserving
-to have been mentioned sooner, was the “Country Doctor” of
-the past generation.</p>
-
-<p>Wherever men live, meet with accidents, suffer sickness,
-grow old and die, there in civilized lands the physician is a
-necessity, and is always to be found. Favored as we are in
-the present by all the progress in medical and sanitary science,
-and attended by the skilled physicians of to-day, we can
-hardly realize the life of the doctor and of the patient in the
-time many of the remedies which are now used to relieve pain
-were unknown, when there were no drug stores except in the
-larger towns, when only a few simple medicines could be easily
-obtained at the village store, along with the tea, sugar, calico,
-twine and garden seeds that made up the stock on the shelves.
-Then the physician compounded his own drugs, rolled out his
-own pills, made his own tinctures, weighed or measured out
-his own prescriptions, and carried with him on his round of
-calls, and perhaps in his saddle-bags, a most varied and astonishing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_579" id="Page_579">[579]</a></span>
-assortment of medicines, a list of which would be
-remarkable to-day, alike for the presence of many that are
-abandoned, and for the absence of still more that are now in
-common and constant use.</p>
-
-<p>The physician of to-day excels him perhaps in general
-knowledge, in ability to deal with difficult diseases, and to perform
-delicate and successful surgery. He is the man of wider
-reading and more scientific views; he is possibly the better
-practitioner; but he is by no means the distinct character in
-his way that the country doctor of fifty years ago was.</p>
-
-<p>“His genial face, his engaging manners, his hearty laugh,
-the twinkle in his eye, the sincerity with which he asked after
-the health of the carpenter’s daughter, the interest he took in
-the family of the poorest laborer, the good nature with which
-he stopped to chat with the farm hands about the prospect of
-the corn crops and the turnip crops, made him the favorite for
-miles around. When he rode out he knew the names and personal
-history of the occupants of every house he passed. The
-farmers’ lads pulled off their hats, and the girls dropped courtesies
-to him. Sunshine and rain, daylight and darkness were
-alike to him. He would ride ten miles on the darkest night,
-over the worst roads, in a pelting storm, to administer a dose
-of calomel to an old woman, or to attend a child in a fit. He
-was present at every birth; he attended every burial; he sat
-with the minister at every death-bed, and put his name with
-the lawyer to every will.”</p>
-
-<p>From the consideration of these vanishing or vanished types,
-a single illustration of which alone was usually to be found in
-any ordinary village, we turn now to a class that then, as their
-successors do now, made up the predominant element in every
-section—the “Country Farmer”—and I mean the country
-farmer of fifty years ago.</p>
-
-<p>The farmer of to-day is a man who lives in a comfortable,
-perhaps handsome house, whose parlor is carpeted and is
-graced with a piano, whose acres are mowed or reaped by the
-horse-power machine, and grain threshed by steam, who drives
-in a good carriage, and his son has a top buggy of his own;
-whose wife wears silk, and his daughters spend their winters in
-the city. He wears handsome clothes, takes one or two agricultural
-papers, keeps fancy stock, Jerseys and Hollands, and
-occasionally furnishes articles to the press on “Creameries” and
-“Ensilage.”</p>
-
-<p>Not such was the typical farmer of a generation or two ago—a
-man whose comforts were fewer and helps much less, and
-also a man of stronger traits of character, more decided convictions,
-harder working, and probably in proportion fully as
-successful in accumulating the profits of careful industry.</p>
-
-<p>One such I have in mind, an example of the best of his class.
-He was a large man, well built, tall and muscular. He had
-been educated at the common district school of the vicinity,
-had succeeded his father in ownership of the farm, had married
-early, and became in time the head of a large family. No
-chance visitor ever spent the night at the house without being
-taken out into the kitchen and shown the long line of boots,
-seven pairs arranged in a regularly diminishing row, and all
-ready for the morning.</p>
-
-<p>He was not what would be called an educated man to-day,
-but he had studied the national and the state constitutions;
-knew all about the politics of the country; looked after the
-interest of the district school near his home; attended regular
-in all seasons and weathers the village church, four miles away,
-and in which also he served as a trustee. He was a firm believer
-in the stanch Calvinism of his fathers; taught his children
-the Westminster Catechism on Sunday afternoons; always
-voted his party ticket straight, and believed with all his
-heart in his minister and in his favorite political leader.</p>
-
-<p>He toiled hard, rising early and going to bed early also.
-His food was simple, beef, pork, salt fish, dried apples, beans,
-and farm vegetables, with milk, butter and eggs in abundance,
-and bread, if not the whitest, yet always sweet, made from the
-wheat of his own growing, ground into flour at his neighbor’s
-grist mill. His work did not present any great variety. In
-spring there was the regular round of repairing the fences,
-cleaning out the barnyard, ploughing and sowing; followed
-in due time by the long and laborious hoeing the corn and
-potatoes, and then by the mowing the grass with scythes, reaping
-the grain with sickle or cradle, and afterward the threshing
-on the barn floor by the well-swung flail, whose sturdy blows
-filled all the valley with answering echoes.</p>
-
-<p>In winter there was the cutting, hauling, sawing, splitting
-and piling in the shed the abundant supply of wood that was
-to keep up the next year’s fires in the great fireplace, the huge
-brick oven, and the kitchen and “living room” stoves.</p>
-
-<p>Pleasures and recreations were few; the huskings in the
-fall, the squirrel and rabbit hunts, the evening chats with a
-neighbor along with the apples and mug of cider, the game of
-checkers by the kitchen fire on a stormy day, the occasional
-larger gathering for an early supper, the spelling match, and
-the singing school. Books were not numerous, the weight making
-up for the lack of variety. There were the Bible, Watts’s
-Psalms and Hymns, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,”
-Rollins’s “Ancient History,” Watts’s “Improvement of
-the Mind,” Baxter’s “Saint’s Rest,” Young’s “Night Thoughts,”
-and a stray volume of <i>The Spectator</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Trained by such books, by lessons of hard experience, by
-intercourse with neighbors, and by the sermons of his minister,
-such a farmer became, not the polished man, or versatile, or
-widely informed, but the man of strong character, rugged worth,
-decided convictions unflinchingly adhered to, true, honest,
-upright, kindly, careful, close perhaps, but generous also and
-helpful. To men of to-day he might seem narrow-minded and
-opinionated. We may smile at some of his ideas and apprehensions,
-and tell humorous stories illustrating his acknowledged
-inquisitiveness; but none the less at heart we must do
-him honor and admit that more men like him were a blessing
-in the community to-day. Rigid necessity compelled him to
-be carefully economical and exact in his dealings to a degree
-even that verged on parsimony, but he was just in it all, and
-demanded only what was rightfully his own. For the sake of
-securing that however he would, if necessary, be at the trouble
-once taken, as it is told, by a certain New England farmer.
-A United States surveying party had taken a single chestnut
-rail from his fence, and using it as a signal pole, had neglected
-either to return it to its place or to compensate him therefor.
-Discovering this trespass he started after them, walked ten
-miles in the hot sun, interviewed the chief, informed him that
-people’s property was to be respected, and that he was not a
-man to be imposed upon or frightened. Pleasantly and respectfully
-met, and asked to state the damage, he replied:
-“Well, seein’ as no cattle got in, there warn’t no damage;
-chestnut rails ain’t of much account anyway, and that one I
-calc’late wasn’t worth more’n ten cents;” and receiving that
-amount duly paid in legal coin of the country, he returned
-home amply satisfied.</p>
-
-<p>Sketches of vanishing types, such as these, might be almost
-indefinitely continued, but we must be content with simply indicating
-some of the fit subjects.</p>
-
-<p>There was in every village the “Country Shoemaker,” whose
-shop, close by the tavern and the blacksmith’s, was the favorite
-rainy day resort for both boys and men. There the latest
-news was rehearsed, party slates were made or broken, and
-matters of local interest, or of state and national politics received
-impassioned discussion.</p>
-
-<p>There were also the village “Tailor” and “Cooper,” persons
-as indispensable as the village pump. The gossiping dressmaker
-went her yearly round among the circle of households;
-and the old-fashioned peddler brought silks and city goods to
-the farmer’s wife, and was always welcomed by the farmer
-himself for the news he brought from other places, supplying
-surprisingly well the place of the modern newspaper.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_580" id="Page_580">[580]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>In almost every New England village situated at all near the
-sea coast a prominent character was the retired Whale Captain,
-a man of very positive character, accustomed to authority, and
-not always a comfortable neighbor or amiable citizen.</p>
-
-<p>Very different also from the farmer of the north was the
-Southern Planter, who was with us only a little while ago, but
-now as a distinctive type is fast vanishing from sight. The
-product and the pride of the southern land, prominent in society
-and politics, ruling as lord over his swarm of dependents,
-and holding his social, religious, and political opinions by a
-sort of entail with his estate, he forms a most interesting subject
-of study, and will perhaps figure largely as a favorite character
-in the American novel of the future.</p>
-
-<p>Any sketch of olden times ought to make special mention
-also of the “Old Stage Coach and Driver.” The days are not
-very long passed when a journey from here to New York or
-Philadelphia was a matter of graver consideration than is now
-given to a trip to London and return. Not without very serious
-preparation, fortifying himself for the hardships, considering
-the possible dangers, and perhaps taking a very formal farewell
-of his family, did a traveler set out on his journey; and
-then his progress was painfully slow, and his discomforts painfully
-many.</p>
-
-<p>The stages, great lumbering vehicles, made perhaps forty
-miles a day in the summer, and not much more than half as
-many in the winter. In summer one was choked by the dust,
-and in cold weather he froze. “If no accident occurred the
-traveler was put down at the inn about ten o’clock at night.
-Cramped and weary, he ate a frugal supper, and betook himself
-to bed with a notice from the landlord that he would be
-called at three the next morning. Then, whether it rained or
-snowed, he was forced to rise and make ready by the light of a
-tallow candle, for another ride of eighteen hours. After a series
-of mishaps and accidents, such as would suffice for an emigrant
-train crossing the plains, the stage rolled into New York
-at the end of the sixth day after leaving Boston.” This is not
-exceptional. It was considered something remarkable when
-the trip from New York to Philadelphia was first made in less
-than two full days.</p>
-
-<p>The mails of that time were carried in these same stages,
-except in the special cases where post-riders hastened through
-on horseback. So small, however, was the mail service at the
-beginning of this century, that Prof. McMaster affirms: “More
-mails are now each day sent out and received in New York,
-than in Washington’s time went from the same city to all parts
-of the country in the course of half a year. More letters are
-delivered in that city every twenty-four hours than, when
-Franklin had office, were distributed in the thirteen states in
-a whole year.”</p>
-
-<p>Along with the varied types of character and of occupation
-that have vanished, or are vanishing away, there are many
-articles of use and of ornament, that were once common, but
-are now hardly to be found.</p>
-
-<p>A pair of old brass andirons that belonged to one’s grandmother
-are to-day an almost priceless heirloom in any family.
-Old spinning wheels, in daily use fifty or more years ago, but
-for a generation consigned to the garret or remote store room,
-are now brought down and, freshly polished and decked with
-ribbons, made to adorn the parlor or the hall. A genuine old
-sickle is to-day hard to find; the hand fanning-mills are becoming
-rare, and a real flail is almost never heard. How
-many of the young ladies of to-day have ever seen one of the
-foot-stoves their grandmothers used to carry to church, or one
-of the warming-pans always put to use for the benefit of the
-friend that in winter time occupied “the best chamber?” How
-long is it since the side of every kitchen opened into the cavernous
-depth of the old “brick oven,” the heating of whose
-great dome was such a labor for the adults, but such a delight
-for the children? What too have become of the old tin “Dutch
-ovens” that were used before the open fireplace, and of the
-iron “bake kettles,” with cover for the burning coals, which
-were sometimes called by this same name? While for an old
-tinder box and flint one will search almost in vain unless in
-some cabinet of carefully guarded relics and antiques.</p>
-
-<p>A very wide question is sometimes raised as to how far the
-absence of such marked types as those of the past indicates an
-improved age in the present, and whether indeed the opposite
-of this may not be the case. It may be argued, and not quite
-without some show of reason, that the tendency to reduce all
-characters, stations, and kinds of life to a largely universal
-correspondence, and the merging of markedly distinctive traits
-into a general resemblance, is an indication of weakness rather
-than of strength, and that thereby society suffers a loss instead
-of securing a gain. One may well hesitate before refusing to
-admit that there may be some truth in such a view. However,
-without attempting to argue this question, or to draw any inferences
-from the whole, it is enough for the present purpose
-to show that many of the strong traits of the past, like strong
-features seen in old family portraits, are to be recognized only
-in reduced and softened characteristics to-day, so that we do
-well in the midst of the uniformity of the life of the present to
-pause and recall and honor these vanishing types of the past.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="THE_COUNCIL_OF_NICE">THE COUNCIL OF NICE.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center smaller">An essay read before the University Circle, of San José, California.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>“There are four things,” says Hooker, “which concur to
-make complete the whole state of our Lord: His Deity, Manhood,
-the conjunction of both, and the distinction of one from
-the other.”</p>
-
-<p>“Four principal heresies have withstood the truth: Arians,
-against the deity of Christ (denying that he was co-eternal and
-co-essential with the Father);</p>
-
-<p>“Apollinarians, maiming his human nature (denying that he
-had a human soul);</p>
-
-<p>“Nestorians, rending Christ asunder, and dividing him into
-two persons (one divine and the other human);</p>
-
-<p>“The followers of Eutyches, by confounding in his person those
-natures which they should distinguish (asserting that his human
-nature was absorbed in the divine, and objecting to any
-distinction between the two).</p>
-
-<p>“Against these there have been four most famous councils:</p>
-
-<p>“1. Nice against the Arians, A. D. 325.</p>
-
-<p>“2. Constantinople against the Apollinarians, A. D. 381.</p>
-
-<p>“3. Ephesus against the Nestorians, A. D. 431.</p>
-
-<p>“4. Chalcedon against the Eutychians, A. D. 451.”</p>
-
-<p>Upon the theme of the first of these great Ecumenical Councils,
-the present paper will be a compilation.</p>
-
-<p>A momentous era has arrived in the history of the church
-and of the world. For the first time a Christian ruler has come
-to the throne of the Cæsars.</p>
-
-<p>With his chosen standard of the cross, Constantine has subdued
-the opposing factions—in the Roman empire, and over
-his vast realm there goes the edict that sets the Christians free
-from Pagan tyranny and persecution.</p>
-
-<p>The church has grown through three centuries of stern conflict
-with the error and darkness, the evils and wrongs of the
-world, to be a mighty power in the earth.</p>
-
-<p>Her course through suffering and toil, along a path tracked
-with the blood of the martyrs, has been a march of victory and
-conquest. A long list of eminent names is on her calendar.
-But now in the period of emancipation and prosperity she is beset
-by a complication of new dangers. Alliance with the state
-exposes her to a strain of corrupting influences. In the removal
-of compacting pressure from without, dissensions spring
-up within. Factions in the empire having been overcome,
-Constantine finds himself compelled to deal with factions in
-the church.</p>
-
-<p>In Alexandria, the most learned see of Christendom, a difference
-of view and a violent discussion had sprung up on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_581" id="Page_581">[581]</a></span>
-the doctrine of the Trinity. The schism extended until the
-whole church became agitated over the question.</p>
-
-<p>Arius, one of the prime movers in it, reasoning upon the relation
-of the terms Father and Son, arrived at the conclusion
-that the Son, though the first born of beings, did not exist from
-eternity. “The controversy turned,” says Dean Stanley, in
-his “History of the Eastern Church,” “on the relations of the
-divine persons in the Trinity, not only before the incarnation,
-before creation, before time, but before the first beginnings of
-time. ‘There was,’ the Arian doctrine did not venture to say
-<i>a time</i>—but ‘there was <i>when</i> he was not.’ It was the excess
-of dogmatism upon the most abstract words in the most abstract
-region of human thought.”</p>
-
-<p>But subtle and abstract as the question was, there was
-thought to be involved in it the root of a perilous departure
-from sound Christian faith. It touched the most central and
-fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion. Hence it engaged
-the profoundest thought and solicitude of the most powerful
-minds of that age; and the first general council was
-called, in order to bring the united wisdom of the church to
-bear upon the settlement of the question.</p>
-
-<p>The council met at Nice in the year 325.</p>
-
-<p>The place selected was not far from Nicomedia, then the
-capital of the East. The number of bishops from all parts of
-the empire is supposed to have been about 318, with a retinue
-of presbyters and attendants amounting to 2,000.</p>
-
-<p>“There were present the learned and the illiterate, courtiers
-and peasants, old and young, aged bishops on the verge of the
-grave, and beardless deacons just entering on their office. It
-was an assembly in which the difference between age and
-youth was of more than ordinary significance, coinciding with
-a marked transition in the history of the world. The new generation
-had been brought up in peace and quiet. They could
-just remember the joy diffused through the Christian communities
-by the edict of toleration published in their boyhood.
-They had themselves suffered nothing. Not so the older
-and by far the larger part of the assembly. They had lived
-through the last and worst of the persecutions, and they now
-came, like a regiment out of some frightful siege or battle,
-decimated and mutilated by the tortures or the hardships they
-had undergone. Most of the older members had lost a friend
-or a brother. Some bore on their backs and sides the wounds
-inflicted by the instruments of torture. Some had suffered
-the searing of the sinews of the leg, to prevent their escape
-from working in the mines, and several had lost the right eye.”</p>
-
-<p>It is said that their authority reposed on their character as
-an army of confessors and martyrs, no less than on that of an
-ecumenical council.</p>
-
-<p>“In this respect no other council could approach them, and
-in the proceedings of the assembly the voice of an old confessor
-was received almost as an oracle.” Even the emperor
-himself regarded them with homage.</p>
-
-<p>They came in groups over the Mediterranean, and along the
-Roman roads from the different parts of the vast empire, from
-Alexandria and far up the Nile in Egypt; from Syria, Euphrates,
-and the distant East; from Greece, and Cyprus and
-Rome; and from the west as far as Spain.</p>
-
-<p>Of the characters present I will copy sketches of a very few:</p>
-
-<p>“The aged Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, was the only
-one present known by the title of pope. Papa was the special
-address given to the head of the Alexandrian church long before
-the name of Patriarch or Archbishop.”</p>
-
-<p>“Close beside Pope Alexander is a small, insignificant young
-man of hardly twenty-five, of lively manners and speech, and
-of bright, serene countenance. Though he is but the deacon
-or archdeacon of Alexandria (at this time), he has closely
-riveted the attention of the assembly by the vehemence of his
-arguments. That small, insignificant young man is the great
-Athanasius,” the chief opposer of Arius, and defender of the
-Nicene creed.</p>
-
-<p>“Next to these was an important presbyter of Alexandria,
-the parish priest of its principal church. In appearance he is
-the very opposite of Athanasius. He is sixty years of age,
-tall, thin, and apparently unable to support his stature. He
-would be handsome, but for the deadly pallor of his face and
-a downcast look caused by weakness of eyesight. At times his
-veins throb and swell, and his limbs tremble, as if suffering
-from some violent internal complaint. There is a wild look
-about him that is at times startling. His dress and demeanor
-are those of a rigid ascetic. He wears a long coat with short
-sleeves, and a scarf of half size, the mark of an austere life, and
-his hair hangs in a tangled mass over his head. He is usually
-silent, but at times breaks out into fierce excitement. Yet with
-all this there is a sweetness in his voice, and a winning, earnest,
-fascinating manner. This strange, captivating giant is
-the heretic Arius.” He is described as a man of peculiar loveliness
-and purity of character from his childhood, of great
-personal power and influence, and as exerting, at whatever
-cost of self-sacrifice, an uncompromising resistance to the
-popular worldly policy which he believed would degrade
-and enslave the church in its subordination to the temporal
-power.</p>
-
-<p>Two notable characters, Potammon and Paphnutius, came
-from the interior of Egypt. They had lived a great part of
-their lives in the desert. Both had lost the right eye, and suffered
-otherwise in the persecution. Bishop Paul, from near the
-Euphrates, had had his hands paralyzed by the searing of the
-muscles with a red-hot iron.</p>
-
-<p>There was Jacob of Nisibis, who had lived for years as a
-hermit, on the mountains, in forests and caves, browsing on
-roots and leaves, and clothed in a rough goat-hair cloak. This
-dress and manner of life he retained after he became a bishop.</p>
-
-<p>From the distant east came John the Persian, Aristaces, son
-of Gregory the illuminator, and founder of the Armenian
-church, and Eusebius the Great, of Nicomedia, were of the
-number. Also Eusebius, bishop of Cesarea, the interpreter,
-chaplain and confessor of Constantine, and the father of
-ecclesiastical history. One of the most interesting characters,
-of whom many remarkable stories are told, was Spyridion, from
-the island of Cyprus, a shepherd both before and after his elevation
-to the episcopate. Hosius, Bishop of Cordova in Spain,
-was one of the most powerful and revered men in the council.
-He had been a confessor during the persecutions of Maximin.
-The council was opened by the emperor in person. It continued
-about twenty days.</p>
-
-<p>A creed was first produced which all could sign—one which
-would doubtless <i>now</i> be pronounced full and orthodox by
-Christians generally. The part relating to the Son reads as
-follows: “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God,
-God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the only begotten Son,
-the first born of every creature, begotten of the Father before
-all worlds, by whom also all things were made,” etc.</p>
-
-<p>But full as this was it did not touch the test point in controversy.
-That point turned upon two Greek words, signifying
-respectively, “<i>of the same substance</i>,” and “<i>of like substance</i>.”
-The Arians admitted that Christ in his divine nature was of
-<i>like substance</i> with the Father, but denied that he was of the
-<i>same substance</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Athanasius and his party feared that this would lead, not to
-the denial of the divinity of Christ, but to the belief in two
-Gods instead of one. “Polytheism, Paganism, Hellenism was
-the enemy from which the church had just been delivered by
-Constantine, and this was the error under whose dominion it
-was feared the teaching of Arius might bring them back.”
-These scarred and maimed veterans of Christianity had suffered
-because of their steadfast testimony to the truth that
-<i>there is one God</i>; and here in the first great council of the entire
-church the creed was formulated which has stood through
-the centuries as a protest and guard against such distinction of
-persons in the Trinity as shall make a plurality of Gods. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_582" id="Page_582">[582]</a></span>
-Nicene creed as adopted had the additional clause inserted regarding
-the Son—<i>of the substance of the Father</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Arius was condemned as a heretic and sentenced to banishment
-with some other leaders of his party, including Eusebius
-of Nicomedia. But afterward at the entreaty of the Princess
-Constantia, sister of the emperor, they were recalled. For
-300 years after the date of its origin Arianism was a considerable
-power, both political and religious, not only in the East
-where it had its birth, but in western and Teutonic nations.
-“The Gothic population that descended on the Roman empire,
-so far as it was Christian at all, held to the faith of Arius. Our
-first Teutonic version of the Scriptures was by an Arian missionary,
-Ulfilas. The first conqueror of Rome, Alaric, the
-first conqueror of Africa, Genseric, were Arians. Theodoric
-the Great, King of Italy, was an Arian. The Gothic kingdoms
-of Spain and France were the stronghold of Arianism.”</p>
-
-<p>But the orthodox doctrine established at Nice won its way
-and secured its place in the heart of Christendom, which, as
-Dean Stanley says, “with but few exceptions receives the confession
-of the first council, as the earliest, the most solemn,
-and the most universal expression of Christian theology.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="SONNET_ON_CHILLON">SONNET ON CHILLON.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse">Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!</div>
-<div class="verse i2">Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,</div>
-<div class="verse i2">For there thy habitation is the heart—</div>
-<div class="verse">The heart which love of thee alone can bind;</div>
-<div class="verse">And when thy sons to fetters are consign’d—</div>
-<div class="verse i2">To fetters, and the damp vault’s dayless gloom,</div>
-<div class="verse i2">Their country conquers with their martyrdom,</div>
-<div class="verse">And Freedom’s fame finds wings on every wind.</div>
-<div class="verse">Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,</div>
-<div class="verse i2">And thy sad floor an altar—for ’twas trod,</div>
-<div class="verse">Until his very steps have left a trace</div>
-<div class="verse i2">Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,</div>
-<div class="verse">By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface!</div>
-<div class="verse i2">For they appeal from tyranny to God.—<i>Byron.</i></div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="AN_OCEAN_MONARCH">AN OCEAN MONARCH.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By G. BROWNE GOODE.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>The gray old city of Siena, hidden away, almost forgotten
-amidst the hills of Tuscany, contains one object peculiarly interesting
-to Americans. Within its walls Christopher Columbus
-was educated, and hither returning in his days of prosperity,
-he deposited, doubtless with impressive ceremonies, a
-memento of his first voyage over the sea. His votive offering
-hangs within and over the main portal of the old collegiate
-church, for many years closed, and now rarely visited by tourists.
-Grouped together in a picturesque and very dusty trophy
-may be seen the helmet, armor and weapons of the great navigator,
-and with them the weapon of a warrior who was killed
-resisting the approach of the strange ships—the sword of an immense
-sword-fish. A sword-fish was no novelty to seafaring men
-accustomed to the waters of the Mediterranean, still the beak
-of this defender of the coast was preserved by the crew of
-Columbus, and for nearly four centuries has formed a prominent
-feature in the best preserved monument of the discoverer
-of America.</p>
-
-<p>A similar though less impressive memorial hangs in the
-great hall of the Bremen Rathaus, side by side with the clumsy
-ship-models, the paintings of stranded whales, and the trophies
-of armor which illustrate the history of the old Hanse-town
-(Free City). It is a painting, of the size of life, of a sword-fish,
-taken by Bremen fishermen in the river Weser, with a legend
-inscribed beneath in letters of the most angular type:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="verse smcap">“Anno . 1696 . den . 18 . juli . ist . dieser .</div>
-<div class="verse smcap i1">Fisch . ein . schwertfisch . genannt . von . dieser .</div>
-<div class="verse smcap i1">Stadt . fischern . in . der . weser . gefangen,” etc.</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>This swift, mysterious animal seems at a period remote in
-antiquity to have literally thrust itself into the notice of mankind
-by means of its attacks upon the boats in the Mediterranean.
-Pliny knew it and wrote: “The sword-fish, called in
-Greek Xiphias, that is to say in Latin, Gladius, a sword, hath a
-beake or bill sharp-pointed, wherewith he will drive through
-the sides and planks of a ship, and bouge them so that they
-shall sink withall,” and the naturalists of the sixteenth century
-knew almost as much of its habits as those of the present day.
-Few fishes are so difficult to observe, and a student may, like the
-writer of this article, spend summer after summer in the attempt
-to study them with few results, other than the sight of a few
-dozen back-fins cutting through the water, a chance to measure
-and dissect a few specimens, and perhaps the experience of
-having the side of his boat pierced by one of their ugly swords.
-Yet, while little is known of their habits, few fishes are so generally
-known by their external characters.</p>
-
-<p>No one who has seen a sword-fish or a good picture of one,
-soon forgets the great muscular body, like that of a mackerel,
-a thousand times magnified, the crescent shaped tail, measuring
-three feet or more from tip to tip, the scimitar-like fins on
-the back and breasts, the round, hard, protruding eyes, as
-large as small foot balls, and the sword-like snout, two, three
-or four feet in length, protruding, caricature like, from between
-its eyes. This feature has been recognized in almost every
-European language, and while many other fishes have names
-by the score, this has in reality but one. The “Sword-fish” of
-our own tongue, the “Zwaard Fis” of Holland, the Italian
-“Sifio” and “Pesce-Pada,” the Spaniard’s “Espada,” and
-the French “Espadin,” “Dend” and “Epee de Mer,” are
-variations upon a single theme, repetitions of the “Gladius” of
-ancient Italy, and “Xiphias,” the name by which Aristotle,
-the father of Zoölogy called the same fish twenty-three hundred
-years ago. The French “Empereur,” and the “Imperador”
-of the Spanish West Indies carry out the same.</p>
-
-<p>A vessel cruising in search of sword-fish proceeds to the fishing
-grounds and sails hither and thither, wherever the abundance
-of small fish indicates that they ought to be found.
-Vessels which are met are hailed and asked whether sword-fish
-have been seen, and if tidings are thus obtained the ship’s
-course is at once laid for the locality where they were last
-noticed. A man is always stationed at the masthead, where,
-with the keen eye which practice has given him, he can readily
-descry the tell-tale dorsal fins at a distance of two or three
-miles.</p>
-
-<p>The sword-fish has two cousins, the spear-fish and the sail-fish,
-which bear to it a close family resemblance. Their
-bodies, however, are lighter, their outlines more graceful, and
-their swords more round and slender. The latter has an immense
-sail-like back fin, which it throws out of the water
-while swimming near the surface. An English naval officer,
-Sir Stamford Raffles, wrote home from Singapore in 1822:
-“The only amusing discovery we have recently made is that
-of a sailing fish, called by the natives <i>Ikan layer</i>, of about ten
-or twelve feet long, which hoists a mainsail, and often sails in
-the manner of a native boat, and with considerable swiftness.
-I have sent a set of the sails home, as they are beautifully cut,
-and form a model for a fast sailing boat. When a school of
-these are under sail together they are frequently mistaken for
-a fleet of native boats.”</p>
-
-<p>While there is but one species of sword-fish which occurs in
-the tropical and temperate parts of the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean,
-about New Zealand, and in the eastern Pacific from
-Cape Horn to California there are several kinds of sail-fishes,
-and at least eight species of spear-fish. The naturalists of the
-United States Fish Commission have recently discovered that
-we have along our Atlantic coast a fine species of sail-fish, and
-one or two of spear-fishes, in addition to the true sword-fish,
-which has been known to exist here since the days of the
-Spanish explorers.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_583" id="Page_583">[583]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>It seems somewhat strange that no reference to the sword-fish
-is to be found in the narratives of the voyages of Columbus.
-The earliest allusion in American literature occurs in
-Josselyn’s “Account of two Voyages to New England,” printed
-in 1674, in the following passage:</p>
-
-<p>“The twentieth day we saw a great number of sea-bats or
-owles, called also flying-fish; they are about the bigness of a
-whiting, with four tinsel wings, with which they fly as long as
-they are wet, when pursued by other fishes. In the afternoon
-we saw a great fish called the Vehuella, or Sword-fish, having
-a long, strong and sharp fin like a sword-blade on the top of
-his head, with which he pierced our ship, and broke it off with
-striving to get loose; one of our sailors dived and brought it
-aboard.”</p>
-
-<p>Although sword-fish were sold in the New York fish
-market as early as 1817, it was not until 1839 that the writers
-in ichthyology consented to consider it an American fish.</p>
-
-<p>The sword-fish comes into our waters in pursuit of food. At
-least this is the most probable explanation of their movements,
-since the duties of reproduction appear to be performed elsewhere.
-Like the horse-mackerel, the bonito, the blue-fish and
-the squeteagus, they pursue and prey upon the schools of
-menhaden and mackerel which are so abundant in the summer
-months. “When you see sword-fish, you may know that
-mackerel are about!” said one old fisherman to the writer.
-“Where you see the fin-back whale, following food,” said another,
-“there you find sword-fish.” They feed chiefly upon
-fish which swim crowded together in close schools, rising
-among them from beneath and striking to the right and left
-with their swords until they have killed a number, which they
-then proceed to devour. An old fisherman described to the
-writer a sword-fish in the act of feeding in a dense school of
-herring, rising perpendicularly out of the water until its sword,
-with a large portion of its body, was exposed, then falling flat
-over on its side, striking many fish as it fell, and leaving a
-bushel of dead ones floating at the surface.</p>
-
-<p>They are most abundant in the region of Cape Cod, or between
-Montaulk Point and the eastern part of George’s Banks,
-and during July and August, though some make their appearance
-in the latter part of May, and a few linger until snow falls.
-They are seen at the surface only on quiet summer days, in the
-morning before ten or eleven, and in the afternoon after four
-o’clock. Old fishermen say that they rise when the mackerel
-rise, and follow them down when they go.</p>
-
-<p>A sword-fish, when swimming near the surface, usually allows
-its dorsal fin and the upper lobe of its caudal fin to be
-visible, projecting out of the water several inches. It is this
-habit which enables the fishermen to detect the presence of
-the fish in the vicinity of their vessel. It moves slowly along,
-and the schooner, even with a light breeze, finds no difficulty
-in overtaking it. When excited its movements are very rapid
-and nervous. Sword-fish are sometimes seen to leap entirely
-out of the water. Early writers attributed this habit to the
-tormenting presence of parasites, but such a theory seems unnecessary.
-The pointed head, the fins of the back and abdomen
-snugly fitting into grooves, the long, lithe, muscular body,
-with contour sloping slowly from shoulders to tail, fit it for the
-most rapid and forcible movement through the water. Prof.
-Richard Owen, the celebrated English anatomist, testifying in
-court in regard to its power, said: “It strikes with the accumulated
-force of fifteen double-handed hammers. Its velocity
-is equal to that of a swivel shot, and is as dangerous in its
-effects as a heavy artillery projectile.”</p>
-
-<p>Many very curious instances are recorded of their encounters
-with other fishes, or of their attacks upon ships. It is hard
-to surmise what may be the inducement to attack objects so
-much larger than themselves. Every one knows the couplet
-from Oppian:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse">“Nature her bounty to his mouth confined,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">Gave him a sword, but left unarmed his mind.”</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>It surely seems as if the fish sometimes become possessed
-with temporary insanity. It is not strange that when harpooned
-they retaliate upon their assailants. There are, however,
-numerous instances of entirely unprovoked assaults upon
-vessels at sea, both by the sword-fish, and still more frequently
-by the spear-fish (known to American sailors by the name of
-“boohoo,” apparently a corruption of “Guebucu,” a word
-apparently of Indian origin, applied to the same fish in Brazil).
-The writer’s note-book contains notes upon scores of such instances.
-The ship “Priscilla,” from Pernambuco to London
-had eighteen inches of sword thrust through her planking; the
-English ship “Queensbury,” in 1871, was penetrated to a
-depth of thirty inches, necessitating the discharge of the cargo;
-the “Dreadnought,” in 1864, when off Colombo, had a round
-hole, an inch in diameter, bored through the copper sheeting
-and planking; the schooner “Wyoming,” of Gloucester, in
-1875, was attacked in the night time by a sword-fish, which
-pushed his snout two feet into her planking, and then escaped
-by breaking it off.</p>
-
-<p>One of the traditions of the sea, time honored, believed by
-all mariners, handed down in varied phrases in a hundred
-books of ocean travel, relates to the terrific combats between
-the whale and the sword-fish, aided by the thrasher shark.
-The sword-fish was said to attack from below, goading his
-mighty adversary to the surface with his sharp beak, while the
-shark, at the top of the water, belabors him with strokes of his
-long lithe tail. Thus wrote a would-be naturalist from Bermuda
-in 1609: “The swoard-fish swimmes under the whale and
-pricketh him upward. The threasher keepeth above him, and
-with a mighty great thing like unto a flaile, hee so bangeth the
-whale that hee will roare as though it thundered, and doth
-give him such blows with his weapon that you would think it
-to be a crake of great shot.”</p>
-
-<p>Skeptical modern science is not satisfied with this interpretation
-of any combat at sea seen at a distance. It recognizes
-the improbability of aggressive partnership between two animals
-so different as the sword-fish and a shark, and explains
-the turbulent encounters occasionally seen at sea by ascribing
-them to the attacks of the killer whale, <i>Orca</i>, upon larger
-species of the same order.</p>
-
-<p>There can be little doubt that sword-fish sometimes attack
-whales just as they do ships. This habit is mentioned by
-Pliny, and furnishes a motive for all of Edmund Spenser’s
-“Visions of the World.”</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse">“Toward the sea turning my troubled eye</div>
-<div class="verse i1">I saw the fish (if fish I may it cleepe)</div>
-<div class="verse i1">That makes the sea before his face to flye</div>
-<div class="verse i1">And with his flaggie finnes doth seeme to sweepe</div>
-<div class="verse i1">The fomie waves out of the dreadfull deep.</div>
-<div class="verse i1">The huge Leviathan, dame Nature’s wonder,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">Making his sport, that manie makes to weep:</div>
-<div class="verse i1">A Sword-fish small, him from the rest did sunder,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">That, in his throat him pricking softly under,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">His wide abysse him forced forth to spewe,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">That all the sea did roare like heavens thunder,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">And all the waves were stained with filthie hewe.</div>
-<div class="verse i1">Hereby I learned have not to despise</div>
-<div class="verse i1">Whatever thing seems small in common eyes.”</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Baron Sahartur, in a letter from Quebec in 1783, described a
-conflict between a whale and a sword-fish which took place
-within gun shot of his frigate. He remarks: “We were perfectly
-charmed when we saw the sword-fish jump out of the
-water in order to dart its spear into the body of the whale when
-obliged to take breath. This entertaining show lasted at least
-two hours, sometimes to the starboard and sometimes to the
-larboard of the ship. The sailors, among whom superstition
-prevails as much as among the Egyptians, took this for a presage
-of some mighty storm.”</p>
-
-<p>There are two great sword-fisheries in the world, one on the
-coast of New England, and the other in the waters about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_584" id="Page_584">[584]</a></span>
-Sicily. The former gives employment, in different years, to
-from twenty to forty vessels, and from sixty to one hundred
-and twenty men; the latter to over three hundred boats and
-seventeen hundred men. In Italy the annual product of the
-fishery amounts to about 320,000 pounds, while in New England,
-counting the fish taken incidentally by halibut and mackerel
-vessels, the yield is at least 1,000,000 pounds.</p>
-
-<p>The apparatus used in killing sword-fish is very simple. It
-consists of the “pulpit” or “cresembo,” a frame for the support
-of the harpooneer as he stands upon the end of the bow-sprit,
-the “lily iron” or “Indian dart,” which is attached by a
-long line to a keg serving as a buoy, and is thrust into the fish
-by means of a pole about sixteen feet in length. As the vessel
-cruises over the schooling grounds a lookout is stationed at
-the masthead, whose keen eye descries the tell-tale dorsal fins
-at a distance of two or three miles. By voice and gesture he
-directs the course of the vessel until the skipper can see the
-fish from his station in the pulpit. There is no difficulty in
-approaching the fish with a large vessel, although they will
-not suffer a small boat to come near them. When the fish is
-from six to ten feet in front of the vessel, it is struck. The harpoon
-is never thrown, the pole being too long. The dart penetrates
-the back of the fish, close to the side of the high dorsal
-fin, and immediately detaches itself from the pole, which is
-withdrawn. The dart having been fastened, the line is allowed
-to run out as far as the fish will carry it, and is then passed
-into a small boat, which is towing at the stern. Two men jump
-into this and pull in upon the line until the fish is brought in
-alongside.</p>
-
-<p>The pursuit of the sword-fish is much more exciting than ordinary
-fishing, for it resembles the pursuit of large animals
-upon land. There is no slow and careful baiting and patient
-waiting, and no disappointment caused by the capture of
-worthless “bait-stealers.” The game is seen and followed,
-outwitted by wary tactics, and killed by strength of arm and
-skill. The sword-fish sometimes proves a powerful antagonist,
-and sends his pursuers’ vessel into harbor, leaking and almost
-sinking from injuries which he has inflicted. I have known a
-vessel to be struck by wounded sword-fish as many as twenty
-times in one season. There is even the spice of personal danger
-to give savor to the chase. One of the crew of a Connecticut
-schooner was severely wounded by a beak thrust through the
-oak floor of the boat in which he was standing, and penetrating
-two inches into his naked heel. A strange fascination
-draws men to this pursuit when they have once learned its
-charm. An old sword-fisherman, with an experience of
-twenty years, told me that when he was on the fishing ground
-he fished all night in his dreams, and that many a time he had
-bruised his hands and rubbed the skin off his knuckles by
-striking them against the ceiling of his bunk when he raised
-his arms to thrust the harpoon into imaginary monster sword-fishes.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<p>The home and its apartments should not be treated as a
-dead thing, where we make best arrangement of its fittings,
-and there leave it. It must grow in range and in expression
-with our necessities, and diverging, and developing tastes.
-The best of decorators can not put that last finish which must
-come from home hands. It is a great canvas always on the
-easel before us—growing in its power to interest every day and
-year—never getting its last touches—never quite ready to be
-taken down and parted with. No home should so far out-top
-the tastes of its inmates that they can not somewhere and
-somehow deck it with the record of their love and culture. It
-is an awful thing to live in a house where no new nail can be
-driven in the wall, and no tray of wild flowers, or of wood-mosses
-be set upon a window sill. The ways are endless, in
-short, in which a house can be endowed with that home atmosphere
-which shall be redolent of the tastes of its inmates.—<i>Donald
-G. Mitchell.</i></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="ECCENTRIC_AMERICANS">ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>IX.—A PIONEER ECCENTRIC WOMAN.</h3>
-
-<p>This artificial arrangement called society seems to be possible
-only upon unreal standards of truth and morality; it has a
-system of “white lies”—as if any lie <i>could</i> be white and true.
-It is because children haven’t learned the difference between
-real truth and the “play truth” of the world that they are
-such a holy terror in society. We have to squelch their questionings
-and hide our blushes. Children and fools—distinguished
-puritans!—always tell the truth, we say, and confess our false
-lives in the saying; but occasionally one who is not a fool,
-but who preserves a child’s truth, comes into this masquerade of
-life and insists on recognizing the real persons behind the
-masks. Heavens, what a disturbance! Put him out! He’s
-an Eccentric.</p>
-
-<p>Give one of these uncomfortable persons the clairvoyant insight
-into character and motives and the clear-speaking tongue
-or pen; put him on a higher moral plane than society about
-him travels, and two things will likely come to pass, viz.: martyrdom
-for himself and an uplift for his neighbors. Such a
-touch for truth, such a power to convey it, such a purpose had
-Jane Grey Swisshelm, and it’s safe to say that she has put
-more people to bed with uncomfortable bed-fellows in the shape
-of smarting consciences than any other woman of her time.</p>
-
-<p>She was a rare combination of feminine and masculine qualities.
-Timid and courageous; yielding to kindness, hard as
-steel on questions of principle; domestic in all her tastes, public
-in all her life; slight of form and sickly by heredity, for
-fifty years she “endured hardship as a good soldier.” To a
-fanatical religious nature and a wonderfully analytical mind,
-she brought that childlikeness of conscience, and with a rare
-command of language for a weapon, she became a moral
-blizzard in a half century of upheaval in our political elements.</p>
-
-<p>No one, I think, can read her autobiography without the conviction
-that this life of controversy was foreign to her nature,
-that the pugnacious pen was forced into her hand when it
-would have preferred to wield the pencil of the artist, or even
-the distaff in a happy home. She was thus forced aside from
-her natural course by an incompatible theology and an incompatible
-marriage. Benevolence was her mastering trait, but
-her hard theology gave no exercise to it. Perhaps better to
-say in her own words, she “obeyed the higher law of kindness
-under protest of her Calvinistic conscience.” Her religion
-taught her that everything that she liked to do and enjoyed in
-the doing, was, by that token, sinful; and her husband and his
-family by thwarting her in all such enjoyments, unconsciously
-executing her theology against herself, set her upon expiating
-her sinfulness by engaging in the most disagreeable and trying
-work that she could find. Men and women before her have
-sought “in the world’s broad field of battle” relief from disappointment
-of the heart’s wishes, but few have put on the armor
-to punish themselves for not enjoying that disappointment.
-It is, therefore, to the crucial tenets of her Calvanistic
-faith and the exorbitant demands of her conscience that we owe
-the great work Mrs. Swisshelm did in the cause of humanity.
-What it cost her only God and herself know; but we are not
-without evidence that she got some recompense as she went
-along, in achievements which must have been grateful to the
-heroic side of her nature.</p>
-
-<p>For in the veins of this slight girl ran the blood of a race of
-heroes and martyrs—a family which fetched its line direct from
-signers of The Solemn League and Covenant. “My kith and
-kin,” she says, “had died at the stake, bearing testimony
-against popery and prelacy; had fought on those fields where
-Scotchmen charged in solid columns, singing psalms.” She
-hated the devil of her theology, because she considered him a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_585" id="Page_585">[585]</a></span>
-sneak, “but I never was afraid of him,” she says—a statement
-we can well believe of one who at the age of six watched an
-alleged haunted place by night to catch a ghost. She never
-knew the time when she did not believe the cast-iron creed of
-her ancestors; read her Bible, understood all of Dr. Black’s
-metaphysical sermons, and was converted before her third
-year, and completed her theological education before she
-completed her twelfth year. Truly she “had no childhood,”
-as she says.</p>
-
-<p>Born in Pittsburgh in 1815, she married at the age of sixteen
-a too-well-to-do farmer, and spent most of her life in the
-country. “I spent my best years cooking cabbage,” she says.
-She taught school much of the first ten years of her married life.
-She found her pen-power and her work in 1844, at the age of
-twenty-nine. Mrs. Swisshelm was one of the first, if not the very
-first, American woman to enter the field of political journalism.
-At this day, when all the avenues of literature throng with gifted
-women, when no considerable daily paper is without female
-contributors and staff writers, and some of our best magazines
-are conducted by women, it is hard to appreciate what it cost a
-timid, devout woman like Mrs. Swisshelm to take that step in
-1844; it was in her mind voluntary consecration to martyrdom.
-This call came to her during an illness brought on by an attack
-on her by her husband and his mother, so outrageous that she
-had fled wildly to the woods, and been taken up and cared for
-by kindly neighbors. Her afflictions came to her as chastisements
-for not remembering those in bonds as bound with them;
-specifically for assisting to build a church for the “Black-gagites.”
-She wrote her first attack in an anti-slavery cause,
-propped up in bed, and it was in verse. She states the situation:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>No woman had ever done such a thing, and I could never again
-hold up my head under the burden of shame and disgrace which would
-be brought upon me. But what matter? I had no children to disgrace,
-and if the Lord wanted some one to throw into that gulf, no one could
-be spared better than I. No Western Pennsylvania woman had ever
-broken out of woman’s sphere. All lived in the very center of that
-sacred inclosure, making fires by which husbands, brothers and sons sat
-reading the news; each one knowing that she had a soul, because the
-preacher who made his bread and butter by saving it had been careful
-to inform her of its existence as preliminary to her knowledge of the
-indispensable nature of his services.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>Her articles created a sensation, and no wonder that they
-did. For, although she had but little literary culture, she had
-simplicity and intensity. Her style was modeled on the English
-of the Bible (which she says was for years the only book
-that she allowed herself to read, in her dread of becoming
-wiser than her plodding husband), and on this sturdy stem she
-grafted the simple, homely, direct illustrations of the rural folk
-around her. Thus, it arrested the attention of learned and unlettered
-alike. But there was more than phraseology in her power.
-She was as intensely in earnest as if she were herself in bonds—that
-is what “remembering them as bound with them”
-means. She was one of a few who <i>meant it</i>; one of the kind
-of “fools” that “hear His word and <i>do</i> it.” McDuffee, when
-he heard that Andrew Jackson had sworn to hang the first seceder,
-said: “Yes, and he’s just dashed fool enough to do it.”
-She felt that two races, the white and the black, were to be rescued
-from the curse of slavery; and for such a cause it was
-with her as “Hosea Bigelow” says, “P’izen-mad, pig-headed
-fightin’.” She had been reared an abolitionist, and that which
-was bred in the bone had been converted into a clear, blazing
-passion by a year’s residence in Kentucky (1832), where she
-witnessed scenes, the narration of which make that awful
-chapter in her biography entitled “Habitations of Horrible
-Cruelty.” She says:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>For years there had run through my head the words: “Open thy
-mouth for the dumb, plead the cause of the poor and needy.” From
-first to last my articles were as direct and personal as Nathan’s reproof
-to David. Every man who went to the war (<i>i. e.</i>, against Mexico), or
-induced others to go, I held as the principal in the whole list of crimes
-of which slavery was a synonym. Each one seemed to stand before
-me, his innermost soul made bare and his idiosyncrasy I was sure to
-strike with sarcasm, ridicule, odium, solemn denunciation, old truths
-from the Bible and history, and the opinions of good men. I had a
-reckless abandon, for had I not thrown myself into the breach to die
-there, and would I not sell my life at its full value?</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>I think this keen sense for the weak places in men’s character
-and reasoning, and her reckless assaults thereon were what
-made her so formidable. She always struck for the heart, and
-rarely missed her aim. “Exposing the weak part of an argument
-soon came to be my recognized forte,” she says. With what
-disregard of everything she rode after the oriflamme of humanity
-let her tell:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Hon. Gabriel Adams had taken me by the hand at father’s funeral,
-led me to a stranger and introduced me as: “The child I told you of,
-but eight years old, her father’s nurse and comforter.” He had smoothed
-my hair and told me not to cry; God would bless me for being a good
-child. He was a member of the session when I joined the church;
-his voice in prayer had smoothed mother’s hard journey through the dark
-valley; and now, as mayor of the city he had ordered it illuminated in
-honor of the battle of Buena Vista, and this, too, on Saturday evening,
-when the unholy glorification extended into the Sabbath. Measured by
-the standard of his profession as an elder in the church whose
-highest judicatory had pronounced slavery and Christianity incompatible,
-no one was more vulnerable than he, and of none was I so unsparing,
-yet as I wrote, the letter was blistered with tears; but his oft repeated
-comment was: “Jane is right,” and he went out of his way to
-take my hand and say: “You were right.”</p>
-
-<p>Samuel Black, a son of my pastor, dropped his place as leader of
-the Pittsburgh bar and rushed to the war. My comments were thought
-severe, even for me; yet the first intimation I had that I had not been
-cast aside as a monster, came from his sister, who sent me a message
-that her father, her husband and herself, approved my criticism. Samuel
-returned with a colonel’s commission, and one day I was about to
-pass him without recognition, where he stood on the pavement talking
-to two other lawyers, when he stepped before me and held out his hand.
-I drew back, and he said:</p>
-
-<p>“Is it possible you will not take my hand?”</p>
-
-<p>I looked at it, then into his manly, handsome face, and answered:</p>
-
-<p>“<i>There is blood on it!</i> The blood of women and children slain at
-their own altars, on their own hearthstones, that you might spread the
-glorious American institution of woman whipping and baby stealing.”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh,” he exclaimed, “This is too bad! I swear to you I never killed
-a woman or a child.”</p>
-
-<p>“Then you did not fight in Mexico, did not help to bombard Buena
-Vista.”</p>
-
-<p>His friends joined him and insisted that I did the Colonel great
-wrong, when he looked squarely into my face, and, holding out his
-hand, said:</p>
-
-<p>“For the sake of the old church, for the sake of the old man, for the
-sake of the old times, give me your hand.”</p>
-
-<p>I laid it in his, and hurried away, unable to speak, for he was the most
-eloquent man in Pennsylvania. He fell at last at the head of his regiment,
-while fighting in the battle of Fair Oaks, for the freedom he had
-betrayed in Mexico.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>Her destructive attack on the private character of Daniel Webster,
-in 1850, also illustrates her reckless courage and her sagacity.
-She was in Washington pending the fugitive slave bill. Webster
-was supporting the measure—a damaging defection from
-the anti-slavery side, because of his supposed moral as well as
-intellectual greatness. Mrs. S. discovered “that his whole
-panoply of moral power was a shell—that his life was full of
-rottenness. Then I knew why I had come to Washington.”
-She put the facts into one short paragraph, and published it in
-her own paper, against the advice of all her friends, and even of
-such stanch anti-slavery men as Giddings, Julian, and Dr. Snodgrass.
-They said it was true, and no one would dare to deny
-it; yet no one had dared to make it public; the publication
-would ruin her and her influence. She said: “The cause of
-the slave hangs on the issue in Congress, and Mr. Webster’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_586" id="Page_586">[586]</a></span>
-influence is against him; his influence would be less if the
-public knew just what he is. I will publish it and let God take
-care of the consequences.” Eccentric conduct, surely! It
-was published, and it did bring ruin—but on Daniel Webster,
-instead of Jane Grey Swisshelm. It killed Webster’s
-influence with the conscientious part of the Whig party, and
-probably gave the <i>coup de grace</i> to his presidential prospects.
-She was long known as “the woman who killed Webster.”</p>
-
-<p>It was in 1847 that Mrs. Swisshelm took the decisive plunge
-by founding the Pittsburgh <i>Saturday Visiter</i>. The sensation
-created by this unprecedented appearance of politics in petticoats
-she characteristically describes:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>It was quite an insignificant looking sheet, but no sooner did the
-American eagle catch sight of it than he swooned and fell off his perch.
-Democratic roosters straightened out their necks and ran screaming with
-terror. Whig ’coons scampered up trees and barked furiously. The
-world was falling, and every one had “heard it, saw it, and felt it.”</p>
-
-<p>It appeared that on some inauspicious morning each one of three-fourths
-of the secular editors from Maine to Georgia had gone to his
-office suspecting nothing, when from some corner of his exchange list
-there sprang upon him such a horror as he had little thought to see. A
-woman had started a political paper! A woman! Could he believe
-his eyes? A woman! Instantly he sprang to his feet and clutched his
-pantaloons, shouted to the assistant editor, when he, too, read and
-grasped frantically at his cassimeres, called to the reporters and press-men
-and typos and devils, who all rushed in, heard the news, seized
-their nether garments and joined the general chorus, “My breeches!
-oh, my breeches!” Here was a woman resolved to steal their pantaloons,
-their trousers, and when these were gone they might cry, “Ye
-have taken away my gods, and what have I more?” The imminence
-of the peril called for prompt action, and with one accord they shouted,
-“On to the breach, in defense of our breeches! Repel the invader or fill
-the trenches with our noble dead!”</p>
-
-<p>“That woman shall not have <i>my</i> pantaloons,” cried the editor of the
-big city daily; “nor my pantaloons,” said the editor of the dignified
-weekly; “nor my pantaloons,” said he who issued manifestoes but once
-a month; “nor mine,” “nor mine,” “nor mine,” chimed in the small
-fry of the country towns.</p>
-
-<p>Even the religious press could not get past the tailor shop, and “Pantaloons”
-was the watchword all along the line. George D. Prentice
-took up the cry, and gave the world a two-third column leader on it,
-stating explicitly, “She is a man all but the pantaloons.” I wrote to
-him, asking a copy of the article, but received no answer, when I replied
-in rhyme to suit his case:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse">“Perhaps you have been busy</div>
-<div class="verse i1">Horsewhipping Sal or Lizzie,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">Stealing some poor man’s baby,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">Selling its mother, may be.</div>
-<div class="verse i1">You say—and you are witty—</div>
-<div class="verse i1">That I—and ’tis a pity—</div>
-<div class="verse i1">Of manhood lack but dress;</div>
-<div class="verse i1">But you lack manliness,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">A body clean and new,</div>
-<div class="verse i1">A soul within it, too.</div>
-<div class="verse i1">Nature must change her plan</div>
-<div class="verse i1">Ere you can be a man.”</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>Mrs. Swisshelm was scourged into the woman’s rights agitation
-as she had been into the anti-slavery struggle, by her own
-troubles, brought on her again by her husband.</p>
-
-<p>The house left to her by her parents she wished to sell. Under
-the laws of Pennsylvania a wife could not alone give title,
-and her husband in this case refused to sign the deed unless
-the purchase money were given to him to be put into improvements
-on his mother’s estate, where all his wife’s earnings had
-so far been put out of her reach. Upon the death of her
-mother, whom she idolized and had nursed tenderly for some
-weeks against the opposition of her husband, the latter filed a
-claim against the mother’s estate for his wife’s wages as nurse.
-Of these applications of the law she writes:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>I do not know why I should have been so utterly overwhelmed by
-this proposal to execute a law passed by Christian legislators for the
-government of a Christian people, a law which had never been questioned
-by any nation or state or church, and was in full force all over
-the world. Why should the discovery of its existence curdle my blood,
-stop my heart-beats, and send a flush of burning shame from forehead
-to finger-tips? Why blame him for acting in harmony with the canons
-of every Christian church? Was it any fault of his that “all that she
-(the wife) can acquire by her labor, service, or act during coverture belongs
-to the husband?” Certainly not!</p>
-
-<p>It occurred to me that all the advances made by humanity had been
-through the pressure of injustice, and that the screws had been turned
-on me that I might do something to right the great wrong which forbade
-married women to own property. So, instead of spending my
-strength quarreling with the hand, I would strike for the heart of that
-great tyranny. I studied the laws under which I lived and began a series
-of letters on the subject of married women’s rights to hold property.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>The result of the agitation thus begun was an amendment to
-the statute in 1848, securing to married women the right to hold
-property. The predictions of evils to follow from this introduction
-of “an apple of discord into every family,” made by
-sage and serious men then, sound marvellously like some of
-the warnings we hear from objectors to woman suffrage now.
-But Mrs. Swisshelm refused to join the organized suffrage
-movement, and had many hot debates with its organs as to
-method, not as to principles; she herself, curiously enough,
-predicted evils to flow from woman suffrage, similar to those
-her critics had predicted would flow from granting property
-rights.</p>
-
-<p>She opposed the Washingtonian temperance movement,
-scornfully rejecting the plan of reforming drunkards by coddling
-them; waged warfare against the encroachments of the
-Church of Rome; and on more than one occasion successfully
-resisted the tyranny of trade unions. To defeat the latter she
-herself learned and taught other women the art typographic,
-and became independent. It is a notable fact that she was
-driven into this contention, also, by her own troubles with
-union printers. She seems to have been generally a conscript,
-not often a volunteer to fight, but the result always was to advance
-the interests of oppressed classes more than her own interests.
-It was to establish a precedent in behalf of other
-female correspondents that she applied for and secured a seat
-in the reporter’s gallery in the Capitol, Washington, being
-the first woman who ever sat there. She was then (1850), as
-for many years before and after, a correspondent of the New
-York <i>Tribune</i>.</p>
-
-<p>In 1847, after twenty years of vain efforts to “live up to the
-lights” of her mother-in-law, Mrs. Swisshelm and her husband
-parted, she taking their only child and going to Minnesota to
-live with her sister.</p>
-
-<p>Her Minnesota experience was almost tragic. Before reaching
-there she was informed that Governor Lowrie allowed no
-abolition sentiments in St. Cloud. “Then there is not room
-there for General Lowrie and me,” stoutly replied the little
-crusader. General Lowrie was the territorial governor under
-Buchanan’s administration; he was a Mississippian who kept
-slaves in Minnesota, and ruled the territory with so high a
-hand that he was called dictator. When Mrs. Swisshelm
-started the St. Cloud <i>Visiter</i> she invited the governor, among
-others, to subscribe, and received from him a letter promising
-it “a support second to that of no paper in the territory, if it
-will support Buchanan’s administration.” To the confusion
-of her friends, Mrs. Swisshelm accepted the terms, and frankly
-announced in the paper that General Lowrie owned everybody
-in Minnesota, and so she had sold herself and the paper to
-him and would support Buchanan’s administration—its object
-being, as she understood it, the subversion of all freedom in
-the United States, and the placing of a master over every
-northern “mud-sill” as over the Southern blacks; that Governor
-Lowrie had promised to support the paper in great power<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_587" id="Page_587">[587]</a></span>
-and glory for this, and she was determined to earn her money.
-It was simply the unconventional, blunt truth-telling of a child
-applied to a lying system of politics, and it cut like a knife.</p>
-
-<p>Lowrie swore vengeance. “Let her alone, for God’s sake!”
-said one who knew her career. “Let her alone, or she will
-kill you. She has killed every man she ever touched. Let
-her alone.” He did not, and she did kill him with the truth.
-To his threats she returned the promise that she should continue
-to support Buchanan until she had broken him down in
-everlasting infamy. Her office was sacked one night and a
-notice left that if she revived the paper she would be tied to a
-log and cast into the Mississippi. The issue could not be
-avoided. An indignation meeting was called, and Mrs. Swisshelm
-said “I will attend and speak.” She made her will, settled
-her business, wrote a history of the trouble to testify if she
-could not, and employed a fighting man to attend the meeting
-by her side, and shoot her square through the brain if there
-were no other way to prevent her falling into the hands of the
-mob. Mrs. Sterns, a Yankee woman, held her arm, saying,
-“We will go into the river together; they can’t separate us.”
-So this descendant of the old Covenanter martyrs made her
-first speech to the, to her, doubtless, sweet music of a howling
-mob, stones and pistol shots.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Visiter</i> was reëstablished on new type, by a stock company,
-and the first issue brought down on them a libel suit from
-Governor Lowrie, to compromise which Mrs. Swisshelm published
-a retraction, which released the owners from $10,000
-bonds. She then bought the material, suspended the bonded
-<i>Visiter</i>, and issued the St. Cloud <i>Democrat</i>. Its first issue rang
-the death-knell of Governor Lowrie and border ruffianism in
-Minnesota. It was useless to sue her for libel, and she was too
-well protected to fear force. The state election in 1859, when Governor
-Lowrie was a candidate for Lieutenant-Governor, turned
-on the policy of border ruffianism, press-breaking, and woman
-mobbing. “The large man who instituted a mob to suppress
-a woman of my size [<i>i. e.</i>, 100 lbs.], and then failed, was not a
-suitable leader for American men,” and Lowrie was snowed
-under, and not long after was taken to an insane asylum.
-The next year Mrs. Swisshelm felt honored at being burned in
-effigy in St. Paul by her enemies, as “the mother of the Republican
-party in Minnesota.” She afterward lectured two
-years in the northwest.</p>
-
-<p>Then came the terrible civil war. Mrs. Swisshelm engaged in
-hospital work, bringing to it the consecration, indomitable energy
-and eccentric gumption that she displayed in politics and
-business. She walked through the red tape and professional
-etiquette which were killing more than bullets were, as she had
-through conventional chains. She says: “It was often so easy
-to save a life, where there were the means of living, that a
-little courage or common sense seemed like a miraculous gift
-to people whose mental powers had been turned in other directions.”
-In one hospital she found gangrene, and to her call
-for lemons, specific for it, she was gravely told by the surgeon
-that he had made a requisition a week before for them, and
-could not get them. She telegraphed the <i>Tribune</i>:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Hospital gangrene has broken out in Washington, and we want
-<i>lemons!</i> <span class="smcapuc">LEMONS!</span> LEMONS! No man or woman in health has a
-right to a glass of lemonade till these men have all they need. Send
-us lemons!</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>The next day lemons began to pour into Washington, and
-soon into every hospital in the country. Governor Andrew
-sent two hundred boxes, and at one time she had twenty ladies
-with ambulances distributing lemons. Gangrene disappeared.</p>
-
-<p>She felt about equal anger and contempt for masculine indifference
-and the mushy inefficiency of women who flocked to
-Washington to nurse in the hospitals. She sarcastically says the
-vast majority of the women who succeeded in getting into hospitals
-were much more willing to “kiss him for his mother” than
-to render the soldier any solid service; they “were capable of any
-heroism save wearing a dress suitable for hospital work. The
-very, very few who laid aside their hoops—those instruments of
-dread and torture—generally donned bloomers and gave offense
-by airs of independence.”</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. S. was one of three women who followed Grant’s advance
-upon the Wilderness. Her courage, endurance and good
-sense never showed to better advantage than during the Petersburg
-battles.</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. Swisshelm’s marital experience was but an episode to
-her true career—the counter-irritant that brought out her character.
-Its unhappiness was due to four causes: 1. Religious
-differences. Both sides were fanatical, and her husband’s people
-felt a call to give her no rest till they had got her “converted
-and saved” by their theological scales. 2. It was a sad case
-of mother-in-law, on the husband’s side. 3. The brains, character
-and courage were all on one side. No woman had a
-higher reverence for strong manly character, and she was married
-to a male shrew and weakling. But above all she belonged
-to the last half of the nineteenth century in her ideas
-of woman’s sphere, and he to the last half of the eighteenth, in
-his. Aside from this, they loved each other, and after their
-separation each bore high testimony to the right intention and
-purity of the other.</p>
-
-<p>Few women of this day appreciate how much of their freedom
-to work and think they owe to such pioneers as Jane Grey
-Swisshelm. Few men can be made to see how much of the
-great advance of American life is due to the nobler, broader
-womanhood made possible by the self-immolation of such
-pioneers. They made their impression on the point most needing
-change and strength, if our society and government were
-to become pure, strong and enduring. For it has become a
-law of sociology that the condition of its women is the measure
-of the civilization and possible growth of any people. Mrs.
-Swisshelm did more than her share to lengthen that measure
-for this people, and, happily, lived to see the fruits of her work.
-But it was a desolate life for a woman, for all that.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="THE_IMPERIAL_COLLEGE_IN_PEKING">THE IMPERIAL COLLEGE IN PEKING.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Rev. GEO. W. SMYTH</span>, President of Fouchow College.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>Among the many interesting places to be seen in the old
-and strange city of Peking, that which must claim the chief
-attention of every visitor intent on noting the changes which
-the last twenty-five years have wrought in this ancient empire
-is the Túng Wên Kuan, or College of United Literatures. It
-is an imperial college in which Chinese students are taught
-the principal languages and literatures of modern Europe.
-Their studies are in Chinese and in one or other of the western
-languages, and hence doubtless its high-sounding but significant
-name. The students are government cadets, paid from
-the public treasury, and preparing to enter the consular and
-diplomatic service of their country in foreign lands. A short
-account of the origin, purpose and methods of this school may
-not be uninteresting, as showing how great a change has
-come over the high official mind of this country in the last
-quarter of a century. The change, indeed, was the result of
-necessity, but it is not on that account any the less real, and
-the movement it inaugurated can not now be stopped.</p>
-
-<p>The war of 1860, which so nearly destroyed the present dynasty,
-and showed the ruling classes at Peking the greatly superior
-power of the West, necessitated a great change in the
-foreign policy of the empire. Hitherto they had complacently
-looked upon foreigners, subjects and sovereigns alike, as uncouth
-barbarians, who were to be excluded from the capital, or
-allowed to enter it only on admitting their subjection and vassalage
-to the Celestial ruler. But the war which came so
-near overthrowing the dynasty and bringing down the whole
-fabric of government crashing about their ears, convinced
-even the proudest of the mandarins that further resistance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_588" id="Page_588">[588]</a></span>
-would be destruction, and that China, whether she would or
-not, must step out of her seclusion, and take an open place
-among the nations of the world. She must henceforth enter
-into treaty relations with the kingdoms of the West, treat them
-as equals, trade with them on reasonable terms, receive their
-ambassadors, and submit herself to the public laws of the civilized
-world. New methods had to be devised to meet these
-unusual conditions, and the first thing done was to establish
-the Tsungli Yamên, or office for the transaction of Foreign Affairs.
-In the following year a school was opened for the training
-of interpreters, and out of this grew in time the well
-equipped Imperial College of to-day. In 1865 this school was
-raised to the rank of a college by adding a scientific department.
-With this view new buildings were erected, and steps
-taken toward engaging the services of a competent corps of
-foreign professors. In a memorial to the throne presented by
-Prince Kung in 1866, that enlightened statesman thus declares
-the scope and motives of this undertaking: “What we
-desire,” he says, “is that students shall go to the bottom of
-these subjects (that is, the astronomical and mathematical sciences),
-for we are firmly convinced that if we are able to master
-the mysteries of mathematical calculation, physical investigation,
-astronomical observation, the construction of engines,
-the engineering of water courses, this, and this only, will assure
-the steady growth and power of the empire.” The prince had
-to meet many objections, and after stating that the nations of the
-West learn from each other, daily producing something new,
-and that even Japan has recently sent men to England to acquire
-the language and science of that country, he adds: “Now,
-when a small nation like Japan knows how to enter on a career
-of progress, what could be a greater disgrace than for
-China to adhere to her old traditions, and never think of waking
-up?”</p>
-
-<p>It was some time before the college was thoroughly organized.
-W. A. P. Martin, D.D., once a missionary of the American
-Presbyterian Church at Ningpo, was appointed president.
-Other appointments followed as speedily as the fitting men
-could be found, till the plan contemplated was realized.</p>
-
-<p>This, then, is the Imperial College at Peking. What does it
-do? What is taught there, and what are the influences of its
-training? While in Peking this summer I was fortunate
-enough to visit it, to see something of its working, and to gain
-some familiarity with its purposes and plans. The learned
-president, Dr. Martin, courteously showed me over the buildings,
-and told me of the work they were doing. The college
-buildings adjoin the foreign office or Tsungli Yamên. They
-are in no sense imposing, being ordinary Chinese structures of
-one story, without attempt at adornment or splendor of any
-sort whatever. The rooms are small and plain, containing
-nothing that is not needed for the immediate work of teaching.
-The room of the president is a very plain one for so high an
-officer. The departments of chemistry and physics are well
-supplied with the instruments and chemicals needed for their
-work. The professor of astronomy, who is also professor of
-mathematics, showed me a fine equatorial telescope just arrived
-from Grubb, one of the most celebrated makers in Europe.
-The rooms of the language professors are in keeping
-with the rest, small and bare, but sufficiently well adapted for
-the purposes to which they are put. The languages taught are
-four, English, French, German, and Russian, the English receiving
-far more attention than the others. The full course
-extends over a period of eight years, and in that time the students
-are led from “reading, writing and speaking,” through
-all the intermediate departments to “astronomy, geology and
-mineralogy, political economy and the translation of books.”
-After completing the course, those so disposed may remain in
-the college or be sent abroad, at the option of the government,
-for the pursuit of special studies, with a view to professional
-use. Many so remain. Last year one man left who had been
-in attendance for eighteen years.</p>
-
-<p>The work done is as thorough as it can be. It can not be said
-that the students make as much progress as foreign students
-would make in much less time, but the slowness is due not
-more to the difficulties of a foreign language than to the utter
-strangeness of the subjects pursued. I was fortunate in being
-there on Wednesday, when the students of the higher English
-classes read essays of their own before the president and the
-English professor. Some of those I heard were very creditable,
-especially one on the subject of currency. He seemed to
-have thought for himself, to have a fair understanding of the
-subject, and would have delighted the fiscal reformers of
-America by the soundness of his hard money principles. He
-expressed great dissatisfaction with the currency of China, and
-hoped for a speedy and thorough reform. So does every man
-who travels in this strange country. Inside the walls of Peking
-there is one way of reckoning money, outside there is another;
-a few miles off one may find a third, and so on, <i>ad infinitum</i>.
-The currency of China is the most bewildering subject
-on the face of the earth. The rest of the essays did not
-impress me so much by the thoughts they expressed (indeed,
-there was little originality in any of them), as by their fair
-command of English style. The writers had evidently some
-mastery of the intricacies of the English idiom. I confess
-some of the themes disappointed me. They were taken from
-somewhere or other in the ancient classics, instead of being
-characteristic of the subjects they were studying. But it is
-hard to avoid this. The students know very little of the literature
-of the languages they are studying, and it is almost impossible,
-I am told, to induce them to take the great foreign works
-from the library and attempt to read them for themselves.
-They have not yet reached the state of intelligent enthusiasm
-which refuses to think a language known before a fair acquaintance
-is made with its literature. But this, too, will come in
-time. As to the students personally, a few of them impressed
-me as intelligent men, and as anxious to do their work well.
-The great trouble with them, the one which must seriously interfere
-with their studies, since it can not but narrow and distort
-their intellectual sympathies, is their seemingly invincible
-pride. I was told that scarce any but the Cantonese students
-care to take the slightest notice of their professors when they
-meet them on the street. Think of the difficulties of teaching
-such men! They probably look upon their instructors as far
-beneath themselves, and possibly think of the languages they
-are studying as the speech of barbarians. With such material,
-and with such dull and sullen prejudices to fight against, the
-professors must be regarded as having accomplished much.
-They could do more were their students men of liberal minds,
-eager to acquire knowledge for its own sake, and pursuing it
-with a generous enthusiasm. It is not easy to do your best
-work where you fail to rouse the sympathies of the student
-and make him feel something of the ardor which a liberal
-mind ever feels in the acquisition of knowledge. The Chinese
-are not an enthusiastic people, and except in a very few cases,
-it is impossible to make them such in learning of foreign
-things. They like to know as much as suits their imperative
-needs, and but few care enough about more to study with
-eager diligence. This struck me as being true of many of the
-students of this Peking college.</p>
-
-<p>Beside teaching there is here another department of the first
-importance—that of translating and publishing foreign books.
-Several important works have already been translated by the
-professors of the college, or by the students under their supervision.
-Wheaton’s “Elements of International Law,” Woolsey’s
-“International Law,” Faucett’s “Political Economy,” Bluntschli’s
-“Droit International Codifié,” the “Code Napoleon,”
-Kerl’s “English Grammar,” and Tytler’s “Universal History;”
-these are the chief works hitherto translated. In addition, several
-compilations have been made, such as “Natural Philosophy,”
-“Chemical Analysis,” “Mathematical Exercises,”
-and “Mathematical Physics.”</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_589" id="Page_589">[589]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The printing office is a commodious building, with several
-presses, several fonts of movable Chinese, and one of English
-type. When I was there one great book had just been
-finished, and another was just being printed. No more remarkable
-books have ever been issued from the government press,
-and if they are prophetic of the near future we may look for
-its coming with no little hope.</p>
-
-<p>The book just published is a report on education in the West,
-by Dr. Martin. It is the result of a recent examination of the
-chief schools of learning in America and Europe. The report
-is quite full, giving an account of the principal classes of schools,
-elementary and professional, of the two continents, and closing
-with an exhibit of the present state of our own Michigan
-University. I wish there were space to speak of it at length,
-but the mere catalogue of some of the titles of its chapters
-will show its scope and purpose as well as the most elaborate
-description. Among the principal headings are such as these:
-“Elements Common to the Education of all Western Nations;”
-“Classification of Schools;” “Primary Schools;”
-“Education of Women;” “Education of the Blind and Deaf;”
-“Literary and Scientific Associations;” “The Nations Learning
-from Each Other;” “Rise and Progress of Science;” “Educational
-Statistics.” Beside these there is an account of professional
-schools of all classes. These will give some conception
-of the character of this most significant work. It is published
-with a preface by one of the ministers, by order of the
-Council for Foreign Affairs.</p>
-
-<p>Who may estimate the influence of such a work as this, published
-and sanctioned by such high authority? The educational
-system of the West could have no more favorable introduction,
-as no foreigner in the empire is more highly esteemed
-than the learned author. It was fitting that such a book should
-come from the pen of Dr. Martin. In his translations of
-Woolsey’s and Wheaton’s treatises on international law, he
-had already shown the Chinese the public law of the nations
-of the West, and in this he describes the educational system
-on which their intellectual life is based. Others, it is true,
-have already taught the Chinese much, but it is scarcely injustice
-to say that from no one could this work come with such
-weighty authority as from the president of their own highest
-western school. It may be regarded as destined to play no
-unimportant part in shaping the intellectual life of the China
-of the future.</p>
-
-<p>The other book, a much larger one, is an exhaustive treatise
-on anatomy, in ten volumes, by Dr. Dudgeon, a professor in
-the college, and a member of the London Missionary Society
-in Peking. He has been in charge for many years of the London
-Mission Hospital, and has long been engaged in the preparation
-of this great work. One of the conditions on which it
-was published was that the authorities should retain one hundred
-and fifty copies for their own use. How great a change
-this indicates, and how eloquently it speaks for the future of
-medical science in China, none but the older missionaries can
-adequately appreciate. Twenty years ago, few even of the most
-sanguine, could have believed that in the ancient capital itself,
-almost under the very shadow of the Imperial Palace, the work
-of an English medical missionary would be printed at the public
-expense, and official sanction be given to this recent innovation
-of the once universally feared and detested foreigner.
-Yet so it is. It is needless to speculate on what its influence
-must be on the future of medical education in this ancient empire.</p>
-
-<p>Such is some of the work done in this most interesting
-school. It would be a pleasing task to note the changes which
-its very existence indicates, and speak of what its influence
-must be on the future. But this paper, being too long already,
-with a single further remark I will bring it to a close. The
-president of this great school is a Christian man, once a missionary
-of the Presbyterian Board, and still interested in all
-missionary work. In accepting his new position he gave up
-neither his faith nor his interest in the evangelization of the
-land. This is a matter of great moment, and it can not but be
-a theme for rejoicing that the highest foreign school in the empire
-is under the presidency of such a man. Of course he is
-not permitted to teach Christianity directly, but his influence
-and life are on the side of Christian principles, and Christianity
-will suffer no injustice at his hands. China is slowly opening
-her doors to the introduction of Western learning. She cares
-nothing as yet for our religion, but our science she will have.
-Is it not then important that it should be given her by Christian
-men, and not by such as him who, in the Japanese University
-at Tokio once told his students, that in the West Christianity
-was the religion of only women and babes? If Christian
-educators can take a leading part in this movement now,
-they may be able to hold it when it becomes more general,
-and thus the Chinese, in receiving science may the more readily
-accept that best of all gifts, a pure and undefiled Christianity.
-This must be the hope of all men interested in the future
-of China, and patiently waiting for the time when the religion
-of Christ shall cover the whole earth.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="EIGHT_CENTURIES_WITH_WALTER_SCOTT">EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By WALLACE BRUCE.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>In the providence that regulates human affairs there seems
-to have been no ordained quiet for the exiled Stuarts, but the
-quiet of the grave. During the early and unpopular reigns of
-the imported “House of Hanover” the Jacobite party eagerly
-watched and weighed every opportunity for restoring the ancient
-line. The throne of England was too great a prize to be
-readily abandoned. Some of the attempts to regain the glory
-and power which had departed from these Ichabod princes
-seem more like a romance than real history.</p>
-
-<p>The Chevalier de St. George, whom we saw in the story of
-“Rob Roy,” retired to Italy after his unsuccessful enterprise
-of 1715, “where the sufferings of his father for the Roman
-Catholic religion gave him the fairest right to expect hospitality.”
-He was at this time thirty years of age, and, following
-the suggestions of his counselors, fixed his choice of a
-wife on the Princess Clementina Sobieski, daughter of the
-Prince of Poland. The romantic history of the Chevalier in
-pursuit of a throne was now to be paralleled in the getting of a
-wife. This young lady was accounted one of the greatest fortunes
-in Europe. She was granddaughter of that King John
-Sobieski, who defeated the Turks before Vienna. The dazzling
-expectations of the Pretender gratified the ambition of
-her parents, and they agreed to conduct her privately to
-Bologna, with a view to the marriage. The preparation became
-known to the British Court. The Emperor of Austria,
-at the request of England, arrested the bride as she passed
-through Innspruck, and detained her as prisoner in a cloister.</p>
-
-<p>A bold attempt for the release of the Princess was contrived
-and executed by Charles Wogan—a devoted partisan to the
-Stuart cause. “He obtained a passport from the Austrian
-ambassador, in the name of Count Cernes and family, stated
-to be returning from Loretto to the low countries. Major Misset
-and his wife personated the supposed count and countess;
-Wogan was to pass for the brother of the count; the Princess
-Clementina, when she should be liberated, was to represent
-the Count’s sister, which character, in the meantime, was enacted
-by a smart girl, a domestic of Mrs. Misset. Captain
-Toole, with two other steady partisans, attended on the party
-of the supposed Count, in the dress and character of domestics.
-They arrived at Innspruck on the evening of the 27th of
-April, 1719, and took lodging near the convent. It appears
-that a trusty domestic of the princess had secured permission
-of the porter to bring a female with him into the cloister, and
-conduct her out at whatever hour he pleased. This was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_590" id="Page_590">[590]</a></span>
-great step in favor of their success, and taking advantage of a
-storm of snow and hail, Mrs. Misset’s domestic was safely introduced
-into the cloister, and the princess, changing clothes
-with her, came out at the hour by which the stranger was to
-return. Through bad roads and worse weather the liberated
-bride and her attendants pushed on until they quitted the
-Austrian territories, and entered those of Venice. On the second
-of May, after a journey of great fatigue, and some danger,
-they arrived at Bologna.”</p>
-
-<p>The Jacobites drew many happy omens from the success
-with which the romantic union of the Chevalier de St. George
-was achieved, although after all it may be doubted whether
-the Austrian Emperor, though obliged in appearance to comply
-with the remonstrances of the British Court, was either seriously
-anxious to prevent the Princess’s escape, or extremely
-desirous that she should be retaken. By this union the Chevalier
-transmitted his hereditary claims, and with them his evil
-luck, to two sons. The first, Charles Edward, born the 31st of
-December, 1720, was remarkable for the figure he made during
-the civil war of 1745-6; the second, Henry Benedict, born
-the 6th of March, 1725, for being the last male heir, in the direct
-line, of the unfortunate House of Stuart. He bore the
-title of Duke of York, and, entering the Church of Rome, was
-promoted to the rank of Cardinal.</p>
-
-<p>This interesting betrothal and marriage, condensed from
-Scott’s picturesque narrative in the “Tales of a Grandfather,”
-serve as a connecting link between our last paper, which dealt
-historically with the affair of 1715, and the present paper
-which deals with the affair of 1745. It is, moreover, simple
-politeness to our readers to introduce the parents, who are
-passing from the stage, before presenting the son, whose fortunes
-were destined to be more romantic than his ancestors,
-and whose name will survive in song and poetry as the
-“Prince Charlie from over the sea.”</p>
-
-<p>“Waverley” reveals the true state of Scotland during the
-middle of the eighteenth century. In fact, the titles of the chapters
-present almost a history in themselves. While it reveals
-in every page the great power of the novelist in portrayal of
-character, in discerning the motives which influence the actions
-of individuals, in the poetic description of scenery, in
-elevated tone and fitting and graceful dialogue, it differs from
-his greater and later works as the “Hypatia” of Charles Kingsley
-differs from the “Romola” of George Eliot. It is not so much an
-inner growth as an algebraic demonstration; each chapter
-being <i>plus</i> to the one that precedes it. In the early part of the
-story he conducts Waverley step by step through his boyhood
-to the choice of a profession. He then introduces him to the
-Highlands, and deals with the customs and manners of the
-people in a succession of chapter-essays. He gives us a border-raid;
-he portrays the “Hold of a Highland Robber;”
-describes the chief and his mansion; introduces us to a Highland
-feast; treats us to a display of Highland minstrelsy; and
-thus the story moves on step by step, so many <i>stadia</i> a day, like
-the march of Julius Cæsar through Germany, or the retreat of
-the ten thousand Greeks under Xenophon. But in spite of
-this step-by-step process, which marks the first work of Sir
-Walter in prose fiction, no volume of the series presents more
-vividly or graphically the historic features of the times to which
-it is related.</p>
-
-<p>The wild and fierce Highlanders, who stalked to and fro in
-pages of the “Fair Maid of Perth,” are greatly modified and
-toned down in “Waverley.” Civilization has girdled their
-mountain fastnesses. They have been taught to acknowledge
-law, or at least to respect and fear it. The patriarchal system,
-however, still continues. The chief is the leader in war, and
-their arbitrator and protector in peace. The whole income of
-the tribe is paid to the chief, and helps to support his rude
-hospitality. In the mansion of Fergus MacIvor, Waverley is
-introduced to the surviving and modified customs of this
-northern Gælic people. The description of the feast and the
-music of the bard, chanting the deeds of their ancestors, are
-worthy of special mention. “A huge oaken table extended
-through the whole length of the hall. The apparatus for dinner
-was simple, even to rudeness, and the company numerous,
-even to crowding. At the head of the table was the chief himself,
-with Waverley, and two or three Highland visitors of
-neighboring clans; the elders of his own tribe sat next in rank;
-beneath them their sons and nephews, and foster-brethren;
-then the officers of the chief’s household, according to their
-order, and lowest of all the tenants who cultivated the
-ground.”</p>
-
-<p>“Even beyond the long perspective, Waverley might see
-upon the green, to which a huge pair of folding doors opened,
-a multitude of Highlanders of a yet inferior description, who
-nevertheless were considered as guests, and had their share of
-the cheer of the day. In the distance, and fluctuating round
-the extreme verge of the banquet, was a changeful group of
-women, ragged boys and girls, beggars, young and old, large
-greyhounds, terriers and pointers, and curs of low degree; all
-of whom took some interest in the main action of the piece.
-Some pains had been bestowed in dressing the dishes at the
-upper end of the table. Lower down stood immense joints of
-mutton and beef, which resembled the rude festivity of Penelope’s
-suitors. But the central dish was a yearling lamb
-roasted whole. It was set upon its legs, with a bunch of parsley
-in its mouth, and was probably exhibited in that form to
-gratify the pride of the cook, who piqued himself more on the
-plenty than the elegance of his master’s table. The sides of
-the poor animal were fiercely attacked by the clansmen, some
-with dirks, others with the knives which were usually in the same
-sheath with the dagger, so that it was soon rendered a mangled
-and rueful spectacle. Lower down still, the victuals seemed of
-a still coarser quality, though sufficiently abundant. After the
-banquet the chieftain made a signal for the pipes to cease, and
-said aloud, ‘Where is the song hidden, my friends, that MacMurrough
-can not find it?’ The family bard, an aged man,
-immediately took the hint, and began to chant with low and
-rapid utterance a profusion of Celtic verses, which were received
-by the audience with all the applause of enthusiasm.
-As he advanced in his declamation, his ardor seemed to increase.
-He had at first spoken with his eyes fixed upon the
-ground; he now cast them around as if beseeching, and anon
-as if commanding attention, and his tones rose into wild and
-impassioned notes, accompanied with appropriate gestures.
-The ardor of the poet seemed to communicate itself to the
-audience. Their wild and sun-burnt countenances assumed a
-fiercer and more animated expression; all bent forward toward
-the reciter; many sprung up and waved their hands in ecstasy,
-and some laid their hands on their swords.”</p>
-
-<p>It was in such halls as these that the cause of the Pretender
-was cherished. The Lowlanders were for the most part disposed
-to peace. The relation of landlord and tenant had
-gradually lost its feudal character. The payment was in
-pounds sterling and not in warlike service. The result of the
-Pretender’s adventure might therefore have been foretold at
-the outset, but it was brilliant while it lasted, and he had the
-pleasure of giving a few feasts in Holyrood—the palace of his
-ancestors. It will be remembered that he landed with seven
-followers in Moidart on the 25th of July, 1745. The place was
-well chosen for concealment, being on the main land south of
-the islands of Skye. He opened communication with the
-clans in the neighborhood, but at first received little encouragement.
-By wise measures and cordial address his numbers
-grew slowly. An association was drawn up and signed by the
-chiefs who had taken the field, in which the subscribers bound
-themselves never to abandon their prince while he remained
-in the realm, or to lay down their arms, or make peace with
-government, without his express consent. He marched to
-Perth with his little army, where the Chevalier first found the
-want of money. When he entered that town, he showed one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_591" id="Page_591">[591]</a></span>
-of his followers a single guinea of the four hundred pounds
-which he had brought with him from France; but the towns
-and cities north of the Tay supplied men and money, and for
-a time his fortune was in the ascendant.</p>
-
-<p>The English troops at that time in Scotland were under a
-second rate commander, Sir John Cope. He moved north to
-Inverness and left Edinburgh undefended. The Pretender
-captured Edinburgh, and entered it the 17th of September.
-He began his march on foot, but, on account of the crowd who
-pressed upon him to kiss his hand, he was compelled to call
-for his horse as he approached the eastern entrance of the
-palace. His personal appearance was prepossessing. His
-graceful manners, noble mien and ready courtesy “seemed to
-mark him no unworthy competitor of the crown. His dress
-was national. A short tartan coat, a blue bonnet with a white
-rose, and the order and emblem of the thistle, seemed all
-chosen to identify him with the ancient nation he summoned
-to arms.” It was indeed a proud moment, but the bubble was
-soon to burst. After a few successful battles, and an ill-timed
-excursion into England, the army was disbanded, and the unfortunate
-Wanderer was compelled to flee for his life, disguised
-as a servant. He sought refuge in a cavern where seven outlaws
-had taken up their abode. With these men he remained
-about three weeks, and when the hour of his departure came
-they said: “Stay with us; the mountains of gold which the
-government have set upon your head may induce some gentleman
-to betray you, for he can go to a distant country and
-live on the price of his dishonor; but to us there exists no such
-temptation. We can speak no language but our own—we can
-live nowhere but in this country, where, were we but to injure
-a hair of your head, the very mountains would fall down to
-crush us to death.” On the 20th of September he embarked
-in a French frigate, and reached Morlaix in Brittany the 29th
-of September.</p>
-
-<p>If there ever was truth in the words, “there is a divinity
-that doth hedge a king” it finds illustration in the thirteen
-months that Charles Edward spent on this expedition in Scotland.
-No history or romance recounts such perils of flight,
-concealment and escape. The secret of his concealment was
-known to persons of every age, sex, and condition, but no
-individual from the proudest Earl to the meanest outlaw would
-stoop to give up their leader, even for the promised reward,
-which would have purchased the half of Scotland north of the
-Forth. That the Prince was bold and generous, in this campaign,
-no person can doubt; and if Charles the First had possessed
-as much humor as his amiable descendant, he might
-have preserved his head which was an “unco’ loss” to the
-whole Stuart line. After the victory at Preston, the Pretender
-sent word to the Edinburgh preachers to preach the next day,
-Sunday, as usual; and the Rev. Neil M’Vicar offered the following
-prayer: “Bless the king! Thou knowest what king I
-mean. May the crown sit long on his head. As for that
-young man who has come among us to seek an earthly crown,
-we beseech thee to take him to thyself and give him a crown
-of glory.” It is said that when the Prince heard of M’Vicar’s
-prayer he laughed heartily, and expressed himself quite satisfied.</p>
-
-<p>I have spoken of this novel being true to history. It could
-hardly have been otherwise when we consider the opportunities
-Scott had for studying all the facts. In the closing chapter
-of “Waverley” he says: “It was my accidental lot, though
-not born a Highlander, to reside, during my childhood and
-youth, among persons who cherished a lingering though hopeless
-attachment, to the House of Stuart; and now, for the purpose
-of preserving some idea of the ancient manners of which
-I have witnessed the almost total extinction, I have embodied
-in imaginary scenes, and ascribed to fictitious characters, a
-part of the incidents which I then received from those who
-were actors in them. Indeed, the most romantic parts of this
-narrative are precisely those which have a foundation in fact.
-There is scarce a gentleman who was ‘in hiding,’ after the
-battle of Culloden, but could tell a tale of wild and hair-breadth
-’scapes, as extraordinary as any which I have ascribed
-to my heroes. The accounts of the battle at Preston and skirmish
-at Clifton are taken from the narrative of intelligent eye-witnesses,
-and corrected from the ‘History of the Rebellion’
-by the late venerable author of ‘Douglas.’ The Lowland
-Scottish gentlemen, and the subordinate characters, are not
-given as individual portraits, but are drawn from the general
-habits of the period, of which I have witnessed some remnants
-in my younger days, and partly gathered from tradition.”</p>
-
-<p>“Guy Mannering,” the next in sequence, is rather a portrayal
-of character than a historic picture. It gives us a glimpse of
-gipsey-life in Galloway true to fact, and also reveals the traits
-of the hardy smugglers that invested its shores. The characters
-stand out by themselves with little or no background.
-Here is Dandie Dinmot, with his numerous dogs and children;
-Attorney Pleydell, with his old-time courtesy; Dominie Sampson,
-a cyclopædia of worthless erudition—a man to be laughed
-at and loved—possessing a fund of knowledge, but no wisdom;
-Guy Mannering, a courtly gentleman, deep and undisturbed
-as a tropic sea; two sweet young ladies and their lovers, who
-are at last happily married; Meg Merrilies, as generous and
-sensible a gipsey as ever lived; Dirk Hatterick, as false a sea
-rover as ever hoisted sail; and Glossin, a fawning scoundrel,
-whose course through life was like the trail of a serpent. The
-book is in fact a drama rather than a novel, or rather both in
-one—a dramatic romance. Coleridge regarded it as one of
-the greatest of Scott’s novels, and mentions it in this connection
-with “Old Mortality.”</p>
-
-<p>In “Redgauntlet” we find a continuation of the smuggler
-trade, and are also introduced to the Pretender, who has not
-improved either in appearance or character since we last saw
-him in “Waverley.” His friends and supporters for the most
-part consist of the very dregs of society. In his blind adoration
-for a person not to be named with respect, the Prince lost
-the confidence of friends who had risked their all to support
-his title. In a cup of dissolute pleasure he dissolves the pearl
-of his good name. If he had died at the head of his army of
-adherents in Scotland, or after his return to France, he would
-have survived in history as a worthier man. “He proved to
-be one of those personages who distinguish themselves during
-some singular and brilliant period of their lives, like the course
-of a shooting star at which men wonder, as well on account of
-the briefness, as the brilliancy of its splendor. A long trace of
-darkness overshadowed the subsequent life of a man who, in
-his youth, shewed himself so capable of great undertakings;
-the later pursuits and habits of this unhappy Prince are those
-painfully evincing a broken heart, which finds refuge from its
-own thoughts in sordid enjoyments.”</p>
-
-<p>The man was also in the hands of persons full of wild plots
-and political impatience. They formed schemes wholly impracticable.
-They invited him in 1750 to London; but he was
-soon convinced that he had been deceived, and after a stay of
-five days he returned to the place from which he came. He
-died at Rome the 31st of January, 1788, and was royally interred
-in the Cathedral Church of Frescati, of which his brother
-was bishop.</p>
-
-<p>After his death his brother, the last direct male heir of the
-House of Stuart, made no assertion of his right to the British
-throne, but had a beautiful medal struck, in which he was represented
-in kingly garb with the motto in Latin, “King by the
-grace of God, but not by the will of the people.” He finally
-received an annuity of 4,000 pounds a year given to him by
-George the Third, and on his death he bequeathed to George
-the Fourth all the crown jewels, which James the Second had
-carried along with him to the Continent in 1688. He died at
-Rome, June 1807, in the eighty-third year of his age. The
-volumes of “Waverley” and “Redgauntlet,” taken in connection
-with Scott’s “Tales of a Grandfather,” give the most complete
-history of this unfortunate struggle.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_592" id="Page_592">[592]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“The Antiquary” and “Saint Ronan’s Well” present a postscript
-of manners and customs, which seems tame from a historic
-standpoint, after living so many centuries in the company
-of heroes and princes. Scott speaking of “The Antiquary” says:
-“It wants the romance of ‘Waverley’ and the adventure of ‘Guy
-Mannering;’ yet there is some salvation about it, for if a man
-will paint from nature he will be likely to amuse those who are
-daily looking at it.” He also says in his introduction of “The
-Antiquary:” “‘Waverley’ embraced the age of our fathers, ‘Guy
-Mannering’ that of our youth, and ‘The Antiquary’ refers to the
-last ten years of the eighteenth century. I have in the last
-two narratives especially, sought my principal personages in
-the class of society who are the last to feel the influence of
-that general polish which assimilates to each other the manners
-of different nations. Among some of the same class I
-have placed some of the scenes, in which I have endeavored
-to illustrate the operation of the higher and more violent passions;
-both because the lower orders are less restrained by the
-habit of suppressing their feelings, and because I agree with
-my friend Wordsworth, that they seldom fail to express them
-in the strongest and most powerful language. This is, I think,
-peculiarly the case with the peasantry of my own country, a
-class with whom I have been long familiar. The antique force
-and simplicity of their language, often tinctured with the
-oriental eloquence of Scripture, in the mouths of those of
-an elevated understanding, give pathos to their grief, and
-dignity to their resentment.” The pathos and eloquence in
-the homes of the fishermen justify Scott’s criticism, and the
-picture which he has drawn of the old grandmother will survive
-in our memory as one of the most dramatic in the Waverley
-series.</p>
-
-<p>There are two references in “The Antiquary” to contemporary
-history, which ought not to be entirely overlooked; one
-where the Antiquary describes the excitement of preparation in
-Edinburgh against the anticipated French invasion, when almost
-every individual was enrolled either in military or civil
-capacity. Beacons were erected along the coast to summon
-the newly organized army of defense when occasion required,
-and Scott humorously refers, in one of his letters, to the appearance
-he himself made decked out in regimentals. Near
-the close of “The Antiquary” the signal light blazes out by mistake
-the 2d of February, 1804; the person, who kept watch on
-the commanding station of Home Castle, being deceived by
-some accidental fire in the county of Northumberland. The
-only historical allusion in “St. Ronan’s Well” relates to the
-Reign of Terror and to Napoleon Bonaparte at Acre.</p>
-
-<p>The twenty-six novels and five poems of Sir Walter, therefore,
-unite the two greatest events of Europe—the wars of the
-Crusades, and the exploits of Napoleon and the French Revolution.
-In “Count Robert of Paris” we see Constantinople in
-her glory, under the rule of the crafty Alexius. We hear the
-tread of armed hosts passing and repassing along the great
-highway of the world. In “The Betrothed” we see England aroused
-by the voice of her eloquent Archbishop. In “The Talisman”
-we see the craft of Saladin opposed to the discordant army of
-Richard the Lion-hearted. In “Ivanhoe” we find Saxon and
-Jew pressed down under the heel of the Norman. We see
-Scotland rescued from the oppression of England in “Castle
-Dangerous” and the “Lord of the Isles.” We note the state
-of the Highlands in 1402 in the “Fair Maid of Perth,” and
-trace the wiles and craft of the French Emperor in “Louis the
-Eleventh,” and in “Anne of Geierstein.” We visit with “Marmion”
-the Battle-field of Flodden, we see the light glimmer
-in the Chancel of Melrose as we turn the pages of “The Lay
-of the Last Minstrel,” and wander with James the Fifth in disguise
-through the wild passes of the Trosachs. In the
-“Monastery” and “Abbot” we read the history of the Catholic
-and Protestant struggle in Scotland, we weep with the unfortunate
-Mary, and glory in the triumph of Knox. In “Kenilworth”
-we see the power and weakness of the Virgin Queen,
-and look into the sad eyes of Amy Robsart sacrificed upon the
-altar of ambition.</p>
-
-<p>We see the London of James the First in the “Fortunes of
-Nigel;” we hear in “Rokeby” the echo of the battle of Marston
-Moor; we follow the struggle of Argyle and Montrose
-in the “Legend;” and talk with the young exile, Charles the
-Second, in the groves of “Woodstock.” In “Peveril of the
-Peak” we find the King upon his throne, surrounded by Buckingham
-and the most desolate court of Europe. In “Old Mortality”
-we sympathize with the Covenanters, a people devout
-and sincere in their character, as they were unpractical in their
-conduct. In “The Pirate” we note some of the surviving customs
-of old Scandinavia. In the “Bride of Lammermoor” we
-see the decay of a noble House. “The Black Dwarf” is related
-to the fierce discussion in Scotland at the time of the
-national Union. “Rob Roy” introduces us to the Pretender
-in the Affair of 1715. “The Heart of Midlothian” gives us a
-picture of Edinburgh; and so our historic chain, composed of
-poetic links, brings us down to the beginning of our own century.
-No wonder that Scott has been styled the Great Magician,
-when, by the lifting of his wand, he was able to make the
-heroes of neglected history burst their cerements.</p>
-
-<p>I sat one evening on the banks of the Tweed amid the ruins
-of Dryburgh Abbey, by a plain monument in St. Mary’s Aisle;
-the soft moonlight, streaming through broken casements,
-added solemnity and beauty to the peaceful sylvan scene. I
-recalled the ruins of Kenilworth Castle, far off on another
-poetic stream, and the pageant of history which there passed
-before England’s Elizabeth; and I thought how much grander
-the procession of Eight Hundred Years, which passed in long
-review before the mental vision of the great novelist and poet,
-now resting beneath the quiet stars. The ivy still rustles in
-the breeze; the gray ruins again gleam in the moonlight, and,
-reader, the years can never lift their furrows of care between
-me and that twilight picture hallowed by the poetic memory of
-a noble man.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="ALASKA_ITS_MISSIONS">ALASKA—ITS MISSIONS.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By the <span class="smcap">Rev. WM. H. LEWIS</span>.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>No one familiar with the spiritual obstacles that missionaries
-encounter expects that characters that shall be Christian from
-highest principle, and through and through, will be formed in
-the first, or even the second generation of converts, as a rule,
-though every mission field furnishes shining exceptions to this
-rule. We shall not be disheartened, then, when we come to look
-into the history of Alaska, if the present state of society there
-is found to be slightly savage still.</p>
-
-<p>Dall, in his work, “Alaska and its Resources,” speaking of
-the Indian character, says: “They are hospitable, good humored,
-but not always trustworthy. They will steal, and have
-sometimes attacked small vessels in the straits.…
-They sometimes have as many as five wives, though one or
-two is the usual number. Drunkenness is a common vice
-among them. They have an uncontrollable passion for alcohol,
-which is plentifully supplied them by the whalers and
-traders. They hate the Russians, and will not trade with
-them.… Their customs in regard to the treatment of
-the old and infirm are, from a civilized point of view, brutal
-and inhuman.… When an old person was sick for
-more than seven days the others put a rope around his body
-and dragged him by it around the house over the stones. If
-this did not kill or cure, the sick person was taken to the place
-of the dead.… Here the individual was stoned or
-speared, and the body left for the dogs to devour, the latter
-being themselves eaten by the natives.” Of the Aleuts proper
-he says: “Since the time of their first intercourse with the
-Russians, their character, habits, mode of life, and even their
-very name, have been totally changed. Originally they were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_593" id="Page_593">[593]</a></span>
-active, sprightly, and fond of dances and festivals. Their
-mode of worship partook more of the character of religion
-than that of any of the tribes, which still remain unchanged.
-Ground into the very dust by the oppression of ruthless invaders,
-their religious rights, gay festivals and determined character
-have all passed away. A shade of melancholy is now one
-of their national characteristics. All speak some Russian, and
-many of them can converse fluently in that language. The
-Aleuts are light, and nearly the same color as the Innuits of the
-Northwest. Their features, perhaps from the great admixture
-of Russian blood, are more intelligent and pleasing. They are
-all nominally Greek Catholics, but there is very little knowledge
-of the principles of true Christianity amongst them. While further
-advanced than any other native American tribe, they are far
-from civilized, except in dress, and require careful guardianship
-and improved methods of education to preserve them from the
-rapacity of the traders. The reality of their devotion to a religion
-which they do not comprehend may well be doubted.” He
-then quotes Veniamínoff’s description of the native character,
-with the comment that it is marked by partiality confessed,
-and that it is mainly due to his goodness of heart and love for
-the people.… In another place, speaking of mission
-work not Russian, he says; “In the evening, the Indians, old
-and young, gathered in the fort yard and sang several hymns
-with excellent effect. Altogether, it was a scene which would
-have delighted the hearts of many very good people who know
-nothing of Indian character, and as such will doubtless figure in
-some missionary report. To any one who at all understood
-the situation, however, the absurdity of the proceeding was so
-palpable that it appeared almost like blasphemy. Old Sakhuiti,
-who has at least eighteen wives, whose hands are bloody with
-repeated and most atrocious murders, who knows nothing of
-what we understand by right and wrong, by a future state of
-rewards and punishments, or by a Supreme Being—this old
-heathen was singing as sweetly as his voice would allow, and
-with quite as much comprehension of the hymn as the dogs in
-the yard. Indians are fond of singing; they are also fond of
-tobacco; and, for a pipeful apiece you may baptize a whole
-tribe of them. Why will intelligent men still go on, talking
-three or four times a year to Indians on doctrinal subjects by
-means of a jargon which can not express an abstract idea, and
-the use of which only throws ridicule on sacred things, and still
-call such work spreading the truths of Christianity? When the
-missionary will leave the trading posts, strike out into the wilderness,
-live with the Indians, teach them cleanliness first,
-morality next, and by slow and simple teaching lead their
-thoughts above the hunt or the camp—then, and not until then,
-will they be competent to comprehend the simplest principles
-of right and wrong.”</p>
-
-<p>The history of the early dealings of the Russian expeditions
-with the natives is one of continued outrages and retaliations.
-Almost every record of voyages for discovery or trading from
-1648-1800 tells of atrocities committed by the sailors, and of
-wholesale massacres by the natives. The sole purpose of
-these expeditions was gain, and no attempt was made even to
-conciliate, much less to evangelize, the Indians. It was not
-until 1793 that a ukase was issued by the Empress of Russia,
-authorizing the introduction of missionaries into the American
-colonies, but unfortunately the same ukase ordered the shipment
-thither of convicts from Russia, and was obeyed in the
-proportion of a hundred convicts to one missionary. In 1794
-(May) Shílikoff brought over 190 emigrant convicts, two overseers
-and eleven monks, and Ióasaph, elder of the Augustine
-Friars, was invited to settle in the colony. All the monks were
-obliged to support themselves by constant work, as no provision
-was made for them by the government, and Ióasaph complained
-bitterly of the treatment they received from the Shílikoff
-Trading Company’s officials. At the same time, in 1795,
-one year after his landing, he reported the conversion of 1,200
-natives, thus quite justifying the hard criticisms quoted above.
-The census of this colony of Kadiák in the same year gave a
-population of 3,600 natives. In 1796 Father Ióasaph was made
-bishop by imperial ukase, and returned to Irkútsk to receive
-his consecration. Father Iuvenáti was murdered by the natives
-for attempting to put down polygamy. The first Russo-Greek
-Church was built at Kadiák during this year. In 1799
-Bishop Ióasaph, with a company of clergy, set sail for his new
-diocese in the ship “Fenie,” which was lost at sea with all on
-board, and from this time to 1810 only one monk was left in
-the colonies. On the 10th of June, 1810, Captain Golófnin
-brought one priest to Sitka in his sloop of war “Diana,” and in
-1816 Father Sòlokoff arrived from Moscow, and took charge
-of all the mission work in the colonies. There were at the
-death of Governor Baránoff in 1819 five colonies of the company
-in the Aleutian Isles, four on Cook’s Inlet, two on Chujách
-Gulf, and one on Baránoff Island, in Sitka Bay, with three
-priests in charge, three chapels and several schools, where,
-however, nothing was taught except reading and writing in the
-ecclesiastical characters. Father Mordóffski reached Kadiák
-in 1823, and in 1824 the real history of the mission begins with
-the arrival of the noble and devoted Innocentius Veniamínoff,
-the Russian Selwyn, at Unaláshka, and the commencement of
-his life-long labors among the Aleuts. He was made bishop
-and transferred to Sitka in 1834, and the record of his life gives
-all that there is to be said about the progress of religious work
-among the natives, so far as the Russian Church is concerned,
-up to the time of the transfer of the territory to the United States.
-Mr. Dall’s estimate of his labors is well worth quoting here to
-counterbalance some other quotations that have been made
-from his book. He says, “Whatever of good is ingrained in
-their (the natives’) characters may be in great part traced to
-the persevering efforts of one man. This person was the Rev.
-Father Innocentius Veniamínoff, of the Irkútsk Seminary, since
-Bishop of Kamchatka. He alone of the Greek missionaries
-to Alaska has left behind him an undying record of devotion,
-self-sacrifice and love, both to God and man, combined with
-the true missionary fire.”</p>
-
-<p>John Veniamínoff was born September 1st, 1797, graduated
-from the seminary at Irkútsk in 1817, and was ordained in
-May of that year. He was advanced to the priesthood in 1821,
-made Bishop of Kamchatka in 1840, and took the title of Innocent.
-In 1850 his see was made archiepiscopal, and in 1868
-he was recalled to Russia and made successor of Philaret as
-Metropolitan of Moscow. In 1823 he offered himself as a missionary,
-and was sent by his bishop to Unaláshka. The following
-extracts from his own published account of his mission
-(“The Founding of the Orthodox Church in Russian America,”
-St. Petersburg, 1840) will give the best idea of what he
-had to do, and how well he did it:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Although the Aleuts willingly embraced the Christian religion, and
-prayed to God as they were taught, it must be confessed that, until a
-priest was settled amongst them they worshiped one who was almost an
-unknown God. For Father Macarius, from the shortness of time that
-he was with them, and from the lack of competent interpreters, was able
-to give them but very general ideas about religion, such as of God’s
-omnipotence, His goodness, etc. Notwithstanding all of which the
-Aleutines remained Christians, and after baptism completely renounced
-Shamanism, and not only destroyed all the masks which they used in
-their heathen worship, but also allowed the songs which might in any
-way remind them of their heathen worship to fall into disuse, so that
-when, on my arrival amongst them, I through curiosity made inquiry
-after these songs, I could not hear of one. But of all good qualities of
-the Aleutines, nothing so pleased and delighted my heart as their desire,
-or to speak more justly, <i>thirst</i>, for the Word of God, so that sooner
-would an indefatigable missionary tire of <i>preaching</i> than they of <i>hearing</i>
-the Word.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>But Veniamínoff, true missionary that he was, was not content
-with his quiet, peaceful labors among the Aleuts. There
-was a fierce tribe that hunted the Russians like wild beasts in
-the neighborhood of Sitka, and to them he determined to carry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_594" id="Page_594">[594]</a></span>
-the gospel. He began to get ready for his mission to these
-Koloshes in 1834, but was detained a year, and at last,
-ashamed of himself for his cowardice, he resolved that immediately
-upon the close of the Christmas holidays he would take
-his life in his hand and go. “Four days before I came to
-these Koloshes,” he says, “the small-pox broke out among
-them. Had I begun my instruction before the appearance
-of the small-pox they would certainly have blamed me for all
-the evil which came upon them, as if I were a Russian Shaman
-or sorcerer, who sent such plagues amongst them. But glory
-be to God, who orders all things for good.” (Think of thanking
-God for opening such <i>a door of entrance</i>, a door from whose
-opening in such a place any one but a man of iron nerves and
-complete self-surrender would have fled away and thanked God
-for his escape!) “The Koloshes were not what they were
-two years previously” (when he <i>meant</i> to come among them).
-“Few were baptized then, for, while I proclaimed the truth
-to them, I never urged upon them, or wished to urge upon
-them, the immediate reception of holy baptism, but, seeking
-to convince their judgment, I awaited a request from them.
-Those who expressed a desire to be baptised I received with
-full satisfaction.” After sixteen years of missionary toil in such
-a field Veniamínoff was sent to St. Petersburg to plead for help
-for the mission. The Czar proposed to the Synod to send him
-back as a bishop, but that body objected, because, though he
-was an excellent man, he had “no cathedral, no body of clergy,
-and no episcopal residence.” “The more, then, like an apostle,”
-said the Czar, and he was consecrated. No sooner was
-he consecrated than he was impatient to get back to his see,
-and on April 30th, 1842, he writes: “At last, thank the Lord
-God, in America! Our doings since we came to Sitka (September
-26th) have not yet been very important. A mission
-was sent to Noushtau, which will reach its destination not
-sooner than the <i>middle</i> of <i>next June</i>. December 17th a sort of
-Theological School was opened, containing now twenty-three
-persons, creoles and natives. The theological student I. T.
-was sent to Kadiák to learn the language, and in four months
-has had wonderful success. The monk M. has been preaching
-to the Koloshes, and ⸺ has about eighty candidates for holy
-baptism, and asks it for them; but I do not care to be over
-hasty with them. The more and the better they are taught,
-the more can they be depended upon. I went this spring to
-Kadiák to examine into the affairs of the Church there, and
-was comforted beyond expectation. The church is full every
-holy day, and Lent was kept by more than four hundred of
-them, some coming from distant places.”</p>
-
-<p><i>April 5, 1844.</i>—“The children here (at Sitka) between the
-ages of one and eighteen are very numerous. In the Theological
-School, in the Company’s School, and in two girls’
-schools, there are about one hundred and forty, and yet I gathered
-about one hundred and fifty others.” He reports four
-hundred children under instruction, and thirty-five adults baptized
-at their own request. 1845.—The Kwichpak Church
-numbered two hundred and seventy natives and thirty foreigners.
-Priests visited the Kenai and Koetchan tribes, staying
-with them some months and baptizing several converts. And
-so the good bishop went on from year to year, as the Russian
-Mouravieff says, “Sailing over the ocean, or driving in reindeer
-sledges over his vast, but thinly settled diocese, thousands
-of miles in extent, everywhere baptizing the natives, for whom
-he has introduced the use of letters and translated the gospel
-into the tongue of the Aleutines.”</p>
-
-<p>“The good bishop has little to say of himself. We are told
-he became master of six dialects, spoken in the field committed
-to his charge. He himself translated, or assisted others in
-translating, large parts of God’s Word and the liturgy of his
-church for the use of the natives. For forty-five years, ten of
-them as Bishop of Kamchatka, eighteen more as its archbishop,
-he labored on, in season and out of season.” (Hale’s “Innocent
-of Moscow.”) And when, in 1867, Philaret died and Innocent
-was chosen Patriarch of Moscow, one of the first works
-he undertook was the organization of the Orthodox Missionary
-Society, which was the cause of as much good at home in
-awakening the spirit of missions in the church as it was abroad
-in supporting the work in distant fields. This society in 1877
-raised and expended 141,698.65¾ roubles in missionary
-work.</p>
-
-<p>The following statistics are taken from a report in the <i>Mission
-Journal</i> of Irkútsk: “There are in the diocese of the
-Aleutian Islands and Alaska, including about two hundred
-Sclaves and Greeks at San Francisco, eleven thousand five
-hundred and seventy two members of the Eastern Church.
-The church buildings are nine—viz., at San Francisco, at Sitka
-(where there are about three hundred orthodox), at Kadiák, at
-Renai, at Bielkoffsky, at Ounalashka, at Nonschatchak, on the
-Island of St. Paul, and at the Michaeloffsky Redoubt at Kwichpak.
-There are two vacancies among the clergy at Sitka and
-at the Kenai Mission.”</p>
-
-<p>Bishop Iohn succeeded Innocent, but soon returned to Russia.
-Bishop Nestor, a man of ability, went out in 1879. He
-died in 1880, and has had no successor. The most influential
-Russians left the country when the territory was ceded, and
-interest in the missions has largely been withdrawn, so that in
-the last two reports of the Orthodox Missionary Society no
-mention whatever is made of Alaskan Missions.</p>
-
-<p>And this brings us to speak of another work going on there,
-viz., the mission of the Presbyterians. On the 10th of August,
-1877, the Rev. Sheldon Jackson and Mrs. McFarland
-reached Fort Wrangel as the first missionaries of the Presbyterian
-body to Alaska. Mr. Jackson reports that one of the
-first sights he saw was an Indian ringing a bell to call the people
-to school. The Indian was Clah, from Fort Simpson, and
-about twenty pupils attended. The Lord’s Prayer was recited
-in Chinook jargon (a mixture of French-Canadian, English,
-and Indian words), and the long meter doxology was sung at
-closing. The book stock inventoried four Bibles, four hymn
-books (Moody and Sankey), three primers, thirteen First Readers,
-and one wall chart. Twelve thousand dollars were raised
-as a special fund by Mr. Jackson’s efforts at home, and two
-other missionaries were sent out in 1878. In 1880 one missionary
-and one teacher went to Alaska. In 1879 the mission
-buildings were erected, and the First Presbyterian Church of
-Fort Wrangel organized. The mission includes a church
-building, a Girls’ Industrial Home and school houses, with stations
-among the Chilcats, Hydahs and Hoonyahs, neighboring
-tribes. There are at present three ministers and five male and
-female teachers at the different stations.</p>
-
-<p>To provide for the Swedes and Germans in the employ of
-the Russian American Fur Company, a Lutheran minister was
-sent to Sitka in 1845 and remained till 1852. He was succeeded
-by the Rev. Mr. Nintec, preaching in Swedish and
-German, who remained until the transfer in 1867, when, his
-support being withdrawn by the Russian government, he returned
-to Europe.</p>
-
-<p>A Roman Catholic bishop, with one priest, also came to Fort
-Wrangel in 1879 to establish a mission, but it is believed that
-the work has now been stopped and the priest withdrawn.</p>
-
-<p>It must be remembered that all that has been cited of the
-missions so far has only to do with the Indians in the neighborhood
-of Sitka and Fort Wrangel, along the southern coast,
-and on the Lower Yukon. So far, the great continent, with its
-vast and almost unexplored interior, has only been trimmed
-around the edges. Full 40,000 of the possible 60,000 natives
-are yet without Christianity, and one might as well establish a
-mission in Cuba to evangelize Spain, or in the Jerseys to reach
-the Mahometans, as to sit down in a mission at Sitka and hope
-to reach the scattered tribes of Alaska. If we should send
-missionaries to that neighborhood it would only be to make of it
-a Fort <i>Wrangel</i> indeed, but the whole country is open to us,
-and on the Grand Yukon and its tributaries and among the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_595" id="Page_595">[595]</a></span>
-Eskimos of the northern coast there is work enough, yet untouched,
-for all the men the church could send.</p>
-
-<p>Here, then, in as small a compass as possible, is the field,
-its past history and its present condition; a few Greek priests,
-whose congregations are decreased by removals and will
-eventually die out; eight or ten Presbyterians, men and women,
-who confine their labors to Sitka and Fort Wrangel, and have
-enough to do there; and one clergyman of the Church of England,
-on a river 2,500 miles long, whose banks from end to end
-are his parish; 11,000 members of the Greek Church, 700 or
-800 Presbyterians, and between 2,000 and 3,000 Church of England
-folk familiar with her services and loving her ritual; and
-at the very least calculation 5,500 natives that might be reached
-and cared for, and <i>should</i> be cared for. Here is a chance to
-show the people of America that the church does know how to
-deal with the Indian question. There will be a clear field and
-no favor for several years to come. A fund of $15,000 appropriated
-by Congress in 1878 for educational purposes, but never
-called for, might be claimed by any party proving to Congress
-by their works that they meant to educate the people. A government
-of some sort, military perhaps, will soon be established.
-Prospectors after everything valuable will overrun the
-country as soon as it is safe and profitable to do so. What
-shall be done by Christian people for all these heathen souls?</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="OUR_NAVAL_FORCE">OUR NAVAL FORCE.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Lieutenant G. W. MENTZ</span>, U. S. Navy.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>Beside torpedoes and fortifications there should be always
-at hand for the defense of our coasts, a sufficient number of
-as good iron-clads and torpedo boats as any nation in the
-world possesses, vessels that can go to sea, so that we can
-meet the enemy with the same kinds of weapons he opposes to
-us, and with enough of them to prevent the first hard blows.
-Then with this as a nucleus, and our ship-builders and our
-mechanics skilled in the work necessary to keep up such an
-establishment, we could build up a sufficiently large navy as
-the war progressed.</p>
-
-<p>If we wait until war is upon us before we provide ourselves
-with such modern weapons, and such as every nation of any
-importance, except ourselves, possesses, our officers and men
-would have to fight with weapons with which they are unfamiliar,
-while their opponents are trained in their management.</p>
-
-<p>It requires time to learn to handle the new weapons of naval
-warfare, which are very different and much more complicated
-than those of the days of wooden frigates and smooth-bore
-guns, such as our navy is still composed of, and that is another
-reason why we should keep up a navy in time of peace.
-Torpedo and torpedo-boat attacks, for instance, depend almost
-entirely upon the <i>skill</i> in their management. We have no such
-things as torpedo-boats and whitehead torpedoes, etc., and our
-officers have had no experience or practice with such weapons.</p>
-
-<p>Germany, the leading military nation of the world, has the
-proper idea of preparing her navy for war in time of peace.
-Beside being provided with the best and most effective
-weapons, all her naval force, active and reserve, are exercised
-each summer and the men and officers are trained in their
-duties on board the vessels, and with the weapons they will
-have to use in time of war. Then, each article, from a sailmaker’s
-needle to a gun is kept ready at the naval stations, all
-the articles belonging to one ship being labeled with the ship’s
-name, and all kept together so that they can instantly be put
-on board. The German Admiralty has recently reported that
-the whole naval force can be put in effective working order, for
-offensive or defensive movements, in one week’s time. It was
-only by similar preparations with her army in time of peace,
-that she was enabled, so promptly, to meet and to conquer
-France in 1870.</p>
-
-<p>But let us glance at the kind of weapons which would be
-used against us in a foreign war, and with which we are unprovided
-and with which we must supply ourselves. Except
-the United States, every nation of any maritime importance
-possesses immense war vessels. There are some vessels which
-have an average speed of sixteen miles an hour; which have
-their batteries and their machinery protected by solid iron of a
-thickness of two feet, or of steel and iron combined of one and
-a half feet thickness; whose battery, or armament rather, consists
-of a few <i>very</i> heavy guns, capable of sending a mass of
-metal weighing one ton a distance of eleven miles, several
-guns of less weight and power, a number of revolving cannon,
-a dozen or two dozen torpedoes, two torpedo-boats, each
-of these fitted with four torpedoes and a revolving gun; whose
-crews are supplied with rapid, accurate and distant-firing
-small arms (muskets and pistols). In addition to all this, these
-vessels are rams, and are themselves most powerful weapons
-of war, and could cut in two and sink any ship they struck.
-These vessels, when complete, with their guns, ammunition,
-crews, provisions and coal, everything in fact on board, weigh
-from 9,000 to 13,000 tons. About twenty-seven feet of the depth of
-such a vessel while she floats is beneath the surface of the water,
-and the whole ship is divided into fifty or more water-tight
-compartments, so that if any two compartments are filled with
-water the ship will still float. These iron-clads (more properly
-armor-clads) do not have this two feet thickness of iron all
-around the ship, only the vital parts, the engines and boilers,
-etc., and that part of the ship where the great guns are fought,
-are so protected. The armor consists of a belt eight to ten feet
-wide (deep) and from one to two feet thick; half of its width or
-depth is below the surface of the water and half is above. The
-machinery, engines and boilers in a war vessel are put in the
-ship as low down as possible, the farther below the surface of
-the water the better, as below the surface of the water a shot is
-not effective, that is, for a greater depth below the surface than
-one or two feet.</p>
-
-<p>The machinery then is protected from shot on the sides and
-underneath. To protect it from shot on top, a steel deck of
-three inches thickness is built in the ship immediately over the
-engines and boilers, the deck inclining toward the sides of the
-ship, so that if a shot did strike the deck it would be deflected
-upward and away from the engines and boilers. This deck
-is also placed below the surface of the water, if practicable.</p>
-
-<p>The guns of such a ship are generally placed in a citadel and
-on the deck underneath the citadel. The citadel is clad with
-iron or steel, and the guns on the deck beneath are protected
-by the belt of armor spoken of above.</p>
-
-<p>The amount of metal that the guns can fire from one side of
-such a ship is anywhere from 6,700 to 8,960 pounds. The shot
-composing this mass of metal travel through the air with a
-velocity of 1,800 feet per second, and travel nine miles in about
-twenty-five seconds. When a shot weighing one ton and traveling
-with such velocity strikes an object squarely, the object
-must indeed be strong to withstand the shock.</p>
-
-<p>What resistance to such a force could the walls of a wooden
-ship give, or even those of ten-sixteenths of an inch of steel
-or of seven inches of iron? Yet there is no United States war
-vessel with a greater thickness of side than seven inches of
-iron. Most of our monitors have only 5″ armor.</p>
-
-<p>The people of this country have reason to be proud of the
-deeds of their navy in the past, and many a time has the “ruler
-of the seas” lowered his flag to the stars and stripes. But those
-victories were gained with ships the equal of any in the world,
-and with guns which had no superiors and with crews and officers
-well trained and accustomed to the use of their weapons.
-Is it so now with our navy? No. We would go into battle
-with the odds all against us. The sides of our ships are as
-pasteboard to the high-power guns of the present time.</p>
-
-<p>Our guns are as much use against two feet of iron armor, or
-its equivalent in steel, as a pop-gun is against a stone wall, and
-would make just about as much impression. And, although<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_596" id="Page_596">[596]</a></span>
-we have just as brave, patriotic and skillful men and officers
-in our navy to-day as we ever had, they are not skilled or
-trained in the use of the proper weapons, in the management
-of modern weapons—such as their opponents will use against
-them.</p>
-
-<p>The possession of these instruments of war would make all
-governments very careful and respectful in their treatment of
-us and increase the probabilities of their never being used in
-actual warfare. The annual cost would not amount to the one
-millionth of the amount of damage Brazil, or Italy, or Germany,
-or France, or England, or Chili even could do us in the same
-length of time if we are without them.</p>
-
-<p>Our navy costs about $15,000,000 yearly, about half of that
-sum is for the pay of officers and men, and it is misapplied,
-because they are being trained in the use of weapons which
-are no longer effective, and our people are not getting the
-proper return for their money. But the fault is their own and
-the navy is not to blame. The cause of the great change that
-has taken place in the last twenty years in the weapons of naval
-warfare is due to the use of iron and steel, instead of wood, in
-the construction of ships, and, although the navy has asked the
-country repeatedly for modern ships and guns, the people
-have not seen fit to grant them.</p>
-
-<p>This is what our navy consists of: Of high-power rifle guns,
-such as almost every nation possesses, we have one, recently
-finished, and which, owing to lack of experience, required <i>one
-year</i> to construct.</p>
-
-<p>Of cruising vessels, fit only to destroy merchant vessels of
-slow speed, we have thirty-six, four of which are of iron, whose
-sides are about one half inch thick. None of these vessels would
-be able to engage the battle ships of any maritime nation.</p>
-
-<p>For coast defense, we have nineteen iron-clads; many require
-extensive repairs, and it would take time to put them in condition.
-None of them have sides of a greater thickness than
-seven inches of iron, and they could not withstand the blows
-of modern guns.</p>
-
-<p>Of guns for the whole fleet, we have, beside the one mentioned
-above, eighty-seven converted rifle guns worth retaining,
-but they are only of fair power. The other guns in the navy,
-2,577 in number, are, according to a late report of the Secretary
-of the Navy, “in no real sense suited to the needs of the
-present day.”</p>
-
-<p>Of torpedo-boats such as every other navy has, we have
-<i>none</i> nor have we any torpedo-boats, except the “Alarm.”</p>
-
-<p>Of the personnel, there are, all told, officers, seamen, apprentices
-and marines, 11,918.</p>
-
-<p>Of reserves, we have none but the merchant marine, and
-merchant sailors require considerable training to fit them for
-war purposes, and none of them are trained for such a purpose
-now.</p>
-
-<p>This force is to protect 10,000 miles of sea coast, the lake
-coast, the second largest merchant marine in the world, the
-amount of property is incalculable, and the interests of 55,000,000
-of people. Our country is rich and prosperous, and the treasury
-is fairly bursting with the money we have saved. Every year
-we put away in its vaults $100,000,000, for which we have no
-present use. Our resources in metal in the ore, and in everything
-connected with the material of ship building and gun
-building is almost beyond comparison with any other country.
-With one year’s surplus of revenue we could build a navy that
-would cause the most powerful nations to fear and respect us,
-and which would be the surest harbinger of peace. But our
-people are beginning in a slow way to realize that we need a
-reorganization of the navy, and Congress has appropriated the
-money for the building of four new vessels. These are to be
-of steel, and are for the purpose of protecting our shipping, our
-citizens abroad, and to police the seas in time of peace and to
-prey upon the enemy’s commerce in time of war. They will
-have high speed, about seventeen miles an hour, and (if Congress
-appropriates the money) they will have high-power modern rifle
-guns which will compare favorably with the guns of similar
-size of other nations. But they will not be <i>battle</i> ships, nor
-coast defense ships. Their sides will be about ten-sixteenths
-of an inch thick, and, although of steel, that thickness will not
-resist a shot from a high-powered rifle gun. These four vessels
-have been named the “Chicago,” “Boston,” “Atlanta” and
-“Dolphin.” The “Dolphin” is now afloat, having been
-launched Saturday, April 12th, at Chester, Pa., at the works of
-John Roach &amp; Co. The same firm is building the other three new
-vessels. They will all be finished one year from now. The guns
-for the armament are being constructed, some at the Washington
-Arsenal, some at Cold Springs, N. Y., and some at South
-Boston, Mass. They are all to be of steel, and this metal,
-which is used throughout in the construction of the ships and
-guns, if possible is to be manufactured in the United States,
-however, it may be necessary to send to England for the tubes
-for the larger sized guns. The building of these vessels and
-guns has given an impetus to the steel industry in our country
-and has been the means of giving employment and experience
-to our mechanics, which almost alone repays for the outlay in
-money.</p>
-
-<p>Building ships and guns in our own country, and of our own
-metal, and with our own workmen, increases our resources
-just so much, and adds just so much to our war strength; and
-adds just so much, too, to the interest the people of the country
-take in their defenses, in their navy. The employment
-affects thousands of families; not only are the ship builder, the
-gun constructor and the skilled mechanics employed by them
-benefited, but the miners, and all those engaged in transporting
-the ore and the coal from the mines to the workshops, and <i>their</i>
-families are benefited. We have grown to be a great manufacturing
-country, and the skill and ingenuity of our mechanics
-in the manufacture of some articles are recognized by
-all. Many of our manufactured articles are in use in every
-part of the world. We are unrivaled in our labor-saving machines,
-because it requires, to think out and invent the sewing
-machine, the agricultural machine, etc., etc., something which
-the mechanics of other countries do not possess, superior mental
-ability, due to our free institutions and general education.
-Here is a field for our mechanics, <i>the manufacture of all war
-material</i>. Why should not <i>we</i>, instead of Mr. Krupp, supply
-the world with guns? Why should not <i>we</i>, instead of Mr.
-Yarrow, of England, supply the world with torpedo-boats, etc.,
-etc.?</p>
-
-<p>We have supplied other nations with muskets; an American
-invented the gun which fires a hailstorm of 1,200 bullets
-per minute, and which bears his name, the Gatling gun; and
-our fellow countryman is supplying the world with revolving
-cannon, but <i>not</i> from the United States. Every one of our
-manufacturing industries has been assisted by the government
-by high tariff on similar articles of foreign manufacture. But
-that would not be the kind of assistance the manufacture of
-war material would need to boom it along. All that would
-be necessary for the government to do for that industry is to
-accept and adopt such articles for the use of our army and
-navy as are proved to be valuable, and to provide itself liberally
-with them, and cease doing as it did with the Hotchkiss
-gun, purchase one or two, and drive the inventor to a foreign
-land, where his invention is better appreciated.</p>
-
-<p>It is humiliating to every patriotic man and to every mechanic
-in our land, and a disgrace to the American people that
-we, a manufacturing country, a country full of mechanical
-genius, a country full of iron ore and of coal, a rich country,
-should go to other nations to buy steel plates to use as armor
-for our monitors, and steel for the tubes of our guns. That
-is what we have recently done, and the “Alert” is now bringing
-us some steel plates made in England. Why should not
-our manufacturers get the large profit there is in the manufacture
-of weapons of war? All they need is a little encouragement
-from the government, and orders would soon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_597" id="Page_597">[597]</a></span>
-come in from foreign governments, for it can not be doubted
-that our superior mechanics in a very short time would produce
-a superior style of weapon. There is at present no demand
-by our government for such articles, while in England
-there is <i>constant</i> demand for them; our mechanics are inexperienced,
-and governments which have a need for such material,
-and which <i>do</i> prepare for war in time of peace, purchase
-from those skilled and experienced in their make. Our government,
-by encouraging such an industry, would be but providing
-itself with the best of weapons, and would be putting the
-country in a secure state of defense.</p>
-
-<p>Germany, ten years ago, adopted a scheme for the improvement
-of her navy, which before that time was of little consequence,
-and part of the policy was, to build her own armor-clads,
-and everything pertaining to the navy in her own country,
-and she has so far succeeded that her navy, though not the
-largest, is one of the <i>best</i> in the world, and was all created by
-her own people, and at a small annual expenditure. Now, the
-private dock-yards in Germany that build some of the new
-ships of the navy are building war vessels for other countries.
-It is unnecessary to say that Germany’s wealth and natural
-resources are not nearly as great as our own.</p>
-
-<p>At the opening of Congress in 1872, the President, in his
-message, called attention to this subject in the following few
-but apt and unequivocal words:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>I can not too strongly urge upon you my conviction that every consideration
-of national safety, <i>economy</i>, and honor imperatively demands
-a thorough rehabilitation of our navy.</p>
-
-<p>With a full appreciation of the fact that compliance with the suggestions
-of the head of the Department and of the advisory board must
-involve a large expenditure of the public money, I earnestly recommend
-such appropriation as will accomplish an end which seems to me so desirable.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing can be more inconsistent with true public economy than
-withholding the means necessary to accomplish the object intended by
-the constitution to the national legislature. One of these objects, and
-one which is of paramount importance, is declared by our fundamental
-law to be the provision for the “common defense.” Surely nothing is
-more essential to the defense of the United States, and of <i>all</i> our people
-than the efficiency of our navy.</p>
-
-<p>We have for many years maintained with foreign governments the
-relations of honorable peace, and that such relations may be permanent
-is desired by every patriotic citizen of the republic.</p>
-
-<p>But if we heed the teachings of history we shall not forget that in the
-life of <i>every</i> nation emergencies may arise when a resort to arms can
-alone save it from dishonor.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>The Secretary of the Navy commences his annual report for
-the same year with this earnest appeal in behalf of the navy:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The condition of the navy imperatively demands the prompt and
-earnest attention of Congress. Unless some action be had in its behalf
-it must soon dwindle into insignificance. From such a state it would be
-difficult to revive it into efficiency without dangerous delay and <i>enormous
-expense</i>. Emergencies may at any moment arise which would
-render its aid indispensable to the protection of the lives and property
-of our citizens abroad and at home, and even to our existence as a nation.…
-The mercantile interests of our country
-have extended themselves over all quarters of the globe. Our citizens
-engaged in commerce with foreign nations look to the navy for the supervisory
-protection of their persons and property. Calls are made upon
-the Department to send vessels into different parts of the world, in order
-to prevent threatened aggression upon the rights of American citizens
-and shield them in time of civil commotion in foreign lands, from insult
-or personal indignity. It is to be deplored that in many such instances
-it has proved impossible to respond to these calls, from the want of a
-sufficient number of vessels.</p>
-
-<p>These things ought not to be. While the navy should not be large, it
-should <i>at all times</i> afford a nucleus for its enlargement upon an emergency.
-Its power of prompt and extended expansion should be established.
-It should be sufficiently powerful to assure the navigator that
-in whatsoever sea he shall sail his ship he is protected by the stars and
-stripes of his country.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>Notwithstanding such messages from the highest authority
-in our land, only <i>some</i> of the money necessary to build four
-new cruisers has been appropriated by Congress. Our people
-must instruct their representatives in Congress to provide them
-with the means to put them and their country in a secure state
-of defense, else that body, composed of many politicians and
-few statesmen, will never show that they have any other welfare
-at heart than their own reëlection, and the getting or retaining
-of their party in power.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="THE_COMING_SUMMER_MEETINGS_AT_CHAUTAUQUA">THE COMING SUMMER MEETINGS AT CHAUTAUQUA.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>The advance number of the <i>Assembly Herald</i> for 1884, already
-in the hands of many of our readers, contains a well
-arranged, though necessarily condensed, program of the exercises
-for July and August at this well known and increasingly
-popular summer resort. The tens of thousands who expect
-both pleasure and profit from spending part of the season
-there, will be glad to have some notice beforehand of the
-rich things in preparation for them. For our friends who have
-already acquaintance with the place and the persons who
-have brought it into such favorable notice, it is enough to say,
-there is, in the schedule before us, unmistakable evidence that
-the motto of those in the management of Chautauqua is still
-<i>Excelsior</i>. The attractions of the place itself have by manifold
-improvements been constantly increasing. Means have not
-been wanting, and their outlay has been generous—science
-and art, under skillful direction, have done much, never to mar
-the beauties of nature, but rather to unveil features of exquisite
-loveliness that were partially concealed. The grandeur of the
-noble forest trees that tower above the neat cottages is even
-more majestic since the occasional openings show them to better
-advantage, and afford glimpses of the cerulean vault, or
-floating clouds against which they seem to thrust their branches.
-The native flora, of great richness, has, whenever practicable,
-been protected, while many carefully tended exotics display
-their modest beauty or shed sweet fragrance on the air. The
-little patches of lawn are becoming more beautiful, and the
-larger one extending from the hotel Athenæum to the lake, is
-arranged with taste, and kept in fine condition. The hotel
-itself is very commodious, furnished and kept in the best style.
-From its spacious verandas there is a delightful view of the
-lake and the landscapes adjacent to it. There are accommodations
-for about five hundred guests, who at moderate cost
-can, if they will, enjoy all the conveniences, comforts and
-luxuries furnished at the best hotels in the large cities.</p>
-
-<p>The places for all public meetings, concerts and class lectures
-are in good order, and many interesting and valuable
-additions have been made to the museum, among which are
-mentioned a cast of the arch of Titus; several new statuettes,
-just received from the British Museum; also casts of the Siloam
-inscriptions, and of the Moabite stone. Much valuable
-information may be gathered, as well as a pleasant recreation
-enjoyed in the museum. The grounds and principal buildings
-are provided with electric lights, so that there is no groping
-around in the dark, as was the case at our first visits to “The
-Fair Point,” as the retreat was then called.</p>
-
-<p>But “Chautauqua” has a meaning far beyond what belongs
-to the place, charming as the site is, and beyond the material
-improvements that have been made. It is often, and not inaptly,
-spoken of as an “idea,” a thought or conception of a
-desired object, and the way to reach it. The thought, however
-vague at first, had life and power in it, took form, and was
-cherished till a new system was evolved—one that at first proposed
-more complete normal instruction and thorough preparation
-for Sunday-school work. But the <i>idea</i> soon so expanded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_598" id="Page_598">[598]</a></span>
-as to take in everything pertaining to the proper
-development and culture of human beings. From the first
-inception of this grand work that, in eleven years, has extended
-into every state in the Union, and influenced many
-kindred educational enterprises, there has been no standing
-still. The idea having thorough possession of the minds that
-entertained it, “progress” has been the watchword, and, fortunately,
-the management has been in such competent hands
-that the advance movements have always been in the right
-direction. The trustees and other business officers have approved
-themselves as wise counselors, and been liberal in
-their personal sacrifices of the time and means necessary to
-forward the enterprise, while the Superintendent of Instruction
-and President of the association have demonstrated to all
-their rare qualifications for the responsible positions they occupy.
-With faith in the enterprise, a worthy object in view, and the
-resolute purpose to accomplish it, all obstacles have been
-overcome, and a marvelous fertility of invention shown in the
-methods adopted. It is not too much to say that all the important
-measures proposed and adopted have been found both
-practicable and useful. Skilled architects have wrought in
-the Assembly, but their united efforts did not make it. Chautauqua,
-as it is to-day, confessedly far surpassing the most
-sanguine hopes of its founders, was never made. It was born
-and grew. It has vital elements; and whereunto it may yet
-grow, no one can tell. It is already, though in its youth,
-a university in fact, as well as by the charter obtained from the
-legislature. It employs some thirty or more able professors,
-selected because of their known ability and success as teachers
-in the several departments to which they are assigned.</p>
-
-<p>We take note of a few things in their order:</p>
-
-<p><i>The Teachers’ Retreat</i>, under the personal direction of some
-of the foremost educators of the age, will open July 12. It is
-specially for the benefit of secular teachers, and a large number
-of them are interested in it. The time thus spent in counsel
-and delightful social intercourse, without interfering with
-the needed rest, recreations and pleasures of the summer
-vacation, will lead to a higher appreciation of their work, with
-a knowledge of the best methods of accomplishing it, and
-make their return to the school room a delight.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Chautauqua School of Languages</i> includes Hebrew,
-Greek, Latin, French, German, Spanish and English. This
-school is not for undergraduates alone, as the instruction is
-given in a way to illustrate the best methods of teaching.
-Students, if prepared, may profitably pursue the study of several
-languages at the same time, but are not registered as beginning
-more than one. As all having experience in the matter
-know, much depends on starting right, and any one, of fair
-ability and a firm purpose, with the help and direction furnished
-at Chautauqua, can, in due time, become an accomplished
-and thorough linguist.</p>
-
-<p><i>The School of Theology</i>, J. H. Vincent, D.D., President, is to
-commence its first session July 12. It will be an attraction to many.
-The studies and topics for discussion, we see, are arranged not
-alone for beginners, but to allure ministers of experience to
-review first principles, and extend their acquaintance with
-truths that the wisest know but in part.</p>
-
-<p><i>The School of Elocution</i>—open from July 12th to the 25th—will
-be in charge of Prof. Cummock, a gentleman of culture,
-and thoroughly fitted for his position. Too many offer themselves
-to read and speak in public who know almost nothing
-of English phonation, and were never trained to pronounce
-the language distinctly and forcibly. If two-thirds of the
-average clergymen of the country, who are not wanting in
-ability, could be persuaded to seek, in their summer vacations,
-such instructions in voice culture and manner, as are now
-offered them, it would add much to their present efficiency,
-and make the Sabbath services a delight to their hearers.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Sunday-School Normal Department</i> retains its prominent
-place in the program, and the managers have made a
-wise selection of the persons to whom the work is committed.</p>
-
-<p><i>Chautauqua Music</i>, both instrumental and vocal, has always
-been of a high order, and a source of much pleasure to those
-in attendance. From the grand organ, chorus choir, Tennesseeans,
-skillful directors and distinguished soloists that are
-promised, we may expect special richness in that part of the
-feast of fat things.</p>
-
-<p>The lectures in the Amphitheater and Hall of Philosophy
-will be by men of acknowledged ability, equal to the best that
-have been on the platform before them. By such men to such
-audiences no second rate productions will be presented.</p>
-
-<p>Recreations are recognized as desirable, and provided for—such
-as will please all and injure none. Nothing innocent and
-elevating is forbidden. Those who enjoy good society, and the
-friendly intercourse of cultured people, find that at the Assembly
-in the grove thoroughly refining influences are prevalent,
-and seem never to tire of praising the resort.</p>
-
-<p>Although some imitations have been attempted, the
-original Chautauqua is unrivaled, the cheapest, most accessible,
-and for many reasons the most enjoyable summer resort
-in all the land. If you are a stranger, get the program as
-published in the <i>Assembly Herald</i>, study it, and in due time
-report in person on the ground. You will then know, and unless
-different from most well disposed persons, you will not
-need a second invitation to come.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="GOING_TO_EUROPE">GOING TO EUROPE.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>Stowed away among the cherished plans of most people is
-generally a European trip. Sometimes the plan is vague, to
-be sure. Sometimes the probabilities are that it will never in
-the world be carried out. However that may be, it is a good
-thing for which to plan. Learning something about the conditions
-and details of European traveling gives not a little of
-the relish of the actual trip, and a preparatory journey on paper
-does much to educate us to travel—as important a training,
-by the way, as traveling.</p>
-
-<p>The value of this practice was admirably illustrated last
-summer at Chautauqua by Dr. Vincent, in his introduction to
-the first tourist’s trip beyond the sea. He said:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>When I was a boy I took a trip to Europe without leaving home. I
-imagined myself traveling all over the continent of Europe, going to
-Egypt and Palestine. I cut out a lot of paper and gave it value as
-money, foreign money and American money, and every once in a while
-I would take it up and imagine it covering the expense of the trip. I
-would read a little, and imagine myself going almost everywhere. I said
-to myself: “If I can ever go to Europe I shall certainly go,” and I
-went.</p>
-
-<p>I have often said to myself, if I were a teacher, knowing the power
-of the imagination over children, I would take my school on a trip to
-Europe, and when they grew weary with the recitations and of the monotonous
-tasks or other routine of school life, I would say: “Now let
-us have a bit of fun, let us go to Europe.” I have thought of how much
-geography, history and architecture I could bring out on a trip to Europe!
-What demand there would be all the while for the knowledge of arithmetic!
-How many things I could teach a lot of youngsters in the average
-school room in the way of an imaginary trip to Europe that should
-last several weeks or months! And what an opportunity we have, what
-facilities we have for the furtherance of a scheme like this, in the photographs,
-the engravings and books of travel, and all sorts of things that
-abound everywhere, by which little people might go with you, and be
-glad all the while they went, and learn all the more because they were
-glad.</p>
-
-<p>And then how much more intelligent the traveler would be in his
-maturer years! Men and women who imagine themselves going to Europe
-become much more intelligent observers on a trip to Europe. It
-pays double value to them.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>Imaginary trips beyond the sea may teach two very important
-things: How to travel and how to observe. It is impossible
-for a novice to make a European trip with the ease with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_599" id="Page_599">[599]</a></span>
-which one would journey about the United States. One must
-encounter strange customs, trying climates, new languages,
-endless interesting sights. He will be on the verge of losing
-his baggage, dire calamity! he will have his trunk ransacked,
-he will be charged extra for over-weight, he will have to wait
-and fight and worry his way unless fortified by a knowledge of
-what he must go through with, and of how to act under all
-circumstances. He will miss much that he wants to see, and
-see much in which he is not particularly interested, unless his
-trip is thoroughly planned and he knows accurately what he is
-going to see and where to go to see it.</p>
-
-<p>To study up for a European trip begin with your pocket-book,
-and ask, “Can I afford it?” The voyage is of course the first
-item. The different lines which cross the Atlantic—no less
-than twelve in number—are very nearly uniform in their
-charges, in their accommodations, and in their provisions for
-the safety of their passengers. A first-class passage over and
-back may be put at $140, but as steerage passenger one may
-go for about $60. The expense of traveling in Europe varies
-with the caution, tastes and habits of the person. Supposing
-that you are willing to walk much, to go to second-class hotels,
-to ride in second or third-class carriages, and take very little
-luggage, you may make your trip for from $2 to $3 per day, and
-in that way, too, you have the advantage of seeing and hearing
-very much that the more expensive and, in consequence, more
-exclusive style of traveling denies. More than half of the unpleasantness
-of traveling second-class in Europe is in the disagreeable
-sound of the word “second-class.” On the Continent
-the associations of the third-class carriage are by no means
-unpleasant—nearly all students and many professional men
-travel in that way. It is, too, the only way in which to come in
-contact with the people and study their habits:</p>
-
-<p>First-class traveling may be estimated at about $7 per day in
-Great Britain, and $6 on the Continent. The items which must
-be added to the usual hotel expenses and car and carriage rates
-consist largely of fees to servants in the hotels and restaurants,
-and to the guards, porters and guides that seem to
-be essential to each traveler. It is said that many servants on
-the Continent receive no wages except the fees from travelers.
-It is not strange then that the result is that in order to receive
-any respectable attention one must pay often and liberally. A
-not inconsiderable part of the day’s expense is the little fee
-which is required at the gate of churches, castles, museums,
-parks, and where-not.</p>
-
-<p>It may be roughly estimated that a tour of three months
-through England, Scotland, France, Germany, Holland and
-Italy can be made for $650. Of course this is making no allowance
-for purchases, which latter, it is well to warn lovers of
-bric-a-brac, are a continual snare to pocket-books and incumbrance
-to luggage.</p>
-
-<p>If you can afford the trip, then pack your trunk. Apropos of
-this operation it is well to remember that much luggage is a
-continual annoyance and expense. In France you can carry
-but fifty-five pounds free; for all over that amount you must pay.
-On the railways of Germany, Holland, Italy and Switzerland
-no luggage, as a rule, is free. The truth is, you must submit
-to expense and trouble for every vestige over what you can
-carry in your hand. A sorry outlook for Americans, who are
-accustomed to the generous outfit which our capacious “Saratogas”
-allow. The useful little “steamer trunks,” about
-twenty-five inches in length, eighteen in width and fourteen
-deep, hold considerable property if they be well packed, and
-one can easily arrange to leave all the ocean paraphernalia,
-including the steamer chairs—a <i>sine qua non</i> to ocean travel,
-by the way—at the port of landing, until their return. Perhaps
-the best plan is to take only necessary clothing—very little finery
-and all the small conveniences which are requisite for comfortable
-living at home. A very useful and formerly essential
-part of your outfit will be your passport. Although not now
-absolutely necessary, except in Russia and Portugal, it is a
-very convenient document, as it secures many privileges to its
-possessor. It does seem strange to be obliged to carry a paper
-testifying that you are yourself but in the masses of humanity
-which throng Europe it is not surprising that it is
-sometimes necessary to be identified. In the United States
-the Secretary of State has the power of granting passports. In
-order to procure one an affidavit of citizenship, with papers of
-naturalization, if a naturalized citizen, must be forwarded.
-This must be accompanied by the affidavit of a witness, and
-an oath of allegiance to the United States, all these duly made
-and sworn before a justice of the peace. With these go a description
-of your person, in which your age is given, your
-height, the color of your eyes and hair, the size of your nose
-and mouth, the length of your chin, your complexion and the
-shape of face.</p>
-
-<p>On reaching Europe it will be necessary to secure the indorsement,
-or <i>visa</i>, as it is called, of the American minister, or
-consul, and afterward of the minister of the country to be visited.
-The last item of business to worry you before you leave
-is to put your funds into a shape in which you will have no
-trouble. The “letter of credit” is undoubtedly the favorite
-method, as by it any amount may be drawn at almost any place
-a tourist will visit. Several banking houses of New York
-furnish them. Napoleons are current in all parts of the Continent,
-and English sovereigns pass in Belgium, Holland and
-Germany. <i>Circular notes</i> of from £10 to £20 and upward may
-be obtained and are available throughout Europe.</p>
-
-<p>These matters arranged, there is a much more important one
-to occupy your attention—to plan your trip. The indefinite
-purpose of tourists, their hap hazard efforts to see everything,
-involves them too often in a jumble of misconnections, lost
-days, out-of-the-way trips, and unnecessary expense, where a
-careful arrangement of their plan beforehand would have
-saved them time, trouble and money. Plan your trip. If you
-can go for but six weeks or three months, do not try to see all
-Europe and part of Asia in that time. Be content to “do”
-thoroughly a smaller territory, and be assured that you will be
-the gainer. It is well to invest in a guide-book—a stout, latest
-edition, reliable guide-book—Harper’s or Appleton’s is best—and
-select your trip. Decide exactly where you want to go,
-and what you want to see. If you are interested in paintings,
-prepare an outline of the European schools of painting, with
-the examples of each that will be found on your route.
-Put down on your chart the subjects of these pictures, and an
-outline history of the artists. Thus equipped you can study
-and enjoy the work without wasting time in learning historical
-details. It is wise to know something of the history of each
-locality which you visit, to be familiar with the palaces, cathedrals
-and museums of the cities, and the government, customs
-and employments of the people. Nor is it at all difficult to
-learn these things. Books of travels, delightful magazine papers,
-newspaper letters teem with information which can all
-be utilized on an imaginary European trip. It would be wiser
-if many people who spend much time in acquiring a slight
-smattering of French, German and Italian in order to make
-their way understandingly on the Continent would let the language
-go and study the countries, their cities and their people.
-Better, because English is spoken at all the leading European
-hotels and by most guides, and at nearly all points interpreters
-may be found to assist in making any necessary arrangements.
-Of course the greatest amount of good can only be gained by one
-commanding the languages, but where there must be a choice
-between a smattering of them and general information on
-what one is about to see, by all means choose the latter.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<p>Through the whole course of life it is right to hold, and to
-have held in a preëminent degree, the kindest language toward
-our parents, because there is the heaviest punishment for light
-and winged words; for Nemesis, the messenger of Justice, has
-been appointed to look after all men in such matters.—<i>Plato.</i></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_600" id="Page_600">[600]</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="C_L_S_C_WORK">C. L. S. C. WORK.</h2>
-
-<p class="center">By Rev. J. H. VINCENT, D. D., <span class="smcap">Superintendent of Instruction</span>.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>July is one of the C. L. S. C. vacation months.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>“Memorial Day,” Sunday, July 13. Read Paul’s wonderful
-words about “Charity” in 1st Corinthians, xiii.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Salutations—sincere and abundant—to all the members of
-the Circle who have opportunity this month of meeting in the
-green woods or by the lake-side at one of the “Summer Assemblies.”
-Hold “Round-Tables.” Talk and plan, and then
-report the new things you think of. If you can not go to any
-of the great Assemblies, hold a comfortable little “C. L. S. C.
-Grove-Rest” or “Go-to-the-Grove” picnic in your own neighborhood.
-One such humble gathering may be the seed of a
-grand Assembly one of these days.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>A member of the class of ’87 asks concerning the mountain
-known as Quarantania. This is a high bluff on the west of the
-Jordan, near the north end of the Dead Sea, and believed to
-be the Mountain of Temptation.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>“Hand Book of Abbreviations and Contractions, current, classical
-and mediæval; also of secret, benevolent, and other organizations,
-legal works of the United States and Great Britain, and of the Railroads
-of the American Continent.” By the Rt. Rev. Samuel Fallows,
-A.M., D.D. Chicago: The Standard Book Company.</p>
-
-<p>A <i>multum in parvo</i> for the general reader. The title fully
-unfolds the character of the volume.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>“A Complete Hand Book of Synonyms and Antonyms, or synonyms
-and words of opposite meaning. With an appendix.” By the Rt. Rev.
-Samuel Fallows, A.M., D.D. Chicago: The Standard Book Company.</p>
-
-<p>This compact, neatly printed, well-bound volume is one of
-the most valuable of the “Standard Hand-Book Series,” edited
-by Bishop Fallows, of Chicago. For the English reader
-or writer desiring carefully to discriminate between words and
-phrases, anxious to use language most appropriately, we know
-of no single volume equaling this hand-book for utility and
-general adaptation to his needs.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>To a member of the circle who is really a very large-hearted
-and noble man, as I have since found him, but who is “decidedly
-opposed to teaching religious truths in schools of any
-kind,” and who objects to being required to read the “Philosophy
-of the Plan of Salvation,” I have made the following
-reply, which I insert here, as it may meet similar cases:</p>
-
-<p><i>My Dear Sir</i>:—Your letter of December 27 is before me.
-We have provided a college outlook, a college outlook which
-touches every department in the realm of culture. We give a
-bird’s eye view of this vast world which appeals to every faculty
-of the soul. We touch the physical man, the physical world
-in which he lives, above among stars, below among stones,
-about among plants and animals. We study history, the history
-of the earth as revealed in science, the history of man as
-unfolded in the traditions and records of the race. We study
-political and social economy. We also study somewhat (to a
-very limited degree) the phenomena and laws of man’s moral
-and spiritual being. <i>It would be a strange course of study that
-ignored faculties as real, as universal, and as persistent in their
-operations as the religious faculties.</i> We avoid scrupulously
-everything that tends to the promotion of sectarianism in
-thought or spirit, but we believe in that profound philosophy,
-which all leading educators of life have recognized, that “the
-fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” A culture of muscle
-alone is a one-sided culture. The culture of the reason alone
-is equally one-sided. A culture of memory alone is folly. The
-true culture is a culture of body, mind and heart, the soul
-in its entirety, with its many-sided relations to the truths
-which belong to those relations: God, neighbor, home, life,
-nation, time, eternity. The C. L. S. C. would indeed be a
-most narrow and bigoted thing if it were to refuse attention to
-the religious world. Now concerning Dr. Walker’s work on
-“The Plan of Salvation,” the name is, I confess, quite misleading.
-It is a book written forty years ago, by one of the
-ablest intellects of America. No American religious book has
-had a wider circulation. It is profoundly philosophical, and
-it gives a most original view of the old Jewish history; and a
-man’s education who calls himself an infidel is incomplete
-without reading that book. There is not the slightest tinge of
-sectarianism about it. It is a vigorous classic which every
-student of the English tongue should read. Hundreds of our
-readers, who are not members of any evangelical church, and
-who are skeptical in their tendency, have read the book with
-great delight, and though prejudiced somewhat against the
-title, have given words of testimony to its wonderful power as
-a literary production, to say nothing about the vigor of its arguments.
-You say you “find sermons in stones, and <i>good in
-everything</i>.” Can you not, <i>if you find good in everything, find
-good in a philosophical book written by a mighty intellect, acknowledged
-by the scholars of the past forty years</i>? “The
-Plan of Salvation” is not a discussion of the way a soul is
-to be saved. It is a discussion of the philosophy underlying
-the biblical history. You can not afford not to read it, even if
-you decline to prosecute our course of study. I am a little
-surprised that a broad man should be “decidedly opposed to
-teaching religious truths in schools of any kind.” What
-would a culture be that ignored the religious? One of the
-strongest arguments that I ever read in favor of the Bible as
-a text-book for study, was written by Huxley, who pleaded
-fervently for it as <i>a book for study in every secular school</i>. I
-do not “compel” you to read Walker’s book; I do not say you
-<span class="smcapuc">MUST</span> buy the book. You may read any book on any phase of
-the question, Roman or Protestant, according to the tendency
-of your faith. <i>Something</i> on that line you must read to complete
-our broad survey.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="THE_C_L_S_C_COURSE_FOR_1884-85">THE C. L. S. C. COURSE FOR 1884-’85.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>Beginner’s Hand Book in Chemistry, Prof. Appleton.</p>
-
-<p>Scientific Readings in <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span>: “The Circle of
-the Sciences;” “Huxley on Science;” “Home Studies in
-Chemistry,” by Prof. J. T. Edwards; “Easy Lessons in Animal
-Biology,” Dr. J. H. Wythe; “The Temperance Teachings
-of Science;” “Studies in Kitchen Science and Art.”</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Barnes’s “Brief History of Greece.”<a name="FNanchor_1a" id="FNanchor_1a"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>
-
-<p>“Preparatory Greek Course in English;”<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> Wilkinson.</p>
-
-<p>“College Greek Course in English;” Wilkinson.</p>
-
-<p>Chautauqua Text-Book No. 5, “Greek History;”<a name="FNanchor_1b" id="FNanchor_1b"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> Vincent.</p>
-
-<p>“Cyrus and Alexander;” Abbott.</p>
-
-<p>Historical Readings in <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span>: “Ancient Life
-in Greece;” “Greek Mythology.”</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>“The Art of Speech,” volume one; Dr. L. T. Townsend.</p>
-
-<p>General Readings in <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span>: “Talks About
-Good English.”</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>“The Character of Jesus;” Horace Bushnell.</p>
-
-<p>“How to Help the Poor;” Mrs. James T. Field.</p>
-
-<p>“History of the Reformation;” Bishop J. F. Hurst.</p>
-
-<p>Sunday Readings in <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span>.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Readings in <i>Our Alma Mater</i>:<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> “Lessons in Every-Day
-Speech,” Prof. W. D. MacClintock; “Lessons in Household
-Decoration,” Miss Susan Hayes Ward; “Lessons in Self-Discipline—Memory,
-Thinking, Selection of Books,” etc.
-Official Communications to Members.<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a></p>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1a"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Not to be read by the classes of ’85, ’86 and ’87.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Not to be read by the classes of ’85 and ’86.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> The <i>Alma Mater</i> is sent free to all members of the C. L. S. C. who are recorded
-at Plainfield, N. J., and whose annual fee is paid.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> To recorded members several other valuable documents are forwarded without
-additional expense.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_601" id="Page_601">[601]</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="LOCAL_CIRCLES">LOCAL CIRCLES.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>If we change our order this month and begin the gossip
-from our letters with the “University Circle,” of <b>San José,
-Cal.</b>, it is only because we wish to call particular attention to
-the thrifty growth of our work on the Pacific coast. Mrs.
-Fields, the competent secretary of that branch, sends us this
-pleasant report of the San José work: “Colleges and universities
-are no longer confined to the east. They spring up like
-Jonah’s gourd with the westward moving star of empire, and
-are only checked by the setting of that star in the great western
-ocean. California boasts of its grand State University at
-Berkeley, which she thinks rivals Harvard and Ann Arbor,
-and we of San José point to our university with its commodious
-buildings, its noble president, Dr. C. C. Stratton (widely known
-also as president of our Pacific Coast C. L. S. C.), its excellent
-faculty, and hundreds of earnest students, and feel that it is
-an institution of which any city or state might well be proud.
-In the shadow of this university there very naturally has arisen
-a Chautauqua circle. There are no unfriendly comparisons
-and inhospitable exclusiveness, no neighborhood jealousies or
-rivalries between ‘the University of the Pacific’ and that little
-branch of the great ‘People’s University,’ known as the
-‘University Circle.’ Two of the oldest and most honored professors
-in the former institution, together with all the ladies of
-the faculty, are members of the circle. They freely give
-their time and genial presence to the semi-monthly meetings
-of the C. L. S. C. whenever it is possible for them to do so,
-and by their wide range of knowledge add greatly to the interest
-and profit of these occasions. The rest of the members
-of the University Circle are neighbors and friends who are
-greatly interested in the reading, and who believe in the value
-of association and mutual helpfulness. They are mostly middle
-aged people, though there is a sprinkling of gray hairs on
-some brows, and here and there is a bright young face.
-They count twenty when all told, and usually have a good
-representation present. The meetings are held in the different
-homes, so that to each falls his allotment of these hospitable
-pleasures. One evening there was ‘a chiel amang ’em takin’
-notes,’ who felt sure that this University Circle ought to let its
-light shine for the benefit of the whole Chautauqua family,
-and these notes are herewith presented: ‘Eighteen Chautauquans
-present in the cheerful double parlors of Mrs. G. A
-gentle-faced member of the Society of Friends presided, and
-illumined the circle with her beaming smile and her bright,
-suggestive leadership. The members recited from slips of
-paper, each naming a theme numbered in the order of their
-occurrence in the lesson, and distributed previously among
-the class. Each person, while studying the whole lesson carefully,
-had made special preparation on his or her own topic.
-This brought a great deal of careful research and fresh thought
-to bear on the lesson, and every one seemed thoroughly prepared,
-from the tall, scholarly Prof. M., with his slight, professional
-stoop, arising from a long habit of digging among
-Greek roots, down to the bright young girl who had brought
-her fine new classical atlas and was ready to point out all
-localities and routes of travel named in the lesson. The various
-themes were taken up in order, eliciting considerable discussion,
-bits of comment and remark, with ever and anon a
-seed-thought of spiritual application from the gentle Quakeress.
-If <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span> were not crowded with good things this
-report might be made of indefinite length, but it shall be
-brought to a speedy close. It needs not to be added that the
-onlooker went away saying: How beautiful, how rational, how
-Christian a method of spending an evening! Who can estimate
-the power for good which such a circle exerts upon its
-members and upon the community which is so fortunate as to
-possess it!’”</p>
-
-<p>An interesting plan has just been carried out by the <b>Montreal,
-Canada</b>, circle. They have held an open meeting, where
-a <i>resumé</i> of the winter’s work was given by the president, and
-the objects of the society were explained for the benefit of outsiders.
-An admirable plan, we should think it would prove.
-A <i>resumé</i> of one winter’s work in the C. L. S. C. must impress
-a candid person of the genuine merit in the scheme, and necessarily
-would enlarge the borders of the Circle’s influence.
-They do things well in Canada. That famous Toronto Central
-Circle impresses this truth upon us afresh each time
-we receive a report from them. This month they send an
-admirable program of their regular monthly meeting, at
-which, in addition to a lecture by Prof. Hutton, of University
-College, on “Phases of Roman Life and Literature with some
-Modern Analogies,” reports from local circles were called
-for, a Round-Table conference on the work was held, and a
-half hour was spent in singing Chautauqua songs, every one
-who could sing being specially invited to come and join.</p>
-
-<p>The C. L. S. C. movement has reached the beautiful village
-of <b>Strondwater</b>, near Portland, <b>Maine</b>, where they have a small
-but enthusiastic circle of seven members. Their weekly meetings
-are pleasant and profitable, and they enjoy to the utmost
-their studies in Greek and Roman History and Literature. From
-the neighboring state of New Hampshire is reported the “Parker’s
-Falls Circle” of <b>Newmarket</b>, another “little pentagon of
-ladies” holding occasional meetings, conducted on the conversational
-plan. They write that they are so situated that
-they can not well have regular meetings, but all enjoy the
-course, and hold fast to the motto, “Do not be discouraged.”</p>
-
-<p>In October of 1883 the “Longfellow Circle” was organized
-at <b>North Cambridge, Mass.</b> From their report we find that
-they have over twenty members, whose exercises are varied
-to avoid monotony. A committee of three arrange a program
-for each month, which is printed by hectograph and circulated
-among the members. They have observed the memorial days
-of Longfellow, Shakspere and Addison, and find their meetings
-very interesting.</p>
-
-<p>At <b>West Newton, Mass.</b>, where there is a flourishing circle
-of forty who show a great deal of interest and pride in the work,
-Shakspere’s day was observed with a very interesting program,
-in which we are pleased to notice that tableaux took a prominent
-part. This circle sends us word that this is their first
-year’s experience with a local circle, but that they have enjoyed
-it so much that they will certainly continue it again another
-winter.</p>
-
-<p>From <b>Chelsea, Mass.</b>, is a suggestive account of the origin
-of their circle: “In 1880 three members of one family heard
-of the C. L. S. C. and immediately seized the idea and
-joined the class of 1884. In the fall of 1882 they discovered
-that an elderly lady of their church had been to Chautauqua
-that year, and was also an ’84 member, full of enthusiasm.
-In 1883 three of their group enjoyed Framingham from beginning
-to end, while the fourth spent the season again at
-Chautauqua. Result—in October, 1883, was organized the
-‘Mt. Bellingham Local Circle,’ with fourteen live members,
-among whom are the four irrepressibles, of ’85, while the rest
-are proud of belonging to the ‘Pansy Class.’ We have just
-become acquainted with a sister circle of some ten members
-connected with the Central Congregational Church, and have
-enjoyed an evening together. We meet on the first Monday
-and third Wednesday of each month, while the ‘Pansy Circle’
-meets fortnightly on Monday evening. This gives us a chance
-to make visits without interfering with the regular work of
-either circle.”</p>
-
-<p>At <b>Shirley, Mass.</b>, a circle was organized in December, 1883,
-with a membership of seven. Much interest is felt, and the
-meetings are thoroughly enjoyed.</p>
-
-<p>From historic <b>Plymouth, Mass.</b>, the secretary of the “Plymouth
-Rock Circle” writes: “Having been very quiet and
-studious the past winter, and not having increased in numbers,
-we thought it best to invite some of our friends to a
-Chautauqua supper. Accordingly, on the evening of May 12<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_602" id="Page_602">[602]</a></span>
-quite a goodly number entered the prettily decorated Grand
-Army Hall, and were soon seated at the well filled tables.
-The supper seemed to be enjoyed, also the program which followed.
-Some of our guests were so well pleased that they
-think of becoming members of the class of ’88.”</p>
-
-<p>The tide of Chautauqua enthusiasm reached <b>Brighton, Mass.</b>,
-last fall, and on October 8, 1883, a local circle was organized.
-It was called the “Union Circle of Brighton and Allston,” as
-the members come from both places. At the meetings of the
-circle they review the readings of the intervening two weeks,
-and for that purpose questions are prepared on the different
-subjects by the members. The circle is composed of eleven
-members, one of whom is vice president of the class of ’87 of
-the New England Branch of the C. L. S. C.</p>
-
-<p>At <b>Lawrence, Mass.</b>, the circle is doing excellent work. Prof.
-Richards gave them three lectures in November, and Rev. W.
-F. Crofts another January 21. The Round-Tables have been
-well attended and thoroughly appreciated. The circle laments
-the loss of one of their members, Mrs. C. E. Daniels, a devoted
-Christian and an enthusiastic worker in the C. L. S. C., who
-sailed with her son on the ill-fated “City of Columbus.” Her
-place can not be easily filled, and her sad fate has cast a gloom
-over a large circle of relatives and friends.</p>
-
-<p>From <b>Gloucester, Mass.</b>, a member writes: “We are still
-alive as a circle and at work. We feel that the true C. L. S. C.
-spirit is here. We meet once a month and study unitedly sections
-of the month’s readings. We have found this year’s
-course more in accordance with our need than any previous
-year’s. We number not quite a dozen regular members, all of
-whom expect to forward their memoranda by July 1.”</p>
-
-<p>The “Vincent Circle,” of <b>Troy, N. Y.</b>, remembered the bard
-of Avon’s day. Each member of the large circle received the
-neatly printed program with this stirring call to duty attached:
-“Don’t fail to attend this extra meeting. Come with true
-Shaksperean enthusiasm. Have a half score of quotations on
-tongue’s end. Bring a friend with you, and ‘Chautauqua
-Songs.’ Invite members of other circles.”</p>
-
-<p>A report comes from <b>Brocton, N. Y.</b>, one of Chautauqua’s
-neighbors, of the really remarkable work going on there: “In
-our <i>sixth</i> year of reading in the C. L. S. C. we number twenty-five
-members. We have kept up our weekly gatherings in
-class through the winter with a good degree of interest, feeling
-that there is an influence of power in the work, and its surroundings,
-which lifts us above the common level of life into
-a purer and nobler atmosphere. The graduates of 1882 are
-formed into a class of the ‘Hall in the Grove,’ and have most of
-the winter been reading Blackburn’s ‘Church History.’ We are
-all hoping to live to celebrate the Founder’s Day.”</p>
-
-<p>A very enjoyable social reunion was recently held by the
-circle at <b>Syracuse, N. Y.</b> From the newspaper report we learn
-that there were about one hundred and fifty past and present
-members of the C. L. S. C. there. The Syracuse professors of
-the public schools and university have shown great kindness
-to this circle. The principal of one of the schools is at present
-president of the circle. Through the kindness of the Board of
-Education one of the school buildings was thrown open to the
-club for their reunion. We notice on the program of exercises
-carried out, a humorous poem by Mrs. Frank Beard, and an
-address from Mr. W. A. Duncan on “The Chautauqua Idea,”
-as well as several addresses by well known Syracuse educators.</p>
-
-<p><b>Prattsburgh, N. Y.</b>, has a circle but one year younger than
-that of Brocton. They write: “Our local circle organized
-October 1, 1883, for its fifth year’s work, with eighteen regular
-members, an increase over former years. We have representatives
-in each of the six classes; one graduate of ’82 and two
-of ’83 still remaining true to the local circle. Our meetings
-are held weekly at the homes of the members, and though in
-a measure informal, we find them both interesting and
-profitable.”</p>
-
-<p>In the college town of <b>Ithaca, N. Y.</b>, a circle has, of course,
-splendid opportunities of getting assistance from Cornell University,
-opportunities which the large circle of forty there improves.
-This society spent a very interesting evening with
-Shakspere—the first memorial day they have had the pleasure
-of celebrating.</p>
-
-<p>The <b>Oswego</b> and <b>Scriba, N. Y.</b>, circles joined in a reunion in
-the spring, at which they carried out a fine program, and were
-served afterward with a sumptuous repast. From <b>Fulton, N. Y.</b>,
-comes a very enthusiastic report: “The ‘Lawrence’ C. L. S.
-C. of this village is a flourishing and enthusiastic circle, numbering
-about forty regular members, and nearly as many honorary
-members. It was organized in October 1883, and was
-the outgrowth of a small circle of eight which had been formed
-the year previous. During 1883 these classes met separately,
-as two distinct circles, but at the commencement of the present
-year they consolidated, and now form a large class of
-earnest, interested students. We have observed the memorial
-days, giving a short sketch of the individual and extracts from
-his writings, interspersed with music. In March we had the
-rare treat of listening to a lecture by Dr. Vincent, he being
-one of the lecturers of our village ‘Popular Lecture Course.’
-After the lecture the Chautauquans gave him a reception, and
-all had the pleasure of being personally introduced to him. He
-gave us an inspiring talk upon the theme of which he never
-tires, and intensified our love for this noble course, and increased
-our desire to do more and better work, feeling that
-though it may be superficial in comparison to a regular college
-course, it is elevating in its influence and character, and enables
-those of us who have left youth and school days far back
-in the past, to feel that we are not retrograding, but at least can
-be within hailing distance of those who are fresh and thorough
-in the same subjects. We have retained nearly every one of our
-original members, and are constantly gaining new ones. Already
-can we see the influence of the C. L. S. C. work in our
-thriving village in the increase of literary societies, and a
-growing desire for a more solid class of reading. We feel that
-the Chautauqua Idea is of heavenly birth, and have faith that
-each circle is a link in a chain that will encircle the earth.”</p>
-
-<p>The “Tremont Social Circle,” of <b>New York City</b>, has been in
-existence only since December, but their membership is large,
-and their associations have been very pleasant. They celebrated
-both Longfellow’s and Shakspere’s days; the latter
-with tableaux, with the admirable supplement of a brief synopsis
-of the play, from which the subjects were taken, before each
-piece.</p>
-
-<p>The “Spare Moment Circle” is reported this month from
-<b>New York City</b>. They are finding much profit in their readings.
-There seems to be little union work among the New
-York circles. One member writes: “We hear there is but one
-other circle existing in New York City. There must be a number
-of members reading alone, who would be pleased to join a
-local circle, and who would, no doubt, be desirable members.
-Would you kindly notice in <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span> as early as
-convenient that there is a circle connected with the Central M.
-E. Church, 7th Avenue and 14th Street, New York City?” There
-are several New York circles and several “lone readers.” An
-effort should be made by some one to hold a general reunion
-at which an organization could be effected and plans laid
-for occasional joint meetings. Such organizations are in successful
-operation in several cities where there are a number of
-circles.</p>
-
-<p>New circles have been reported from <b>West Philadelphia</b> and
-<b>Sugar Grove, Pa.</b> Also at <b>Chester, Pa.</b>, there is a thriving circle
-of between forty and fifty members. The circle is divided
-into sub-circles, meeting weekly, with a reunion of the
-entire circle monthly. At the weekly meetings a regular
-teacher leads in the lesson, and the different members have
-essays on subjects bearing on the readings. At the monthly
-meetings each member contributes ten written questions on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_603" id="Page_603">[603]</a></span>
-the readings of the previous month, which are asked promiscuously
-by the president. Generally there is also a lecture
-and music by outside talent, and the circle has met with kindest
-encouragement from all outsiders. They celebrated Longfellow
-and Shakspere days, each in turn.</p>
-
-<p>In the “Pansy Circle,” at <b>Frankford, Philadelphia</b>, they have
-wisely made practical Mr. Blaikie’s excellent hints on getting
-strong, and spend the latter part of each evening in dumb-bell
-drill and other gymnastic exercises. This circle was formed last
-fall, and all told numbers thirty-five members, active and
-local.</p>
-
-<p>The circle at <b>Bradford, Pa.</b>, is still progressing. A few of
-their members have left the town, but nothing discouraged the
-rest are keeping up their work.</p>
-
-<p>April 17th the Alumni Association of <b>Pittsburgh, Pa.</b>, held
-their annual meeting. One of the features of the evening was
-a paper on “The C. L. S. C.,” by a prominent lady member.
-A general survey of the aims and methods of the organization
-was given, and a glance taken at the home work. The writer
-stated that: “Pittsburgh has the honor of being in the advance
-in adopting the new departure, the ‘Central Circle’ having
-been projected at Chautauqua but a few days after the organization
-of the parent circle. At the first few meetings held,
-more than three hundred members were enrolled. The ‘Central
-Circle’ has ever since maintained more or less healthy existence.
-It has proved of great service in providing a home
-for such Chautauquans as were not able to attend any of the
-local circles. It has also by its regular monthly meetings
-brought into contact members of the different local circles,
-thus making them mutually helpful. Around this original
-‘Central Circle’ have grown up not a few hopeful daughters,
-both in Pittsburgh and Allegheny, of which the mother organization
-has just cause to be proud. Lawrenceville boasts one
-of the most efficient local circles to be found anywhere. ‘South
-Side Circle’ is not only prosecuting the regular course with
-vigor, but has recently ambitiously attached a school of languages.
-The members are tugging away at Latin roots. The
-‘Emerson,’ ‘Woodlawn’ and ‘Vincent’ circles, in Allegheny, are
-moving steadily forward. The ‘Allegheny Circle’ of ’87 seems
-to be worthy of special mention. It is composed of twenty
-earnest, enthusiastic members, who intend to graduate—ladies
-and gentlemen in about equal numbers, representing occupations
-as various, probably, as their number will permit. The
-‘Mt. Washington Circle’ has twenty-one names enrolled at
-Plainfield—seven gentlemen and fourteen ladies, residents of
-three different wards, and representing five religious denominations.
-One feature of membership, of which we feel somewhat
-proud, in which I fear we are alone among the circles
-of these cities, is that we have one member who, if permitted
-to finish the course, will add another to the only too small list
-of graduates under twenty years of age.” The “Allegheny
-Circle” of ’87, of which the writer speaks, often favors us with
-programs and interesting reports. One of the latest was of
-their evening with France.</p>
-
-<p><b>Washington, D. C.</b>, gives us three breezy reports this month.
-A member from the “Foundry M. E. Church Circle,” organized
-in 1882, writes: “The four Chautauqua circles of this city
-have been doing excellent work, and their prospect for the
-future grows brighter and brighter as the Chautauqua Idea of
-self education becomes better known to the people. During
-the existence of our societies Dr. J. H. Vincent has paid us a
-number of visits, each time preaching and lecturing to large
-congregations in Foundry Church. His lectures and sermons
-never fail to exert a good influence, for it is a noticeable fact
-that each time we are honored with his presence our circles
-have the greatest increase in membership. We trust he can
-find it convenient to be with us more frequently in the future.
-The ‘Foundry’ C. L. S. C. is the largest in the city. The
-officers of the circle constitute a board of instructors; at
-the meetings each instructor takes charge of but one topic.
-If there remain other subjects of discussion they are distributed
-among individual members so that our lessons are always
-very satisfactorily discussed. After the recitations we have
-a literary exercise, consisting of readings, essays, recitations,
-debates, etc. We always take pleasure in observing each memorial
-day with an appropriate program. The C. L. S. C. of
-this city is yet only in its infancy, but as its members and
-friends become more enthusiastic for its success we hope to accomplish
-much for it in the near future.” The second comes
-from the “Pansy Circle,” of whom we have never before had
-the pleasure of hearing, and opens with an excellent plan:
-“In addition to our weekly meetings, where we discuss the
-subjects for the week’s reading, we have a monthly gathering.
-We began work late in the year, so that we have had but three
-such. At the first, Professor O. T. Mason, of Columbia University,
-gave us a lecture-talk on Vegetable Biology, which
-was delightful to all. The second entertainment was a lecture
-by Professor Cleveland Abbe, the scientist of the Signal Bureau,
-and he selected the topic ‘Thunder Storms, and the few
-things we know about them.’ He concluded an hour’s talk
-with a suggestion, which he said we should hear more of later.
-It was to this effect: The Signal Office needed many observers—those
-who were able to understand and appreciate
-this work—and they had proposed to have one or more in every
-county in the States. He had thought it a good idea for
-the Chautauquans to be invited to do such work in connection
-with their studies. The purpose expressed gave our little
-‘Pansy Circle,’ although composed of ladies, considerable
-pleasure, and you may hear more of this, if we do. We
-spent our last monthly meeting celebrating Shakspere’s day,
-members of the circle reading selections from the ‘Merchant
-of Venice,’ and giving us all great enjoyment. Closed the
-evening with general conversation about the great dramatist.”</p>
-
-<p>The “Meridian” Chautauqua Circle, of <b>Washington, D. C.</b>,
-is now in its second year, throughout which period the interest
-has been great, notwithstanding the smallness of the circle;
-there being nine active and three local members. At the last
-weekly meeting was held the Shaksperean celebration. The
-exercises consisted, in part, of a brief sketch of his life and
-works, the question of their authenticity, citations of wit and
-wisdom, an argument relative to the sanity of Hamlet, together
-with selections from his plays. Among the decorations were
-sketches of his birthplace, the desk at which he studied “Little
-Latine and less Greeke,” his seal, his epitaph, and a portrait
-of the author. After the literary exercises a supper was
-served.</p>
-
-<p>At <b>Sudlersville, Md.</b>, there is a pleasant circle of two, which
-sends word that “Having for the first time observed information
-in the March number of <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span> encouraging
-the report of two as a local circle, we, the ‘Eureka Circle,’ take
-great pleasure in reporting with the multitude of others.”</p>
-
-<p><b>Snow Hill, Md.</b>, claims to have the finest C. L. S. C. on the
-Peninsula. “Of our twenty members one is a clergyman, two
-are lawyers, and six are school teachers. The study of Biology
-was facilitated by the use of a splendid microscope of 600 diameter
-power. We have a regular organization, a board of
-officers, and after the usual preliminaries of a formal assembly,
-the program. Three readers, one in each book, are
-appointed, a ‘commentator’ listens to each, then epitomizes the
-matter, and comments upon the manner. An examiner has
-been previously appointed in each study, whose business it is
-to prepare five written questions; these are thrown together
-and drawn by the members, who answer whatever falls to
-their lot.”</p>
-
-<p>The “Bryant” C. L. S. C., of <b>Toledo, Ohio</b>, is a flourishing
-circle of about twenty-five members, part of whom are “regular”
-and part “local.” A lively interest has been manifested,
-and many warm discussions held concerning some of the characters
-studied about. Addison’s day was celebrated in a very
-quiet manner, at a regular meeting of the circle.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_604" id="Page_604">[604]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The C. L. S. C. of the Third Presbyterian Church of <b>Cincinnati,
-Ohio</b>, had an unusually pleasant meeting on April 23.
-Although they have been organized for nearly two years, they
-have never before celebrated a Memorial Day. We trust their
-pleasant experience will lead to more frequent “special occasions”
-in the future.</p>
-
-<p>The celebrations of Shakspere’s and Addison’s days were
-combined at <b>Springfield, Ohio</b>, and a very successful meeting
-was the result. This circle was organized in 1878, and the
-class of ’82 are happy to read the “White Seal Course” with
-the other classes, while they read the “Crystal Seal” alone.
-All the Memorial Days have been observed this year, commencing
-with Garfield’s and closing with Shakspere’s and Addison’s,
-but they claim that their Chautauqua picnic, given annually
-in June, is the jubilee of their C. L. S. C. year.</p>
-
-<p>From the <i>Toledo Evening Bee</i> we learn that a very delightful
-evening was spent by the members of the <b>Bryan, Ohio</b>, C.
-L. S. C., in memory of William Shakspere. The circle here
-has been holding regular meetings since October, 1881. There
-are now sixteen members. Among the “days” none are more
-pleasant than Arbor Day. It does not receive much attention,
-we fear, but here is one circle at least that planted a tree.
-From <b>Amelia, Ohio</b>, a letter comes, saying: “In our little
-town we have a small C. L. S. C., and as you wanted all circles
-reported to <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span>, we give ours as the ‘Elm-tree
-Circle.’ We are but four girls studying together, but a circle
-of one hundred could not be more enthusiastic. On Arbor
-Day we planted a tree and named it ‘Vincent.’ We hope that
-in another year we can report a much larger circle.”</p>
-
-<p>The sixth annual reunion of the circle at <b>Norwalk, Ohio</b>, was
-held on April 23. They have thirty members enrolled, and
-are reading the books of the seal course in the circle, while the
-books in the regular course are read at home. The exercises
-at their reunion were conversational entirely. The questions
-of the authorship of what are known as Shakspere’s plays, and
-which is Shakspere’s best play, being informally argued until
-the party were summoned to supper. The circle expect to resume
-their conversations another year.</p>
-
-<p>From <b>Cincinnati</b> we have an encouraging account of the
-good things the circles have been enjoying there. The topics
-discussed at their Round-Table are particularly good. “The second
-Round-Table of the C. L. S. C. of Cincinnati and vicinity
-was held at Christie Chapel on April 22. An essay was
-read on ‘Stray Leaves from a Chautauqua Journal,’ and one
-on ‘Tent Life at Chautauqua.’ Then followed some impromptu
-talks on Chautauqua, and some experiences, amusing and
-otherwise, were related. The second topic of the evening was
-‘The advantages of the study of the classics in the original,
-and as we study them in translations, in the C. L. S. C. Course.’
-The discussion of this was fully participated in by the members,
-and a goodly meed of praise was given to the C. L. S. C.
-Classical Course. On April 24, at the invitation of the Grace
-Church Circle, the other circles were treated to a very fine lecture
-by their pastor, Rev. A. L. Reynolds. His subject was,
-‘The Survival of the Fittest.’ The fifth annual reunion of the
-C. L. S. C. of Cincinnati and vicinity was held at Grace M. E.
-Church on Friday evening, May 9. It was a most enjoyable
-affair, and brought together members from some sixteen circles
-in and around the city, including Cheviot, Elmwood, Madisonville,
-Athens and Ironton, Ohio, and Covington and Newport
-in Kentucky.”</p>
-
-<p>A very delightful thing it is to have a C. L. S. C. home, a
-room that belongs to your circle, where you may surround yourself
-with the emblems, mottoes and banners of your brotherhood,
-and with the implements for successful work. Such a
-home belongs to the circle of <b>Lima, Ind.</b>, of which they write:
-“We have a large and handsome room for our meetings. At
-present it is modestly furnished, but money is in the treasury
-to be used in making the room more attractive with bright
-rugs, fanciful screens and pictures.” This circle succeeded in
-doubling its numbers last summer by holding a Chautauqua
-reception, at which the attractiveness of the work was so well
-shown that no trouble was experienced in increasing the circle.</p>
-
-<p><b>Petersburg, Ind.</b>, reports a circle of seven members; <b>Rushville,
-Ind.</b>, one of twenty-two; and <b>Liberty, Ind.</b>, one of eleven.
-All three are energetic, faithful bodies, up in their readings,
-loyal to the customs of the C. L. S. C., and full of enthusiasm.</p>
-
-<p>A brief history of “Alpha Circle,” of <b>Quincy, Ill.</b>, has lately
-been sent us. This circle was formed in January, 1883, with
-thirteen members. Eleven were added the following season.
-At the close of the studies in June, 1883, a literary and musical
-feast was prepared at the home of one of the members.
-Fifty invitations were sent out to the members and interested
-friends of the circle. A public meeting was held in September,
-for the purpose of explaining the objects and aims of the Circle,
-and an effort was made to organize others. At least two
-societies resulted from this meeting: the ‘Beta’ Circle, composed
-entirely of ladies; they are great workers, and are giving
-the subjects very thorough attention; beside this, a small
-circle has been organized in the neighboring township—<b>Melrose</b>.
-The circle has had several little excursions, etc., and spent the
-fourth of July most delightfully in the woods on Bredewig’s Alps.
-The ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’ Circles joined in observing Longfellow’s
-day. Seventy-five invitations were sent out to friends,
-and the program was highly interesting. The meetings of the
-circle are very interesting.</p>
-
-<p><b>Alton, Ill.</b>, also has a circle with a steady membership of
-twelve.</p>
-
-<p>On Longfellow’s day the three circles at <b>Sycamore, Ill.</b>, held
-a delightful service in the poet’s honor; essays, music and
-recitations made up the program. One of the circles at Sycamore
-reports: “Our first meeting was held November 14, 1882,
-when we organized a class with twelve members; now we have
-sixteen, four of whom are local members only. We have good
-officers and most of our class are doing very thorough work,
-though we are nearly all busy housekeepers and mothers. We
-grow more and more in love with the work. We have lively
-and free discussions on all topics studied, and meet every
-week, rain or shine.” The “Dunlap” local circle was organized
-in the fall of 1883, and consists of some thirty members,
-mostly of the class of ’87, but with two members who have
-completed the four years’ course. Considerable enthusiasm
-prevails. Each meeting has been well attended, and all who
-started in with the course are steadily pursuing it. April 21 a
-“Shaksperean Social” was held. A program was presented
-consisting of music, essays and readings. Refreshments were
-served to some forty members and their friends. Every one
-went home more enthusiastic Chautauquans than ever. A
-“Cicero” night was recently held, and a “Virgil” night is the
-next on the program.</p>
-
-<p>At <b>Memphis, Tenn.</b>, the South Memphis local circle of the
-C. L. S. C. is composed of fourteen active members, beside
-several who are only local members. There is a good average
-attendance, and each one takes an active part. The meetings
-are begun with roll call, followed by reading of minutes, songs,
-and a full program of essays, readings, and “talks.” These latter
-are really essays memorized and recited without notes. The
-circle is very earnest in its work.</p>
-
-<p>A few ladies of <b>Prairieville Center, Mich.</b>, belonging to
-classes 1886 and 1887, would acknowledge some of the pleasure
-brought into their busy lives by Chautauqua. Last year, as a
-nucleus, four ladies met once a week, read or held informal conversations
-on the lesson; now they are officered and dignified
-by the title of the “Kepler Circle,” including five farmers’
-wives, one school teacher and one gentleman—five members,
-two local. As yet they have had no help, such as observance of
-memorial days or lectures, but are trying by personal influence
-to help on the work.</p>
-
-<p><b>Atlas, Mich.</b>, has a live C. L. S. C. organized in March, though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_605" id="Page_605">[605]</a></span>
-several of the members began the course in October. There
-are eight regular members and ten local ones, who will probably
-take up the full course next year.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Vincent has kindly sent us a very remarkable report of
-the results of the circle work at <b>Detroit, Mich.</b> We have given
-much of the letter, for it shows vividly how much individual
-growth oftentimes is due to the thoughtful reading of good books.
-The writer says of the circle: “Nine persons met on October 1st,
-and formally organized. The growth both in numbers and interest
-was small during the first month, but continuing, we
-have held up to date twenty-one meetings, at which two hundred
-and twenty-two persons have been present; we keep a record
-of each evening’s work, and also a visitors’ list, trying to
-have a visitor each evening, which has generally ended in a
-new member. We open with singing, responsive reading, roll
-call with quotations, literary exercises, question box, Round-Table.
-For the first three months we were obliged to use ‘Gospel
-Songs,’ but, thanks to Miss Kimball, we now have the
-Chautauqua song books and are learning to enjoy them. By
-unanimous consent the responsive service consists of a selection
-of Scriptures by the leader, each member bringing her
-Bible. It has been our aim to conduct ‘Pansy’ Circle on as
-near the Chautauqua principle as possible; now for a few results.
-At the commencement of this season a neighbor was
-induced to visit the circle, with the promise of exemption from
-questions, etc. To-day that lady is a member of the general
-Circle, and an active member of the local, and from formerly
-being in such ill health that she was in a fair way of losing her
-mind, she has now quite recovered, and it is due to the C. L.
-S. C. Another member, who does not profess religion, was
-offered a copy of Ingersoll’s works, by a fellow workman, but
-it was refused, with the statement that he had a better book
-to read, which proved to be Walker’s ‘Philosophy of the Plan
-of Salvation.’ That book has done wonders, bringing into
-active Christian life several hitherto backward ones. Another
-member told me that having lacked educational advantages,
-and feeling the need of them, she made it a subject of prayer,
-but for a long time seemed to have no answer, until an apparently
-accidental call on a friend discovered to her the C. L. S.
-C., and now she is one of our most enthusiastic members.
-There are many other cases worthy of mention, where the C.
-L. S. C., working like leaven, transforms individuals into active
-factors in life’s warfare. It is indeed a glorious cause, and I
-am never weary of sounding its praises. We are a household
-altogether Chautauquan, singing the songs with our children;
-indeed, we have a six months’ old girl who will not be
-quieted by me unless I sing ‘The Winds are Whispering,’ and
-our boy looks anxiously forward to the time when he can join
-the Circle. May your life be spared to see the ingathering
-from the grand Idea.”</p>
-
-<p>About the middle of last February six ladies and one gentleman
-met at the house of a lady interested in the C. L. S. C.
-workings, to see if a circle could not be started in <b>Markesan,
-Wis.</b> It was not until March 11 that they had a regular
-working meeting. They call the circle the “Climax,” and
-now have fourteen enthusiastic regular members, and five
-local members. Shakspere day was observed with an interesting
-program, consisting of roll call, response to be a gem of
-thought from Shakspere, a biographical sketch of his life, a
-paper on his eccentricities, songs, and several readings.</p>
-
-<p>Monona Lake Assembly has aroused enthusiasm for the C.
-L. S. C. work among very many of its visitors. Another
-tribute to its good influence comes from a friend writing of the
-origin of the oldest circle at <b>Eau Claire, Wis.</b>: “In 1882 one of
-our circle visited the Assembly at Monona and came back full
-of enthusiasm, which resulted in the organization of a circle.
-We started with six members. It took us some time to get
-acquainted with the method of instruction, and to gain the
-necessary discipline for memorizing (we are none of us very
-young). We have never increased our original membership,
-because we found that six who were congenial could work
-profitably together. Our circle, with one exception, visited
-Monona last summer. We gained a fresh inspiration from the
-‘Round-Table.’ Last fall two other societies were organized,
-one consisting of members of the Congregational Church,
-numbering eighteen, and professing great pleasure in their work.
-The other society consists of young ladies, graduates of the
-high school. They have a membership of ten; they feel
-great satisfaction in the work. They are all young, fresh
-minds, and enjoy that advantage over our circle, but they
-can’t exceed us in enthusiasm. When the societies multiplied
-we gave our little society a name. We are now known as the
-‘Alpha Society.’ We often bless good Dr. Vincent in our
-hearts for originating and developing the plan of C. L. S. C.
-work. I recently met a Chautauquan from a little town of a
-few hundred people—<b>Knapp</b>. She said: ‘We have only
-a little circle of six. We are farmers’ wives, and are very
-busy, but we do enjoy our reading. We can see we are doing
-better work this year than we did last year, so we feel encouraged.’”</p>
-
-<p><b>Iowa</b> never fails to send us fresh and interesting items. This
-month two circles organized in October of 1883 are reported,
-one from <b>Corydon</b> of ten members, and another of fifteen
-members from <b>Humboldt</b>. In both the interest is good and
-the work growing.</p>
-
-<p><b>Anamosa, Iowa</b>, has a circle of fourteen now on its second
-year of work. The secretary writes: “Our hearts and minds
-are aglow with genuine Chautauqua enthusiasm. It has all
-been full of suggestive life and interest. We have kept all the
-Memorial Days, and followed out its principles and precepts.”
-At their Longfellow memorial the circle kindly opened their
-doors to their friends, hoping by this means to extend the field
-of C. L. S. C. work in the town. A well written article in a
-local paper on the work done, shows how thoroughly its influence
-is appreciated: “When one has passed an evening with
-such a club, that has been faithfully kept up year by year, not
-for social delight but for hard study of history, philosophy,
-<i>belles lettres</i> and the evidences of the Christian religion, he
-realizes the worth of it and since music, good music too, is ever
-added to the mental labor as joint refiner of mind and heart,
-he approves the ‘club’ as one of the finest social and literary
-organizations that has ever blessed this city.”</p>
-
-<p>A capital subject for a talk or essay is this, which we find
-on the program of the Shakspere exercises at <b>Shanandoah,
-Iowa</b>: “How Shakspere is regarded by literary men.”</p>
-
-<p>At <b>Carthage, Missouri</b>, a “Chautauqua Anniversary” was
-recently held by the two-year-old circle there. Between forty
-and fifty were present. The literary exercises were followed
-by an elaborate supper. The subjects of the evening’s toasts
-were the Memorial Days, taking them in order.</p>
-
-<p>The various local circles of the Chautauqua Literary and
-Scientific Circle of <b>Kansas City, Missouri</b>, united in a service
-commemorative of Shakspere. The church in which the exercises
-were held was handsomely decorated for the occasion
-with flowers and plants, and with three elegant banners prepared
-for and presented to the circle in Kansas City by the
-Columbus Buggy Company, of Columbus, O. The gift of these
-was prompted by the Milton Memorial Services held by these
-circles several months since, at which the donors were present.
-Beside the circles of Kansas City and the Wyandott circle, a
-large audience was present to listen to the exercises. The local
-circles of Kansas City are the “Kansas City Circle,” the “Dundee,”
-the “Central Circle” and the “Clyde Circle,” the “Ladies’
-Forest Avenue Circle,” and a circle on Summit Street.</p>
-
-<p>In a letter from a circle in <b>New Orleans, La.</b>, we find some
-interesting points. The circle selects topics for discussions at
-their meetings. Each member is required to bring in thoughts,
-statistics or quotations bearing upon the subject. Popular
-topics are taken, as for example, one given at a recent meeting
-was “The Higher Education of Women.” The idea is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_606" id="Page_606">[606]</a></span>
-good one. Such discussions give an agreeable change from
-so much historical and scientific reading. Among their officers
-they have a chaplain who conducts the opening exercises of
-the evening; another excellent plan. Just now they are
-meeting a difficulty which comes to many circles. The writer
-says: “The majority of the circle are of class of ’85. They
-commenced the course as <i>young</i> members, with no outside
-interests, and now at their maturity are branching off to their
-respective callings; one an ordained Episcopalian minister, in
-a distant parish; another leaves this summer to finish a collegiate
-course for the Presbyterian ministry, and others go elsewhere,
-yet we may feel assured, never to lose interest in the
-C. L. S. C.” Losing the tried, trusty “stand-bys” of a society
-is generally one of the most dangerous trials it goes through.
-Only a persistent putting of the shoulder to the wheel will carry
-it over, but that <i>always</i> does it.</p>
-
-<p>From <b>Cañon City, Col.</b>, a lady writes: “We have organized
-a little circle of about ten members and have worked hard up
-to this time to demonstrate to ourselves our interest and determination
-to prosecute the studies. For housekeepers who
-have long been out of the discipline of students the work pushes
-us so that we, as yet, have not been able to read anything additional
-to the course. One of our number prepares questions
-on the lessons and acts as president or referee. These
-questions are on slips of paper, and each member draws
-one, on which to gather information to report to the class at
-the next meeting. Enough to say thus far we enjoy our reading
-very much, and hope it is but the beginning of a systematic
-study, which will end only with life.”</p>
-
-<p>A friend sending us the program of the Longfellow celebration
-at <b>Durango, Colorado</b>, writes: “I send you a copy of our
-Longfellow program. While it may suggest nothing new as a
-literary program, it may be a satisfaction to lovers of the C. L.
-S. C. to hear that in this new frontier town of Southwestern
-Colorado, sandwiched between the Ute and the Navajo Reservations,
-the ‘Chautauqua Idea’ has taken root.” One exercise
-of the evening we do not remember to have seen before in
-any report: “The exercise—quotation guesses—was a pleasant
-little diversion. The president distributed slips of paper
-amongst the members, each slip containing a line from some
-one of Longfellow’s poems. Each slip was numbered, and as
-the president called the number the member holding that
-number would read the sentiment from her slip and finish it
-in the language of the poem from which it was taken. The
-evening’s entertainment closed with a banquet, and everyone
-went home feeling better acquainted with Longfellow and
-more deeply in love with the C. L. S. C.”</p>
-
-<p>The pastor of the M. E. Church at <b>Idaho Springs, Col.</b>, last
-fall called a meeting to organize a club in the interest of good
-reading. “When the people came together some friends of the
-Chautauqua Idea were found; three or four of them had
-been regular or local members of the C. L. S. C., and it was
-decided that we form a branch of that great home college. We
-have a membership of about twenty. We frequently have a
-half-dozen visitors, but we do not consider our meetings
-public; they have been very interesting, and the interest is
-unabated. We have adopted various methods of examination
-on the required reading, but none seem to us so good as that
-of giving to each person present a written question; this being
-by him answered is then discussed by any person who so desires.
-We strive to be informal, and since we have become
-acquainted, are able to express ourselves on the subjects being
-discussed better than at first. Since the first of January we
-have recruited by taking in some desirable local members,
-thereby filling the places of those who have dropped out of the
-ranks by the pressure of other business. We can see the good
-effects of our circle on our little town in many ways already.
-With one or two exceptions we belong to the class of 1887; at
-the end of April, in our first year, we report ourselves as making
-good progress.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="C_L_S_C_TESTIMONY">C. L. S. C. TESTIMONY.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p><i>Massachusetts.</i>—I want to say for the encouragement of any
-who urge objections to the C. L. S. C. course, that I took it up
-to please my wife, but ’twas but a short time before I was earnestly
-reading and studying to please myself. It seemed quite
-an undertaking, but, though we are forty years old, and have
-four children, we have found time to keep abreast of the work
-as carried on by the Circle. We (myself and wife) are of
-the class of ’86, and began reading together, but the next year,
-’83, there was a circle formed, and we joined. You would only
-have to glance into our sitting room to-night to learn that we
-are disciples firm and true in this course and its kindred
-branches; my wife and myself reading French History, two
-older children at the other end of the room reading the Home
-College Series, while the two youngest (seven and ten) are reading
-the course of the C. Y. F. R. U., and the benefits, the blessings
-and the pleasure we gain from all of this can never be
-counted in time. We are enthusiastic over the C. L. S. C.,
-because we can see and feel some of its benefits already. We
-know the forty minutes a day pays better interest than any similar
-time spent in any secular business. We know its value
-can not be computed by any known tables. We recommend
-it to everybody, and we feel ’twill grow here among us. It is
-succeeding everywhere, it must succeed, and must produce
-good results, for “We study the Word and the Works of God.”</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>Massachusetts.</i>—I am quite an invalid, so I take the reading
-slowly and in small doses, but I can not begin to tell the good
-it has done me.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>New Jersey.</i>—Life seems to me to have been lifted on a
-higher plane since my association with the C. L. S. C. I know
-I am a better wife, I love my Christian work better, I am better
-acquainted with the Master, and as the intellect is cultivated,
-the soul is pushed out into greater depths and heights and
-breadths.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>Pennsylvania.</i>—I enjoy the reading and study more than I
-can express, believing that its influence is elevating. I regret
-that I can not enjoy the advantages of a local circle. I did try
-to interest some in my own neighborhood, but did not succeed.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>Pennsylvania.</i>—It is helping me regain what I lost under the
-pernicious influence of novel reading. It fills many moments,
-that would have been spent in idle dreaming, with rare pleasure
-in the acquirement of knowledge. Its purifying influence
-is making life more real and earnest. I belong to a small circle
-numbering six members. Two of the number read last year,
-and were instrumental in the organization of the circle this
-year. We are all enthusiastic members, meeting regularly
-each week. We have real social meetings, with no formality
-or coldness, and they are a source of great benefit and enjoyment
-to us all.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>Pennsylvania.</i>—You may send me about twenty-five “Popular
-Education” circulars, and the same number of “Spare
-Minute Course” tracts, and I will try to aid the C. L. S. C. by
-distributing them, and speaking a word for it. I have not been
-able to do much for it yet, but it has done a great deal for me.
-The first year, and up to February of this year, I did the reading
-all alone. Sometimes it was very discouraging, but every
-month when <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span> came, and I read the letters
-from other members, the circles and others, my enthusiasm
-received an impetus that carried me on into the next month,
-and so on through the year. I do not pretend to keep up with
-the class. Do not think I had finished over half the required
-readings at the close of the year. But, if the only object of
-the C. L. S. C. was to have the reading done, I might have
-done it. My conception of the “Chautauqua Idea” is growth.
-It has been a means of growth to me. I have grown intellectually,
-morally and spiritually. It destroyed a taste for light<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_607" id="Page_607">[607]</a></span>
-reading, and created an appetite for real knowledge, giving enlarged
-views of life and life’s work.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>Indiana.</i>—This is my third year of work, and I feel much
-more zealous than at the start. No early training can take the
-place of such a course as this, yet with a foundation how easy
-it all appears when we once get at it. It is wonderful how the
-interest grows. I go out but little, my friends find my C. L. S.
-C. books scattered around when they come in. At first they
-attracted little attention, and I failed to create much interest
-in them by speaking, but as time goes on and they still see the
-same thing they begin to wonder and ask questions, until now
-I am frequently asked to explain “the whole plan,” and find
-willing hearers. There are four of us in this place who pay
-the annual fee, but I succeeded in getting several more to subscribe
-for <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span>. In another year I hope we
-shall have an interesting class. “We four” are not formally
-organized, but our sympathy brings us closely together wherever
-we meet. I have the complete set of C. L. S. C. books—could
-not get along without them.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>Wisconsin.</i>—I tried for years, ten years at least, to arrange
-a course of reading for myself (before I ever heard of the C.
-L. S. C., too), that would be <i>practical</i> and instructive at the
-same time; though I made many attempts I always found it
-impossible to pursue the courses of study I selected, but I never
-gave up the effort. My thirst for knowledge has always been
-so great I never am happy unless I feel that every day I have
-made some improvement, or acquired some knowledge that
-will be of lasting benefit. So when I had the opportunity of
-joining the C. L. S. C. I hailed it with delight and gratitude,
-and never think of its founders without thanking them in my
-inmost heart for the good it has done, and the good it promises
-in the future.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>Wisconsin.</i>—These two years of C. L. S. C. work have been
-the happiest of my life. Our studies lighten our cares, encourage
-our Christian faith, and give the future a bright and encouraging
-outlook. We see the good influence even in our
-children; if they do not fully appreciate, they are enthusiastic
-in their admiration of Chautauquans, and are always glad
-when it is our turn to have the society.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>Missouri.</i>—I presume this year will end my four years’
-course; there are a number of books which I had not the time
-to read, but I shall keep on taking <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span> and
-reading all I can, for my whole soul is in it, and I have gained
-more information and practical knowledge through this systematic
-course of reading than I have in twice the length of time
-before. I think we shall gain members here to the C. L. S. C.,
-and I shall do all I can. I think we ought to have a strong
-circle here. I work in the railroad shops, and I read <span class="smcap">The
-Chautauquan</span> to the men nearly every noon.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>Colorado.</i>—I am, like many another member of the C. L. S.
-C., a “busy mother,” but I have always been able to find time
-for my required reading, and for a good deal more that seemed
-to be suggested by the readings. To say the course of systematic
-reading is a delight to me, is to but feebly express my appreciation.
-It is a continual benefit, and an abiding stimulus
-to self-culture. The study of astronomy in last year’s course
-started me on what has since been the greatest pleasure I have
-ever known, that of learning the face of the heavens, till I
-know the stars, and really greet them each night as dear, familiar
-friends. The air is so clear here, and our evenings so
-uniformly cloudless, it is a constant source of enjoyment.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p><i>Texas.</i>—I am a lone member, having found no one yet to
-join me in reading, yet I prize the course so highly that nothing
-but necessity would induce me to relinquish it. Last year, in
-much physical weakness and suffering, I partially accomplished
-the course, and felt a kind Providence had given me
-this to turn my mind from gloomy thoughts. How I wish the
-young, the middle-aged and the old would give time for the
-good thoughts, knowledge and discipline it contains.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="EDITORS_OUTLOOK">EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>THE C. L. S. C. COURSE FOR 1884-5.</h3>
-
-<p>Students and graduates of the C. L. S. C. will examine with
-interest and with much satisfaction the course of study for next
-year printed in this number. It does not appeal to the jealousy
-but to the pride of the alumnus to know that Alma Mater is
-providing better things for the student of to-day than she did
-for him. Certainly the work of next year is so constituted as
-to yield most satisfactory results. It is neither too wide nor
-too narrow; neither too deep nor too shallow. It is admirably
-arranged, embracing most important and attractive subjects,
-by authors of highest qualifications for their work.</p>
-
-<p>That which impresses us most is the scope and thoroughness
-of each department. Let him who has imagined that
-this work is “smattering” surface work, scrutinize the single
-department of Greek in next year’s study. True, there are not
-four or six years of drill in translating the language, but we
-do not hesitate to say that the student who <i>studies</i> the works
-prescribed here will know more of the Greek life and thought
-than the average graduate after his six years’ translating. He
-will also be able to stand comparison with the latter in his acquaintance
-with the Greek literature. Nor is this designed as
-a criticism of the work done by the college, but as a word to
-that particular critic of the C. L. S. C.</p>
-
-<p>In the department of science the titles of the text-books
-themselves indicate that the C. L. S. C. is abreast of the times
-in repudiating the absurd notion that science can be learned
-by the memorizing of descriptions and definitions. Such titles
-as “Home Studies in Chemistry,” “The Temperance Preachings
-of Science,” and “Studies in Kitchen Science and Art,”
-bespeak the scientific method which requires the observation
-and arrangement of facts and phenomena by the learner himself.</p>
-
-<p>We are glad to note the liberal attention bestowed upon our
-English in the curriculum of the coming year. “The Art of
-Speech,” by Dr. Townsend, “Talks about Good English,” in
-<span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span>, and “Lessons in Every Day Speech,” by
-Professor MacClintock, are a quantum of English quite beyond
-the fashion of these times. No study has been so inexcusably
-neglected by our schools of every grade. Just now
-there are signs of repentance in some quarters. President
-Eliot of Harvard is pleading for its admission to a place equal
-with Greek and Latin. If what should be will be, not many
-years hence will witness it so.</p>
-
-<p>Prominent also, as heretofore, is the aim to keep before the
-C. L. S. C. both the moral and the religious. No one can read
-“The Character of Jesus,” by Bushnell, without mental and
-moral profit, without the awakening of a deeper homage of
-soul for the world’s Redeemer. Then there is Mrs. Field’s
-work on that perplexing, every-day question, “How to Help the
-Poor.” Bishop Hurst’s “History of the Reformation” is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_608" id="Page_608">[608]</a></span>
-among the very best works on that eventful period in church
-history. These are to be supplemented by the continuance of
-those well-chosen Sunday Readings in <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span>.
-Beside these classified departments we are promised a series
-of articles on miscellaneous subjects, such as Memory, Self-Discipline,
-Thinking, Selection of Books, etc. Taken altogether,
-a course of study for a year which, faithfully pursued,
-is an education in itself. We predict for the C. L. S. C. a year
-of increased interest, pleasure and profit.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>THE WALL STREET TROUBLES.</h3>
-
-<p>The panic in Wall Street has not extended to the whole
-country in the same form and intensity as the great crises of
-1857 and 1873; but, no doubt, the effect of the shock at the
-money center will distribute itself gradually over the entire
-country. The country is not any worse off now than it was at
-the beginning of May; it is, rather, better off, because an evil
-has been uncovered and a remedy applied. We did not think
-ourselves on the verge of ruin on the first of May, nor do we
-now know that we were. The evil we have discovered in
-action we knew to be in existence then. But having been
-forced to take medicine for the sickness, we shall experience
-some inconvenience from the drastic dose. It is hardly possible
-to make an 1873 over again. None of the factors of a
-great general depression exist (so far as we can see); but the
-cure of the speculative disorder, from which the whole economical
-body must more or less suffer, may be exasperatingly
-difficult. All chronic maladies yield very reluctantly to medical
-treatment; and our economic maladies are equally stubborn.
-The seat of the present trouble is the organization of
-railroad property and its management; the principal owners
-and managers of railroads are speculators in their own property.
-This disorder has existed from the beginning of such
-property. It is a twist which the property was born with. It
-has tortured the patient for fifty years. And to this date no
-one has applied any adequate remedy. Reformers abound, but
-the patient does not hesitate to call them quacks; and, denying
-that there is any serious trouble, it asks to be let alone.</p>
-
-<p>We can estimate the evil by a comparison of three groups
-of figures. Take first the figures which show the cost of railways.
-Take next the figures for the nominal capital in stocks
-and bonds; add the figures which show net income. It is not
-necessary here to give the actual figures in either group. The
-fact is that the net income is less than a fair interest on the actual
-cost of the roads, and perhaps not one per cent. on the
-nominal value as shown by capitalization. A road has cost
-five millions; the nominal value is twenty millions; the
-net income is six per cent. on four millions. Take out
-a dozen corporations which are wholesomely managed,
-and the rest of the companies are, in varying degrees,
-bankrupt as to their nominal capitals and unprofitable as to
-their actual cost. Speculation trades upon the delusion that
-the roads are presently, or in some “sweet by-and-by,” to
-pay dividends upon all their capital. To economize this delusion,
-the speculative owners of the lines carefully conceal the
-facts about the condition of their property, or pour out these
-facts in a torrent of apparent losses—according as they themselves
-are long or short of the property. The real condition of
-a railroad property can not be known except when it is bankrupt.
-At other times railroad book-keeping is too confusing
-for average brains, and exuberant hope makes the future out
-of the “astonishing growth of the country.” To remove the
-railroad property from the sphere of speculative manipulation
-is the pressing demand of all legitimate interests vested in
-such property. Until this is done this kind of property will be
-a squalling baby in the financial household, falling into convulsions
-periodically and alarming and distressing the whole
-family of industries and investments.</p>
-
-<p>It is understood that the largest fortunes in the country are
-made by magnifying this kind of property. It is known that
-a panic seldom strikes its fangs into the manipulator. It is believed
-that the public is usually the bitten party in the gambling
-circle. But in the present case it is not probable that
-any but the Wall Street men have much suffered, or that any fortunes
-have been made in the street. What has had to be done
-is to distribute through the street a large aggregate of losses incurred
-since 1881. The sum total exceeds five hundred millions,
-according to some statisticians. This sum is divided into
-two parts: 1st, losses from July 1881 to January 1883, estimated
-at three hundred millions; 2nd, losses from January
-1883 to May 1884, estimated at two hundred millions. We
-mean losses as measured by the fall in market price of railroad
-paper of all kinds. It is believed that before 1883 the
-public at large had suffered a loss of perhaps two hundred
-millions, that since that the said public has had little to do
-with the Wall Street market, and that the street (including all
-the men doing business on the stock market) has had to distribute
-a loss of three hundred millions. It is presumed that
-the public has, since January 1883, recovered from its losses,
-but the street is in the agony of its punishment. It was inevitable
-that some of the losses should be thrown on the banks;
-and through these losses the panic directly reached the
-public, in the double form of impaired confidence and stringency.
-The country has borne both evils with good sense.
-The impairment of confidence did not become general distrust:
-the stringency, which for a day or two made money worth four
-or five hundred per cent. per annum, passed off in a week.
-The fact that the troubles concerned one kind of property only,
-and was localized in Wall Street, was quickly understood by
-the country at large. The wounded banks were relieved by
-their neighbors, and the brokers on whose books the bad balances
-are found have been left to settle up their business as
-they may be able to manage it, while business in general goes
-on as before, with, however, a considerable increase of caution.
-The first effect of this caution will be depressing. Nor
-is it to be denied that considerable depression already existed in
-legitimate trades. The trouble is not serious, but it is annoying.
-At bottom it is based on an excess of enterprise in a part
-of the manufacturing and trading public. Anxious to be rich,
-they aim at impossible growth in business. They make certain
-kinds of goods in larger quantities than the public will consume
-them. This trouble may be called over-production or
-under-consumption; it does not much matter. Whatever name
-we give it, the thing is self-corrective, and involves no large
-disaster. It compels men to content themselves with less than
-they wish, teaches us that we can not all be millionaires, cuts
-down our ambition for social importance or ostentation, but it
-does not tend toward a crash. It is painful to go slow when
-we desire to go fast; but the breaking of bones occurs when
-fortuitous combinations permit us to drive on like Jehu. It
-may be dull, but it is safe to be dull in the economical world.
-It is the roaring activity of prosperous times that makes our
-financial ruin.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>SOME POINTS ON THE GENERAL CONFERENCE.</h3>
-
-<p>The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church
-held in Philadelphia last May was in several respects remarkable.
-It was in the first place a picturesque body for the eye
-of a moral artist. The “war horses” of older days were there
-with the sound stentorian neigh which one expects to hear at
-a camp meeting. Probably there were more of these than in
-recent sessions of the body. There was William Taylor from
-everywhere, Ram Chandra Bose from India, and the venerable
-men of a former generation who are called Trimble and
-Curry. But the moral picturesqueness of the Conference lay
-rather in the variety and independence of young Americans
-from all sections. There was a very lively Bear from Wall
-Street, a still livelier lay preacher from New Jersey, a choice
-collection of young pastors from all over Zion, and a sprinkling
-of college men and newspaper men, bankers, railroad<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_609" id="Page_609">[609]</a></span>
-men and physicians, ex-generals, ex-chaplains, and farmers.
-The face of the body was so variegated and its separate limbs
-so independent that some spectators said it was not a body at
-all because it had no community of life and no head. Its independence
-of traditions and its refusal to be led by anybody
-added to the picturesqueness of the assembly. Nothing could
-be thrust down its throat. It threw all the men who successively
-tried to lead it. It voted with reference to an order of
-ideas and aspirations which no one can find written down in
-the press of the denomination. We believe there was but a
-single caucus, and that was a gathering of the colored delegates.
-It was a piece of most adroit management. It will
-probably be the last of that series of caucuses; and if it had
-been held half a day sooner, it would have defeated its own
-purpose. The white delegates would have defeated anybody
-who had asked them to go into a caucus. A very manly and
-self-respecting independence of dictation or management was
-in the air.</p>
-
-<p>Another striking fact was the form which the independence
-of the body took on—the results which it reached. It might be
-called the Missionary Reform Conference. From the first it
-was clear that this branch of church work would receive a push
-forward on new lines. The single large debate of the session
-was over the proposition to locate a regular bishop in India.
-The bishops opposed it vigorously. The special adherents of
-“presbyter writ large” opposed it. And yet the measure received
-a majority of votes, and was defeated only by “dividing
-the house” and getting a lay majority against it to kill a clerical
-majority for it. After that defeat by a formal device for
-distributing a minority so as to give it veto power, the Conference
-had its own way. It made Chaplain McCabe Missionary
-Secretary, and elected William Taylor a Missionary Bishop
-for Africa, and it lifted Daniel Curry, who had led the movement
-for an Episcopal residence in India, sheer over the heads
-of all the editorial staff and set him down in the chair of the
-<i>Quarterly Review</i>. Each of these facts means more than meets
-the eye. Chaplain McCabe is the prince of collection-takers.
-The best man in the church to raise money is set to increasing
-missionary collections. William Taylor has been a bishop for
-thirty years—a bishop <i>de facto</i>—he is now bishop <i>de jure</i> in
-Africa. We doubt whether he will confine himself to Africa;
-but it will certainly require all of Africa to hold him. The Liberian
-grave-yard ceases to be the Methodist Africa. Bishop
-Taylor will lay siege to the whole continent—the Nile, the
-Soudan, the Congo, the Cape, as well as Liberia. Nor is this
-all. He believes in self-supporting missions, and will give a
-great impetus to the movement toward self-directing independence
-in all missions. Some time or other a mission must
-become a church; that time, many believe, is at hand in
-India, Africa and Europe. The reversal of judgment in Dr.
-Curry’s case is a conspicuous proof of the independence of the
-Conference. Eight years ago he was retired from the <i>Christian
-Advocate</i> at New York for insubordination. Part of his
-offense was a singular freedom of pen on this same subject of
-missions. For example, he once wrote (concerning the return
-visits of missionaries in the other hemisphere): “We need a
-few graves of missionaries in heathen soil,” or words of this
-significance. The General Conference was persuaded to vote
-him out in 1876; but the act emancipated the paper, and under
-Dr. J. M. Buckley it is independent in a wider sense than
-Dr. Curry ever dared to make it. And now with the burden
-of seventy-five years upon him, Dr. Curry succeeds the other
-venerable Daniel as the editor of the chief and only universal
-organ of the denomination. “Whedon on the Will” will
-probably cease to be the conspicuous feature of the <i>Quarterly
-Review</i>, and if it should drop out of the “course of study” for
-young ministers, the loss might be a gain.</p>
-
-<p>The choice of the Conference for new bishops will probably
-be approved after some experience. Bishops Ninde and
-Mallalieu are probably universally popular selections. Bishops
-Walden and Fowler are yet to be approved by the intelligence
-of the denomination. But from one point of view the last two
-are better selections than the former. Bishops Ninde and
-Mallalieu have to be seasoned to a life of travel and hardship.
-They have lived in the study; and men past fifty (Bishop
-Mallalieu is 56) usually break down in the Methodist Episcopacy.
-The other pair of new bishops have long been inured to
-travel; and their physical preparation for the hard work before
-them may prove, on trial, that these were <i>almost</i> the best
-selections that could have been made. If Ninde and Mallalieu
-should soon follow Kingsley, Thompson, and the two
-Havens, the effect would probably be to direct the choice of
-the denomination in future elections to men accustomed to real
-itineracy. But, after all, on that view, or any other proper
-view, the largest bishop chosen by the last General Conference
-is the one who must write “Missionary” before his title.
-William Taylor has long been a bishop; his church has merely
-recognized, at rather a late hour, a fact which has long been
-conspicuous. Whether or not there is a great bishop, or more
-than one, among the other group of four remains to be proved
-by their work. There is little doubt that the judgment of the
-Conference was perplexed in the matter of voting Dr. J. H.
-Vincent into the Episcopacy, and so voting him out of that
-vast work which he supervises as the head of the Sunday-school
-organization. His friends will see in the vote of 178 for
-bishop, a proof that the Conference wanted him on the platform;
-they will see in the fact that for his old place the Conference
-gave him 316 ballots—<i>all but nine</i> of its votes—the
-reason why he was not made bishop. The figures are in both
-cases the highest possible compliment—both votes were complimentary.</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>CHAUTAUQUA OUTLOOK FOR 1884.</h3>
-
-<p>It is fitting that, in this last number of the Chautauquan
-year, we should remind our readers that the gathering of our
-students and teachers is at hand, and that the opening of the
-sessions of our schools and the breaking of silence on our
-platform are to occur this year under auspicious circumstances.
-Our columns afford indications that the class of this year
-is unusually large; our correspondence shows that the interest
-of the public in our work is enlarging its boundaries; the program
-for the sessions is the richest and most attractive ever
-furnished. Dr. Vincent has taken great pains in the selection
-of topics, teachers and lecturers. Old and tried men and
-women remain in the force, and it has been increased by addition
-of talents approved by excellent work and good fame in
-other fields. The Chautauqua Idea is still peculiarly Chautauquan.
-No other place or organization does its work. It is a
-school for all—a university in which, by joining self-instruction
-with the schools and platform of Chautauqua, a man or
-woman of any age may pursue knowledge in almost any field
-with profit and pleasure. The original impulse to this work of
-ours was given by providing for the wants of those who had not
-good advantages in early life; but it has been found in the
-actual work that an arrangement of subjects and lectures
-could be made which enables any man to add to his knowledge
-and quicken his interest in personal study. It has come to
-pass that our best patrons and friends are those who have
-graduated in other schools, while we continue to increase the
-usefulness of Chautauqua for those in whose behalf it was
-founded. The success of the “Idea” along the whole line is
-not merely a satisfaction; it is a promise and a prophecy.
-There is every reason to believe that its broad, philanthropic,
-refining and elevating tendencies will continue to develop new
-methods of giving knowledge to all. But, of course, a benevolent
-enterprise like ours depends upon the sustained interest
-and enthusiasm of its friends. We are just as liable to flag in
-this as in any other benevolent work. It is not carried on to
-make money; money is made to carry it on. All the conditions
-of failure which must surround an undertaking which has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_610" id="Page_610">[610]</a></span>
-not the force of self-interest behind it, exist of course in this
-large and expensive enterprise. Therefore we may properly remind
-the friends of Chautauqua that their patronage and
-coöperation in many ways are essential still, and must always
-be, to its progress. We make these suggestions, not from any
-doubt of the fidelity and perseverance of our friends, but, to
-recall attention to the fact that the Chautauqua Idea is a philanthropic
-and not a commercial one. Chautauqua does not
-exist to enrich any one, but to increase knowledge and spread
-culture in the land. It has no antagonisms, and need not have,
-but it can not dispense with the active zeal of its numerous
-friends.</p>
-
-<p>The managers have done their whole duty in making preparations
-for the approaching campaign. Let every high private
-emulate their industry and zeal. Bring your friends to
-the Lake. Remember that we want the coöperation of the sober,
-thoughtful and earnest people. The Chautauqua season
-is not a picnic; it is a season of rest, because a change of
-scene and occupation always refreshes mind and body. But
-our patrons are expected to bring their heads with them—and
-their consciences—that when they return home they may carry
-back new force and larger power to influence their neighbors.
-Chautauqua is ready to receive its pupils and guests. It has
-wide arms and a generous heart. The season will be what its
-patrons choose to make it. We are confident that they will
-choose to make it the best of the series.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="EDITORS_NOTE-BOOK">EDITOR’S NOTE-BOOK.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>The fourth volume of <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span> closes with the
-present number. In the month of August we shall issue at
-Chautauqua the <i>Assembly Daily Herald</i>, with its numbers of
-invaluable lectures, its racy reports and varied sketches of
-Chautauqua life. For the advantage of our friends we make
-an attractive combination offer of the fifth volume of <span class="smcap">The
-Chautauquan</span>, and the <i>Assembly Daily Herald</i>, for $2.25.
-See advertisement.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Among the great figures missed at the Republican National
-Convention this year was that of ex-Senator Roscoe Conkling.
-Not having admired him politically, we are the more free to express
-our respect and admiration for the courage with which he
-declined a seat on the supreme bench, and the splendid success
-he is achieving at the bar. A certain intense ardor which
-marks him as a man give assurance of still higher success and
-permanent fame in his profession.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The unveiling of an imposing statue of Martin Luther, in
-Washington, is one of the events which reminds us of the
-granite character of Luther; and in the same breath set us
-thinking of the solidarity of humanity. Luther is a great way
-from home in Washington, four centuries after his birth; but
-he is among his own people and as much alive as he ever
-was.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The cap-sheaf of official negligence is put on in the case of
-a bank which wallows for years, perhaps, certainly for months,
-in insolvency, and is never in all the time honestly and thoroughly
-examined by the various persons whose duty it is to
-know the facts.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>“Men were giants in those days.” The five hundredth anniversary
-of the death of John Wyclif was celebrated in England
-in May last. The Bishop of Liverpool preached, dissenters
-of all denominations were represented. The public was
-told again that Wyclif was the first Englishman to maintain
-the supremacy of the Scriptures. The Lord Mayor of London
-presided over a great conference, and a fund was founded to
-print and circulate Wyclif’s works. After five centuries of all
-kinds of progress that man’s memory is still as fresh as a May
-morning.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The State Superintendent in New York has decided that no
-religious exercises are in order in public schools. The schools
-are for all, and until some common system of religious instruction
-is agreed upon, there should be none. This is the substance
-of the decision, and we can not help thinking it sound.
-Religious instruction is amply provided in other ways; and in
-order that Protestant and Catholic children may study together
-in peace, it seems wisest to let each class be religiously instructed
-elsewhere, according to the wishes of their parents.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The most effective speech in the late Methodist Episcopal
-General Conference was made by a colored delegate, the Rev.
-Dr. Taylor of Kentucky. The effectiveness came of the fact
-that he had not only considered what he had to say, but also
-meditated on the best way of saying it. We are often told that
-oratory is a lost art. Is it not a faded art merely because
-speakers give too little attention to the manner of their speech?</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Charles O’Conor, the greatest jury pleader of the century,
-died in May, at the age of eighty. Four years before his death,
-having been very ill, he had the pleasure of reading the longest
-obituary notice that any convalescent ever perused with
-personal interest. His power over juries was such that cases
-were often given up by the other side in advance of the pleading.
-He was an Irish Catholic whose warmest friends were
-American Protestants.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Several additions have been made to the evidence that it
-does not destroy women to educate them. Professor Seelye
-of Amherst is among the new witnesses. We are at a loss to
-know why it ever needed testimony. Professor Seelye gravely
-says that some hard-worked women students were carefully examined
-by a competent woman and found to be perfectly
-healthy! When our readers recover from their astonishment
-let them enter their girls for the C. L. S. C.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The new scheme for registering time seems to encounter a
-resistance which in physics is called the <i>vis inertia</i>. Most
-towns of any size—except the largest cities—still maintain
-local time. We respectfully hint to the almanac makers, that
-they have a great opportunity to spread intelligence on this
-subject. It will not be long before all towns within the meridional
-divisions will have common time. Why protract the agony of
-computing a dozen times a day the differences between several
-standards of time in the same community?</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>They continue to find Charley Ross. One was found last
-month. But each time it is not the true Charley Ross. What
-an amount of agony his parents have suffered! What a mercy
-were the knowledge that the boy died long ago! But reflect,
-too, on the uses of that tragedy. Thousands of children are
-watched over with more diligence because that tragedy recurs
-daily to the minds of parents as a solemn warning.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Psychologic classification is getting into disorder. Sir William
-Thompson has defined a “Magnetic Sense,” and a critic
-of him says: “We might as well be logical and liberal, and
-add to the present senses the touch sense, the self sense, the
-power sense, the logical sense, and the psychic, muscular, and
-electro-magnetic senses.” We suppose it is a wise thing to be
-“liberal;” but it is better to be accurate, and this use of the
-word <i>sense</i> is not accurate.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_611" id="Page_611">[611]</a></span></p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The nomination by the Chicago Republican Convention of
-the Hon. James G. Blaine, of Maine, for President, and Senator
-John A. Logan, of Illinois, for Vice President, seems likely
-to precipitate a political contest over the tariff. Mr. Blaine
-and the platform on which he stands speak for protection,
-while the opposition will favor free trade.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Members of the Class of ’84 who expect to be at Round Lake,
-N. Y., on C. L. S. C. Day (Wednesday, July 10), and who wish
-to receive their diplomas there, should report to Miss Kimball,
-at Plainfield, N. J., by July 10.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>We burn up, in this country, three hundred and fifty-nine
-hotels in a year. In the last eight years the aggregate is set
-down by the National Board of Underwriters as two thousand
-eight hundred and seventy-two. Here is another wound in the
-economic body through which our life-blood is pouring in a
-great stream, and nothing will stanch the wound but a better
-moral character in the people. Unsafe buildings are built
-for the most part by people who are smart and wicked.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>All over the country Salvation-army captains, lieutenants
-and corporals are getting into trouble, and the organization is
-falling into disgrace. The movement may as well be voted a
-failure. It is, however, the only religious failure of any importance
-in the last two decades. In London, where it is held in
-vigorous hands by General Booth, it is still a respectable success;
-but no one else has been able to work it on a large scale.
-Petty successes here and there do not disprove the general rule
-of failure.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>In Baltimore, last month, the fourth floor of a warehouse fell
-and six persons lost their lives. Accidents in buildings are becoming
-far too numerous. In such cases, as well as in broken
-banks, we have a proof that our complex civilization requires
-a higher grade of conscientious character—or more of it—than
-we are producing. Our brains are good enough; we want better
-morals.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>It is reported from Europe that Prince Napoleon and his son
-Victor are both “running” for the office of Emperor of France.
-The office does not exist at present, and there is no prospect of
-its being created—the gunpowder facilities are lacking. But
-father and son are said to be quarreling over the matter. If France
-wants a monarch she now has a chance to get a gentleman in
-the person of the Count of Paris, who was with our army of
-the Potomac for some months, and has written a capital book
-on the civil war in our country.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>It was a pleasant thing to see the Governor of Pennsylvania
-taking the lead in the Methodist General Conference when the
-resolutions against polygamy came up for discussion. Governor
-Pattison was a lay member of the body, and made a vigorous
-speech in favor of energetic measures to suppress this
-evil.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>A distinguished Israelite of New York said to a reporter last
-month that he expected to see the synagogues opened for religious
-services on Sunday. The movement would begin with
-the religious use of both sacred days; but it will probably end
-in the general neglect of the seventh day. The inconvenience
-of having a different Sabbath from the rest of the people is
-doubtless a great embarrassment to the religious teachers of
-the Hebrews.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>It is a proper prayer, “Remember not against me the sins of
-my youth.” But it is as well for young people to remember
-that human society does not readily forget our errors. And
-somebody has said that “God can afford to forgive when men
-can not afford to forget.” Perhaps he is not quite right; to forgive
-is not to give a man an office or a farm. We have forgiven
-all who have wronged us, if we are good Christians, but
-that does not oblige us to indorse their notes.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>An ungracious thing is the fault-finding with Mr. George I.
-Seney, because, before the late troubles in Wall Street, he gave
-away some two millions of money to philanthropic uses. People
-who never give away things seem to think that, having
-given largely, Mr. Seney should have rolled himself into a safe
-nest and remained there. It occurs to us that no man has a
-better right to risk his own money than the man who has acquitted
-himself generously of his obligations to humanity. We
-have seen no proof that Mr. Seney was guilty of even an irregularity
-in the conduct of his business, or that he is not able to
-meet all his engagements.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Mr. Ferdinand Ward is the most picturesque and romantic
-figure in the late crisis in monetary New York. His success in
-Wall Street, by which a poor youth laid his hands on a dozen or
-more millions of other men’s money, appropriately climaxed by
-his enforced visit to the cell formerly tenanted by William M.
-Tweed, is a romance of rascality; and yet no one can tell
-just how he succeeded in using the cupidity of mankind to blind
-their eyes to the plainest principles of finance. The scheme
-was simple enough: Loan $70,000 on securities worth $100,000.
-Then take the securities to a bank and hypothecate them for
-$90,000. To a thief the profit is just $20,000. But the genius
-lies in concealing the simplicity of the business.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>It was not strange that General Grant was deceived by young
-Ward. No one supposes that the General is an acute and expert
-man of business. But men who ought to be acute and expert
-men of business—for that is their calling—were as completely
-deceived as General Grant. There are always hindsight
-philosophers and small-eyed sons of detraction to seize
-such an occasion as the late panic to criticise great and good
-men. General Grant’s vindication lies in the fact that there are
-very few moneyed men in New York whom Ferdinand Ward
-did not deceive.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The zeal with which some persons labor to make benevolence
-unpopular is one of the worst manifestations of human nature.
-Why can not the critics remember that very few men ever
-catch the disease of giving away large amounts of money? So
-uncommon a disorder ought to be given the benefit of a corner
-of that mantle of charity which is usually employed to cover a
-multitude of sins.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>One of the most remarkable statements we have lately seen
-was made by the president of a brewers’ convention recently
-held at Rochester, N. Y. He said: “Our hope is based on the
-fact that prohibition can not last in a progressive state.” We
-have tried to analyze this “hope,” and the result is this: A
-progressive state is one in which the drink-sellers are powerful
-enough to overthrow prohibition. <i>Progress</i> has a peculiar signification
-in the drink-seller’s dictionary. We are at a loss to
-conjecture what truly progressive elements of a population
-should rise up to put down prohibition.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Among our reformers no class deserves more support than
-those who seek to improve the health of mankind. Some of
-them have exaggerated the value of this or that means; but
-the end they seek is a very useful one. We are coming to
-agreement on everything but food and sleep. We shall agree
-about these by-and-by. Plenty of sleep <i>in the night</i>—and
-wholesome food <i>in moderation</i>—these are two articles of the
-coming man’s health creed. The italicised words express the
-best evidence on the subject of longevity. A recent writer
-says that gluttony kills more people—who it may be said by
-parenthesis know no better—than tobacco and drink. Eating
-too much is the next evil to be reformed; then sleeping too
-little.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>One of the beautiful customs of Brooklyn, N. Y., is to have a
-parade of the Sunday-school children of all denominations on
-one of the first warm days of May. This year fifty thousand
-children were in line, and the city kept holiday. The custom
-would bear transportation to other cities and towns.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_612" id="Page_612">[612]</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="TALK_ABOUT_BOOKS">TALK ABOUT BOOKS.</h2>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<p>We have a new candidate for the honorable position of expounder
-and teacher of English.<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a> It is for those who desire to learn, and have no
-teacher; for the tens of thousands whose school advantages have been limited,
-or mis-improved, and who are now studying out of school, and seek
-by self-exertion to acquire the culture and practical knowledge they need.
-It will not be found in the technical sense a grammar, but a series of
-familiar and most entertaining letters, in which the author discusses the
-principles and usage of the English language. The style is conversational,
-and remarkable for its perspicuity. The vigorous sentences are
-clear as sunbeams, and as purely English as Cobbett himself. The editor’s
-well considered and generally incisive notes are good reading, and
-add much to the value of the work.</p>
-
-<p>One of the most able, scholarly and exhaustive commentaries on the
-New Testament is now in process of publication by Funk &amp; Wagnalls,
-New York. It is a translation, with notes by American editors, of the
-expositions and critical analyses of the well known German scholar and
-exegete, Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer. The whole work may require
-ten or more volumes of fair size, eight of which are promised
-during the year. The one on the “Epistles to The Corinthians”<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> is now
-before us. As a philologist Meyer has certainly but few equals,
-and his grammatical expositions of the Greek text give evidence
-of much patient research, acute discernment, and a thorough comprehension
-of the subjects discussed. The work will prove an invaluable
-aid to all who critically study the New Testament in the original language,
-and even lay readers may, if they will examine, find much that
-is refreshing in the author’s incisive criticisms, and clear, concise statements
-of evangelical doctrines.</p>
-
-<p>An ingenious portfolio<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> has been invented by a member of the Philadelphia
-bar, for those who may not have studied thoroughly the laws of
-thought and composition, yet wish to know how to work up a subject. On
-the side of a neat little slate are placed certain typical questions which are
-to be applied to the subject of contemplation, and space is given under each
-to jot down the points to be considered under each heading. Thus in
-one’s pocket may be carried a scientific outline by which one may
-classify immediately the scraps of illustration, the fancies or thoughts
-which they pick up on any given subject.</p>
-
-<p>Miss Emily Raymond, of Toledo, has written a very pleasing, comprehensive,
-and satisfactory account of the Chautauqua Idea and its
-home. This little volume, entitled “About Chautauqua,” is probably
-the most complete report yet given of this modern movement. The
-price of the book is 50 cents. Address Miss Raymond, 48 Bush Street,
-Toledo, O.</p>
-
-<p>A collection of first-class short stories by American authors has been
-begun by Charles Scribner’s Sons.<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> They are being gathered from the
-great number of stories which have been sent out in the leading magazines
-of the country during the last twenty years, and promise to make
-a remarkably entertaining collection. Many of the foremost writers of
-fiction of the day are in the list of authors.</p>
-
-<p>The entertaining volume, “Our Famous Women,”<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a> will be, we
-think, a decided success. Thirty of the prominent women of
-the times are discussed most pleasantly in as many easy and appreciative
-essays. The papers are not critical or comprehensive, but gossipy,
-entertaining, and very well written. One finds in most of them
-exactly the facts they want about such favorites as Mrs. Burnett, Louisa
-M. Alcott, Rose Terry Cooke, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Mary A. Livermore,
-etc. As far as possible, the writers have been wisely chosen
-from the ranks of the famous women themselves. The book will be
-worth a great deal to women who are trying to win position and a livelihood
-by their own exertions. Its heroines are striking examples of
-what bravery, earnestness, cheerfulness and faithfulness will do in a life.</p>
-
-<p>Another volume of Charles Scribner’s Sons’ new edition of “Ik
-Marvel” is out. “Rural Studies,” first published in 1867, has been
-revised and reissued under the title of “Out-of-Town Places.”<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a> The
-book was not more timely fifteen years ago than it is now; perhaps it
-will be even more useful now, for the last fifteen years have taught us
-more of beauty and its uses than we had ever before had time to learn.
-Mr. Mitchell’s little book gives many capital suggestions to farmers and
-owners of country places about practical improvements. It is not a
-book for horticulturists, or for fancy stock or high-art farmers, but it will
-be very useful to people who by their own labor and planning are trying
-to beautify their homes.</p>
-
-<p>A good book on etiquette—and, as it often happens, a very ordinary
-one—is pretty sure of finding a wide circle of readers in America. A
-sensible, reliable guide-book into the mysteries of the best society has
-lately been published by the Harpers.<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a> We like it. The writer knows
-exactly what her readers need and is competent to supply their want
-clearly and reliably. What more could be asked of the writer of a book
-on etiquette?</p>
-
-<p>Uncle Remus<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a> has become the representative of a vanishing type of
-American life. It is a matter of congratulation that so much of his
-humor, shrewd sense and peculiar dialect has been saved to us in “His
-Songs and His Sayings,” a little book which, though we are apt to
-consider it merely humorous, really has much material for interesting
-study. The aim of the author was as he says: “To preserve the legends
-[of the plantation] in their original simplicity, and to wed them permanently
-to the quaint dialect—if indeed it can be called a dialect—through
-the medium of which they have become a part of the domestic history
-of every Southern family.”</p>
-
-<hr class="shorter" />
-
-<h3>BOOKS RECEIVED.</h3>
-
-<p>How the Bible was Made. By Rev. E. M. Wood, D.D. Cincinnati:
-Walden &amp; Stowe. 1884.</p>
-
-<p>The Exodus and Other Poems. By Rev. T. C. Reade. Cincinnati:
-Printed by Walden &amp; Stowe for the author. 1884.</p>
-
-<p>Quicksands. From the German of Adolph Streckfuss. By Mrs. A.
-L. Wister. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott &amp; Co. 1884.</p>
-
-<p>Standard Library: The Fortunes of Rachel. By Edward Everett
-Hale. New York: Funk &amp; Wagnalls. 1884.</p>
-
-<p>Standard Library: Chinese Gordon. By Archibald Forbes. New
-York: Funk &amp; Wagnalls. 1884.</p>
-
-<p>There was Once a Man. A Story. By R. H. Newell (Orpheus C.
-Kerr). New York: Fords, Howard &amp; Hurlburt, for Our Continent
-Publishing Co. 1884.</p>
-
-<p>A Palace Prison; or, The Past and The Present. New York: Fords,
-Howard &amp; Hurlburt. 1884.</p>
-
-<p>Rapid Ramblings in Europe. By W. C. Falkner. Philadelphia: J.
-B. Lippincott &amp; Co. 1884.</p>
-
-<p>One Thousand Popular Quotations. Compiled by J. S. Ogilvie.
-New York: J. S. Ogilvie &amp; Co.</p>
-
-<p>Ballads and Verses Vain. By Andrew Lang. New York: Charles
-Scribner’s Sons. 1884.</p>
-
-<p>Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book. By George Eliot. New
-York: Harper &amp; Brothers. 1884.</p>
-
-<p>Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel. By Ignatius Donnelly.
-New York: D. Appleton &amp; Co. 1884.</p>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> A Grammar of the English Language in a Series of Letters. By William Cobbett.
-With notes by Robert Waters. New York: James W. Pratt. 1883.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> Critical and Exegetical Hand-Book to the Epistles to the Corinthians. By Heinrich
-August Wilhelm Meyer, Th.D. New York: Funk &amp; Wagnalls. 1884.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> The Adult Kindergarten; or the Educational Problem Solved, for Public Life,
-Private Life, and School Life Uses. By a member of the Philadelphia Bar. Price,
-50 cents. The Townsend Publishing Co., Philadelphia.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> Stories by American Authors. Price per volume, 50 cents. New York: Charles
-Scribner’s Sons. 1884.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> Our Famous Women. Hartford, Conn.: A. D. Worthington and Company.
-1884.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> Out-of-Town Places, with Hints for their Improvement. By the author of “Wet
-Days at Edgewood.” A re-issue of “Rural Studies.” New York: Charles Scribner’s
-Sons. 1884.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> Manners and Social Usages. By Mrs. John Sherwood. New York: Harper &amp;
-Brothers, Franklin Square. 1884.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings. The Folk-lore of the Old Plantation.
-By Joel Chandler Harris. New York: D. Appleton &amp; Co. 1884.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<p><b>ERRATA.</b>—On page 544 of the June number of <span class="smcap">The Chautauquan</span>,
-for “Henry VII.,” in Question 3, read Henry VI.; for “1609,”
-in Question 39, read 1690; for “George IV.,” in the answer to Question
-47, and in Questions 48 and 49, read George III. On page 551, for
-“from which comes companion,” read from <i>comes</i>, companion.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
-<img src="images/decoline1_arrowsbox.jpg" width="252" height="14" alt="decorative line" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="tnote">
-
-<p class="center"><b>Transcriber’s Notes:</b></p>
-
-<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
-
-<p>Page 559, “comman ding” changed to “commanding” (He is tall and commanding)</p>
-
-<p>Page 559, “tresspassers” changed to “trespassers” (immunity from outside trespassers)</p>
-
-<p>Page 560, “fir st” changed to “first” (implied in their first belief)</p>
-
-<p>Page 576, “Musem” changed to “Museum” (the Art Museum)</p>
-
-<p>Page 576, “Bursa’s” changed to “Bursar’s” (to the Bursar’s office)</p>
-
-<p>Page 578, repeated word “and” removed (and then ends with)</p>
-
-<p>Page 582, “Rathhaus” changed to “Rathaus” (the Bremen Rathaus)</p>
-
-<p>Page 582, “scimeter” changed to “scimitar” (the scimitar-like fins)</p>
-
-<p>Page 583, “pressage” changed to “presage” (took this for a presage)</p>
-
-<p>Page 583, “coast of New England, and the other in the waters about” was originally and erroneously printed at the foot of page 584.</p>
-
-<p>Page 584, “Calvanistic” changed to “Calvinistic” (her Calvinistic conscience)</p>
-
-<p>Page 586, “watchward” changed to “watchword” (“Pantaloons” was the watchword)</p>
-
-<p>Page 590, “Xenophen” changed to “Xenophon” (ten thousand Greeks under Xenophon)</p>
-
-<p>Page 591, “Brittainy” changed to “Brittany” (reached Morlaix in Brittany)</p>
-
-<p>Page 597, “cannon” changed to “common” (to be the provision for the “common defense.”)</p>
-
-<p>Page 600, “Autonyms” changed to “Antonyms” (A Complete Hand Book of Synonyms and Antonyms)</p>
-
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
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