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Title: The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, July 1884, No. 10

Author: Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
        Chautauqua Institution

Editor: Theodore L. Flood

Release date: July 26, 2017 [eBook #55208]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Emmy, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHAUTAUQUAN, VOL. 04, JULY 1884, NO. 10 ***

                            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 THE CHAUTAUQUAN, VOL. 04, JULY 1884, NO. 10 ***


    

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