A party is reported in Ohio claiming to organize C. L. S. C. local
circles, taking collections, etc. Now be it known that no agents for such
purposes are appointed by the Chautauqua authorities. Such self-appointed
agents are likely to be swindlers. Our workers render their services
voluntarily. We appoint no agents.
* * * * *
General Gordon’s proclamation of freedom for slave-holding and
slave-dealing in the Soudan has created a great surprise. It is even
suggested that his religious enthusiasm has toppled over into insanity.
Perhaps we can not hope to understand the case. But we need not
misunderstand the facts. Slavery was never practically abolished in that
country. Even in Egypt it continues to exist. General Gordon has not
reëstablished slavery. Starting from that fact, we may easily reach the
inference that the heroic and simple-minded Gordon has merely done away
with one of the pretexts by means of which corrupt Egyptian officials
plundered the natives. Slavery can not be abolished by slave-traders, and
their ways of enforcing any law which naturally renders it odious and
despicable.
* * * * *
John Ruskin is not always exactly level with common sense, but perhaps
he is nearly right in saying “Never buy a copy of a picture. It is
never a true copy.” It would probably be much wiser in people who pay
considerable sums for copies of old paintings if they spent their money
upon inferior original works by living artists. We have come to a place
where the tide should turn in favor of our own young artists; and we
believe the turn in the tide is not far ahead.
* * * * *
The weather prophets have let us alone this winter. But on the Pacific
coast a sidewalk philosopher has tried to explain the cold weather of
the sunset slope. He says that an earthquake off the coast of Japan
has filled up the Straits of Sunda, and so diverted the warm current
that should flow to the coast of Oregon. This is an improvement upon
the last prophet, who regulated the weather astrologically—by studying
the positions of the stars. The new man comes back to the earth and
is chiefly at fault in his facts. We welcome him in the room of the
astrologer of last year.
* * * * *
“Ruined by speculation.” They have to keep that “head” standing in the
newspaper offices. The last case which has fallen under eye is that of a
bank in Philadelphia, whose manager speculated in tin. When a bank fails,
or a trustee betrays a trust, we always ask: “What did he speculate in?”
The story is trite. We know of nothing better to write than the laconic
advice of General Clinton B. Fisk: “DON’T!”
* * * * *
Sir James Caird was part of a commission to study the causes of the
great famine in India in 1876-7, and has written a book on the subject.
The trouble of course is that the farmers are poor, their methods bad,
and that population keeps ahead of the food supply. One mode of relief
is emigration. This reminds us that Charles Kingsley, who studied the
Hindoo laborers in the West Indies, wrote very enthusiastically of their
qualities. Will the Hindoos come into our own South, and what will come
of it? In the West Indies, Kingsley says that negro and Hindoo lived and
worked together peacefully. We may not like it, but that side of the
world is top-heavy with humanity, and steam will go on distributing the
people among the less crowded nations.
* * * * *
What is money worth in this country? The discussions at Washington, and
the prices of government bonds, seem to show that it is worth between
two and three per cent., and there is not much doubt that a hundred-year
government bond bearing only two per cent. would sell at par. An incident
in New York City confirms this opinion. A recent call for bids on city
bonds bearing three per cent. interest, and payable in five years or
thirty, at the will of the city, was answered by bids for six times the
amount required at from par up to 103⅓. If short New York threes are at
a premium, a long government two would be worth par. Why, then, it will
be asked, do _we_ pay from six to ten per cent. in different parts of the
country? The answer is that _risk_ and superintendence of _short loans_
makes the difference. The real value of money is found by taking for a
measure long loans, in which there is absolutely no risk. The _Times_ of
New York expresses the opinion that thirty-year threes of that city would
sell at 115.
* * * * *
A correspondent of the New York _Evening Post_ furnishes some interesting
incidents in the life of Joel Barlow, the father of American epic
poetry. Redding, Conn., was the early home of Barlow, and the visitor
is shown the house in which the poet constructed his commencement poem
in 1778. It is said that Barlow’s one romance was a common one among
college students. He fell in love with a sweet girl whom he privately
married soon after graduation. He served as a chaplain in the Continental
army, but at Redding he is best remembered as the promoter of several
industrial enterprises designed to promote the welfare of the town.
Barlow was not a great father of our epic, but his sons have, perhaps,
not greatly surpassed him.
* * * * *
The enthusiasm of science, in alliance with the passion of boys for
killing birds, is making trouble in Massachusetts. The taxidermists
want birds to stuff, and average boys want to slay birds. The law is
loose, and any boy can get a license to kill birds in the service of
science. The dead birds are oftener eaten than stuffed. The song birds
and insectivorous birds are rapidly diminishing. Of course the boys rob
the nests of the birds and kill the young in the nests. There is a period
in a boy’s life when he loves such work. Maine has abolished the system
of licensing taxidermists, in consequence of the wholesale slaughter of
birds that went on under that system.
* * * * *
There is no doubt that the tobacco habit, or any other bad habit, can
be more easily overcome with the aid of prayer than without it. But
there are two objections to a common way of stating the case. The first
is that many tobacco users have ceased using it without the aid of
prayer. The second objection is that there is danger of teaching that
men cannot reform bad habits without _special_ divine help. The word
we spell c-a-n-t has two meanings, and both are present in the plea of
helplessness. It is understood, of course, that God helps men who help
themselves; that is the reason why a wicked farmer can raise good crops
by being a good agriculturist, though he is a bad sinner.
* * * * *
Congress is struggling with a foreign copyright bill. The bill is a
bungling one and really opens the American market to free trade in
books. This _may_ be desirable, but it is well to keep distinct measures
in different baskets. The free book question belongs in the tariff
bill. International copyright means putting a foreign author on a level
with the home author. We ought to do it without delay, but we need not
confer any favors on foreign publishers in a copyright bill. We have
international patent-right, but we did not think it necessary when we
protected the foreign inventor to put the foreign maker of the inventor’s
machines under shelter of the “Free List.”
* * * * *
John Bright is still the most vigorous handler of a rhetorical club in
all England. In the course of the great debate, last month, in the House
of Commons, the Tories of high birth were badly represented by two or
three orators of their rank. Mr. Bright crushed them fine by saying that
“the brothers and sons of dukes use language more virulent, more coarse,
more offensive and more ungentlemanly than is heard from a lower rank of
speakers.” We suspect that the sentence is the reporter’s, not Bright’s;
but the rebuke which he administered made a sensation which reminded
Englishmen of the days when he described the political “Cave of Adullam”
and its inhabitants.
* * * * *
The Prussian Chamber of Deputies recently debated the question of
dueling, especially in the universities. A critical member began it
by complaining of the idleness, drinking, gaming and dueling of the
students. The curiosity which the debate brought to light is the fact
that though dueling is forbidden by law, it has powerful friends in the
Chamber and the government. Germany has forbidden the barbaric custom;
but young Germans grow up in the belief that dueling is manly, and their
seniors remember that they had the same disease in the universities. The
German people are very sensitive to foreign criticism on this point;
and probably the other civilized nations will by and by ridicule German
dueling out of existence.
* * * * *
Curiosities of speech are always interesting, and it is a delightful
business for grammatical people to scold their neighbors. The New York
_Tribune_ has had a bout with a few score correspondents on the duties
of the neuter verb between subject and predicate; which must it agree
with? The _Tribune_ says with the real subject; the other folks say there
are two subjects, and that the verb must agree with the last. All the
malcontents quote “The wages of sin is death.” The _Tribune_ has three or
four answers; its best is that _death_ is the true subject; its second
best is that wages used to be singular. In “The Contributors’ Club” of
the _Atlantic Monthly_, another class of errors is discussed, such as the
dropping of _h_ in _which_ and _when_, a common thing in and around New
York, and the suppression of _r_ in many words. The English say _lud_, we
say _lawd_. While just touching this interesting topic we call attention
to a Meadville eccentricity. It is the rising inflection at the end of
questions, such as, “Is he _sick_?” Can any reader tell us whether this
locution (or rather inflection) is a localism only?
* * * * *
There is a lamentably large number of illiterates in the United States.
Let us reduce the number as fast as possible. But let us stop assuming
that the spelling book will rub the Decalogue into the conscience. Our
immediate troubles and dangers come from literates who are as bright as
lightning, and almost as destructive. We shall not get moral education by
way of the spelling book. The statistical proof that we do is defective.
We may count up the illiterate rogues in prison with much satisfaction,
if we forget that the literate rogues are too smart to be caught and
caged. Moral character does not result from intellectual training. Thirty
years ago we had this straight, and taught that an educated bad man was a
much more dangerous beast than an uneducated bad man.
* * * * *
A few kind-hearted people have for several years conducted a crusade
against horse-shoes. They claim that the horse-shoe is a piece of
unprofitable cruelty. They furnish examples and drive their own horses
unshod. Among their examples is this: “In Africa, a horse working in
a post-cart does, barefoot, over hard ground, twenty-four miles in
two hours.” One view is that our horse-shoeing bill would pay off the
national debt in a few generations. It is rather remarkable that these
reformers do not receive more attention. We hope they will soon get the
general ear; hence this note.
* * * * *
President Eliot, of Harvard, in a recent address, makes a suggestion
which is likely to arrest attention. The clergy are likely to have
a monopoly of classical education, perhaps of liberal education, if
present tendencies are not overcome. One of these tendencies is to give
candidates for the ministry a monopoly of Greek study in colleges.
President Eliot thinks that increased and more thorough study of English
may help in resisting the tendency toward purely mechanical education.
English study of a thorough sort requires and promotes classical
study. We add our thought that real liberal education is a fruit of
study _after_ the school-boy discipline, and that a classical revival
and an English literature revival are both clear possibilities of the
Chautauquan organization and methods. The most thorough study, with the
best helps, is within the plan of our university.
* * * * *
Salmi Morse was last year at this time struggling to exhibit his “Passion
Play” in New York. The religious feeling of the country won a conspicuous
victory in defeating the purpose of Mr. Morse. Near the end of last month
the dramatist drowned himself in the East river, and an actress whose
relations to him were questionable, is trying to gain notoriety by a
theory that a rejected suitor of hers murdered Mr. Morse. There are a
dozen good morals in the story.
* * * * *
Frederick Douglas having at 70 married a white wife, the public has
had to listen to a great many homilies on the general subject of
inter-marriage among races. We are not about to add another to the long
list of sociological essays. We suggest two things: First, it is best to
leave the whole matter to individuals. Therefore, the laws which forbid
marriage between whites and blacks should be repealed. Second, the real
evil—if there be one—is scarcely touched by the prohibitive laws. As
Mr. Douglas puts it: It is permitted to white men to beget children by
dark-skinned mothers, provided they do not marry these mothers of their
copper-colored children. The nobler of two ignoble white men—the one who
marries the black mother of his children—should be left in peace until we
can invent some means of punishing the ignoble wretch who does not marry
her. The former is a very rare man; the growing lights in the African
face show us that the other men are numerous.
* * * * *
Everybody has heard of the “Great Eastern” steamship, an eighth of a mile
long and thirty feet under water. The great ship was a failure, and after
an unsuccessful pursuit of genteel occupations for many years, she has
gone to Gibraltar to be used as a coal hulk. If any sailor ever loved
this leviathan, he will feel “the pity of it” in this unromantic end;
and most of us feel a touch of sadness in reading the story.
* * * * *
The honors paid to the dead Arctic explorers in New York, on Washington’s
birthday, lost none of their significance by the association. The flags
were at the peak in honor of the father of his country, in the morning;
in the afternoon they dropped to half-mast in memorial mourning for the
heroes of the ill-fated “Jeannette.” To young eyes seeing both memorial
honors, the spectacle must have been inspiring—as showing that the paths
to glory are still open to heroic souls. The booming guns, the wistful
and reverent throngs, the military tramping along the streets, all had
the same cheering lesson. We do not measure men or honor them by success;
for utter failure heroically faced we have the funeral pageant and the
historic record. We are not at all interested in the North Pole. We
soberly think the Arctic exploration business a foolhardy one. But we
forget our indifference, and our sober judgment, when we meet the cold
corpses of those who have vainly fought the cruel North—and say, “Well
done; like heroes you died; like heroes you shall be buried.”
* * * * *
In the graduating list published in the February CHAUTAUQUAN, the name
“J. Van Alstyne,” from New Jersey, should be Wm. L. Van Alstyne, Jr.;
also the name Emily Hancock, which appears under New York, should be
under Indiana, and “Mrs. John Romeo,” of New York, should read Mrs. John
Romer.
* * * * *
A correspondent kindly calls our attention to two errors in THE
CHAUTAUQUAN for February. We “stand corrected.” Whittier’s birthday comes
on December seventeenth, instead of the sixteenth, as stated on page 302,
and there are thirty-eight states in the Union, not thirty-nine.