From the gay world we’ll oft retire
To our own family and fire,
Where love our hours employs;
No noisy neighbor enters here
No intermeddling stranger near,
To spoil our heartfelt joys.
—_N. Cotton._
The room which above all others should be furnished with the most loving
thought and lavish expense is the household parlor, or family sitting
room. Here the father reads his evening paper, the mother busies herself
with her ready needle, the children “with books, or work or healthful
play.” This should be to eye and body preëminently a restful room,
commodious, cheerful. If the reception room for visitors needs the cheer
of firelight, how much more the _living room_ of the household.
Whittier’s description of the homely comfort of an old New England farm
house remains unexcelled in the literature of house furnishing:
“Shut in from all the world without
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed.
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall,
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andiron’s straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row.
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.
What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.”
For the sake of restfulness to the eye, the walls and carpet should be
neutral in tone, making a good background to the family figures; the wall
paper being of a good all-overish pattern that will not detract from
pictures that may hang on it, and the carpet or rug well mixed, of not
too loud a pattern, and without strong contrasts of light and dark. Blue
wall papers are hard to deal with, but creams, fawns, soft greenish or
olive-grays, and simple leaf patterns with slight variations of color
or shade are all good for walls that are to be hung with pictures, as
a sitting room should be. Common butchers’ paper, put on in sheets,
the better textured cartridge paper, or sheathing paper with a pretty
variation introduced by way of frieze or dado are all restful to the
eye and good for the sitting room walls. The greens used should not be
sharp and crude, but should be modified, making them yellowish, bluish,
or grayish. So with reds, which will be better yellowish, slightly
bluish (not purplish), or brownish; and yellows which must be modified
into creams, old-golds, or fawns. This rule is for large surfaces. A
little pure, bright color can be introduced here and there by way of
decoration, and must appear somewhere in the room if it is to have a
cheerful look, but wait till your pictures are hung before you introduce
much brilliant color. It may take the life out of them. Picture-rods are
a great convenience, and, after the first expense, save much trouble,
and much marring of walls by driving nails. The picture-rod should
run below the frieze, and a box of picture-hooks of suitable size for
the rods should be kept ready to hand, and picture-wire so that a new
painting or engraving when it comes home may find its place at once and
not stand on the floor for a month waiting till the master can drive
a nail. As for the wall decorations, there should be a looking-glass
for family convenience either in this parlor or the entry way (the
parlor is the better place), and the best pictures the house affords,
always making sure that they are good pictures. Better always a good
photograph, or wood-cut, or etching, than a poor chromo, steel engraving,
or water-color; and better, a hundred fold, a good water-color than a
poor oil painting. If your family portraits are poor, consign them to the
garret or the upstairs hall, but, if possible, have at least one good
painting in your home-room, even if it does cost money; and remember that
a first-hand sketch by a good living artist is better than a second-hand
copy of an old master. But one good painting in a house, whether a copy
or an original, is a continual art lesson. A woman of taste will not
mix all manner of pictures together on one wall. If possible, she will
keep oil paintings by themselves, and not put them in juxtaposition with
water-colors—nor will she put a picture suited only to a gallery in a
family sitting room. Nor will she put Bacchantes in the same group with
worshiping cherubs. There is a vast deal of stuff purely ephemeral that
women are apt to load their walls with—Christmas, New Year, Easter and
birthday cards, and painted panels, which may do very well to exhibit
during the holidays or the day or two after the birthday; then, having
had their day, they should cease to obtrude if not to be. There should be
a box or receptacle for all this clutter; such souvenirs are admirable
for their suggestions to the amateur decorator or embroiderer of the
family, but they should not be allowed to spot the walls, to hang from
the side brackets or to decorate the looking-glass. “God bless our home”
is a devout aspiration which is better carried out in a godly life than
worked in cross-stitch and hung over the sitting room door. I have seen
Scripture texts deftly inwrought into the mural decoration of a sea-side
cottage, verses from the sailors’ Psalm being painted in a decorative
way between border lines of frieze or dado, where they did not seem out
of place, but the summer boarders were well nigh driven from another
cottage because of a card-board abomination hung over the mantel piece
of their sitting room, with indigo clouds and grass-green waves, with
a three-quarters-length Christ in all colors of the rainbow uttering
the magic words worked in shaded reds—“Peace, Be Still.” The matter
of mottoes has been overdone, and it is always safe to leave them out
altogether.
Paintings upon plush must be exceedingly good to make them worth hanging
anywhere. Usually such decoration is a waste of expensive material.
Any way, plush is too easily spoiled by dust or careless handling
to make it welcome in the family room. Painting upon picture and
looking-glass frames is another misuse of decoration. A London artist
with rare ingenuity paints a stalk of lilies to hide a flaw in his
hall mirror, and straightway the “Decorative Art” salesrooms all over
our land effloresce with blooming mirror frames whose unpruned vines
straggle and trail over every glass. The beauty of a mirror is to have
it absolutely clear and free from dust and dirt, finger marks or paint
blotches, throughout its entire surface. Flower painting in polychrome
upon frames and easels is utterly out of place, as it calls the eye off
from the picture which the frame or easel holds, and reminds one of a
servant decked out in finery surreptitiously borrowed from her mistress’s
wardrobe.
Marble mantel pieces, to be good, must be expensive. A simple pine
mantel piece with a little incised ornament is far better than white or
cold gray marble. Raised, stuck-on ornament is objectionable, whether
in wood or stone, but mantel pieces, book-cases and cabinets give a
fine opportunity for domestic carving, and one can but wonder that
more home ingenuity is not expended on the construction and carving of
mantels and other woodwork in our rooms, such as doors and windows. I
have seen a wooden mantel piece small, plain, and somewhat cheap and
inferior-looking, so improved by a little carving, judiciously introduced
by the man of the house—a small panel set in here, and the edge of the
shelf prettily finished—that the whole thing grew dignified at once and
became a worthy ornament of the “spare room,” when painted in harmony
with the rest of the woodwork. The youngest whittlers might be taught to
use tools for the family good, if parents were only willing to go to a
little trouble and expense in providing models, tools and wood for their
use, and a comfortable chimney nook where the work could be carried on.
In the schools of Philadelphia Mr. Leland has shown how much may be done
by boys and girls when their efforts are wisely directed.
When there is no room in the house specially set apart as a library,
cabinets and book cases form an important part of the sitting room
furniture. I would have book shelves of some sort in every room of a
house; but in the room where the family gathers there should be a special
shelf for books of reference. An encyclopædia is of as much value to the
household as a wood lot is to the farm. Better wear your old silk gown or
shabby overcoat another year, or two years even, and have your book of
reference always at hand for the general good. The unabridged dictionary
is a necessity, and should stand in its rack easy of access to school
children and their elders as well. A household book of poetry, Dana’s or
Bryant’s, or whatever may be better, and an equally comprehensive volume
of religious verse like Gilman’s, or Palgrave’s choice “Golden Treasury,”
should be well thumbed by the children, and should be placed temptingly
at hand, not locked behind glass doors. Glazed doors are demanded by
collectors who revel in vellum, uncut leaves, and rare editions, but
cases that are well backed and that have leathern, or even moreen or
flannel, valences tacked to the shelves, will serve well enough to
protect books in a house where all the reading matter is for daily use or
study.
A low book case three or four feet high and broad enough to fill a
generous wall space, running, if need be, across one side of the room,
may be found ample enough for a family whose library is limited. Pictures
and vases can be ranged upon its top. I know a room that holds three
or four such book cases of ebonized pine, filled with books and made
gay with valences of scarlet moreen, which yet scorns to be called “the
library,” and is only known as the family “sitting room.” Valences of
leather or wool are sufficient to protect the books from dust if the
cases are well backed.
In addition to the book case, hanging shelves for children’s books, or
cabinets for collections of any sort, can be made of pine, and when
absolutely plain, if neatly varnished, need not prove unsightly. They may
even be made very ornamental by a bright curtain, plain or embroidered,
with rings attached that run lightly over a brass rod or wire, and screen
the contents of the shelves from the too inquisitive eye.
It is really a happy day for a household when one of its members develops
a hobby and begins to make a collection—not of buttons or business cards,
but of something on which genuine study will not come amiss, and there is
hardly any line in which one is likely to interest himself where he may
not often pick up for a mere trifle much that will be of special value to
his collection, much that, by itself, would be comparatively worthless,
but which in a collection has added worth and dignity; and any collection
makes a new point of interest in a home. In a quiet country town where I
once lived, the boys of the village took to collecting butterflies and
insects. Farmers carried turpentine or benzine in their pockets, and
would come home from their haying fields with hats gay with the captured
moths and butterflies they were taking to the collectors of their
several households. Thus homes hitherto utterly wanting in any æsthetic
influence, seemed to brighten into something positively charming, when
father and mother, son and daughter clustered about the drawers in the
front parlor, exhibiting to any chance visitor the fragile treasures so
carefully arranged within them, and when a new specimen was captured the
collector would
“Run it o’er and o’er with greedy view,
And look and look again, as he would look it through.”
Think of the many lines in which the collector may work! The postage
stamp craze was by no means to be despised; it was a good geography
lesson for the children, and well up to the times, throwing in a little
history as well. Coin collecting is yet more profitable in the same
lines, and when confined to the coins of one’s own land, gives a wide
enough range for the average collector. For the out-of-door student there
are shells, sea mosses and birds’ eggs, flowers to press, and minerals
to secure. One boy hunts up Indian relics, another collects weapons of
various sorts, from
“The old queen’s arm which Gran’ther Young
Fetched back from Concord, busted,”
to an Australian boomerang or a South Sea Island club brought by the
sailor uncle from some voyage of long ago. One dear, old lady has a
choice collection of bits of lace all dated and named; another of
pieces of brocade, an admirable commentary on silk manufactory. Here we
find a treasurer of fans, and there of snuff-boxes; here of children’s
photographs, and there of photographs or autographs of famous men; and
everywhere, all over our land, will be found the covetous collector of
rare, old china and pottery. Let the children be encouraged to interest
themselves in some such lines as these, not so as to make nuisances of
themselves and museums of their homes—there will be little danger of
that—but enough to give them a wholesome enthusiasm in some particular
line of study. A vast deal of general information is disseminated through
a household, unconsciously absorbed, as it were, when each one has a
hobby of his own, and gives out of his choicest discoveries for the
common good.
As to the sitting room furniture, there are a few essentials that must
be emphasized. There should be a table large enough for half a dozen
people to sit around of an evening—a round one is best—strong, solid,
and covered with a serviceable cloth. There are handsome woolen table
covers that grow yet handsomer with age as their colors mellow together,
but the best is expensive. A square of plain felt does very well, and
is in better taste than the scarlet and green felt cloths stamped with
black figures that were so prevalent twenty years ago. A figured cloth
shows spots less than a plain one. If a mat of some sort, or even a
newspaper, is always laid down under any lamp that burns kerosene, and if
a blotter is always used where writing or painting is going on, a plain
cloth ought to last for years. Light should abound where the family sit
together, sunlight by day and good gas or lamp light by night should be
generously supplied. A good duplex burner or a double student lamp uses
no more oil than several small lamps dotted down here and there, about
the room, and it brings the family together about the central table. So
with the drop light, which is an essential where gas is used. The wise
woman discards gas in her sitting room, however, and uses good oil,
which is far better for the eyes. There should be a writing desk in the
room. The old-fashioned secretary was a valuable piece of sitting room
furniture, and many a good one has been recalled from the attic within
the last few years, and, by a judicious use of soda water, has been freed
from old paint, and when scrubbed and rubbed, it has shone as good as
new, and much more useful than the modern Davenport. There should be
large, easy chairs, not too low, for the use of the men of the house,
and for elderly people who find it hard to rise gracefully and with ease
from soft, low chairs. There should also be low chairs with broad seats,
and short arms, or none at all, for those who must busy themselves with
sewing, knitting, and embroidery, and comfortable camp chairs that can
be lightly lifted by the children and carried here and there about the
room. Let the chairs, in fact let everything be strong and comfortable
in this room. A heavy man is often put to great inconvenience because
the chairs at his disposal are too flimsy to bear his weight. There are
countless stories told of the Rev. Phillips Brooks, and men of his build,
who dare not laugh at a dinner party lest their chairs resolve themselves
into kindling wood at the first mirthful shake. In my own parlor there is
one chair deep, broad, and of marvelous strength, bought with an eye to
the needs of a friendly neighbor of grand dimensions. “This is a chair
that Mr. B. can’t break,” said the kindly donor who had witnessed the
collapsing of ordinary parlor chairs under his ponderous weight. Remember
that no chair should be expected to do service that has not connecting
rungs between the legs.
There should be, also, a lounge or sofa in this room, with ample pillow,
not a round horse-hair cylinder, but something useful, restful, and not
too fine. Let the color be as perfect as may be, but if the material
of which it is made be really too splendid for daily use, its glories
should be veiled behind a strong, washable tidy. I have seen a gray linen
square or towel, with drawn work at the ends, such as costs fifty cents,
perhaps, at the linen shops, with a few long-stemmed poppies bending
together in a row at one end, wrought in outline, with the familiar
legend, “We are all nodding, nid, nid, nodding,” running sleepily down
the center. That had just sentiment enough, and art enough for its place
and use. Tidies are mere clutter if not intended to be brushed against
and used. Paintings on blue satin, decked out with lace, are out of taste
in any room, however fine, and out of place on any chair. No chair should
be too daintily dressed out to be sat upon; and no painting should so
hang as to invite shoulders clad in black broadcloth to rub themselves
against it. “Tidies” or “chair backs,” if used at all, should be of a
firm material, not easily crumpled, should be firmly attached, should
give off little or no lint, and should be washed when they are soiled, or
thrown away. They are better when off the white.
There should be a wrap of some sort, afghan, Mexican or army blanket,
railway rug or shawl thrown over the foot of the sofa, with which to
cover up the invalid of the household, or any one who is tempted to
lounge awhile.
Other sitting room comforts, though not essentials, are a sewing table,
stand or basket with drawers or pockets attached, for the convenience of
needlewomen, a portable screen, two-leaved and not too large, that can
shut off draughts from rheumatic shoulders, and an occasional hassock or
footstool—“crickets” our grandmothers called them in New England.
The covering of tables, chairs, etc., affords an opportunity to introduce
color into the room, but it is not at all necessary that the chairs
should all be covered with stuffs of the same quality or color. Unless
very well chosen, plain colors are apt to stare, like the sharp green
“rep” that was so long popular, and whose good wearing qualities made it
so hard to displace. If the manufacturers had only kept pace with the
times, and produced the stuff in good, plain shades that would keep their
colors, or figured in good designs, it would still hold its own against
all the so-called tapestry goods that the upholsterers offer us. “Rep,”
however, was utterly unsuitable for curtains; it was stiff and wiry, and
hung in ungainly folds.
For our sitting room some light drapery at the windows is advisable. If
the room has no blinds, there should be some sort of thick shades or
venetian blinds. There is a yellowish brown holland that is admirable
for the purpose; but with outside or inside blinds, a thin curtain like
Madras muslin is all that is necessary to shade the blackness of the
windows at night, or to temper the brightness of the sunlight by day. The
advantage of Madras muslin or Cretan cloth over lace, muslin, or cheese
cloth curtains lies in the color and figure; colored and figured curtains
showing to better advantage against the light than plain white, and
looking fresher much longer; they “furnish” a room more.
Whatever curtains are used, they should be hung with rings from rods of
brass, bamboo, or wood—varnished pine is good enough—so that they can
be pushed entirely to one side with ease. Rods should not be too large
and should be finished at the ends with some simple ornament, as a plain
ball which pulls off at one end, so as to allow the rings to slip over
the rod. The curtains may be long, if hung outside the window frame, and
just reach the floor, or they may hang from the upper sash and just reach
to the window ledge, so as to cover only the window; or they may be half
curtains hanging from a small rod or wire so as to screen only the lower
sash. It is not at all necessary to treat the windows alike. A bay window
may have a long, heavy curtain running across the bay and forming a nook
where two or three may sit cosily together, and the other windows may be
treated to sash or half-sash curtains of soft silk, Madras muslin, or
even Turkey red calico. Where a window is filled with plants, the little
half curtain running upon a brass wire and falling over the lower sash
serves, on winter nights, as a slight protection for the plants from
outer air, and can be thrust to one side by day, and tucked up out of
sight. A little drapery is a great relief in a room where there are bare
floors and much display of woodwork in doors and window frames. Then,
a portière in place of a closet door, a hanging before a book case, or
curtains at the windows would relieve the bareness of the room as nothing
else could. Curtains should not repeat the color of the walls, nor should
portières be of the same material and color as the curtains. Woodwork,
however, when painted should repeat the wall color, though it should be
somewhat lighter in shade.
There lacks but little to make our home parlor complete. A piano, if
practice thereon will not interfere with the occupancy of the room by
the household; otherwise let the piano be kept where music lessons given
and studied will not disturb the family serenity; for many reasons the
drawing room is the best place for the piano, it is more likely to be
treated with respect by mischievous fingers there than in the living
room; and a clock, the plainer the better—no little French fanciful
affair, but something substantial, that can last like the tall, ancestral
eight-day time piece. Should the clock stand on the mantel it is not
essential to have balancing ornaments on either side. The choicest
treasures of the house should indeed adorn the mantel piece, but it is
never necessary to have two of a kind standing at equal distances from
the center.
This is the room in which all things should seem to grow into a likeness
to the household, and to grow old with it. Here no changes should be made
but for good cause, and always for the better, never by the wholesale.
Nor should furniture be introduced that is so staringly new and gay as to
put the rest out of countenance and make it look shabby by comparison.
There are plenty of good stuffs subdued enough in color to harmonize
with any long used parlor, no matter how old the carpet nor how faded
the chair seats. Whatever is good and old, though worn, let us respect,
preserve, and repair.
NATIONAL AID TO EDUCATION.
BY GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN,
U. S. Senator from Illinois.
To bring to light and expose to public gaze our national defects or
social deformities is an unpleasant and generally thankless task, but
so long as we shirk it, just so long will they remain to our national
detriment and disgrace. To be conscious of disease, to locate and
properly diagnose it, is to be half-way on the road to good health.
It is not necessary in this age of enlightenment to dwell upon the
manifest and manifold advantages to a people and to a nation, of
education. They are palpable, and conceded by all men. Illiteracy,
then, must as plainly be a disadvantage to a nation, a hindrance to
the advancement and welfare of its people, and an evil which should be
eradicated.
We Americans boast, and boast rightfully, of the high position in the
scale of intelligence we occupy as a people; but pride in that fact
should not blind our eyes to our existing imperfections. We are proud of
the attainments of our men of letters; we rejoice in the achievements of
our scientists and inventors; we glory in our rapid advance among the
nations to wealth and power; and we fail to give serious heed to the
hundreds of thousands of our people who are growing up every year in
clouded ignorance, without even the rudiments of education.
If we examine with care our census returns and the reports of our
Bureau of Education, we will be startled by some of the facts they
reveal. To follow many of these revelations in detail might lead to an
accusation of making invidious distinctions, but there are enough to
which the attention of the country may be called without the shadow of
justification for such a charge. Let us look at these.
Take the Bulletin of “Illiteracy in the United States,” as returned at
the tenth census, and its first line reveals the deplorable fact that of
the 36,761,607 persons of ten years of age and upward, 4,923,451 (over
one-seventh) are unable to read, and 6,239,958 (nearly one-sixth) are
unable to write.
It appears, moreover, from other census tabulations presented[D] to the
United States Senate that, of the 50,155,783 persons constituting our
population in 1880, there were equally proportioned between the white
and colored races, 4,204,363 of both sexes over twenty-one years of age
unable to write, or about 2,000,000 “illiterates” out of the 10,000,000
persons at that time entitled to vote; or, in other words, one of every
five voters in the United States unable to write his name. From other
statistics of that census it appears also that 1,640,000 voters were
unable to read. Thus we have the astounding assurance that while one in
every five voters can not write the ballot that he wishes to deposit, one
in every six voters can not even read the ballot that he places in the
box!
It is this one illiterate voter in every five (or six) voters who holds
the balance of power at our elections.
While a very large proportion of our population, and also of that portion
of it which exercises the elective franchise, can both read and write,
yet a great number of these are very little the more intelligent because
their limited ability to do either or both is so imperfect and so rarely
availed of. Alluding to these, a committee of the United States Senate
(Report 101, Pt. 2, first session, Forty-eighth Congress), said: “Of
those who can write, multitudes do not place a sentence on paper twice in
a lifetime. Thousands never get an idea from the printed page.” Yet these
are the men who may at any time subject the country to their control—men
who hold the weighty balance of political power.
To the patriot, to the lover of republican institutions, to the advocate
of unrestricted individual suffrage, this fact is appalling. But it is
none the less a fact that should be known. Nor may the advocates of
monarchical systems of government and of restricted suffrage take comfort
from that fact. That the deciding ballot in our political contests may
be an ignorant one does not prove the evil or folly of unrestricted
suffrage. Not at all. Cancer in the breast does not prove the folly of
life. Nor is a jammed finger necessarily fatal. These simply remind us
that in the one case the knife, and in the other the lotion, should be
quickly and efficiently used. So with the ignorant ballot. Its existence
merely proves the absolute necessity of prompt and vigorous action to
enlighten it—of educating him who casts it—of taking counsel from the
past and present and providently guarding the future. It teaches us
that while we are properly horrified at any desecration of the sacred
right of suffrage—whether by bulldozing, ballot-box stuffing, false
counting, or other methods of intimidation or of fraud—it is high time
to arouse ourselves to a state of facts existing around us and under our
very noses, constituting a sacrilege only differing from these others
in degree; to realize, in time to remedy it, that at every election
we witness, at almost every voting precinct in the land, a constant,
never-failing, almost winked-at desecration by power-clad ignorance of
that right; to realize the great dangers from this source that we have
thus far happily escaped; to properly apprehend the possible perils thus
stored up for us in the bosom of the future, and by timely, energetic and
sufficient action to arrest them. Thus the very knowledge that one in
every five of our voters exercises ignorantly this undue and prodigious
power must nerve a free and enlightened people to make immediate and
adequate provision both to aid and to make obligatory the elementary
education of those who in due time will inherit from us the right of
suffrage.
It can not be too often or too strongly urged, under the light of
this revelation from the census returns, that an ignorant ballot is
a dangerous ballot, because it may be at once heedless, and easily
deceived; that an educated ballot is, to the degree of education, an
enlightened ballot—possibly wrong-headed or mistaken at times, but
as a rule careful, brave and pure; and that, as the ballot is placed
in the hands of all Americans, education—the means by which they may
discriminatingly cast that ballot—should be open and free to all.
The very existence of the Republic depends upon the proper use of the
potential ballot. Education alone can teach that proper use. Hence it is
that “education to all” is the chief corner stone of the Republic; and
to make that secure, no effort however great, no expense however large,
should be withheld.
Here then, with the fact staring us in the face, that the one potential
vote of every five votes that decides all the great political questions
of the day—questions involving the most complex and far-reaching
principles of government—questions of finance, of diplomacy, of commerce,
of trade, of the tariff, of the relations of capital and labor, and
others whose solution perplexes the minds of our very ablest statesmen—is
an utterly ignorant vote, can the American people hesitate to demand of
Congress not only immediate but adequate remedial legislation in the
shape of ample national aid to elementary education for all of school
age, and obligatory attendance within reasonable limits?
But this is not the only fact bearing heavily upon the question of the
necessity of national aid to our public school system. If we examine
the details of these census tabulations we shall find that much the
larger portion of this illiteracy is found in some thirteen or fourteen
states. Taking these states and territories in which the proportion of
“illiterates” (those unable to write) to the total state or territorial
population of ten years of age and upward exceeds 25 per cent., we find
that ratio to be: In Alabama, 50.9 per cent.; Arkansas, 38; Florida,
43.4; Georgia, 49.9; Kentucky, 29.9; Louisiana, 49.1; Mississippi, 49.5;
New Mexico, 65; North Carolina, 48.3; South Carolina, 55.4; Tennessee,
38.7; Texas, 29.7; and Virginia, 40.6. Massing these twelve states and
one territory together, we find they include a population of 10,079,130
of ten years of age and upward, of which number no less than 4,324,513,
or over two fifths, are unable to write—forty-three out of every one
hundred unable to sign their own names—while of the 26,682,477 persons
of like age in the remaining states and territories, the number of such
illiterates is but 1,915,445, or a little over seven in every one hundred.
We are all of course aware that this large proportion of illiteracy
in the states named is largely owing to the presence of the colored
population. Nevertheless the fact remains that these people, to whom all
the rights of citizenship have been accorded, and who will hereafter form
a very important and possibly predominating factor in the administration
of the affairs of many of these states, as well as an important factor in
national affairs, must remain for a long time in ignorance unless some
other means of educating them be adopted than that which now obtains.
But let no one deceive himself with the idea that this undue and
lamentable ratio of illiteracy in these particular states is due wholly
to the presence of the colored population. Unfortunately illiteracy
prevails to a very considerable and almost an alarming extent among their
native white population also. Thus the census tabulations show that
the proportion of “illiterates” (those unable to write), in the total
native white population, ten years of age and upward, is: In Alabama, 25
percent.; Arkansas, 25.5; Florida, 20.7; Georgia, 23.2; Kentucky, 22.8;
Louisiana, 19.8; Mississippi, 16.6; New Mexico, 64.2; North Carolina,
31.7; South Carolina, 22.4; Tennessee, 27.8; Texas, 13.9; and Virginia,
18.5. Massing them we find that of the 6,010,714 native whites, ten years
of age and upward, within the territorial limits mentioned, there are as
many as 1,395,441—being 23.2 per cent., or nearly one in every four of
the whites—unable to write. It is evident, therefore, that the surprising
illiteracy in these states is not wholly attributable to the presence
therein of the colored race.
It is somewhat humiliating to have to confess to the world by our own
official figures that one out of every four of the native whites over ten
years of age in twelve states and one territory of our Republic is unable
to write his own name, especially when we compare it with the additional
fact, derived from the same tabulation, that the illiteracy of the
foreign born of these same localities does not rise in any instance above
10.9 per cent.
Turning to the other side of the picture we may find some grains of
comparative consolation in observing the fact that of the remaining
19,775,075 native whites, ten years of age and upward, in the United
States only 860,019—or 4.3 per cent., being one in twenty-three—are
unable to write. This favorable condition of one part of the country,
however, only serves to bring out in sharper contrast the sad condition
of the other part, and should spur the philanthropist and statesman to
renewed and more strenuous effort to obliterate, or at least ameliorate,
this alarming sectional inequality in the degree of illiteracy.
Were it not for the hope of ultimately removing this inequality by
attaining an educational homogeneity or equality on the higher level
as between the sections, one might almost be tempted to wish for an
educational equalization on the lower grade; for as long as that
inequality continues to exist, so long must it prove a source of
irritation and danger in a thousand forms.
As to the situation in the old slave states, where the colored population
is proportionately large, it is not difficult to understand it. We can
appreciate the dread on the part of the whites of an “uprising,” as it
is termed, of the colored people. But the words of Jefferson[E]—possibly
prophetic unless averted by the exercise of wisdom and fairness—have in
them a depth of meaning that none but those whites can fully realize
when, speaking of the slaves, he says: “And can the liberties of a
nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a
conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift
of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice
can not sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means
only, a _revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is
among the possible events_; that it may become probable by supernatural
interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us
in such a contest.”
Aside from the overawing influence of a large standing army there is
but one thing that can prevent a race-conflict, the very possibility of
which we dread to contemplate, and that is the benign and liberalizing
influence of education, resulting in a free and untrammeled exercise
of the elective franchise. Give the former and you will unquestionably
secure the latter.
That the local as well as sectional inequality in education can be
overcome by no other means than by national aid, will be further
demonstrated. Nor is it just that we should expect or ask it to be
otherwise. No matter now what may have caused this inequality, the fact
that it exists is that which now momentously concerns us. We know it
can not be removed by recurring to the cause; and it will become more
and more evident as we examine the subject that only by speedy and
efficient congressional action can we now insure that future educational
equilibrium, not only between the races and between the sections, but
also between the people in each state, which will have so important a
bearing upon the destinies of this nation, and is so essential to the
continued peace, prosperity and contentment of its people.
Another fact of great importance, as bearing upon the necessity for
national aid to education, is revealed by the census returns. It is a
curious as well as an important revelation, because it shows that the
ratio of children or persons under twenty-one years of age to the adults,
is considerably larger in some states than in others, and correspondingly
increases the educational burden.
The principle involved in this condition of affairs may be simply
illustrated thus: Suppose the head of each family had to pay directly for
the education of his own children. Then, even with an equality of means,
the burden would, as a matter of course, fall heavier on the one with a
numerous than the one with a small progeny.
To make apparent the effect of this inequality in the proportion of
minors to adults in different parts of our common country, let us suppose
that the mean average cost of schooling is four dollars per annum for
each child.
It appears that in Connecticut, out of every one hundred persons,
fifty-nine are adults, and forty-one are minors. At this supposed rate,
then, the fifty-nine adults would have each to pay two dollars and
seventy-eight cents per annum in order to make up the one hundred and
sixty-four dollars per annum needed for the education of the forty-one
children. It appears also that in South Carolina, out of every one
hundred persons, forty-three are adults and fifty-seven are minors. At
the supposed rate, then, these forty-three adults would have each to
pay five dollars and thirty cents per annum in order to make up the two
hundred and twenty-eight dollars per annum needed for the education of
the fifty-seven children.
Now, this is a very important fact, indeed, and must lead all fair minded
advocates of education to modify somewhat the criticisms they may have
made touching the expenditure in the South for education as compared with
that in the North and West; for here it becomes palpable that two dollars
and seventy-eight cents per adult in Connecticut is equivalent to five
dollars and thirty cents per adult in South Carolina for the schooling of
the children respectively, in those states. Nearly twice as much in one
state as in the other.
But this result is from an assumed uniform mean average standard of the
cost of educating each child in the Union. Let us test the matter by a
comparison founded on actual cost. Take, for instance, the states of
Maine and Mississippi.
In Maine there are fifty-eight adults to forty-two minors in every
one hundred persons. In Mississippi there are forty-three adults to
fifty-seven minors in every one hundred persons. In Maine[F] the
educational expenditure per capita of the school population is four
dollars and sixty-seven cents per annum. This enforces an annual
expenditure for this purpose of three dollars and thirty-eight cents by
each adult. An equal school tax of four dollars and sixty-seven cents per
annum for each scholar, imposed upon the adult population of Mississippi
would call for six dollars and nineteen cents from each adult—or nearly
twice what the adult of Maine must pay.
The effects of this disparity will be more fully dwelt upon at a later
period. But it must surely be already apparent that this inequality of
the educational burden created by the disparity existing between the
populations of various portions of our country can alone be met and
remedied by some aid from the general government.
It is true that the facts thus far adduced indicate rather the necessity
for national assistance to certain sections or states than for general
and uniform aid to all. But a further study and the development of other
facts will, as we proceed, more fully reveal, not alone the wisdom and
necessity of such aid to all, but the character and extent of the aid
required.
Before we reach that period, however, there are facts touching other
phases of inequality of burden that are worthy of close and careful
consideration.
Careful tabulations from the census returns show that a school enrollment
of 22.4 per cent. of the total population of Missouri amounts to but 88.6
per cent. of the school population of that state, fixing the standard of
school age as between six and sixteen years; while a school enrollment
of 22 per cent. of the total population of New Jersey is equal to[G]
101.5 per cent. of her school population. Hence, although Missouri has a
somewhat larger percentage in school of her total population than has New
Jersey, yet she lacks more than 11 per cent. of having all her children
of school age enrolled as scholars; while a slightly smaller per cent. of
her total population places more than all the school age children of New
Jersey in school. So also with Vermont, where a school enrollment of 22
per cent. of the total population gives 109.5 per cent. in school, of all
of school age.
Comparing Nebraska and Connecticut, we find that while 22.3 per cent. of
the total population of the former state enrolled in the schools amounts
to but 95.4 per cent. of her children of school age, 21.3 per cent. of
the total population of the latter state enrolled in the schools is
equivalent to 110.3 per cent. of her children of school age.
Massachusetts has to send 19.2 per cent. of her total population to
school in order to equal 104.8 per cent. of her children of school age,
while Illinois has to send to school 24.5 per cent. of her population to
reach a like ratio of enrolled scholars to children of school age.
Even in states situated so near to each other as Pennsylvania and
New York we observe this inequality. In the former, where the school
enrollment is 22.8 per cent. of the total population, it is but 99.4 per
cent. of the children of school age, while in New York 23 per cent. of
the total population enrolled in the schools is 112.4 per cent. of her
children of school age.
Thus far have been selected for comparison some of those states the
ratios of whose school enrollment to the total population were about the
same. But while these contrasts bring out very clearly the inequality in
the burden of educating the children of our country, yet there are more
marked illustrations at hand.
Take Arkansas, West Virginia and New York, for instance. In Arkansas the
school enrollment is 13.5 per cent. of population, and but 51.3 per cent.
of the children of school age. At the same ratio a school enrollment of
23 per cent. of total population in Arkansas would be but 87.4 per cent.
of the children of school age. West Virginia has a school enrollment of
23.3 per cent. of total population, which is only 87.9 per cent. of her
children of school age. Yet New York, as we have already seen, by an
enrollment of 23 per cent. of her total population secures schooling for
113.3 per cent.—more than all—of her children of school age.
Comparing other states, one with the other—such as Alabama with Maine,
Georgia with New Hampshire, Tennessee with Rhode Island, Mississippi
with Massachusetts, etc.—we see similar, and in some cases even greater
inequality.
Let us now apply these facts practically, and thus reach a clearer
understanding of the effect of this great disparity.
The actual mean average cost of the schooling of each public school
scholar in the United States is about ten dollars. Assuming then that
the adult population of each state bears the burden of educating its
children, and that all the children of school age in each state are
enrolled in the schools—as they should be—let us ascertain how much the
tax per capita would be on the adults bearing this burden in each state
and territory. In other words, let us discover how much in each state and
territory must every adult (male or female) pay every year in order to
supply the ten dollars per annum that it costs to educate each and every
child in that state or territory.
It would cost each adult in Montana, $1.95; in Wyoming, $2.12; Nevada,
$2.12; Colorado, $2.20; Arizona, $2.34; New Hampshire, $2.78; Idaho,
$3.00; Massachusetts, $3.23; Dakota, $3.30; Rhode Island, $3.22;
California, $3.33; Connecticut, $3.27; Maine, $3.43; Vermont, $3.46; New
York, $3.56; District of Columbia, $3.77; Washington, $3.94; New Jersey,
$4.02; Michigan, $4.15; Oregon, $4.29; Delaware, $4.31; Pennsylvania,
$4.26; Ohio, $4.55; Maryland, $4.55; Nebraska, $4.77; Minnesota, $4.70;
New Mexico, $4.65; Wisconsin, $4.86; Illinois, $4.88; Indiana, $5.00;
Iowa, $5.10; Missouri, $5.28; Kansas, $5.32; Louisiana, $5.54; North
Carolina, $5.67; Virginia, $5.59; Texas, $5.86; Kentucky, $5.65; Florida,
$5.78; Utah, $6.07; Alabama, $6.12; Arkansas, $6.12; Georgia, $5.98;
South Carolina, $5.98; Tennessee, $6.00; West Virginia, $5.86, and
Mississippi, $6.28—while, massing the entire Union, the cost to each
adult in it would be $4.70.
Thus we find that while the school tax on each adult in New York would
be but $3.56, in the adjoining state of Pennsylvania it would be $4.26;
that while in Massachusetts it would be but $3.23, in Illinois it would
be $4.88—a difference of $1.65 per capita to the adult; that while in New
Hampshire it would be but $2.78, in Mississippi it would be more than
double that amount. But the reader can himself, by a glance at the list
presented, perceive even more glaring inequalities than these in the
relative burdens which would be imposed upon the adult population of the
various states and territories, were that burden to be placed entirely on
their shoulders.
If it be the true policy of a nation to equalize, as far as possible,
the necessary burdens imposed upon its people, then we certainly have
before us in these statistics, a condition of facts demanding serious
consideration and efficacious action by the general government.
If inequality in the burdens imposed in order to educate our children be
any argument in favor of national aid to education—and who will venture
to deny it?—then we have in these statistics positive evidence of very
great and possibly hitherto unsuspected inequalities; inequalities of
which none could be aware without a close and critical analysis of the
figures, the developments of which as previously hinted, may well cause
us to modify somewhat the reproaches we may have felt inclined to cast
upon some of our states for what seemed to be a lack of proper effort on
their part in the direction of education.
While, however, reproachful criticism of them still appears to
some extent justifiable, yet the deductions from rearrangement and
classification of the census and educational bureau tables show that
the fault does not altogether lie at the doors of those among whom the
greatest amount of illiteracy is found.
In order to make this clear let us examine the ratio of children enrolled
in schools, not to the state, but to the adult population. That ratio is,
in Alabama, 34.6 per cent.; Arkansas, 31.4; California, 35.2; Colorado,
17.7; Connecticut, 36.1; Delaware, 34.6; District of Columbia, 32.1;
Florida, 35.8; Georgia, 42; Illinois, 50; Indiana, 54.3; Iowa, 56;
Kansas, 53.8; Kentucky, 36.3; Louisiana, 19.8; Maine, 40; Maryland, 31.4;
Massachusetts, 33.5; Michigan, 44; Minnesota, 47.8; Mississippi, 48.6;
Missouri, 47.7; Nebraska, 45.5; New Hampshire, 31.3; New Jersey, 40.7;
New York, 40.3; North Carolina, 40.7; Ohio, 47.8; Pennsylvania, 42.2;
Rhode Island, 30.2; South Carolina, 32.3; Tennessee, 49.1; Texas, 25.2;
Utah, 44.4; Vermont, 38; Virginia, 35.4; West Virginia, 51.8; Wisconsin,
50.4, and in the entire Union, 42 per cent.
Now, the mean average number of children in the United States enrolled
in the schools being forty-two to every one hundred adults, what is our
surprise to find, in the figures just given, that every New England
state, as well as New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia,
falls below this average, while on the other hand, every northwestern
state (including Ohio, Missouri and Kansas), as well as Mississippi,
Tennessee and West Virginia, stands above it!
That in proportion to the adult population of those states, there are
more children at school in Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia, than
in any of the New England states, is, indeed, an astounding revelation.
Supposing, then, the cost of educating a child in those states to be the
same, it follows that each one hundred adults in Mississippi, Tennessee,
and West Virginia are paying more to educate their children than is paid
by the same number of adults in any New England state!
At first sight these statistical results fairly stagger one, and give
rise to doubts of their accuracy. But a careful examination of them
will satisfy any reasonable mind that these developments are veritable
facts, if the census returns and the school enrollment reported by the
Commissioners of Education are to be accepted—being based upon and
directly calculated from them. Even supposing the existence of some
deficiencies in the returns or some minor errors in the calculations, the
general facts they reveal must be accepted as true.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
FOOTNOTES
[D] By Senator Butler, of South Carolina.
[E] “Notes on Virginia, Fourth American Edition, N. Y. 1801,” p.
241.
[F] See Report of Commissioner of Education for 1881, page 49.
[G] The surplus of percentage being due doubtless to the
attendance at school of some children beyond the school age prescribed by
law.
THE PARSON’S COMFORTER.
BY FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE.
The parson goes about his daily ways
With all the parish troubles in his head,
And takes his Bible out, and reads and prays,
Beside the sufferer’s chair, the dying bed.
Whate’er the secret skeleton may be—
Doubt, drink, or debt—that keeps within his lair,
When parson comes, the owner turns the key,
And lets him out to “squeak and gibber” there.
It seems a possibility unguessed—
Or little borne in mind, if haply known—
The he who cheers in trouble all the rest
May now and then have troubles of his own.
Alas! God knows, he has his foe to fight,
His closet-atomy, severe and grim;
All others claim his comfort as of right,
But, hapless parson! who shall comfort _him_?
A friend he has to whom he may repair
(Beside that One who carries all our grief),
And when his load is more than he can bear
He seeks his comforter, and finds relief.
He finds a cottage, very poor and small,
The meanest tenement where all are mean;
Yet decency and order mark it all:—
The panes are bright, the step severely clean.
He lifts the latch—his comforter is there,
Propt in the bed, where now for weeks she stays,
Or, haply, seated knitting in her chair,
If this be one of those rare “better days.”
A tiny woman, stunted, bent, and thin;
Her features sharp with pain that always wakes;
The nimble hand she holds the needles in
Is warped and wrenched by dire rheumatic aches.
Sometimes, but seldom, neighbors hear her moan,
Wrung by some sudden stress of fiercer pain;
Often they hear her pray, but none has known,
No single soul has heard her lips complain.
The parson enters, and a gracious smile
Over the poor pinched features brightly grows;
She lets the needles rest a little while;
“You’re kindly welcome sir!”—ah! that he knows.
He takes the Book, and opens at the place—
No need to ask her which her favorite psalm;
And, as he reads, upon her tortured face
There comes a holy rapture, deep and calm.
She murmurs softly with him as he reads
(She can repeat the Psalter through at will);
“He feeds me in green pastures, and He leads,
He leads me forth beside the waters still.”
The reading’s done, and now the prayer is said;
He bids farewell, and leaves her to her pain;
But grace and blessing on his soul are shed—
He goes forth comforted and strong again.
He takes his way, on divers errands bound,
Abler to plead, and warn, and comfort woes;
That is the darkest house on all his round,
And yet, be sure, the happiest house he knows.
THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.
BY G. BROWN GOODE.
“Let the trust of JAMES SMITHSON to the United States of
America be faithfully executed by their representatives in
Congress, let the result accomplish his object, ‘the increase
and diffusion of knowledge among men,’ and a wreath of more
unfading verdure shall entwine itself in the lapse of future
ages around the name of Smithson, than the united hands of
tradition, history, and poetry have braided around the name of
Percy through the long perspective in ages past of a thousand
years.”—_John Quincy Adams._
The name of the Smithsonian Institution is a household word throughout
North America, and its fame is current wherever printed literature
exists. Abroad it is regarded as the chief exponent of the scientific
activities of the people of the United States, and the administrative
scientific department of our government. At home, its actual relations
to the administration are better understood, and it is looked upon in
its proper capacity—that of an organization closely affiliated to the
government and tenderly cherished by its officers, yet, in virtue of its
independent foundation, independent of political favor, and ready to
encourage, advise and coöperate with any public or private enterprise
without the necessity of annual appeals to the congressional committees
on appropriations.
Visitors to the national capital usually carry away pleasant memories of
the quiet old building among the trees in the mall, with its mediæval
battlements and turrets of brown stone conspicuous from every point of
view, and the multitude who enter its halls are at least impressed with
the fact that the national treasure houses are becoming filled with
valuable collections rather faster than the available money and space
will allow to be properly arranged and displayed. Only a very few,
however, of the four hundred thousand persons who visited the buildings
last year can have had the opportunity to inspect the administrative
offices or the scientific laboratories, and very few indeed of those
who are acquainted with the general nature of the operations of the
establishment, have the slightest conception of their meaning and
importance.
No class of American people, except indeed our scientific investigators,
better understand and appreciate the work of the Institution than do
our members of Congress, as is clearly shown by the uniform liberality
with which, throughout many successive terms, regardless of changes in
the political complexion of the administration, they have supported
its policy, by the care with which they disseminate its reports, by
the judgment with which they select their representatives in its board
of regents, and above all, by the scrupulous care with which they
have protected its independence from political complications. Through
the disinterested labors of Washington correspondents, novelists, and
playwrights, the average congressman of current, popular belief, is not
a person remarkable either for manners, honesty or intellect. Residents
of Washington, however, do not find the representative men at the Capital
counterparts of the eminent politicians depicted by the author of
“Democracy,” but in their stead, practical men of business, hard-working
in their committees and hard-worked by their constituents. It is its
support by these men, and through them by the people of the United
States, that has enabled the Smithsonian Institution to do its work in
the past. It is to such support that it will owe its efficiency in the
future, and it seems right that every opportunity should be taken to
explain its operations to the public. Representatives of the best classes
of thinking Americans will no doubt thoroughly appreciate the benefits
which education has received and will continue to receive from the proper
administration of the Smithsonian bequest.
The story of the foundation of the Institution sounds more like a romance
than like fact. Its history seems like the fulfillment of some ancient
prophecy—even more strikingly so because it is evident that the future
is to fulfill the promise of the past. The father of the founder of the
Smithsonian Institution was one of the most distinguished members of
the English peerage. Upon the plate of his coffin in Westminster Abbey,
where he was buried “in great pomp” in 1786, he is described as “the
most high, puissant and most noble prince Hugh Percy, Duke and Earl of
Northumberland, Earl Percy, Baron Warkworth and Lovaine, Lord Lieutenant
and Custos Rotulorum of the Counties of Middlesex and Northumberland,
Vice Admiral of the County of Northumberland and of all America, one of
the Lords of His Majesty’s most Honorable Privy Council and Knight of
the most noble Order of the Garter, etc., etc.” While his aged father
was sustaining this overwhelming accumulation of dignities, and while
his elder brother, Earl Percy, was acting as Lieutenant-General in
the war against the rebellious British colonies in North America (he
commanded the reinforcements at the battle of Lexington in 1775, and led
the column that reduced Fort Washington, near New York in 1776), James
Smithson, a youth of modest fortune, inherited from his mother, was
laying the foundations of a scientific education in the English schools
and colleges, receiving the degree of Master of Arts at Pembroke College,
Oxford, in 1786, the year of his father’s death. He was then known as
James Louis Macie, Esq., and did not assume the name of Smithson until
fourteen years later, after he had attained to some reputation as a man
of science. His mother was not the Duchess of Northumberland, but a
cousin of her father’s, Elizabeth Hungerford, who was subsequently known
as Mrs. Macie. She appears to have been the daughter and heiress of Sir
George Hungerford of Audley and the Hon. Frances Seymour, sister of the
Duke of Somerset and aunt of Algernon Seymour, Lord Percy, by marriage
with whose daughter Sir Hugh Smithson was enabled to assume the name of
Percy and the title of Duke of Northumberland. The Smithsons were an
old Yorkshire family, Sir Hugh Smithson, the great-grandfather of James
Smithson, having been created baronet in 1660 by Charles II. after his
restoration. The names of Percy and Northumberland were, as has been
stated, assumed by James Smithson’s father. These barren, genealogical
details are referred to because they seem to be necessary to the
understanding of James Smithson’s career.
Proud of his descent he undoubtedly was. In his will he describes his
identity himself in these words: “I, James Smithson, son of Hugh, first
Duke of Northumberland and Elizabeth, heiress of the Hungerfords of
Audley, and niece to Charles the Proud, Duke of Somerset.” He was,
however, a man of broad, philosophic mind, in whom a thorough training
in the best scientific methods of his day, and associations with leading
investigators in Germany and France, and his brother Fellows of the Royal
Society of London, had developed a generous appreciation of the value of
scholarship and scientific culture.
In one of his manuscripts was found the following sentiment, which I have
already referred to as prophetic in its ring:
“The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father’s side I am
a Northumberland, on my mother’s I am related to kings, but this avails
me not. _My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the
Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten._”
These words came to my mind last summer in London when I saw the present
Duke of Northumberland, grandson of Smithson’s half-brother, a feeble
old man, still one of England’s greatest dignitaries, following in the
train of the Prince of Wales, and rising to falter out a feeble speech
proposing a vote of thanks to His Royal Highness for presiding at one
of the conferences of the International Fisheries’ Exhibition, upon the
occasion of an address by Prof. Huxley, president of the Royal Society.
The name of the Smithsonian Institution has a world-wide fame; but who
outside of English court circles ever heard of Algernon George Percy,
Duke of Northumberland?
Smithson seems early in life to have become imbued with the scientific
spirit of his time. In 1784, while still an undergraduate at Oxford,
he made a scientific exploration of the coasts of Scotland in company
with a party of geologists. In 1787 he was admitted as a Fellow of the
Royal Society, and during the remaining forty-two years of his life, a
considerable portion of which was passed upon the continent, in Berlin,
Paris, Rome, Florence and Geneva, he was the associate of the leading
men of science, and devoted himself to research. He made an extensive
collection of minerals, which was destroyed by the burning of a portion
of the Smithsonian building in 1865, and always carried with him a
portable chemical laboratory. His contributions to science are included
in twenty-seven memoirs, chiefly upon topics in mineralogy and organic
chemistry, but a number of them relating to applied science and the
industrial arts.
His work was by no means of an epoch-making character, but seems to have
been remarkable for its minute accuracy. Smithson was a much greater man
than his published writings would indicate. In his eulogy the president
of the Royal Society remarked: “He carried with him the esteem of various
private friends, and of a still larger number of persons who admired
and appreciated his acquirements.” He was evidently a man of broad,
general culture, who understood thoroughly the needs of the world in the
direction of scientific endowment, and whose action in bequeathing his
estate to the people of America was deliberate and well considered.
In his admirable little monograph entitled “Smithson and His Bequest,”
Mr. W. J. Rhees has shown the tendency of the time of Smithson to have
been in the direction of establishing permanent scientific institutions.
Between 1782 and 1826, over twenty of the most important academies and
societies now in existence were organized. This period he remarks “was
not less marked by the gloom occasioned by long protracted and almost
universal war, and the extent and rapidity of its social changes, than
by the luster of its brilliant discoveries in science, and its useful
inventions in the arts. Pure, abstract science had many illustrious
votaries, and the practical applications of its truths gave to the world
many of the great inventions by means of which civilization has made such
immense and rapid progress.” He quotes in support of these statements
the words of Lord Brougham, the representative statesman of the day. “To
instruct the people in the rudiments of philosophy,” Brougham remarked,
“would of itself be an object sufficiently brilliant to allure the
noblest ambition.”
He recommended this idea to the wealthy men of England, pointing out how,
by the promotion of such ends, a man, however averse to the turmoil of
public affairs, may enjoy the noblest gratification of which the most
aspiring nature is susceptible, and may influence by his single exertions
the character and fortunes of a whole generation.
Very closely do these ideas agree with those expressed by Smithson
in various passages in his note books, especially with that which is
used for a motto upon the publications of the Institution: “Every man
is a valuable member of society who, by his observations, researches,
and experiments, procures knowledge for men.” Or this: “It is in his
knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high
superiority which he holds over the other animals who inherit the earth
with him, and consequently, no ignorance is probably without loss to him,
no error without evil.”
It was with a mind full of such thoughts as these, with perhaps the
support and inspiration of Lord Brougham’s words quoted above from his
“Treatise on Popular Education,” printed in 1825, with such models in
mind as the Royal Society, whose object is “the improvement of natural
knowledge,” the Royal Institution “for diffusing the knowledge and
facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and
improvements, and for teaching the application of science to the common
purposes of life,” and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
established in London in 1825, that in 1826 Smithson drew up his will
containing the following weighty provision: “_I bequeath the whole of
my property to the United States of America to found at Washington,
under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the
increase and diffusion of knowledge among men._”
No one has been able to show why he selected the United States as the
seat of his foundation. He had no acquaintances in America, nor does he
appear to have had any books relating to America save two. Rhees quotes
from one of these, “Travels Through North America,” by Isaac Weld,
secretary of the Royal Society, a paragraph concerning Washington, then
a small town of 5,000 inhabitants, in which it is predicted that “the
Federal city, as soon as navigation is perfected, will increase most
rapidly, and that at a future day, if the affairs of the United States go
on as rapidly as they have done, it will become the grand emporium of the
West, and rival in magnitude and splendor the cities of the whole world.”
Inspired by a belief in the future greatness of the new nation, realizing
that while the needs of England were well met by existing organizations
such as would not be likely to spring up for many years in a new, poor,
and growing country, he founded in the new England an institution of
learning, the civilizing power of which has been of incalculable value.
Who can attempt to say what the condition of the United States would have
been to-day without this bequest? In the words of John Quincy Adams: “Of
all the foundations of establishments for pious or charitable uses which
ever signalized the spirit of the age or the comprehensive beneficence of
the founder, none can be named more deserving the approbation of mankind.”
When the fact of the bequest became known, some six years after
Smithson’s death, much opposition was shown in Congress toward its
acceptance. Eminent statesmen like Calhoun and Preston argued that it
was beneath the dignity of the United States to receive presents, and
that it was too cheap a way of conferring immortality on the donor. The
wise counsels and enthusiastic labors of John Quincy Adams, who seems to
have had from the first a thorough appreciation of the importance of the
matter, finally prevailed, and the Hon. Richard Rush was sent to England
to prosecute the claim. He entered suit in the Courts of Chancery, in the
name of the President of the United States, and in less than two years—an
event unparalleled in the Court of Chancery—had obtained a favorable
decision. The legacy was brought over in the form of 104,960 gold
sovereigns which were delivered September 1st, 1838, to the Philadelphia
mint, where they were immediately recoined into American money, producing
$508,318.46, as the first installment of the Smithsonian legacy. This was
increased in 1861 to $534,529.09.
For eight years the legacy lay in the Treasury, while the wise men of the
nation tried to decide what to do with it. In this instance the adage
that in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom did not appear to
be applicable in the ordinary interpretation. The delay, though irksome
to those who desired to see immediate results, was, however, the best
thing in the end for the interests of the trust. Every imaginable
disposition of the legacy was proposed and discussed in Congress;
the debates fill nearly three hundred and fifty pages of Rhees’s
compilation of Smithsonian documents. Letters by the hundred, advisory,
expostulatory and dissuasive were received from representative thinkers
and from societies at home and abroad. Every man had a scheme peculiar
to himself, and opposed all other schemes with a vigor proportionate to
their dissimilarity to his own. Schools of every grade, from a national
university to an agricultural school, a normal school and a school for
the blind were proposed. A library, a botanical garden, an observatory, a
chemical laboratory, a popular publishing house, a lecture lyceum, an art
museum, any and all of these and many more were proposed and advocated by
this voluntary congress of many men of many minds. It is not necessary in
this place to discuss the history of the period at length, nor to relate
the manner in which the prevalence of wiser councils was brought about.
It is sufficient to say that though the new institution was burdened from
the start with various undertakings which have since proved unprofitable
or better suited to the capacity of other institutions, such have been
the flexibility of its organization and the vitality of its membership
that it has been able to work out a career for itself unparalleled in the
history of benevolent foundations.
It need not be said that the accomplishment of these effects was the
result of long continued effort on the part of men of unusual ability,
energy and personal influence. No board of trustees or regents, no
succession of officers serving out their terms in rotation could have
developed from a chaos of conflicting opinions, a strongly individualized
establishment like the Smithsonian Institution. The names of Joseph
Henry and Spencer F. Baird are so thoroughly identified with that of the
Institution that their biographies combined would form an almost complete
history of its operations. A thirty-two years’ term of uninterrupted
administrative service has been rendered by one, thirty-four years by the
other. It is very doubtful whether any other institution has ever had the
benefit of such an uninterrupted administration of thirty-eight years,
beginning with its birth and continuing in an unbroken line of consistent
policy a career of increasing usefulness and enterprise.
Joseph Henry, the first secretary, entered upon his duties at the end
of the year 1846, a man already famous as an investigator in physical
science, a professor of fourteen years’ standing in Princeton College,
and recognized as eminent in scientific and general acquirements. From
the age of forty-seven to that of seventy-nine, his life was merged in
that of the Institution. Professor Asa Gray has pointed out so clearly
the deep impression which he made upon the Institution while it was
yet plastic, that I venture to quote his words in order to explain
the character of this new force in the evolution of good results from
the Smithson benefaction. “Some time before his appointment,” writes
Professor Gray, “he had been requested by members of the Board of Regents
to examine the will of Smithson and to suggest a plan of organization by
which the object of the bequest might, in his opinion, best be realized.
He did so, and the plan he drew was in their hands when he was chosen
secretary. The plan was based on the conviction ‘that the intention of
the donor was to advance science by original research and publication;
that the establishment was for the benefit of mankind generally, and that
all unnecessary expenditures on local objects would be violations of
the trust.’ His ‘Programme of Organization’ was submitted to the Board
of Regents in the following year, was adopted as its governing policy,
and has been reprinted in full or in part in almost every annual report.
If the Institution is now known and praised throughout the world of
science and letters, if it is fulfilling the will of its founder and the
reasonable expectations of the nation which accepted and established the
trust, the credit is mainly due to the practical wisdom, the catholic
spirit, and the indomitable perseverance of its first secretary, to
whom the establishing act gave much power of shaping ends, which as
rough-hewn by Congress were susceptible of various diversion. Henry took
his stand on the broad and ample terms of the bequest, ‘for the increase
and diffusion of useful knowledge among men,’ and he never narrowed his
mind and to _locality_ gave what was meant for mankind. He proposed only
one restriction, of wisdom and necessity, that in view of the limited
means of the Institution, it ought not to undertake anything which could
be done, and well done, by other existing instrumentalities. So as
occasion arose he lightened its load and saved its energies by giving
over to other agencies some of its cherished work.” The character of
the work done in manifold directions will be discussed topically below;
its spirit is sufficiently indicated in Dr. Gray’s terse summary just
quoted. Professor Henry died in 1878. “Remembering his great career as
a man of science,” remarked President Garfield, “as a man who served
his Government with singular ability and faithfulness, who was loved
and venerated by every circle who was blessed with the light of his
friendship, the worthiest and the best, whose life added new luster to
the glory of the human race, we shall be most fortunate if ever in the
future we see his like again.”[H] His statue, erected by Congress, stands
in the Smithsonian Park.
Concerning the influence of Professor Baird, upon whom the mantle of
his predecessor has descended, it would perhaps be premature and out of
taste to speak. His eminence as a naturalist and his patriotic service as
Commissioner of Fisheries are too well known to need mention, and indeed
may be quite as appropriately discussed elsewhere. As assistant secretary
from the age of twenty-four he was intimately associated with Professor
Henry for twenty-seven years, and his executive ability found full scope
in the development of the systems of publication and international
exchange, as well as the museum, and the explorations, biological
and ethnological, which were from the beginning under his charge. As
secretary his policy has been a direct continuation of that of Professor
Henry. The services of Mr. William J. Rhees, for thirty-two years chief
clerk, merit also especial notice.
The formal direction of the Institution is vested in a board of regents,
consisting of the Vice President and Chief Justice of the United States,
three members each from the Senate and the House of Representatives, and
six persons citizens of the United States appointed by Congress. The
President and his cabinet are _ex officio_ members of the Institution,
and there is a provision, not at present carried into effect, providing
for the election of honorary members of the Institution. The secretary is
the only executive officer of the board, and is responsible to the board
for his conduct of affairs. The regents meet once a year in January. Many
eminent men have served in the capacity of regents, and the records of
their proceedings indicate that their interest in the work under their
charge has been uniformly very active.
The building occupied by the Institution and bearing its name is an
ornate structure of Seneca brown stone, occupying a prominent position
in the “Mall” which extends from the Capitol to the Washington monument.
This building was begun in 1847 and completed in 1855. It is hybrid in
character, combining features selected from both Gothic and Romanesque
style, and is more admired by the public than by connoisseurs in
architecture. It is doubtful if a building more unsuited to the purposes
for which it was designed was ever constructed. The diversion of the
funds of the Smithsonian bequest to this building was one of Professor
Henry’s greatest griefs, and before the close of his life by careful
economy of the annual income, he had succeeded in restoring the entire
sum, amounting to about $450,000 to the permanent endowment fund, beside
increasing this fund nearly $150,000 over and above the original bequest.
The eastern wing of the building, for so many years the hospitable home
of the secretary, has been reconstructed internally, and the offices of
the Institution are all established within its walls. The remainder of
the building is occupied by laboratories and exhibition halls connected
with the National Museum. Another building has recently been built
east of the Smithsonian for the reception of a portion of the national
collections. This was put up by congressional appropriation, and Congress
has at last recognized the justice of the claim, so many years urged upon
them by the secretary, that the Smithson money should not be used to
provide shelter for the government cabinets, and has assumed the care of
the Smithsonian building and votes money for its repairs and maintenance.
Few people who visit Washington make the proper discrimination between
the Smithsonian Institution proper, and the establishments under its
custody. What they see is the National Museum. The relations of the
Museum to the Institution will be discussed more fully in a separate
article, but it is necessary to state just here that it is not the
property of the Institution, but rather its ward—its management being
intrusted by law to the Institution which is provided with funds for its
maintenance by annual congressional grants. In early days the Smithsonian
supported collections of its own, but these were not primarily for public
exhibition, but for the uses of scientific investigators. Professor Henry
always maintained that not one cent of the Smithson fund could with
propriety be applied to the support of the National Museum, and his view
is now the accepted one.
In the Smithsonian proper, little is to be seen by visitors. In the
regents’ room is an interesting collection of relics of the founder,
including his portrait, his scientific library, and certain of his
pictures and personal effects. Beside the regents’ room there are
offices, store rooms and packing rooms occupied by busy clerks and
mechanics. The Smithsonian is, first of all, an executive establishment,
to which have been confided various trusts, to be mentioned hereafter.
It is also a publishing house, and an “exchange” for the reception and
transmission of scientific materials. The great masses of books in
brown wrappers and cases of papers, apparatus and specimens constitute
therefore the greater bulk of the material with which it has to deal.
The leading feature of the plan proposed by Professor Henry was from
the first “to assist men of science in making original researches, to
publish them in a series of volumes, and to give a copy of them to every
first-class library on the face of the earth.” The manner in which the
first item of policy has been carried out can not be described here.
Those who wish to know how it has been done must consult the thirty-four
thick volumes of the annual reports, presented to and printed by
Congress. It is safe to say, however, in general terms that there is
probably not a scientific investigator in America to whom the helping
hand of the Institution has not at some time been of service, and that
assistance of this sort has been by no means restricted to this side of
the Atlantic. Books, apparatus and laboratory accommodations have been
supplied in thousands of instances, and every year a certain number of
money grants have been made. Not less important has been the personal
encouragement afforded, especially to beginners and persons remote from
other advice, in the hundreds of thousands of letters which have been
written by the two secretaries during the seventy years of their added
terms of office. No communication is ever passed by unnoticed and the
archive rooms of the Institution packed from floor to ceiling with letter
files and letter copy books are well worthy of inspection.
The publications of the establishment are as numerous as those of a great
publishing house, and as a matter of fact, they are all given away;
although there is a provision for their sale at cost price, I doubt if
a thousand dollars’ worth has been sold in five years. There are three
series, the aspect of which must be familiar to every observing person
who has ever spent a day among the shelves in any American library of
respectable standing. The Smithsonian “Contributions to Knowledge,” now
including twenty-three stately volumes quarto with 116 memoirs, in all
12,456 pages, and numerous fine plates, the Smithsonian miscellaneous
collection, in octavo, containing 122 papers with 20,299 pages, and
thirty-five annual reports. The papers included in these volumes are all
published separately, the number of separate volumes printed up to this
time being above 500. These include papers varying in length from 4 to
1,000 pages, by the most eminent specialists in every branch of science.
The most recent work, one now in progress, two volumes having been
published, is a systematic work on the botany of North America by Dr.
Asa Gray; another is an illustrated work on prehistoric fishing, by Dr.
Charles Rau.
I have never seen an estimate of the value of the books distributed
during the thirty-eight years, but I should judge that it can not fall
below $1,000,000, estimating the prices at standing publishing rates.
In addition to the direct publications of the Institution let us look at
the numerous magnificent volumes of scientific reports printed in more or
less direct coöperation with the Institution by the various government
surveys and exploring expeditions, at government expense. Who can doubt
that the extent of this literature, which is a constant source of comment
in foreign scientific journals, where it is desired to stimulate European
governments to publish scientific researches in a similar way, is largely
a product of the influence of the Institution?
One of the main features of the Institution in its early days was its
library. Its publications were distributed throughout the world to every
scientific and literary institution of good repute, and in exchange
they sent their own publications. In this way an immense collection of
scientific periodicals and journals was received, and the Smithsonian
library became one of the most extensive in the world in this department.
Books came in freely from other quarters and the support of the library
became a great burden to the Smithson fund. The same policy which led
to the abandonment of the Smithsonian cabinet, led to a transfer of the
library, and in 1866 the books were transferred to the Capitol where they
are cared for as a section of the national library under the name of “The
Smithsonian Deposit.” The books come in as heretofore, in exchange and as
donations, and are sent weekly to their place of custody at the other end
of the mall. The increase in 1883 amounted to 11,739 books and pamphlets,
and the total deposit amounts to about 100,000 volumes. Several thousand
volumes are retained in the working libraries of the Institution.
At the time of the Smithson bequest the endowment of research had
scarcely been attempted in America. There were schools and colleges
in which science was taught and certain of the professors employed in
these institutions were engaged in original investigation. There were
a few young and struggling scientific societies, the American Academy
of Sciences in Boston, and the Boston Society of Natural History, the
Connecticut Academy of Sciences, the New York Lyceum of Natural History
(now the New York Academy of Sciences), the American Philosophical
Society, and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The
American Association for the Advancement of Science was not organized
until 1840. The publications of these societies were necessarily very
limited in extent and influence, but then together with the monthly
journal published at New Haven, by Professor Silliman, they embodied
the chief outcome of American scientific work. Science in America was
an infant in swaddling clothes. Forty years have passed and American
science now stands by the side of the science of Britain, of Germany, of
France, a fellow worker, competing on an equal footing in nearly every
field of research. No one is likely to question the statement that the
Smithsonian Institution has done what was absolutely indispensable to the
rapid and symmetrical development of American scientific institutions,
and it is equally certain that the progress of American science has had
an immense influence upon the welfare of America in every department of
intellectual and industrial activity. It has offered a helping hand to
every institution and every individual in America capable of profiting
by its generous aid, and has stimulated coöperation by them with similar
workers abroad. In this way its influence has been enormous, but still
greater has been the benefit of its stimulating powers upon the policy of
the general government toward scientific ends.
FOOTNOTES
[H] “One trait,” remarks Professor Gray, “may not be wholly
omitted from the biography of one who has well been called ‘the model of
a Christian gentleman,’ and who is also our best example of a physical
philosopher. His life was the practical harmony of the two characters.
His entire freedom from the doubts which disturb some minds is shown in
that last letter which he dictated, in which he touches the grounds of
faith, both in natural and revealed religion; also in his sententious
declaration upon some earlier occasions, that the person who thought
there could be any real conflict between science and religion must be
either very young in science or very ignorant of religion.”
GEOGRAPHY OF THE HEAVENS FOR FEBRUARY.
BY PROF. M. B. GOFF,
Western University of Pennsylvania.
THE SUN.
“Now when the cheerless empire of the sky
To Capricorn the Centaur Archer yields,
And fierce Aquarius stains the inverted year;
Hung o’er the farthest verge of heaven, the SUN
Scarce spreads o’er ether the dejected day.
Faint are his gleams, and ineffectual shoot
His struggling rays in horizontal lines,
Through the thick air; as clothed in cloudy storm,
Weak, wan, and broad, he skirts the southern sky;
And, soon descending, to the long dark night,
Wide-shading all, the prostrate world resigns.”
But as the days go by, his rays no longer struggle “through the thick
air” in “horizontal lines,” nor does he so closely “skirt the southern
sky,” but higher mounting pierces with penetrating power the dark
shadows, lessening “the long, dark night,” driving “the dusky shades
away.” So rapidly do these changes occur that in four weeks our daylight
increases one hour and seven minutes, or our length of days from ten
hours and nine minutes on the 1st to eleven hours sixteen minutes on the
28th. On the 1st, 16th and 28th the sun rises at 7:09, 6:52 and 6:34 a.
m., and on the same days sets at 5:18, 5:36 and 5:50 p. m. respectively.
THE MOON
Presents us with great regularity her changes: Last quarter on the 6th at
5:29 p. m.; new, on the 14th, at 9:13 p. m.; first quarter, on the 22d,
at 5:23 a. m.; and full on the 28th, at 10:52 p. m. In apogee (farthest
from earth) on the 9th, at 7:24 p. m.; in perigee (nearest the earth)
on the 25th, at 6:24 p. m. Least elevation, 10th, amounting to 30° 9´;
greatest elevation, 24th, equal to 66° 45´.
MERCURY,
“The fleet-footed,” makes a direct motion of 43° 18´ 37´´, moving
from about the middle of the constellation _Sagittarius_ and through
_Capricornus_, and is the companion of Venus throughout the month (see
“Venus”). Rises on the 1st at 5:55 a. m., and sets at 3:13 p. m.; on the
16th, rises at 6:12 a. m., sets at 3:50 p. m.; on the 28th, rises at 6:22
a. m., sets at 4:46 p. m. On the 11th, at 7:00 p. m., is 44´ south of
Venus; on the 12th, at 4:00 a. m., farthest from the sun; on the 13th, at
5:42 a. m., 5° 56´ south of the moon.
VENUS
And Mercury are both morning stars during the entire month, and are so
intimately connected as to afford a fine opportunity for making the
acquaintance of the latter. On the 1st Venus is about one and a half
degrees east and 1´ 38´´ north of Mercury; but as Mercury moves more
rapidly than Venus, he will overtake and pass her on the evening of the
11th at a point 44´ south; on the 22d, he will cross her orbit to the
north, and at a distance of 3½° east; and on the 28th will be found
nearly 6° east and 53´ north of her. Before the 11th Mercury will rise
earlier than Venus; on the 11th they will practically rise at the same
time; after the 11th Mercury will rise later than Venus. On the 1st
Venus rises at 6:00 a. m.; on the 16th, at 6:05 a. m.; and on the 28th,
at 6:03 a. m. She sets on the corresponding days at 3:18, 3:51 and 4:19
p. m. respectively. Her motion is direct and amounts to 35° 54´ 10´´;
on the 13th, at 5:18 a m., she is 5° 9´ south of the moon. Her diameter
decreases from 11.2´´ on the 1st to 10.6´´ on the 28th.
MARS
Will during this month be both evening and morning star, changing his
relation on the 11th, on which date he will be in conjunction with the
sun, and will not be visible to the naked eye. His motion will amount to
21° 25´ 32´´ direct, and his diameter remain at 4.2´´. On the 14th, at
10:44 p. m., he will be 4° 30´ south of the moon; on the 28th, at 2:00 p.
m., in perihelion, or nearest the sun. On the 1st he will rise at 7:26 a.
m. and set at 5:22 p. m.; on the 16th, rise at 6:58 a. m., set at 5:24 p.
m.; on the 28th, rise at 6:35 a. m., set at 5:25 p. m.
JUPITER
Rises on the 1st at 6:48 p. m., and sets on the 2d at 8:06 a. m.; rises
on the 15th at 5:48 p. m., sets at 7:12 a. m. on the 16th; rises at 5:47
p. m. on the 28th and sets the next day at 5:17 a. m. On the 1st, at 2:07
a. m., he is 4° 9´ north of the moon; on the 19th, at 2:00 a. m., in
opposition to the sun, that is, on the opposite side of the sun from the
earth; on the 28th, at 6:43 a. m., he is again in conjunction with the
moon, being 4° 27´ north of our satellite. During the month his diameter
increases two-tenths of a second, and he has a retrograde motion of 3°
24´ 8´´. The statement that Jupiter retrogrades some 3½° may puzzle some
of our younger readers, who have doubtless been instructed in what is
a fact, that not one of our planets has a retrograde motion; but that
all move from west to east about the sun as a center. What we mean by
retrograde is really only _apparent_ retrograde; and it was something
very puzzling to the early astronomers, particularly to those who thought
that the earth and not the sun was the center of our system; that the
sun and all the heavenly bodies revolved each day about our earth. When
it was discovered that the earth revolved each day on its axis, and
all the planets revolved about the sun, the retrograde motions were
_comparatively_ easy to understand. Let us see if we can obtain a clear
idea of Jupiter’s actions for this month. As we view him on the night
of the 1st he appears about five degrees _east_ and 1° 2´ south of the
bright star _Regulus_, which can be seen almost the entire night as the
brightest of the six stars forming the sickle in the constellation _Leo_.
Noting his position again on the night of the 28th, we find that he has
moved westward about 3½°, and is only about 1½° _east_ and 17´ north of
Regulus; thus, as we say, having retrograded about 3½°. To assist us in
understanding this, let us take an orange to represent the sun, a grain
(of mustard, for example) to represent the earth, a pea to represent
Jupiter, and a point of some kind for Regulus. Now place these objects
on a stand in the following order: In one line, at the beginning, the
orange; two inches distant, the grain; eight inches farther, the pea.
Next draw a line through the center of the orange so as to make an angle
of five degrees with the line through the orange, grain and pea, and at
as great a distance as convenient, stick a pin to represent Regulus. Now
move the grain and pea (the former about two and one-fourth times as
fast as the latter) about the orange as a center, in the direction of
the movement of the hands of the clock (that is, from left to right). We
can readily see that on account of the more rapid motion of the grain,
together with its being nearer the orange, that the pea will _fall
behind_; and if we sight along the line of the grain and pea, the latter
will be seen nearer the line joining the orange and the pin; and should
we continue the moving of the grain and pea, making similar observations,
we should find the pea approaching nearer and nearer, and perhaps even
passing the line through the orange and pin. These relative motions
we can see will continue until the grain makes nearly one-fourth of a
circumference, after which the pea appears to make a movement in exactly
the opposite direction. Now the foregoing represents tolerably well the
relative positions and movements for this month of the bodies named.
The earth, Jupiter and Regulus are on the same side of the sun; the
earth nearest, Jupiter next (about five times as far as the earth), and
Regulus next (at a distance of say 20,000,000,000,000 miles), and five
degrees west of the line joining the earth and Jupiter. (These bodies
we know move at the average rate of 18.38 and 8.06 miles per second
respectively.) Our standpoint is the earth, and as we move eastwardly so
much more rapidly than Jupiter, we find him dropping back each day, and
apparently approaching nearer to Regulus, till at the end of the month we
find him as before stated, only about 1½° _east_ of that star. Should we
watch him through March and April, we should find him retrograding during
the former month and twenty-two days of the latter, on the 23d of April
being 1½° _west_ of Regulus; and on the same date, as the earth would be
going directly away from him, he would appear stationary; and immediately
afterward would seem to start again toward the east. Jupiter, as we know,
is one of the superior planets, and an explanation of his retrograde
motion explains that of all the others of his kind. A little ingenuity,
putting the earth for Jupiter and Mercury or Venus for the earth, will
show what is meant by the retrograde motion of the inferior planets.
SATURN
Rises at 12:58 p. m. on the 1st and sets at 3:34 a. m. on the 2d; rises
at 11:58 a. m. on the 16th and sets at 2:35 a. m. on the 17th; rises
at 11:12 a. m. on the 28th and sets at 1:48 a. m. on March 1st. On the
16th, at 4:00 a. m., stationary; on 23d, at 3:21 a. m., 3° 44´ north of
the moon. Diameter diminishes one second. Will be an evening star during
the entire month, and thus afford most convenient opportunities for
observations.
URANUS
Has a retrograde motion of 49´ 53´´; diameter, 3.8´´. On the 3d, at
3:25 a. m., is 1° 7´ north of the moon; on the 31st of January it rises
at 9:25 p. m. and sets on the 1st at 9:23 a. m.; on the 15th, rises at
8:24 p. m. and sets on the 16th at 8:22 a. m.; rises on the 27th at
7:35 p. m. and sets on the 28th at 7:35 a. m. It is now a little south
of the equator, in the constellation _Virgo_, and will remain in that
constellation some six years.
NEPTUNE
Is only mentioned, lest the omission of his name might be regarded as
a “slight.” He is a slow-goer, and, except that his presence confirms
a law, we hardly know what he was created for. However, his habits are
quite regular; and we note that he takes the _rôle_ of evening star,
setting on the 2d at 1:22 a. m.; on the 17th, at 12:23 a. m., and on
the 28th, at 11:37 p. m. Has a direct motion of 14´ 35´´; a diameter of
2.6´´; and on the 8th, at 9:00 p. m., is 90° east of the sun.
NEW ORLEANS.
BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.
New Orleans is our most pleasing American city to persons from a northern
climate. Florida presents no place important enough to illustrate a large
general society. Texas has rising towns, but the Anglo-Saxon domination
there brings them more and more into resemblance to our own settled
English, or rather, British communities. In San Francisco we are charmed
not only with a complete change of foliage, scenery, and climate, but
with unexpected varieties in the population, there being a little tinge
of the south of Europe as well as of Mexico and of the Celestial Kingdom
in the speculative yet placid elements there. Yet New Orleans is not
so hard as even San Francisco. It is a land not merely of fruit, but
of the sugar-cane. It lies on that warm gulf whose farther shores were
more historical three hundred years ago than now. As time advances and
we complete our own connections and general developments we see more
and more that the American destiny must be southward. Canada, which has
had a much longer history than the United States, presents even now but
a thin rim of settlement, and her entire population from the banks of
Newfoundland to Vancouver’s Island is not equal to that of the single
state of New York. On the other hand, Mexico, through which the Americans
have built costly railroad systems piercing to the very capital city, has
a population certainly twice that of Canada, and probably three times
the number, considering the extension of Mexico toward Central America.
American diplomacy has little other ground to cover for the near future,
than the republics to the south of us. The surfeit of enterprises and of
productions in the United States compels us to consider a time when we
must not only find markets in the Spanish American states, but shall
become, if not pioneers, as we once were, certainly competitors in the
Pacific Ocean, of the English, Germans, and other modern nations. We have
opened a way to the Pacific by railroad, but the canal long contemplated
across Central America will operate more impartially toward shippers,
will cheapen the movement of goods, and incline the United States rapidly
toward an understanding of the new peoples to our southwest, in methods
no doubt providentially designed. New Orleans has been so clearly
understood by our railroad magnates that they have hastened, almost
without public assistance, to connect her not only with great points
like Hampton Roads, Richmond, Cincinnati and Chicago, but the railroads
are finished from San Francisco to New Orleans, and the only continental
railroad system from ocean to ocean under a single management, does not
pass by Chicago, but by New Orleans. The Americans originally stimulated
by the governmental credit to build from the Missouri River to San
Francisco, have upon their own credit and earnings stretched a railroad
through California nearly to the gulf of that name, and then across the
deserts and Texas, until New Orleans is at this moment the Atlantic
seaport of California. Mr. Gould, who succeeded Colonel Thomas A. Scott,
has stretched another railroad system parallel to Mr. Huntington’s from
the desert through Northern Texas and down the Red River to New Orleans.
Near the close of the past year another important railroad was built
from Memphis directly to New Orleans. A little earlier last year the
Cincinnati Southern Railroad was extended directly to New Orleans by the
great syndicate which had leased it. Therefore, there now run into New
Orleans four lines of rail east of the Mississippi River, and two great
lines west of the Mississippi. Contrast this with the railroad facilities
which existed there only fourteen years ago. At that time New Orleans had
only one railroad to the north, and that had certain connections, and was
under no consolidated sway. It was not even connected with its adjacent
city of Mobile by rail. It had no railroad facilities whatever to reach
Texas, except a little piece of road which ran to the Gulf near the mouth
of the Atchafalaya, and there found steamships for Galveston.
While other cities in the South have shown a cheerful energy to revive
themselves, and while new cities have started up at many points, and have
become respectable centers of trade, New Orleans has retained all that
imperial promise under freedom which she had in the palmiest days of
slavery. Perhaps no city in the South, or in the world, has so thoroughly
changed its ideas, political and social, in spite of sharp contests for
party supremacy there.
The great exhibition of the present year is the best instance that New
Orleans means to lead the industrial spirit of the South, and to become
no longer the great filibuster in the tropics, but the energetic merchant
and projector there. No lawless impulse guided the erection of the great
buildings which are now crowded with the productions of America and
Mexico.
The attempt to let the sugar interests of Louisiana and Mississippi go
in favor of the productions of Cuba and the East Indies, distinctly
points the people at the mouth of the Mississippi to the fact that their
alliance is probably to be with the Northern states, not merely in
politics, but in commerce.
New Orleans is not the only French city in the United States, but it is
the only one which preserves the French quality and language perfectly,
and in that respect resembles Montreal and Quebec. St. Louis had a
French and Spanish basis, but when that post became American the small
Latin element was compelled, in self-defense, to adopt the language
and living of the Anglo-Saxons. New Orleans, however, had a sufficient
start when the Americans occupied it in 1803, to grow relatively with
the American settlers and consequently two cities arose side by side,
which still preserve their differences as much as if a quarter of London
and a quarter of Paris had been cut out and united. Besides, there was
a large rural and planting element in Louisiana, of the French stock,
which has assisted to keep up the French infusion, and hence the market
at New Orleans is the most characteristic thing in the city, where the
_habitants_ and the hucksters, the fishers from the Gulf, and the porters
and carters, carry us back to a scene anterior to the France of to-day,
or before republican ideas had reached the far French colonies. New
Orleans, too, constantly received emigration from neighboring French and
Spanish islands and coasts as they were affected by negro insurrections,
or by internal revolutions. Naturally the fleeing planters from Hayti
and the Lesser Antilles made their way to the nearest large town, and
the steam shipping of the Gulf all concentrates at the two centers of
the ellipse, New Orleans and Havana. The Mississippi River, which is the
only river of the first class on the globe to pass through a cultivated
land and an enlightened population, sufficiently marks New Orleans as
the eye of its destiny adjacent to its mouth. There are many Americans
who have never been to New Orleans, who are unaware that it, like New
York, has two distinct harbors or outlets. As New York has Long Island
Sound and the Bay of New York, one opening a hundred miles to the east
of the other, so New Orleans has a lake system close by which gives her
internal communication far to the east, or almost to the bay of Mobile,
and saves her two hundred miles of round-about river navigation to reach
her own coasts. It may be thought that New Orleans is too far from the
mouth of the Mississippi to command that the commerce of the Gulf should
come a hundred miles up that river for her benefit, yet Philadelphia
and Baltimore are quite as far from the ocean, and these cities have
easily commanded a great interior trade through the communications they
possessed, and from the products they had to supply. Coal, for example,
makes the most effective article of the commerce of both Baltimore and
Philadelphia, and coal is more valuable in the Gulf because farther from
the mines, than it is on the near east coast. The coal furnished to the
shipping at New Orleans has descended the entire line of the river, yet
by such easy facilities that at New Orleans it is probably the cheapest
coal in the world for the distance it has to come to get a market. Great
floats, of which dozens are hauled by a small tug or tow boat, go down
the Ohio to its mouth, and pass on to New Orleans and are there so easily
discharged that the lumber in them finds a market with the coal.
Besides, the railroad projectors, without other inducement than their own
sagacity, have concurred in running all their railroads to New Orleans,
for the country at the mouth of the Mississippi is neither so healthy
nor so strategical for trade as this old town which was founded by the
French under the direction of their government when they picked slowly
and carefully the sites of future trade and military empire. These same
French located St. Louis, and it has not been found advisable by any
succeeding generation to try a better situation.
We may ask whether New Orleans has as great an antiquity as our own
English cities? It is not as old as Philadelphia by almost thirty years,
and is somewhat younger than Charleston, and is about fifteen years
older than Savannah. Of course it does not compare in antiquity with
the colonial cities of the northeast, such as New York, Albany, Boston,
Montreal and Quebec. But it is nearly a century older than any of our
important Anglo-Teuton cities of the West. It is more than half a century
older than Cincinnati, and we may almost call it a century older than
Chicago. St. Louis was its Albany, or upstream neighbor, and was under
the same political domination. Mobile was the parent place the French
established on the Gulf, and Governor Bienville made New Orleans his
capital as late as 1723, or about nine years before the birth of General
Washington.
Soon after this a levee was built in front of the new town, and the early
French authors and novelists took pleasure in visiting it, and even at
that date they called it “the famous place.” As in Quebec and Montreal,
the early French settlement was almost simultaneous with the bringing out
of monks and nuns, and soon a cathedral was conceived and nunneries were
built. The French, however, had not the vigorous nature of the English
in founding new places, and after nearly half a century of occupation
there were hardly three thousand persons in it to transfer to the
Spanish who took possession of the place in the midst of a revolution,
and had some of the best French citizens shot in order to be a terror
to what the Spanish governor, O’Reilly, already suspected to exist in
French Louisiana, the spirit of independence, which Spain wanted to
extirpate in all her colonies, fearing that they would speedily rise to
importance and overwhelm the parent power. Spain had been dismembered
by a treaty early in the eighteenth century, and was left with enormous
American possessions, and with a very small Spain to handle them. The
Spanish cabinet then conceived the policy of preventing the growth of the
colonies, so as to keep them down, use them merely for trade, and not let
that spirit of municipal independence which makes great fermentations in
states commence anywhere. Some of the Spanish governors, however, ordered
public buildings to be constructed, and the American residents at New
Orleans say that the Spanish sway of about forty years has left better
monuments than the French.
A Spanish infusion of settlers marks the present population, and the
Americans call all the Latin races, no matter whether they come from
France and her islands, or Spain and her coasts, by the name of Creoles.
A curious feature of New Orleans is the existence of considerable
elements there from states as foreign to ourselves as Yucatan.
At the close of the American Revolution there were less than five
thousand persons in New Orleans. During that Revolution a considerable
number of respectable British settlers who wanted to avoid the War
of Independence, settled in West Florida and about Natchez, and in
other spots contiguous to New Orleans. Hence the Revolution was hardly
over before the first chapter of manifest destiny was directed from
Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky upon the opening of the Mississippi
River. That physical achievement was so important to the producers on
the Ohio and the Tennessee Rivers that schemes of every sort were tried
to hasten the opening of commerce to the Gulf. One Senator of the United
States was expelled from his place for an intrigue partaking of the
nature of treason with the British who still backed up the Spanish on
the Gulf; and a Vice President was actually pursued nearly to the Gulf
and brought back and tried for treason at Richmond. How long the United
States might have had to wait the slow course of diplomacy or the rough
chance of war to get New Orleans, is uncertain, but Napoleon, who had
acquired Louisiana by his mastery over Spain, believing that he could
not hold it against the English fleets, made haste to sell it to the
Americans for a sum of money and old commercial claims.
Eighty-two years ago, or about the rounded lifetime of an old man, the
Americans occupied New Orleans, and much of the city burnt up the year
our forefathers were voting for the first President of the United States.
A French newspaper had been issued in New Orleans several years before
the American possession. There were perhaps eight thousand persons in
the city when it was transferred to us. Twelve years after the transfer,
the Americans under General Jackson had to give battle to hold the city,
which the English attacked with the best troops they had used in Spain
against Napoleon who had already fallen. Napoleon was contemplating his
last endeavor to astonish the world at Waterloo, when the English and
Americans, unconscious that a treaty of peace had been made between
themselves, fought the battle of New Orleans, which resulted in more
disaster to the British arms than any battle on land during our second
conflict for independence. In St. Paul’s Cathedral stand the monuments
and statues of Packenham and Gibbs who lost their lives in the marshes
around New Orleans.
In 1862, Farragut with his fleet took New Orleans. His victory drove an
entering wedge into the heart of the Confederacy and gave to the navy
of the United States a prestige which it had never enjoyed and which in
its present enfeebled state it is rapidly losing. New Orleans was the
wealthiest and most populous city of the Confederacy; it was four times
larger than either Charleston or Richmond, and before the war had the
largest export trade of any city in the world. Commanding mid-continental
navigation and being the key to the Gulf, its military value was equal to
its commercial importance.
The plan for the capture of New Orleans by the navy, and the reduction of
the forts which guarded the approach to it from the south, originated in
the Navy Department in the fall of 1861. The credit for proposing this
plan has been claimed by more persons than one, and it is likely that it
was conceived and developed from suggestions and hints received from a
variety of sources. It was determined that a naval expedition should be
sent against New Orleans. The plan found little favor with army officers,
but the President became interested in it and Secretary Welles set about
carrying it into effect. The attention of military men was concentrated
on a proposed combination of the forces of the army and the navy for the
capture of New Orleans, in an expedition which was to descend to the
city from the upper waters of the Mississippi River. This scheme seemed
more attractive, and the idea of taking New Orleans by means of a fleet
advancing from the Gulf had never been entertained in military circles.
When Stanton became Secretary of War and was told of the proposed naval
expedition, he was astonished at the originality and audacity of the
idea and exclaimed: “An attack upon New Orleans by the navy! I never
heard of it! It is the best news you could give me.” Secretary Stanton
entered cordially into the spirit of the project and increased the number
of the troops which General McClelland had promised, from ten thousand
to eighteen thousand. Shortly after this, General B. F. Butler was made
acquainted with the purpose of Secretary Welles and he was given the
command of the military force which was to hold New Orleans after the
fleet had taken it. There is no evidence that General Butler suggested
any of the important plans or details for the expedition or that he had
any definite plans concerning it.
Congress had ordered the blockade of 3,500 miles of coast line. There
were scarcely ships enough to maintain it, and the vessels for the New
Orleans expedition had to be built or procured from other sources.
After the Secretary of the Navy had decided to send a fleet against New
Orleans and had given orders for the construction of it, the most serious
question which presented itself was the selection of a commander. All of
the naval officers of high rank were suggested and considered. It was to
be the most powerful and splendid fleet ever gathered under the stars and
stripes, and the Department moved cautiously in the matter of choosing a
leader for it. Finally the name of David Glasgow Farragut was proposed.
The Secretary of the Navy remembered that years before in the war with
Mexico, Farragut had offered a daring plan for the capture of the strong
fort of San Juan de Ulloa, at Vera Cruz. He proposed that the fort be
“boarded” by attaching long ladders to the masts of the attacking ships,
which should then be towed up to the walls of the fort. Secretary Welles
was impressed at the time with the boldness and dash of the scheme, and
though he had not seen Farragut since that day, and really knew very
little of him, yet after some consultation he decided to offer him the
command of the fleet. Farragut, who had never had a squadron, gladly
accepted the honor and the responsibility. He had been trained by a life
of study and active service for some great emergency like this, which
came late in life, in his sixty-second year, but he was prepared for it
and he knew it. Farragut adopted the plans which had been considered by
the Navy Department and made them his own. He grasped the work before
him with a degree of earnestness and enthusiasm unusual in men of his
age. Secretary Welles says of him at that time: “In every particular he
came up to all that was expected or required of him. He determined to
pass the forts and restore New Orleans. He might not come back, he said,
but the city would be ours.” After his arrival at Ship Island on the
25th of March, 1862, Farragut wrote: “I have now attained what I have
been looking for all my life—a flag—and having attained it, all that is
necessary to complete the scene is a victory. If I die in the attempt it
will only be what every officer has to expect. He who dies in doing his
duty to his country and at peace with his God, has played out the drama
of life to the best advantage.” Here was a genuine pious hero of the old
school, determined to do or to die. His task was a herculean one. New
Orleans was defended by two forts erected at the lowest favorable point
for the location of military works, above the Gulf. Fort St. Philip
occupied the left bank of the river, and a short distance below it on the
right bank stood Fort Jackson. These forts mounted in all one hundred
and fifteen guns. A fort on the site of Jackson in 1815 held the British
fleet in check for nine days. The rebel forts were garrisoned by 1,500
men commanded by General J. K. Duncan. A short distance above the forts
lay fifteen rebel vessels. This fleet included the iron ram “Manassas”
and a great floating battery clad with railroad iron. Below the forts a
heavy chain supported by the hulks of eight dismasted ships obstructed
the river. Farragut was to break through the chain, fight his way by
the forts, destroy or capture the rebel fleet and then steam up to New
Orleans and place that city under his guns. The attack was commenced
by the mortar fleet. For six days the mortars poured a ceaseless fire
of shells into the fort. The shells were flying through the air at all
times; nearly six thousand were thrown, but the forts were damaged very
little and the Confederate loss was only fourteen killed and thirty-nine
wounded. It was determined to pass the forts on April 24th. At sunset on
the 23d there were indications of the approaching conflict on every ship
in Farragut’s fleet. The attack was to be made under cover of darkness.
At eleven o’clock that night an officer signaled that an opening which
had been made in the chain was still clear. Five minutes before two
o’clock in the morning two red lights were displayed from the peak of the
flag ship. It was the signal to steam up the river. In about one hour
the fleet of seventeen vessels, in three divisions, was moving. The moon
was rising, but its light was lost in the fierce flames from bonfires
and fire rafts. Both forts opened fire upon the first ship as she passed
through the row of hulks. Five minutes later the little “Cayuga” was
pouring grape and canister into Fort St. Philip, and in ten minutes more
she had passed from the range of its guns and was in the arms of the
rebel fleet. It was a lively moment for the brave little boat. Eleven
rebel gunboats tried to demolish her at once. She could not go forward,
she would not go backward. There was nothing to do but to close with the
enemy. She drove an “eleven inch” shot through one of her antagonists and
it ran aground and burned up. Another one was crippled by a well directed
shot, and the “Cayuga” was about to grapple with the third when two ships
of the Union fleet came to her aid, the “Oneida” and the “Varuna.”
The former ran into one of the rebel ships and almost cut her in twain.
The “Varuna” was rammed by the “Manassas” and another ship and went to
the bottom in fifteen minutes. While she was going down she fired into
one of her adversaries and so damaged her that she had to surrender to
the “Oneida,” and she sent a shell into another rebel gunboat which
exploded its boiler. All the time the remaining vessels of the first
division were steaming by the forts, pouring tremendous volleys into them
and receiving tremendous discharges in return. Farragut’s flag ship, the
“Hartford,” led the second division of the fleet. She was a noble vessel,
splendidly equipped; she steamed into the fight and was followed by the
long line of ships in the second and third divisions. By this hour day
was dawning, but heavy clouds of smoke hung over the river and no light
from the east reached the battling ships. The cannonading which all along
had been terrific was now growing sublime. Three hundred heavily shotted
guns were flashing and roaring over the dark water. The Union ships
advanced to the fray like the famous “Light Brigade,” with cannon to the
right of them, to the left of them and before them. Probably it was the
most picturesque naval battle in the world’s history. Thirty-four armed
vessels and two great forts were struggling in the early morning. The sun
seemed to stand still in the heavens. The light of the guns was brighter
than the orb of day, and Farragut’s gunners had to aim at the cannon
flashes from the rebel forts. The forts themselves were not visible. The
vessels of the enemy were not visible. Our ships were striking great
blows in the dark and they always struck with deadly effect. From points
above the rebels pushed great fire barges loaded with blazing pitch and
cotton into the stream. These rafts came floating down and when they did
not ignite our ships they illuminated them for the Confederate marksmen.
A flaming fire raft was hurled against the “Hartford” and flames ran from
the water’s edge to the mast top. The well trained crew extinguished the
fire and within five minutes the “Hartford” destroyed a rebel steamer
filled with boarding parties. The “Brooklyn,” another Union ship,
encountered a fire raft and for a time lay helpless before the merciless
guns of Fort Jackson. Disentangling herself, she steamed up to the fort
and poured such withering broadsides into it that its guns were silenced
for a time, and the gunners were seen by the ship’s crew as they peered
through the cannon-lighted portholes, to be fleeing from their guns. At
this time the vessels which had passed the forts were doing good work,
and the stream was filled with wrecked and burning Confederate gunboats.
Fire rafts and wrecks came drifting down side by side, and frequently
one of the latter would explode with a loud report. The low, curved iron
rams glided about like gigantic serpents of the sea. Boarding parties
were overrunning some vessels and being repulsed from others. It was an
awful, dazzling and furiously shifting panorama. The last ship to pass
the forts on that memorable morning was the “Penola.” In the light of a
blazing raft she received the discharge of the forty guns of St. Philip,
and passed on to join the victorious fleet above. “And thus,” says
Farragut’s son, “was accomplished a feat in naval warfare which had no
precedent, and which is still without a parallel except the one furnished
by Farragut himself two years later at Mobile.”
On the morning of the next day the fleet moved up to New Orleans. At
noon Captain Bailey was sent to demand of the mayor of the city its
unconditional surrender, and that the flag of Louisiana be removed from
the City Hall. The mayor refused to haul down the flag or to make a
formal surrender of the city. While the officers and men of the fleet
were attending divine service the next day, they were startled by the
discharge of a howitzer from the main mast of the “Pensacola.” The
watchman in the rigging had seen four men tear down the flag of the
Union from the roof of the mint, and had at once fired the gun which was
trained on the flag staff.
On the 28th the forts surrendered to Commander Porter, who had been
pounding away at them with his mortars. May 1st, General Butler and his
troops entered New Orleans, and Farragut turned the city over to him.
His administration was vigorous, but was hateful to the citizens. He
hanged Mumford, the leader of the mob which tore the Union flag from the
mint; he issued his celebrated woman order which placed every female who
insulted a Union soldier on the level of the street walker; he treated
with severity a Mrs. Phillips, who jeered at the remains of a Union
soldier. He is condemned for all of these things by very many people.
Many dishonest things were done during his administration, but repose,
vigor and security were the characteristics of it. General Butler was
a just, efficient, straightforward tyrant, not cruel, but possessed of
an inflexible determination to make his will the law and to make his
cause succeed. After General Butler came General Banks. He endeavored to
restore loyalty to the state by good treatment, but fell into the error
of reposing trust in a type of men who could not understand freedom nor
adopt even a business patriotism for the sake of their own prosperity.
By the census of 1880 New Orleans showed for three-quarters of a century
of American rule a population of 216,000 people, of whom 175,000 are
natives of the United States, and only 58,000 are colored people. New
Orleans stood the tenth of American cities, with more than 36,000 houses,
and more than 45,000 families. Although the manufactures of New Orleans
were in their infancy they had an annual product of nineteen million
dollars, and paid nearly four million dollars a year wages. Looking over
the list of states to discover the origin of the people of New Orleans,
the remarkable fact appears that of her 216,000 people more then 151,000
are natives of Louisiana. The neighboring state of Mississippi has not
put thirty-eight hundred souls into New Orleans. Alabama, which is within
two or three hours’ ride by cars, has not two thousand native children in
New Orleans, but New York has over two thousand of her progeny settled in
New Orleans, and Virginia has 4,300. Of the 41,000 foreign population,
nearly 7,000 are natives of France, showing that there is a constant
immigration, as in the days of Bienville, from old France to new France.
Germany has contributed to New Orleans 14,000 emigrants. About the same
number have come to New Orleans from Great Britain and Ireland. Spain
has contributed about 800 of her natives, Italy about 2,000, Switzerland
nearly 500, Mexico only 300, and the West Indies scarcely 400. These
are suggestive figures, and show that since the great rebellion those
elements go to the far South which have the most original emigrating
spirit and the greater variety of self-sustaining trades and pursuits.
A man who can do nothing, make nothing, improve nothing, has the least
of all motives to emigrate. The debt of New Orleans was about seventeen
million dollars at the last advices, considerably less than the debts of
Baltimore and Washington, but some four millions more than the debt of
Chicago. Railroads and other municipal improvements were responsible for
a good deal of this debt.
Since the war New Orleans has been transformed from the likeness of a
quiet old French city like Orleans which gave it name, to the appearance
of a new French city with pretty relics here and there, and strong
cosmopolitan attachments. The great river which sweeps in splendid curves
past this city has compelled the streets to conform to some extent to
its shores, but the consequence is a charming disposition of streets to
both those who hate crooked streets, and those who hate straight ones.
The town may be likened to the spokes of a wheel with streets laid
out between the spokes in both directions, and conforming to them to
some extent. In front of the city stretches the great bank called the
levee, at the foot of which ride the majestic steamers which come from
all portions of the Mississippi valley and are often like palaces in
cardboard, and since the jetties have been made a success by Captain Eads
and the United States engineers, you also see at New Orleans, riding
cosily, the huge steamships from New York, Liverpool and Cuba. The chief
maritime lines from New York to Texas now stop at New Orleans and the
journey is continued by rail. This great levee, which is an artificial
hill thrown up to keep the river back, is lined with the sugar hogsheads
and cotton bales of the South, with coal and iron, plows and stoves, kegs
of nails, merchandise assembled from all parts of the globe, and massive
presses driven by steam to further compress the bales of cotton and
reduce them in bulk for shipment. A canal runs through the city, and its
other termination is on Lake Pontchartrain. At the lake is a beautiful
new resort built in recent years, nearly as agreeable as Chautauqua Lake,
and the peculiar Creole and negro cooking of New Orleans is to be found
in perfection there, as well as at the Spanish fort, in the environs
of the city. The shops of New Orleans are open to the air all winter
long, and art of a local nature is taking root there. Whatever the Gulf
produces is to be seen at the Creole capital, and a visit to it for even
a few days is the next thing to a trip to Europe.
THE UPPER CHAUTAUQUA.
BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
There is a Chautauqua further on. First, there is a lake level, and
just above it is the level of the “Point,” with its pleasant grass, its
winding walks, its old Auditorium, shaded and hallowed with memories
that have grown through multiplying years. The old cottages, and many
of the old cottagers remain about this Auditorium—reminders of the old
times, and the oldest times, of Chautauqua, when the first vesper service
announced that “The Day Goeth Away,” and the “Nearer My God to Thee,”
rang out under these forest arches. Who that was there can ever forget
that hour? The altars were aglow that night, and hearts on fire. It was
an experiment, but from the first it was an assured success. The time
will come when the remaining sharers in that first feast in the evening
light will be very few, and the last of them will receive honor, and the
children of Chautauqua will listen to their story as with quivering lips
and kindling eye they speak about that first evening under the trees,
the words that broke the sacred silence, the songs that bore praise and
wonder and joy to the heavens, and the friendships that were formed there
never to be broken.
How many who joined in the first Chautauqua service have already “fallen
on sleep” and gone out into a world sleepless and without nightfall,
where, for vesper chant are substituted the hallelujahs of an eternal
morning.
But let us go up higher. Beyond the Point and Auditorium level are the
terraces that run along the hillside, one above another, gardens and
cottages, with pathways and winding roads, leading up under welcome
shadows to a higher Chautauqua—a long stretch of table-land crowned now
with Temple and Chapel, Pyramid, Museum and Hall of Philosophy, while
beyond, in the open fields toward the north we reach the highest point
of our Assembly grounds, one of the highest on the lake. Thus from the
landing and the beginning of our journey we ascend from the lowest to the
highest, and find beauty, delight, pleasant welcomes and rewards all the
way.
This study in the lay of the land which makes the physical Chautauqua is
an allegory. There is an upper Chautauqua. And not all who visit the
place see it, and not all who become Chautauquans reach it.
The Chautauqua movement is progressive, and its friends and students
are expected to make advancement in the line of its conceptions and
provisions. It has court beyond court in which it unfolds its progressive
aims and introduces its disciples to the higher privileges of culture
which it provides. No fences or lines mark these successive stages. They
do not correspond with the topographical elevations, although we have
found in the one a figure or symbol of the other. But such gradation
exists, and I shall point it out.
I. THE ASSEMBLY—Is the first point of approach to the true Chautauqua.
It is the outer court open to the whole world. It has no restraints upon
those who come, save those which are necessary to guarantee a financial
support to the institution, and those rules of ordinary decorum which
are essential to the quiet enjoyment and profit of those who pay their
tribute and wait for the promised compensation. And this compensation
comes in lectures on the widest range of topics, from the “Philosophy
of Locke and Berkeley” to the light and cheery discussions about “Fools
and their Folly.” Concerts by gifted artists, characterizations by rare
impersonators, illustrations of life and manners in remote regions,
by the aid of costumer and _tableaux vivants_, stories of travel,
with photographic accompaniments colored, magnified, and illuminated;
sermons by able ministers, lessons by competent teachers, attractions
for lighthearted youth and wearied but rational age, in bonfires,
processions, fireworks, illuminated fleets—these are the features of
the outer court of Chautauqua for the entertainment, awakening, and
broadening of people who come with no far-reaching or serious purpose,
but who come to “hear” and “see” and have “a good time.” They are simply
recipients. The will-power lies dormant, save as some stirring statement
of lecture or sermon, or some unsyllabled passage in music opens the
soul to the worlds all about it replete with marvel, beauty and power.
So much for the outer Chautauqua. There are those who see this—only this
and nothing more. They come and go. They wonder why they and others
come, and yet they think they may come again—but are not sure. They do
not forget Chautauqua, and they do not “go wild” over it. They smile at
other people, whom they call “fanatics,” because they are full of it, and
“bound to come again,” and to “come every year,” and always, and “would
be willing to live there.” These have seen the Upper Chautauqua—for
beyond the “Assembly” is
II. THE CIRCLE.—It is another court—further in, and a little higher
up—with a white-pillared hall among the trees—“The Hall in the Grove,”
about which a book has been written, and in which songs are sung and
weird services held, and where strange inspirations fall on people. For
those who belong to the Circle—the “C. L. S. C.” as everybody calls
it—are advanced Chautauquans. They know why they come to the place. And
they know when to come. They keep a calendar, and they mark the feasts,
and they know what to do when they are there. They seem at home. There
are hosts of them—all knowing each other, and apparently bound together
by some secret association which has a mystic power. They wear badges on
certain days, badges of different styles and colors and legends. In all
this there is something singular and beautiful.
This “Circle” is a company of pledged readers in wide ranges of
literature. The “Assembly” contains people who listen. The “Circle”
is made up of people who read. The “Assembly” covers a few weeks. The
“Circle” casts its canopy over the year and the years. The “Assembly” is
at Chautauqua. The “Circle” carries Chautauqua to the world’s end—to the
east and to the west, to Canada, to Florida, to Scotland, to the Sandwich
Islands, to India, and Japan, to Cape Colony—everywhere.
The members of the “Circle” stand on a higher plane than the Assembly,
because they put will into the work. They read what they ought, for
months and years, everywhere, getting larger views of the world, and
worthier views of life, and nobler views of the race, and of God the
Father of all.
The “Circle” takes a wide sweep in the world of letters. Its themes
are those of the college world. It puts the preparatory and college
curriculums into good, readable English, and helps people out of college
to know what is going on there; what the young people study in history,
language, and literature; what authors they read, and what estimate is to
be placed on them and their work. It gives glimpses of science, physical
and metaphysical—pointing down to the rocks and up to the stars, and
about to the fields and seas and the forms of life in plant and animal.
Whatever college boys study, the “Circle” provides in some form and
degree for parents to read, that home and college may be one in outlook
and sympathy, in aim and delight. But there is something beyond.
III. THE INNER CIRCLE.—Beyond the readers are the students—those who
have completed the four years’ reading in the “Circle,” and the members
of the “Society of the Hall in the Grove;” have filled out the various
memoranda; have certain seals on their C. L. S. C. diplomas, testifying
to this fact, and to the reading of the additional books. These walk on
the higher levels. Their names are enrolled in the “Order of the White
Seal.” Their faces are turned toward the Upper Chautauqua.
It is possible that the members of the C. L. S. C. who walk in the
inner circle may meet those who rank with them, although they have come
hither by other routes—through the “Chautauqua Teachers’ Retreat,”
the “Chautauqua Spare Minute Courses,” and the “Chautauqua Assembly
Normal Courses.” As students, they all rejoice in the larger places of
Chautauqua. But there are heights beyond these heights.
“Hearers,” “readers,” “student-readers,” successively mark the three
ascending grades of the Chautauqua movement, as outlined in the
“Assembly,” the “Circle,” and the “Inner Circle.” Beyond these three
stages, we come to
IV. THE UNIVERSITY CIRCLE.—Here are members of “The League of the Round
Table,” whose seven seals on the C. L. S. C. diploma entitle them to
this higher honor. Here, too, are advanced students in the “Chautauqua
School of Languages;” these walk in the outer courts and among the sacred
corridors adjoining the University itself. Chautauqua now means more than
ever to them. The towers of the University rise above them. They ask why
its doors may not open to them, and why they may not rejoice in work,
real work, with after-tests in genuine examinations, and after-honors in
diploma and degrees.
Some remain in this goodly place, hearing the songs that float down from
the higher halls, enjoying converse with their fellows of the grander
degree, and encouraging other and younger and more vigorous companions to
go up and possess the land. Others knock at the door by the upper step,
and as it opens, they enter the fifth and highest form of the Chautauqua
movement—
V. THE UNIVERSITY, with its schools, colleges, and _academiae_;
its teachers and professors, its text-books and tasks, its rigid
examinations, and its promotions. Concerning the UNIVERSITY, I shall
write later on.
OUTLINE OF REQUIRED READINGS.
FEBRUARY, 1885.
_First Week_ (ending February 7).—1. “College Greek Course,” from page 83
to 107.
2. “Chemistry,” chapters I, II and III.
3. “How to Help the Poor,” from page 1 to 32.
4. “How English Differs from other Languages,” in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
5. Sunday Readings for February 1, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
* * * * *
_Second Week_ (ending February 14).—1. “College Greek Course,” from page
107 to 133.
2. “Chemistry,” chapters IV and V.
3. “How to Help the Poor,” from page 32 to 66.
4. “Temperance Teachings of Science” and “Home Studies in Chemistry and
Physics,” in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
5. Sunday Readings for February 8, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
* * * * *
_Third Week_ (ending February 21).—1. “College Greek Course,” from page
133 to 154.
2. “Chemistry,” chapters VI and VII.
3. “How to Help the Poor,” from page 66 to 92.
4. “Kitchen Science and Art,” in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
5. Sunday Readings for February 15, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
* * * * *