The Required Reading in THE CHAUTAUQUAN for the month of October ends on
page 20, with the article on “Temperance Teachings of Science.”
* * * * *
Mr. Henry Bergh, who has done a good work for horses in New York, and
tried to do a good deal of work not absolutely good for other animals
(cats for instance), has one quality of a successful reformer; he can use
strong language. He denounces M. Pasteur as “A Jenner in France who now
crawls to the earth’s surface and begins the fiend-like and disgusting
work of polluting the bodies and flesh of the lower animals.” Mr. Bergh
does not believe in inoculation for small-pox. It is a pity he does not
confine his benevolence to horses and their sorrows, a subject which he
understands.
* * * * *
Constant gains characterize the uses of electricity. Recently a message
was sent from Australia to England in _twenty-three minutes_, over
13,318 miles of wire. French experiments in the use of electricity as a
motor are making rapid progress. Telephone messages have been sent 1,200
miles, from Cincinnati to Baltimore, and we are not certain that this is
the best record. Bulwer’s “Coming Race” did everything by just touching
buttons and setting automata at work. Perhaps that race is really
“coming” after all.
* * * * *
What is in a name? The cholera is no worse, nor any more curable, by
calling its cause a _microbe_ (literally minute life, meaning microscopic
insect). It does help us, however, to emphasize old truth. The diseased
are usually victims, Dr. Koch says, of the microbes. If the digestive
organs are impaired, the microbe attacks them with more success.
Still, we are thus far not very much wiser for the terms _microbe_ and
_bacillus_. Meanwhile, Dr. Koch’s first practical rule, that “dry heat
is fatal to the microbe,” is contradicted by the well-known fact that
cholera in Asia is very much at home in the dryest heat known on the
globe.
* * * * *
The papers report that a colored man having married a white woman in
Indiana has been tried for the crime and sentenced to five years in the
penitentiary. We can not discover any use in such proceedings. As we
have remarked once before, the mixture of races is not brought about by
legitimate relations of the sexes, but by illegitimate. Indiana punishes
the wrong people. For one mulatto born in marriage there are a thousand
born out of wedlock. Besides, it has not been proved that the moral
quality of a crime attaches to marriage by persons of different races. It
is highly speculative morals, at all events.
* * * * *
The New York financial troubles of May have, as we anticipated, led to
no general disaster. In New York the business community is well over the
panic, stocks have recovered astonishingly, and general trade is active
and good. Credit lines are closer than they were; but this is a good
result. A large harvest gives the people assurance of cheap food, and
stimulates enterprise. The shock in May has proved a blessing. We need to
be reminded often that honesty, diligence and prudence are necessary to
business success, individually and collectively.
* * * * *
Do not play with it; in the language of the boys, “it’s loaded.” We
refer to the theory that impure private life is something relatively
unimportant in public life. Vote as you judge proper; but don’t corrupt
public morals by public apologies for lechery in any form; it is
dangerous business.
* * * * *
A respectably-sized body of unrespectable Americans have recently
emigrated to Canada—made up of defaulting bank officers and other
trust-breakers. There is a defect which ought to be remedied in the
extradition laws. Canada does not wish to be colonized by this class
of thieves, and we prefer to house and feed the rascals in appropriate
residences at home. It is, in fact, a scandal to civilization that this
class of thieves can escape punishment by crossing the suspension bridge.
* * * * *
It has settled into custom for the President of the United States to
take a long vacation in the summer. We owe the custom, a wholesome
one, to General Grant. It was criticised severely when he as President
began to travel about in the summer. His successors have improved the
practice by roving more widely and extending their acquaintance among
their fellow-citizens. President Arthur has traveled a good deal in an
unostentatious way this summer, and we have not seen a word of criticism.
It is good for the President’s health, it extends his knowledge of the
country and the people, and it gives his fellow-citizens an opportunity
to see and know him.
* * * * *
The cholera in Europe drove Americans home this year in midsummer, and
gave us an unusually large contingent of the English tourist, who, shut
off from the Alps, has been trying our Rockies and the Yosemite. A new
feature of our own summer travel is a considerable stream of pleasuring
flowing toward Alaska. Perhaps when the seals are killed off Alaska may
pay as a summer resort.
* * * * *
One of the new blossoms of the “Chautauqua Idea” is a summer school
maintained by the “South End” churches of Boston. Our correspondent, the
Rev. E. E. Hale, is one of the active managers. Its session this year
lasted six weeks, and was devoted to popular instruction in kindergarten
and housekeeping subjects. The aim is to help the poor to knowledge in
practical matters.
* * * * *
The world’s stock of wit is increasing. We Americans are the principal
inventors of it, and are especially strong in the hyperbolical variety.
A recent specimen worth preserving is the story that a Florida man
recently killed an alligator, in whose stomach he found a hen sitting on
a dozen eggs. The exaggeration turns upon the capacity of an alligator
for swallowing, and the equanimity of the sitting hen. Another example is
the statement that Puget Sound oysters often weigh sixty pounds apiece,
and are not served on the half shell, since “nothing less than a flatboat
will answer the purpose.” A good collection of American hyperboles would
make a very marketable book. “Turning a howitzer loose on a June bug” is
a fresh specimen which we find in a daily newspaper. A “funny editor”
having to report that locomotives have fallen from $15,000 to $8,000,
adds: “We would not advise our readers to lay in their winter stock of
locomotives just yet; they may go lower.”
* * * * *
The preachers who indulge in vacations are not allowed any peace. The
_New York Examiner_ has found a new tender spot to thrust a pin into.
A resting pastor, it thinks, has no business to work or study. He is
defrauding his church if he does. But then the _Examiner_ rubs the sore
spot it has made by the more athletic remark that it is a sin to grind
all the year through. Yes, fifty-two days of rest are required of us all.
It is pleasant, by the way, to read that “the pastors are returning to
their flocks,” a statement which lets out the fact that the flocks did
not take a vacation.
* * * * *
A new thing under the sun this year is the meeting of the great British
Association for the Advancement of Science on American soil. The Montreal
meeting was still further novel in the presence and participation of
distinguished United States Americans. “Greater Britain” will doubtless
more and more take part in these annual gatherings of British science.
The success of the Montreal meeting will provoke the emulation of
Australia, New Zealand, and British India and Africa.
* * * * *
Vegetarians object to eating meat because animals must be killed to
supply such food. One of our quick-witted exchanges has discovered
a counter argument, or rather an _ad hominem_ of the you’re another
variety. “According to some scientists vegetables feel and perhaps
think.” The London _Graphic_ suggests that “the blushing carrot is
susceptible of tender emotions, and that the retiring ways of the truffle
are due to a well-reasoned aversion to the wickedness which is to be
witnessed above ground.” “Perhaps” this is rather speculative.
* * * * *
It has been a dry summer, but it has rained financial scandals. The
heaviest part of the clearing-off shower—we hope it is clearing off—fell
on New Brunswick, N. J., where first the cashier and next the president
of a bank committed suicide in the midst of the ruin they had wrought.
That is awful, but it is morally more satisfactory and healing than the
flight into Canada. When financial wreckers are hurt to the point of
remorse and suicide, the horrors of the crime of genteel stealing will
begin to be realized. That sin is dangerous, too. Let us thank God and
take courage.
* * * * *
Dr. McCosh has been re-visiting the Old World, and at a breakfast party
in Belfast stated an interesting fact. “In my early life,” he said, “I
applied for many positions which I did not get; but I never applied for
the positions which I have since held.” There is plenty of good wholesome
use for the motto: “Let the place seek the man.” It is the rule for
the good places, as the case of Dr. McCosh shows. Perhaps it is more
generally the rule for other places than men suppose it to be.
* * * * *
John Bright continues to excel in strong quotable phrases and
descriptions. The House of Lords being once more in the way of reform,
Mr. Bright declares that House to be filled with “the spawn of the
blunders, the wars and the corruption of the dark ages of our history.
They have entered the temple of honor, not through the temple of merit,
but through the sepulchres of their ancestors.” The last clause will
probably be as lasting as his “Cave of Adullam.”
* * * * *
A notable saying easily forgets its parentage. It is too much trouble for
a busy world to remember _who_ said this or that first. An expression
passes into currency, and after that it is no matter who coined it. It
was, we are now told, a Harvard professor who said not of Edward Everett,
but of the Rev. Dr. Huntington, that his prayers were the most eloquent
ever addressed _to a Boston audience_. The Dr. Huntington referred to
was then a Unitarian of Boston, but is now Protestant Episcopal Bishop
of Central New York. The _Christian at Work_ is our authority for the
precise facts. We do not advise any one to try to remember them.
* * * * *
The French have brought about a state of war in China, by a series of
aggressive measures which seek the aggrandizement of France at the
expense of the territorial rights of the Chinese empire. There is not
the least justification for these proceedings; nor can we hope that good
will come of it. The French are successful at home and failures abroad.
The French cry out that England has done even the same; but that charge,
if true, would not excuse France. England has, in all recent instances,
had the protection of Englishmen or some other fair pretext. Even the
jingoism of Beaconsfield could make some respectable covering for its
brutality. The French simply want some land and mines in Tonquin “for the
glory of France.”
* * * * *
Science gets a footing everywhere. The loss of the United States
steamship “Tallapoosa,” by collision with a schooner, has led to an
investigation to ascertain whether the officers and men on duty are
afflicted with color blindness. We have a notion that in this case the
old-fashioned word carelessness is more scientific than any term used by
optical learning.
* * * * *
One of the fine points of superfine theology is that Adam was the first
member of the Christian Church, and was taken in immediately after
the fall. We see it—the fine point reproduced in a religious paper.
It is a pity that theology should be strained in men’s eyes by such
uses—especially in view of the pressing wants of the living descendants
of Adam.
* * * * *
The making of mortgages is one of the most fascinating of employments. It
is like picking up gold in chunks. Paying mortgages is another affair,
a most refined species of torture which takes away and returns nothing.
But people who do not expect to pay have all the pleasure and none of
the pain. The semi-civilized government which owns Panama proposes to
mortgage its share of the earnings of the Panama Canal for $15,000,000.
Considering that the canal may never be finished, and that it may never
earn anything at all, it must be pure fun to make that mortgage. Public
debts grow large easily because no particular person expects to pay any
one of them. Selling such mortgages is picking up nuggets of gold—getting
without effort—hence public borrowing needs conscience as a restraint.
* * * * *
It is a satisfaction to know that the best horses have been taken out of
the hands of gamblers. Mr. Vanderbilt recently sold the queen of horses
to Mr. Bonner, editor of the _New York Ledger_. On this side of the
Atlantic, at least, fast horses are improving in reputation by keeping
good human company.
* * * * *
The cholera of Asia is in Europe again after a long absence—since 1868.
It has been a topic of great interest all summer, but its ravages have
been comparatively insignificant. After a short period of general
prevalence in Marseilles and Toulon, the unwelcome visitor went on its
travels in search of dirty places in France and Italy—finding some good
food in the latter country. Dirt is the delight of this scourge. Sanitary
science easily handles it, keeps it within moderate limits, and stamps it
out after brief duration. A renewal of the epidemic in the savage forms
of 1832 and 1848 is not to be feared. The world is cleaner. The cholera
has raged fiercely in Italy, especially in Naples, because sanitary
reforms have made slow progress there. The people change their habits
there with great reluctance, and all travelers know that Naples is the
filthiest city in Europe. Wherever good sanitation prevails, cholera is
checked with comparative ease. A fine use of royalty is shown by the
visit of King Humbert to the afflicted towns and their hospitals.
* * * * *
The New York _Evening Post_ irreverently refers to the Emersonian
philosophy as a “mixed American drink.” It is more prosaic in suggesting
that the Concord School of Philosophy is not a school, and has no
philosophy of a clear type, but is a continuation in summer of the winter
lecture platform—a summer lyceum. We suspect that the Emersonians will
not accept the amended title.
* * * * *
Switzerland has investigated the liquor question and found that more
alcohol per head is consumed by the Swiss than by any other people
in Europe. That little country spends $30,000,000 for drink, and yet
the commission which reports these facts, also declines to advise any
restrictive legislation and makes a fervid eulogy of the habit of social
drinking. “Public houses,” they say, “foster intellectual activity, and
are a remedy against misanthropy, vanity and egotism.” This report is
probably the most remarkable document ever produced by a committee. It
gives the size of the evil in bold lines and then splashes on the gay
colors with reckless prodigality.