The Chautauqua University is the latest development of the Chautauqua
Idea. It has been incubating for ten years, and just as we come near
the tenth session of the Chautauqua Assembly the New York Legislature
passes an act granting a charter for the new University. Dr. Vincent
says that hereafter it will be the “_C. L. S. C. of the Chautauqua
University_.”
* * * * *
Dynamite has excited the fears of people in London. Dennis Deasy,
who carried a box containing explosives and infernal machines, and a
railway porter named Patrick Flanagan, supposed to be his accomplice,
were arrested in April in Liverpool. At Flanagan’s lodgings were found
a number of explosives and a false beard, besides a revolver and other
equipments for doing mischief to life and property in London. The most
interesting evidence given during the examination was that of expert
scientific witnesses, who testified that the explosive material in
question was known as “lignine dynamite,” an article that could not by
any possibility be connected with commercial or business transactions,
and which was not made for any legitimate purpose.
* * * * *
A number of gentlemen who have recently come here from Europe, and most
of them from England, have determined to buy land for grazing purposes
in Virginia. It seems strange that Americans go to the far West to
invest in great farms, and thus locate their herds of cattle thousands
of miles from the sea coast, while in the Eastern States, near to
markets at home and abroad, may be found hundreds of thousands of acres
of lands good for nothing else but grazing.
* * * * *
The first reunion of the Christian and Sanitary Commissions was held at
Chautauqua several years ago, amid a blaze of enthusiasm. This year,
from July 22 to 24, they will meet at Ocean Grove, in New Jersey. The
chaplains of the Federal and Confederate armies will meet with them.
Mr. George H. Stuart, president, and the Rev. John O. Foster, of
Waterman, Ill., secretary, issue the call.
* * * * *
Joseph Cook has closed his Monday lectures in Boston for the season.
* * * * *
The Postmaster General, Timothy O. Howe, died within the past month.
This is the first death of a Cabinet officer since 1869. General Howe
served as a judge, in Congress, and in the Cabinet. He was a warm
friend and admirer of General Grant. He did not support civil service
reform. His name was never connected with frauds or scandals during his
public life. Judge Walter Q. Gresham, of Indiana, has been appointed to
fill the vacancy in the Cabinet. His record as a soldier, citizen and
judge has been of the best, and those who know him say that he will be
one of the strongest among the President’s secretaries.
* * * * *
Arrangements are being made to institute a Musical Reading Circle, in
connection with the Chautauqua movement, which shall be to musical
literature what the C. L. S. C. is to general literature. The plan is
being wrought out by Prof. E. E. Ayres, of Richmond, Va., and when the
details are perfected they will be duly announced. Any inquiries or
suggestions concerning this matter may be addressed to Prof. Ayres.
Other musical attractions are in contemplation which will be announced
in the July number of THE ASSEMBLY HERALD.
* * * * *
The Rev. D. H. Wheeler, D.D., LL.D., of New York, was elected president
of Allegheny College, at Meadville, Pa., on the 4th day of April. This
action on the part of the authorities will bring into this section
a gentleman who has reached a high position as an educator and a
religious journalist. In the Northwestern University, at Evanston,
Ill., he distinguished himself by his abilities as a teacher, writer,
and preacher. He served for five years under President Grant’s
administration as United States Consul at Florence, Italy. More
recently he made a brilliant periodical of _The Methodist_, in New
York, which, though it died, went down with its colors flying, and
because no editor could keep it alive. Dr. Wheeler is a local preacher,
and not in the regular order of the ministry. We congratulate the
friends of Allegheny College on his election, and predict that under
his administration the college will have a new lease of life and be
favored with renewed prosperity.
* * * * *
The Longfellow Memorial Association of Cambridge, Mass., has received
a letter from Mr. Bennock, in London, which says that all the
preliminaries for placing a bust in Westminster Abbey are now arranged,
sufficient capital having been subscribed, the sculptor engaged, and
the position for the bust selected. The latter is a column standing
between the memorial niche of Chaucer and the Independent bust of
Dryden, with a full and uninterrupted stream of light falling on the
position, so that the bust will occupy a central and conspicuous place
in the poet’s corner.
* * * * *
The old school of statesmen are represented at Washington by Senators
John Sherman, of Ohio, Anthony, of Rhode Island, and Bayard, of
Delaware. Of the more recent and vigorous school since President
Garfield’s death, are ex-Senators Blaine, Windom, and Kirkwood, with
ex-Senator Conkling, who have retired to private life, while Senator
Edmunds is still recognized as a leader in the Senate. A new generation
of statesmen is gradually appearing—President Arthur, Secretary W. E.
Chandler, Robert Lincoln, Frank Hatton, and others, no one of whom has
been tried except in routine duties. The new administration is one of
peace and quiet, but it is not vigorous on lines of reform.
* * * * *
President Arthur made a trip to Florida in April. This is the
first journey of any extent he has made from Washington since his
inauguration, and he is the first President who has visited the
Southern States so long and so extensively since the war.
* * * * *
The trial of the Phœnix Park murderers, in Dublin, commenced April 9.
The dynamite criminals in London will be tried before a jury, perhaps
before these lines go out from the press, while in Washington the Star
Route trial drags its length along as a trial to patience, and for the
humiliation of every true American citizen.
* * * * *
The Committee on Public Education in the New York Legislature, led
by Mr. Abel Goddard, made a report on a “Dime Novel Bill,” recently,
in these words: “Any person who shall sell, loan, or give to any
minor under sixteen years of age, any dime novel or book of fiction,
without first obtaining the written consent of the parent or guardian
of such minor, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by
imprisonment or by a fine not to exceed fifty dollars.” Objection is
made to this bill, that it is indefinite, in that it fails to explain
what a dime novel is, and that we can not deal by legislation with
the injurious influences of any form of literature. In reply, it may
be said, there are more than forty thousand miles of railway in this
country from which the sale of certain pernicious publications are
excluded. Mr. Anthony Comstock and his co-laborers have been explaining
for several years what the “dime novel” is, and how injurious it has
been to boy and girl readers. This bill is a new ray of light on a dark
subject.
* * * * *
Karl Marx, the father of modern socialism, has recently died. He was
a former correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, and the author of
“Capital.” He has been expelled from half the countries of Europe, and
proscribed in nearly all of them. The fruit of the seeds he has sown
can not now be told.
* * * * *
The motto of M. De Lesseps seems to be—excavate. After giving us the
Suez Canal and beginning a scheme for linking the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans, he tells us that Sahara shall cease to be a burning waste,
and be made to furnish vapors and cooling winds; that the desert
shall become a sea. The project is not a new one, but has presented
such monstrous obstacles that no one but engineers of the wildest
imagination have contemplated it seriously. M. De Lesseps announces
that, let him have one hundred machines of a power equal to one hundred
thousand men, and the work shall be accomplished. The scheme will be
discouraged. M. De Lesseps’s trip to Tunis has already been called “a
fool’s errand,” but when we see the mountain tunnelled, the continents
joined, the oceans about to join hands, it is best to consider before
we say that any project is impossible, especially when M. De Lesseps is
the engineer.
* * * * *
Apropos of the Panama Canal, the work is begun; ten thousand men are
there, and out of these but a few are sick, thus largely disarming
the statement that men can not work there. It need not be feared that
the international squabbling will in any way interfere with the canal
company’s work. The son of De Lesseps recently stated in an interview
that that canal company was simply a business firm, and was there to
dig the canal—all other questions were for the nations to settle.
* * * * *
As wise and true a policy as has been advanced on the Irish question,
is contained in a remark by Lady Frederick Cavendish, whose husband
was murdered at Dublin. She says: “I pray that neither the unspeakable
greatness of my sorrow nor the terrible wickedness of these men,
may blind either myself or any of the English people to the duty of
patience, justice, and sympathy, in thoughts, words, and deeds, with
regard to Ireland and its people at large.”
* * * * *
The greatest achievement of the telephone is talking over the six
hundred and fifty miles between New York and Cleveland. To make
the test complete, it was asked in New York that something be read
in Cleveland from the _Herald_ of that morning. Several items were
read and written down at the New York end of the line. A day or two
following, on receipt of the Cleveland paper, the items were compared
and found to correspond exactly. The wire used on this line is of
recent invention, composed of steel and copper, and remarkable for its
conductivity. This great enterprise has been accomplished by the Postal
Telegraph Company, who are finishing a line from Cleveland to Chicago.
By the time THE CHAUTAUQUAN for June is issued, New York will probably
be able to talk to Chicago—one thousand miles distant.
* * * * *
The great statue of Liberty is affording the committee some trouble.
They have eighty thousand dollars with which to commence the erection
of the pedestal, but no engineer has been found willing to undertake
the work. The statue weighs about eighty tons, and presents an enormous
surface to the wind, while its pedestal is not large. How to secure
it becomes a problem. The _American Architect_ gives a method used in
Japan for securing the light pagoda towers. A pendulum is hung from the
top of the tower, and reaches nearly to the floor. This method was used
by Sir Christopher Wren in securing the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, a
heavy wooden framework being suspended, free to swing in any direction.
The _Architect_ advises a trial of this plan for the statue.
* * * * *
Julian Hawthorne has recently given us three inscriptions for the
modern novelists. They will be useful to many others. Here they are:
“Be cultured. Be cultured, ever more be cultured. Be not too cultured.”
* * * * *
The Vanderbilt ball is said to have cost twice the amount that the city
of Moscow has devoted to the coronation of the czar. It is not pleasant
to reflect that the most prominent feature in American social life is
extravagance. “Extravagance” and “folly” would have been proper words
inscribed over the Vanderbilt doorways that night.
* * * * *
In July the new postal order will take the place of the expensive and
inconvenient money order, while in September we will be allowed to send
a letter for two cents which now costs us three.
* * * * *
Perhaps no recent story has caused more comment among the young than
Mrs. Burnett’s “Through One Administration,” recently finished in _The
Century_. The story follows the modern plan of leaving hero and heroine
in a hopeless, helpless state, and to all appearances perpetually
so. There can be no question about both the artistic and moral value
of such a _finale_. It is inartistic because unfinished; immoral in
influence because it leaves the impression that the great end of life
is human love, and that lost, all is lost. We contend that the story
is incomplete. The whole plan of life, the teaching of individual and
national history, is that one thing taken from life another will be
found to fill the want. To teach through the medium of the novel, and
especially a novel so well written and captivating as Mrs. Burnett’s
always are, that the end is misery, is a wrong to the young, and an
argument against the school of novelists to which this writer belongs.
* * * * *
Peter Cooper died in New York City on the 4th of April, in his
ninety-third year. Not since the death of Lincoln has the city
witnessed such general mourning. He has been a man of great business
ability, of mechanical skill, of the broadest philanthropy. His
business transactions have been marked by the strictest integrity, his
philanthropy by unostentation. The greatest work of his life has been
the Cooper Union, where, free of cost, the poor may obtain instruction
in industrial arts. To this great institution he gave $1,592,192,
and quite as important, the best thought and plans of his teeming
brain. One can only appreciate the wide-spread benefit of the Union
when they know that 40,000 men and women have been fitted there for
lives of usefulness, and free of cost. His life and character were
above reproach, and present a type of what an American man should
be,—energetic and successful, yet simple, kindly, and noble.
* * * * *
The late Gustave Doré frequently compared his head to “a witch’s
cauldron, always boiling and shooting up blue flames.” Anybody who
studies his illustrations of “Dante’s Inferno,” and “The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner,” will be likely to agree with him, yet he was _the
great genius_ among artists of his times.
* * * * *
John G. Whittier says that he is still one of those who hope that the
dreadful evil of intemperance may be checked, and finally abolished,
by legislative action. He believes in the right and duty of the
community to protect itself by legal enactments, whenever there is
a public sentiment strong enough to enforce the prohibition of the
liquor traffic. “I despair of any direct assistance from politicians,”
he writes, “but the great majority of the individuals composing these
parties have a moral sense that may be awakened into action by precept
and example.” Looking at the drinking habits of New Englanders sixty
years ago, and at the general temperance among them at the present day,
he sees reason for the greatest encouragement.
* * * * *
The following items belong to Dr. Vincent’s page, C. L. S. C. Work, but
were received too late for insertion in their proper place:
“We notice in the spelling of many Greek names of our history, _ei_
where _i_ was formerly used. We do not know the proper pronunciation.”
Prof. T. T. Timayenis replies to the above as follows: “Names spelled
with _ei_ are pronounced as English _i_ in _kite_. Those spelled with
_i_ are generally pronounced as English _i_ in the word _in_.”
* * * * *
The memorial days for May are Addison’s Day, May 1; Special Sunday, May
13.
* * * * *
The studies for May are Evangeline, by Longfellow; English, Russian,
Scandinavian, and religious history and literature, with readings in
Physiology, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.