The list of C. L. S. C. graduates of the class of ’83 is published in
this number of THE CHAUTAUQUAN—1300 strong. The states represented
are California, Maine, Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Maryland, Iowa, Illinois,
Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Kansas, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, New
Jersey, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, Connecticut, Missouri, District
of Columbia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Dakota, Kentucky. Canada is also
represented, and in far-away China there is one graduate. The members
are from thirteen different denominations: Methodist, Presbyterian,
Congregational, Episcopal, Baptist, Christian, United Presbyterian,
Reformed, Unitarian, Universalist, Friends, Roman Catholics, Seven Day
Baptists. In its ranks are teachers, housekeepers, ministers, lawyers,
clerks, students, mechanics, farmers, merchants, dressmakers, milliners,
music teachers and stenographers.
* * * * *
The presidential campaign for 1884 was opened in December by the
Republican National Committee fixing June as the time, and Chicago as the
place for holding the National Convention. Chautauqua was discussed as
a proper place for this convention to meet. The _Graphic_, of New York,
furnished a number of good illustrations of the hotels, steamboats, and
lines of railroads with which the Lake is favored, but these attractions
were not strong enough—the atmosphere of the place is not the kind
political conventions breathe. To be sure, President Grant and President
Garfield both honored themselves and Chautauqua by visiting the Assembly,
but a national political convention, even of the Republican type,
would find “water, water, everywhere,” and nothing stronger to drink.
Chautauqua is dead as a place for holding a national political convention.
* * * * *
James Russell Lowell, our Minister to England, enjoys so excellent a
reputation in that country, that people who ought to know better, are
beginning to talk about his “Un-Americanism.” It is a foolish business.
Mr. Lowell is an American of the Americans. But Americanism does not
consist in a capacity for getting the ill-will of foreigners, or in
abusing them when one lives abroad. Mr. Lowell worthily represents the
people of the United States among the English people, and the honors paid
to him in choosing him to unveil the statue of Fielding, and electing
him Rector of the University of Glasgow, are honors paid to this nation.
There is no place for the petty jealousy of his growing popularity in
England. It is a thing to be proud of. The author of the “Biglow Papers”
will always be known on both sides of the ocean as a Yankee of the
Yankees.
* * * * *
Somebody has said of the “House of Representatives,” “it is too big for
business, too big for harmony, too big for economy, too big for any
practical purpose whatever,” and the prospect is that it will be larger,
rather than smaller. Speaker Carlisle found it almost unwieldy when he
organized the four hundred and one members into committees. We venture
the assertion that no officer in the United States Government in his
official capacity passes through a more trying ordeal than the Speaker
of the House. He must face his work every day of the session, in the
hall where he presides; and as for ambition and jealousy, tact and skill
in manipulation, the representatives of the people are so well along in
all these things that to ask one man to appoint this company to places
on committees, and then to legislate for the people, is too much. A new
method of appointing committees ought to be adopted.
* * * * *
Mr George Ticknor Curtis has rendered the American public a valuable
service in his two volumes on the life of James Buchanan, published by
the Harper Brothers. If this material had been precipitated upon the
public mind in the dark days of the civil war, it would have been as
fuel to the flame of public passion, or if it had come to light even
during the years immediately after the war, the result would have
been much the same. Mr. Buchanan’s task during the last days of his
administration was a hard one. He was expected to both _wait_ and to be
in a _hurry_ in discharging his duties as President; besides, it required
more than human sagacity to determine what would be the wisest course
for his administration to pursue. The time when he vacated the White
House, and Mr. Lincoln went into it, makes a joint in American history
which must be studied as with a microscope, if the student would reach a
correct judgment of the men who acted and the events that transpired. The
correspondence which passed between Mr. Buchanan and several members of
his old cabinet, after he retired to private life is like the glare of an
electric light turned on those turbulent times. By these letters one can
read his way out of the heretofore inexplicable darkness of those caverns
of history.
* * * * *
John Brown, of Ossawatomie fame, has been glorified in poetry and song.
There has been a bewitching charm about his name to a multitude of
people, and the events of the past decade have contributed largely to
this spell. As we settle back into our normal condition and study the
naked facts of his history, we are led to wonder how the man exerted such
a tremendous influence over his countrymen. If it be true that Sherman,
Doyles and Wilkinson, with others, whom Brown and his men murdered, had
entered into a conspiracy to destroy the Browns, this did not justify
John Brown and his men for murdering them in cold blood. Not even in
warfare would such heartless butchery be defensible. It may yet appear
that the endorsement which the American people gave to John Brown, and
the glory they have attached to his memory were unworthily bestowed, and
that the people were misled. The close study of American history as made
between 1858 and 1865 may put a new face on many of our biographical and
national stories of men and events.
* * * * *
John Pender, a member of the English Parliament, compliments the Western
Union Telegraph Company, in a speech on the government assuming control
of telegraph lines, in these words: “I have thought it desirable to
refer to my visit to America, and say something about the Western Union
system, because it is a system which is, probably, in its efficiency,
only to be compared with our own system in England, which is worked by
the Government, with this difference, that being worked as a private
enterprise, and being stimulated more or less by competition, I think
the Western Union has shown greater results during the last ten years
than our system has under government management. I think the science of
electricity has received more encouragement and been more developed,
and the reduction of rates has, during that time, also been greater in
America than in England; and, altogether, I think it would be well if our
Government took a leaf out of the book of the Western Union Company.”
* * * * *
December the sixteenth was John G. Whittier’s birthday. He is now
seventy-six years old. In Haverhill, Massachusetts, a thrifty
manufacturing town, Mr. Whittier spent his boyhood, in a lonely farm
house half hidden by oak woods, with no other house in sight of it. He
says, on stormy nights
“We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light-sifted snow-flakes fall.”
* * * * *
The London (England) _Chronicle_ speaks the following sensible words
concerning the new honor conferred on Tennyson: “It will seem very
strange for us to have to think of Alfred Tennyson as Lord Tennyson,
and he is too aged, and his life-impression too decidedly fixed, for
the changed name to get established. Just as we speak of Shakspere, and
Wordsworth, and Bulwer Lytton, and Browning, so we shall think and speak
of Tennyson. A poet’s proper crown is not a peerage, but a nation’s
admiration and love, and the world’s uplifting by his words of trust and
hope, his visions of the perfect, the beautiful, and the true, his subtle
readings of human hearts and motives. England, and the English speaking
races of the world, crowned Tennyson long ago, and the peerage crown
seems but a little thing, only needing a passing word.”
* * * * *
Among the many “happy ideas” hit upon in connection with the C. L. S.
C., that of Memorial Days deserves prominent place and mention. Several
of these days are named for men whose genius and literary greatness have
received the world’s recognition. These days are not memorials to the
cold letters that spell the names of Milton, Addison, and Shakspere,
but to genius and greatness in literature as represented by them. And
the design is not to keep in memory a mere literal sign, a name, but to
pay our homage to the literary or other merit with which the name is
associated. And this with the ulterior view of kindling aspirations and
inspirations in our own minds and hearts.
* * * * *
Seventy-five million dollars are invested in the rubber business of this
country, of which $30,000,000 are in the boot and shoe manufacture.
The annual products are $250,000,000, made by 15,000 persons at 120
factories. Thirty thousand tons of raw rubber are used each year. The
forests along the equator, which Humboldt declared inexhaustible, are
dwindling, and the rapid increase of cost of rubber (from 50 cents to
$1.25 per lb. in six years) is leading to search for cheaper substitutes.
* * * * *
The Rev. Dr. John Hall says: “The churches of New York cost $3,000,000
per year; the amusements $7,000,000; the city government $13,000,000. It
is not an extravagant demand that the churches should have more money.”
* * * * *
Ella A. Giles, in _The Nation_, furnishes a description of a seminary
for colored girls in Atlanta, Ga., under the auspices of the Baptist
Home Missionary Society. Here is a testimony she jotted down in one of
their meetings: “Dis chile didn’t do no teachin’ in vacation,” said a
big mulatto woman, with great pomposity. “’Twan’t ’cos she didn’t know
’nuff, ’xactly, nor ’cos there wasn’t heaps dat needed to be teached. On
every side ignorant niggers is as thick as flies. But my _preferment_ was
doin’ suthin’ else fur my blessed Savior. Needn’t think I didn’t work for
Jesus, my young sisters. I tell ye I worked mighty hard! I visited heaps
o’ sick niggers, an’ I ’low I wan’t lazy. Don’t win ye no crown jes to
go an’ _look_ at sick folks, unless ye _do_ suthin’ fur um. I feel like
as if my stomach was light and freed from bile, ’cos I nussed the sick,
an’ puttin my shoulder to the wheel, didn’t look back like Lot’s wife
and turn unto a pillow of salt, but minded my blessed Lord an’ Savior
an’ visited the sick—fur to please Jesus. I likes dis yeah school. Laws!
I’s mo’n fifty years ole or thar-’bouts, an’ till I kum yeah I nebber
know’d dat workin’ fur Christ meant nussin’ sick folks an’ goin’ to see
the widowers an’ childless in affliction, an’ keepin’ unspotted from de
world.”
* * * * *
One cold day in December, from the City Hall steps in New York City,
the Rev. Henry Kimball gave away two cheeses, cut in pound chunks, two
barrels of crackers, a barrel of turnips, a barrel of hominy done up in
brown paper pound packages, and five bags of Indian meal. One hundred and
twenty women, seventy little girls, and a colored man came to get their
baskets filled. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
* * * * *
At a meeting of naturalists held recently in New York, Prof. D. Cope, of
Philadelphia, alluded to the small provision that is made for original
research in this country, and the stress that is on almost all original
investigators to throw themselves away as teachers in order to gain
a livelihood. It is important that we have original investigation in
science, but capitalists must furnish the money to defray the expenses.
But because a man or woman turns to teaching rather than investigation,
they do not throw themselves away. Teaching is as high and honorable a
calling as investigating nature’s laws.
* * * * *
A new feature lately introduced in the public schools of New Haven is
called “newspaper geography.” The pupils are in turn required to find on
the map places referred to in the paper.
* * * * *
The South Carolina Legislature has passed a bill declaring unlawful all
contracts for the sale of articles for future delivery. Speculation
in cotton never received a harder blow than this. If some of our
legislatures in northern states, say New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois,
should adopt such a law, and then enforce it, what a torpedo it would be
among speculators in oil and grain, and stocks of all kinds.
* * * * *
One of the students in the University of Berlin, Germany, is 69 years of
age. The aged members of the C. L. S. C. find themselves in the fashion.
Our motto is a good one: “Never be discouraged,” not even in old age.
* * * * *
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union celebrated its tenth anniversary
on December 23. We are told that this organization numbers 100,000
members, and that they are scattered all over the land. Here we find the
cause of the stir and hubbub in the country on the temperance question.
It began in the Ohio crusade, among the women. They used prayer and
religious songs and earnest entreaties, flavored with the spirit of
Christianity, and they have won; yes, they have won the grandest victory
of which mention is made in history for temperance and our unfortunate
fellow men. Celebrate the return of the anniversary of the crusade. Do it
with songs and shouts of joy, and continue to work till the end.
* * * * *
We find the following summary of an interview with Whittier in the
_Sun_: “Whittier said that Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, and himself
had always been friends. There were no jealousies, and each took a pride
in the work and successes of the others. They would exchange notes upon
their productions, and if one saw a kindly notice of the other it was
always cut out and sent to him. Hawthorne was by the others regarded
as the greatest master of the English language. Whittier describes
himself as unlike any of the rest, for he never had any method. When
he felt like it he wrote, and neither had the health nor the patience
to revise his work afterward. It usually went as it was originally
completed. Emerson wrote with great care, and would not only revise
his manuscript carefully, but frequently reword the whole on the proof
sheets. Longfellow, too, was a very careful writer. He would lay his
work by and then revise it. He would often consult with his friends
about his productions before they were given to the world. ‘I was not so
fortunate,’ says the Quaker poet. ‘I have lived mostly a secluded life,
with little patience to draw upon, and only a few friends for associates.
What writing I have done has been for the love of it. I have ever been
timid of what I have penned. It is really a marvel to me that I have
gathered any literary reputation from my productions.’”
* * * * *
So large a number of the complete sets of THE CHAUTAUQUAN for 1880-1881
have been received by us that we withdraw the offer made in the January
issue of the magazine.
* * * * *
The prospect is good that we shall have erected at Chautauqua in the
spring about six new cottages, to be used by the School of Languages.
They will be located on the new land recently purchased by the
Association. This will introduce public buildings on that part of the
grounds, and make the lots for private cottages more desirable. The
outlook on the Lake from this point is one of the finest to be found
between Jamestown and Mayville.