Royal favors skip from small to great and back again by no law of ethics
or æsthetics, and if we flatter ourselves that we can account for the
choice of some candidates for the poet’s pension we shall certainly find
our wits tested in search of a philosophy to apply to Charles II., who,
with equal felicity, placed the crown on the geniusless Davenant and the
immortal Dryden.
John Dryden, with all his faults of verse and purpose, was the genius
of his age, and remains one of the five names that star the diadem
of English song. In circumstances that tended to enervate rhyme, at a
time when the rebound from Puritanism paid a premium on license and
licentiousness, when no element in national life had the electrical
currents to stimulate literary, least of all poetic genius, John Dryden
had the skill to attune the age in which he lived to a melodious key that
harmonizes with Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspere and Milton.
In character and record he is inexplicable. Born in the erratic days of
Cromwell he is the most heartily English of all her “men of letters;” of
strictest Puritan training, he died a devout Romanist; of cleanly life
and chaste conversation, his verses are morally reckless; educated at
Cambridge, where he remained for a seven years’ post-graduate course,
he was noted for disloyalty to his _Alma Mater_; never wrote a line in
praise of it, but went out of his way to endorse its rival—Oxford—to whom
he owed nothing.
It was his unanticipated loyalty to royalty that led Charles II. to
appoint him laureate to succeed Davenant, at the same time creating a
post of literary honor and financial profit—historiographer—receiving
£100 for each position. His honors cost him dearly in public favor. It
was currently believed that he renounced the cause of the people for
court favors, and Puritanism for self-advancement, and for a score of
years he lost in popularity all that he won of financial ease and royal
distinction.
His greatness consisted in the sublime tact with which he used the
opportunity that disfavor brought him to immortalize himself in verse.
The Duke of Buckingham, the people’s favorite, ridiculed the laureate
in scathing rhyme, which called forth vociferous applause from all the
lesser poets whom envy and jealousy led to bitter hatred of the favorite
of the court.
Dryden had the grit and genius to hurl the masterpiece of his age at
the whole range of critics under the title of “Absalom and Achitophel,”
and by sheer superiority of brilliancy and wit dethroned Buckingham
and seated himself on the throne of popular favor. A specimen of his
characterization may not be amiss.
“Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand.
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome.
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon,
Then _all_ for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Beside ten thousand freaks that died in thinking,
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy.
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both to show his judgment in extremes.
So over violent or over civil,
That every man with him was God or devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art,
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
He laughed himself from court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne’er be chief.
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.”
Dryden was the first well-paid poet England ever had. For the translation
of his fables he received £300, while for translating Virgil he received
the fabulous sum of £1,200.
His most distinguished poem is his “Ode to St. Cecilia,” which he wrote
at the age of seventy, at a single all-night sitting. In the evening hour
the thought occurred to him and he could not drop his pen until at dawn
the last word was on paper.
Wordsworth could not love Dryden, because there is not an image in all
his poetry suggested by nature. While Chaucer seems to have been always
out of doors, Dryden apparently never knew there was any out of doors.
He could not create, could not be pathetic, but in power of argument, in
satirical skill, in “declamatory magnificence,” he is without a peer in
the language.
Thomas Shadwell, “mature in dullness from his tender years,” who only
lives through the grace of Dryden’s crucifying satire, by a fortune no
art can explain enjoyed the laurel that had decked the brow of Dryden for
a generation. Without poetic merit he was skillful as a hater, shrewd as
a schemer; he missed no opportunity to make Dryden wince until he made
himself acknowledged as his rival, and when William and Mary ascended
the throne the only way they could effectively snub the royalty they
supplanted was to transfer the laurel from Dryden to Shadwell, who owed
all the fame he ever enjoyed to his artful drawing of Dryden’s fire.
It is too bad that William and Mary were fated to divest their reign of
all literary glory by bestowing the court honors first upon Shadwell and
then upon Nahum Tate, who had some veins of merit, but no popular talent.
Dryden praised him in his day, and the “Book of Common Prayer” and our
church hymn books retain some choice lines that he wrote. Queen Anne
retained him ten years, but he was almost universally regarded as stupid
and juiceless in poetry, and at the age of sixty-five, poor, homeless,
unable to earn a living, she ejected him from the laureateship, and he
retired to the “Mint,” the prison for the better class of poor debtors.
Thus, in poverty and humility ended the days of him who wrote our
familiar hymn,
“While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground;
The angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone around.”
Nicholas Rowe, with no popular fervor of verse, won high favor in classic
circles through an independent fortune and rare social gift. Pope’s
friendship welcomed him to the circle of rare visits, while the _élite_
of Queen Anne’s reign courted him with royal art. Few men of real genius
ever have been so splendidly rewarded as he. Swift and Addison were only
second in their admiration to Pope, who wrote this tender epitaph:
“Thy relics, Rowe, to this sad shrine we trust,
And near thy Shakspere place the honored bust;
Oh! next him skilled to draw the tender tear,
For never heart felt passion more sincere;
To nobler sentiment to fire the brave,
For never Briton more disdained a slave.
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest!
Blest is thy genius, is thy love, too, blest!
And blest that timely from our scene removed,
Thy soul enjoys the liberty it loved.”
Unknown as Rowe has proved to be to fame, he was blest with the respect
of his contemporaries, which could not be said of his successor, Lawrence
Eusden, then as well as now unknown to fame, and yet he wore the laureate
wreath twelve years. Pope abused him in his “Dunciad,” Cooke in the
“Battle of the Poets” has this couplet:
“Eusden, a laurel’d bard by fortune raised,
By very few was read, by fewer praised.”
The rhetorician, Oldmixon, says he never met a poet with so much of the
“ridiculum and fustian jumbled together, a sort of nonsense which so
perfectly confounds all ideas that there is no distinct one left in the
mind.” And yet the Georges I. and II. placed the laurel on his brow.
George II., with characteristic misfortune, selected Colley Cibber, whom
Pope made famous—I had almost said infamous—in these lines:
“In merry Old England it once was a rule,
The king had his poet, and also his fool,
But now we’re so frugal, I’d have you to know it,
That Cibber can serve both for fool and for poet.”
His father, Caius Gabriel Cibber, an artist, sculptured the statues of
two lunatics over the gates of Bedlam hospital. Although the artistic
work was creditable, Pope made the father’s hand the medium of a savage
attack on the son in the first book of the “Dunciad,” which was written
for the purpose of making Eusden and Cibber, the laureates of George II.,
ridiculous. He thus introduces them as dunces:
“Still Dunce the Second reigns like Dunce the First.”
And thus he makes the father’s art serve his wicked purpose:
“Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne,
When o’er the gates, by his famed father’s hand,
Great Cibber’s brazen, brainless brothers stand.”
His only literary work that has endured even in the knowledge of scholars
was an admirable autobiography which would have honored his name had he
the wit to let poetry alone.
Eusden and Cibber succeeded in one thing, they made the position of
laureate thoroughly undesirable, so that when upon the latter’s death it
was offered the author of the “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,”
Thomas Gray promptly declined it, but William Whitehead accepted, serving
during the excitement preceding and attending the American Revolution.
He became at once the target for the shafts of satire aimed by his
fellow poets, Churchill endeavoring to persecute him as Pope had his
predecessors. But Whitehead had the rare grace to bear all attacks in
silence, living as comfortable and happy a life as though there had
been no satirical buzzing. He knew he was not brilliant, and did not
propose to make himself miserable over it. Churchill might rasp him as
caustically as he chose, he would lose neither sleep nor peace of mind
in consequence, and this sublime indifference ultimately silenced all
critics, permitting him to enjoy thirty years of self-satisfied service.
At his death Thomas Warton, the senior of two poetic brothers, whom
Hazlitt says was studious with ease and learned without affectation,
reclaimed the position from the contempt in which it had been so
long held. He achieved what should satisfy the aspiration of any man
successfully challenging the public taste that had been the slave of the
didactic school of poetry under Pope, imparting a love for the poetry of
nature and the literary style of the Old English masters who lived out of
doors. It is hard to think that at his death the laureateship sank lower
than ever. It is humiliating to record that for a quarter of a century
Henry James Pye bore the honors, ushering out the eighteenth and ushering
in the nineteenth century, a man of whom Byron expressed the universal
disdain when he wrote:
“What! What!
Pye come again? No more, no more of that.”
Three names grace the laureate record of the past seventy years, names
of pioneers, each rapturously praised by admirers, and as violently
condemned by critics—Southey, Wordsworth and Tennyson.
Taine, our racy French critic, places Southey in the first rank of his
class of poets, a clever man, an indefatigable reader, inexhaustible
writer, crammed with erudition, gifted in imagination, gifted like Victor
Hugo for the freshness of his annotations and splendor of his picturesque
curiosity. De Quincy criticises him as being too intensely objective,
with too little exhibit of the mind as introverting upon its own thought
and feelings. He is distinguished at once for his unwearying attacks
upon the institutions of which the natural Englishman is proud. This is
readily accounted for from the fact that at fourteen he was disgraced
at Westminster school for writing a sarcastic article on corporal
punishment, for which the publisher was prosecuted by the head-master,
and that at Oxford University, where he took a partial course, he was
annoyed by the exasperations of financial infelicities preventing high
rank, and ultimately forcing him away from scholastic privileges.
As a critic, historian and antiquarian Southey held high rank among the
scholars of the land, and yet he acquired his scholarly taste and vast
learning by out of school studies.
He was preëminently one of those curious creatures of circumstance who
are such because they have the tact to make unpromising events serve
them. He was too active a democrat to hope for court favors, and too
closely allied with the Unitarians to venture within the church, and
therefore happily fell into association with Coleridge and his coterie.
At the time Coleridge was scheming as a high-toned communist to send a
colony to America to found a model, impracticable republic on the banks
of the Susquehanna, from which all selfishness was to be banished, and
Southey, at eighteen, attempted to raise money for that object, failing
in which he was frequently a penniless youth.
To prevent the poverty stricken youth from marrying Mrs. Coleridge’s
sister, his uncle shipped him to Lisbon, but it was too late, as the lad
had already married her secretly on borrowed money.
He was sixty years of age before he was financially straight, and before
he was eighty he died, leaving one of the finest libraries in Europe and
an estate of £12,000. His library was the result of his habits of close
study and devout love of books. Of himself he wrote:
“My days among the dead are passed;
Around me I behold,
Where’er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse night and day.”
A college chum befriended him in his youthful poverty and settled upon
him an annuity of £160, which prevented suffering many times. He prided
himself on early rising and was at his desk soon after rising, whether he
had special work on hand or not. The morning after he had finished one of
his leading poems he wrote the first hundred lines of a more successful
one before breakfast. He worked almost literally every hour of every day
of every month of every year of his life, until at seventy-six he broke
down with softening of the brain.
William Wordsworth, a companion and admirer of Southey, succeeded him
as laureate. He was good naturedly ridiculed by the literary world,
but instead of being maddened thereby as Byron was, instead of being
heart-broken and sent to an untimely grave as Keats was, he smiled
serenely on his critics and studiously sought to write as his critics
did _not_ wish him to write, and thereby lived to enjoy a generous and
widespread appreciation.
While others went to Greece and Rome, to history and mythology for
heroes, he went into the streets, highways and byways, huts and hovels,
and chose the rude and crude, the loveless and homeless for his poetic
purpose. A more uniformly prosperous, serene, moral man never graced
English authorship, and in his age he said with pride, “Whatever the
world may think of me or of my poetry is now of little consequence; but
one thing is a comfort in my old age, that none of my works … contain
a line which I should wish to blot out because it panders to the baser
passions of our nature.” Who could ask to have more said of him than that
he was always correct in life, sweet in spirit, amiable in disposition,
unwaveringly conscious that he was doing his utmost to make the world
better?
Upon his death an effort was made to abolish the office of laureate, but
it failed and Alfred Tennyson was selected, and has for thirty-five years
poetized for the glory of England. It is popular in our day to make light
of Tennyson’s verse, but it was not always thus, for our own classic
Longfellow wrote:
“O sweet historian of heart!
To thee the laurel leaves belong,
To thee our love and our allegiance,
For thy allegiance to the poet’s art.”
The criticisms of no poet are so amusing. Ward (T. H.), who is unrivaled
in general judicious criticism, calling from oblivion innumerable
forgotten names, seems never to have so much as heard of him, while
Taine, our French critic, who unceremoniously “skips” numerous poets of
acknowledged rank, gives to scarcely one English poet so extended, clear,
close, appreciative criticism as to Tennyson. Shaw in his “Literary
Compendium” does not deign to mention him, while Bayard Taylor said “No
English poet, with the possible exception of Byron, has so ministered to
the natural appetite for poetry.” The average newspaper ridicules him
as stupid, but one of our keenest critics says, “He can gather up his
strength like a serpent in the gleaming coil of a line, or dart it out
straight and free.”
When Tennyson appeared as a poet at the age of thirty-two he evidenced
a rare poetic taste, unlike that which had hitherto catered to English
readers. For a long time the poetry of England had been prosy in the
extreme, metaphysical, monotonous, remorseful, dark and somber, and
the appearance of a poet light, graceful and sentimental, was an event
calculated to arouse the nation into joyous enthusiasm.
There was about his life, as in his stanzas, a poetic halo, living as
he did in the Isle of Wight, away from the rivalries and annoyances of
society. Queen Victoria appointed him laureate, out of respect to the
public demand that he be thus honored.
It is three centuries since Spenser first wore the laurel. The first
century embraced five names, three of whom—Spenser, Johnson and
Dryden—were men of recognized superiority. The second had no poet of
note. From the reign of the Prince of Orange to the independence of
America there was no man of talent who consented to sing the praises of
William, Mary, Anne or the Georges. The present century has been honored
by scholarly, virtuous men, devoid of marked genius.
It is a delightful thing to be able to say that of the entire sixteen,
dull as some of them have been, they have been almost unexceptionally men
of recognized purity of character, in ages when poets were renowned for
their laxity of morals.
[CONCLUDED.]
THE BELLS OF NOTRE DAME.
BY ADA IDDINGS GALE.
Thy deep tones burden all the air
And hearing, strangest thoughts are mine;
Thou’rt calling all the world to prayer,
To contemplation all divine.
Fled are the pageants of the past
That once turned at thy deep voiced calls,
In glooms doth stand the palace vast,
And silent are its splendid halls.
The galaxy of kings and queens,
Of courtiers—maids of honor fair,
The glittering robe of costly sheen,
The tossing plume, the jewel rare,
The wild retainers in their glee,
That passed unheeded, thy sad tone;
Alas! that life so frail should be
By moulded brass and iron outdone.
Beneath thy chimes passed pomp of pride,
Here many a royal love hath come,
Whose beauties long since faded—died,
Whose dulcet voice is long since dumb.
Thou rang’st the royal infant’s birth,
Thou tolled’st above the royal bier:
Kings, potentates have sunk to earth—
Still art thou speaking calmly here.
Still speak’st above the noise and din
Of the fair city’s glittering sweep—
Thy deep, pathetic tones do win
My very soul—I list and weep.
Thou only art eternal here,
Thy voice the only voice that stays,
Out-ringing, far-toned, deep and clear—
Unmeasured is thy length of days.
Thrones crumble—empires pass away,
And great republics spring to place;
If but men better seem to-day,
Why mourn the faults of age or race?
Why mourn the sad and bitter past,
If but from it the perfect flower
Of justice springeth up at last
To sweeten all the present hour?
Why mourn that gilded thrones should fall,
And jeweled crowns forget to shine,
Since Right will triumph over all,
Moved onward by a power divine?
THE NEW YORK CUSTOM HOUSE.
BY COLEMAN E. BISHOP.
One day I said to the Factotum of the Collector of Customs in New York,
“I must do up the Custom House in a magazine article of three thousand
five hundred words; how much time shall I need to give to the collection
of data here?”
Factotum smiled compassionately on me and said: “About three months!”
In this granite building on Wall Street, with its tall Ionic columns,
is transacted a business greater than all the industries of the United
States combined half a hundred years ago. The merchandise that was
inspected, weighed, counted, measured, valued, catalogued here last year
was valued at—count the figures!—$857,430,637. The catalogue includes
over three thousand articles, many of which you never heard of and
would not even recognize the names thereof. Each of these articles has
its particular rate of duty, some having two or three different ones.
These have to be calculated specifically on every package by quantity,
or if the duty be _ad valorem_, the value of the article has to be first
determined and the duty then calculated on the quantity of goods of
that class. These estimates and adjustments form the most intricate and
delicate business known to civilization. We sometimes think _things_ are
plain and easy to administer upon, but the whole range of metaphysics
and abstract thought is not more perplexing and doubtful than this mere
business matter of levying and collecting the duties on goods passing
the custom house.
I remember of hearing a debate in the Senate of the United States upon
a proposed amendment to the tariff laws. The bill had been prepared
and revised in a committee of Senators most experienced and acute in
such matters, and it had been hammered over in long days of debate.
Some one now asked what would be the exact duty collectible under this
bill on the class of merchandise to which it related, and not a man in
the Senate could tell. Last winter, when it was proposed in the House
of Representatives to cut down the duties twenty per cent. all around
(“horizontal reduction”), it was demonstrated by experts that the measure
would work such confusion that it could _not_ be executed.
To illustrate the nicety and intricacies that have grown around this
business, take fabrics. The duty on silk goods and that on cotton goods
are different. In the case of mixed, silk and cotton, it is, of course,
different still. Then, whether the goods be silk or cotton, or mixed,
the duty is calculated by a double standard—so much per square yard, and
so much according to its fineness and weight. They count the threads of
warp and woof in a square inch, and charge duty accordingly. If there
are two hundred threads to the inch the fabric must pay a duty of, say,
thirty-five per cent. _ad valorem_, if it cost over twenty-five cents per
yard; while on another piece counting two hundred and one threads to the
inch the duty shall be six and a half cents per square yard and fifteen
per cent. of its cost. A single thread more or less may change the duty.
Then there is all the complication of fixing the value of goods. I don’t
suppose there is a farmer in the United States who can ascertain by any
amount of figuring what it costs him to raise a pound of wool; yet the
customs officers must fix the cost for all wool that is imported. So of
all other products on which _ad valorem_ duty is levied. Congress two
years ago made a change in the basis of valuation, by decreeing that the
value of the package in which goods are imported, the fees of brokers
and other middlemen in the country where the goods were bought, and the
cost of transporting them from points inland abroad to the seaboard,
should not be counted in the value of the goods. All these items had
before to be included in the appraisement. The fine distinctions and
the contested points in fixing duties are innumerable. If any of them
seem absurd and needlessly exact, you must remember that every one of
them has been fought over between government and importers, between
foreign and American dealers, and between rival importers, and has been
established by experience as the best adjustment of all conflicting
interests. For the tariff system is the growth of centuries. We inherited
its leading features from England’s protective system—what time that,
instead of free trade, was her better policy—and have gradually modified
and expanded it to suit the exigencies of our own national growth. Each
item in it is the record of more than fiscal economy. It measures the
government’s efforts, as well to defeat the devices of smugglers and
the designs of foreign producers as to raise its own revenues. “As the
laws of nations are the crystallizations of its historical experiences,
so the customs regulations of a people are the residual crystallization
of its commercial relations with foreigners, its efforts at industrial
development and self-preservation, and its bitter acquaintance with
greed, guile and guilt.”[B]
The country’s acquaintance with greed, guile and guilt does not stop
at such manifestations of human nature in those who seek to evade the
payment of duties, either. It has to protect itself at the same time
against the dishonesty and incapacity of its own servants. The customs
system is therefore one of checks and balances to secure (1) the
impartial and rigorous collection of _all_ duties; (2) the prevention
of mistakes in accounts; (3) the prevention of frauds and peculations,
both inside and outside the custom houses. To secure all these the
system of book-keeping and business detail is grown wonderfully complex
and ingenious. The work is divided into three departments, or bureaus,
each under the head of its official, all separate and distinct from one
another, all under the jurisdiction of the Collector of Customs, and yet
each official having his prerogatives and duties which the Collector can
not interfere with. Each department revises the work of the others and
tests accuracy and fidelity therein.
The Collector’s duties are to see that all the departments do theirs.
The Surveyor of the Port has charge of all outside matters. He is the eye
of the Custom House. He is its right hand, which is laid upon a vessel,
its passengers and cargo as soon as they enter the Narrows, and never
taken off until all dues and requirements of the government are paid and
fulfilled.
The Appraiser is to inspect, value, and catalogue all merchandise, and
apportion the duties thereon.
The Naval Officer is to revise the work of all the others, and correct
errors and neglects, but he has nothing to do with the machinery of
collection.
To insure greater correctness there is a reviser of the revisers,
who about a year after the clearance of a cargo takes all the papers
connected with it, computes, compares and checks them off, and ascertains
what has become of all the goods invoiced.
One would suppose that after a ship and its invoices had run the gauntlet
of all these lynx-eyed officials, and the accounts had been cast in half
a dozen different ways, and the whole affair probed, and pried open, and
pried into, and taken to pieces and put together again in different ways,
errors and frauds would be impossible. Importers evidently have not such
faith in the perfection and inevitableness of the system, for appeals
from the demands of the custom house are frequent, and upward of five
hundred suits in a year are brought in court against the collector.
The best way to get a slight comprehension of the way this labyrinthine
business is done is to go through it once, in fancy. Say you are a
merchant traveling in Europe, and keeping an eye on the main chance
by buying a stock of silks, woolens, and fancy goods; also dresses,
gloves, and “knick-knacks,” for gifts. When the former are ready to be
shipped you have three invoices made and presented to the United States
Consul of the port of shipment, for him to revise and approve as correct
descriptions of the goods. One of these invoices he keeps, one he mails
to the Collector of Customs at New York, and one he gives the owner or
consignee of the goods. If on opening the consignment in New York the
inspector find this invoice does not correspond with the goods, it must
be returned to the consul for correction. Thus early in the transaction
do the safeguards begin.
Arrived in port, the vessel is boarded by inspectors who take from
the master the ship’s manifest and the other papers, and seal up the
hatchways, one remaining in charge of the ship while another takes
duplicates of the papers to the collector. The master of the vessel also
proceeds to the custom house and submits his papers, which convey a
complete history and description of his vessel, its voyage, passengers,
crew, cargo, stores, etc., etc. There are in some cases port dues and
other charges against the vessel for him to pay. His statement includes
a schedule of the number, nature, contents, consignees’ names and
residences, and markings and numbers of your packages of goods, and of
all others in the cargo. All this he vouches for under oath. Thus, to
begin with, the government has three accounts of the cargo. The master is
then given a permit to land his cargo, still under surveillance of the
inspector.
The cargo while being discharged on the wharf is checked off by the
manifest, so as to determine whether the cargo apparently corresponds
with the representations of the master and his papers. The cargo being
landed, the interests of yourself and other consignees become active. You
go to the custom house in person, or by a broker, present the bill of
lading and the invoices of your goods, certified by the consul; and you
state under oath that you have certain merchandise in the cargo as set
forth in the invoices, with the marks of the packages and description of
their contents. This is called an entry of the goods. If approved, the
papers are stamped, dated and numbered, and the value of the goods and
the rate of duty are indorsed on the back of your invoice by the entry
clerk. He then issues to you a permit to take away such of the goods
as you choose, upon payment of the estimated duties thereon, and after
compliance with the further conditions described below. If you choose to
leave any of the goods for a season in government warehouses, you need
not pay the duties thereon, but may give bonds for payment to be made
whenever you do take them. This is a bonded warehouse, and when you take
the goods it is called “taking them out of bond.” Often goods intended
for re-export are left in bond until sent out of the country, and no duty
is ever paid on such.
The correctness of these preliminary steps having been reviewed and
vouched for by the naval officer, certain portions of the goods, about
ten per cent., are sent to the appraiser’s office, as samples from
which the value of the whole consignment may be appraised. Before the
appraisal is made, however, you must go to the cashier’s office and pay
the _estimated_ duty on the goods wanted immediately, on their _apparent_
value as shown in the invoice; you must also give what is called a
“return bond” that you will not open the goods until ten days after the
appraiser has passed upon the samples, and that you will return the
goods to the custody of the collector if required during that time; this
enables the government to keep its hold on the goods until the final
adjustment of its claims. You now get your permit indorsed by the deputy
collector and the naval officer, and take it to the inspector in charge
of the vessel.
All your other papers are sent to the appraiser, with the sample goods.
His examiner identifies the one by the other and he makes his estimates—a
difficult and delicate task, sometimes. The changes from the invoices,
either in the quantity or value of goods are noted, and the papers are
returned to the collector’s office, where the work of the appraiser as
to classification of goods and proper duties, to be paid is carefully
revised. If the appraiser’s work be disapproved it is returned to him
for correction. After he has amended it, it goes to the naval office,
where the whole work is again revised. Then it goes finally to the Bureau
of Liquidation, where if you have already paid the right duty you can
get a permit to take your goods; if there is more to pay you pay it; if
you have paid too much the amount of the overcharge is returned to you.
If you be not satisfied with the valuation or any other feature of the
adjustment you can appeal, within a certain time, to the Secretary of the
Treasury, and if he sustain the collector you can still further appeal
to the United States Court. Or if the valuation do not satisfy you, you
can ask for a re-appraisement, or demand to have the goods valued by a
disinterested outsider expert in such goods. Before him you can call
expert witnesses and make as good a case as possible.
If you find any of your goods have been damaged in the voyage—say by
bilge water or breakage—you can demand a reduction of the valuation (and
hence of the duty) in consequence.
You have now done with the custom house, but it has not done with your
papers. They are all gone over again in another way, so as to verify
them; and then all the data are tabulated in such a way as to again prove
the accuracy of the processes. There is another review of them before the
much-tested documents are finally laid to rest. And as before noted, the
whole account of the cargo is re-examined a year later.
With the kid gloves and finery in your trunk you will have less red-tape
trouble. Inspectors from a revenue cutter have boarded the ship down the
Bay, and taken a sworn statement from every passenger as to the number of
pieces of baggage he has, and whether or no he has any dutiable goods
therein. You may not know whether your goods are dutiable or not, and
what is of more importance to you, you may not know that some things
which are strictly dutiable in law and would have to pay if put through
the custom house in an invoice, can pass free in your baggage. You shall
see how and why this liberality of the government is exercised.
Now you and your baggage are taken off the steamer and transported
on barges to the barge office at the Battery. Here the scene is as
animated, if not as picturesque, as at Castle Garden, described in the
October CHAUTAUQUAN. A large rotunda is piled with long tiers of trunks,
boxes and parcels, each ranged under a placard bearing the letter
which is the initial of the owner’s name—so that it is easy for you to
find yours, unless you are as uncertain as to the orthography of your
name as Tony Weller was. A blue-clad, brass-badged inspector, holding
your sworn statement in his hand, demands the keys to your trunks.
The manner in which you comply will have much to do with the rigor of
his investigation, as will your general appearance and make-up. These
officials become as good judges of character by externals as do railroad
conductors. One of the latter once said to me: “I can pick out all the
fresh passengers in a coach as soon as I open the door, by the way they
sit, look, and breathe. If they try to deceive, their faces will betray
them; they look too unconcerned and innocent. If they feign sleep they
overdo it; their attitudes betray them.” So an inspector here says that
people’s words, movements, dress, all tell of them.
I can tell the incoming traveler an open secret. Uncle Sam is extremely
liberal in the matter of baggage inspection. You would be surprised, sir
or madam, at the things the inspector don’t see, if you simply throw
yourself on the government’s generosity and act as if you expected to be
liberally dealt with. You have only to remember that your foot is on your
native heath, and you are an American citizen, one of the sovereigns. An
inspector said: “This property is personal effects, and public sentiment
is very sensitive as to domiciliary inspection and invasion of private
sanctity. The inspector is given wide latitude of judgment; he must have
it. By law, every pair of kid gloves that has not been worn is dutiable,
but we began to allow a lady a few extra pairs, and finally the limit was
set at a dozen. Although that is liberal, we find that plenty of ladies
have more pairs in use; and if her appearance, dress, and the other
contents of the trunks justify it, we pass as many as we fancy a lady in
her station _might_ possess. So of dresses, laces, fans, fancy articles,
et cetera. Even piece goods not cut or sewed are under certain conditions
ignored, if the owner declares they are for her own necessary use. So of
cigars. Our rule is to pass a hundred duty free; but we don’t always stop
to count them, if the passenger looks like a man of means and character.
What would the seizure amount to if there were ten or twenty, or even
fifty over the arbitrary limit we have fixed? The government does not do
such ‘picayune business.’”
“Does not this leave the door open for smuggling?”
“Not much. A person can not get much through openly in a trunk that can
affect the revenues or injure honest importers. The chief thing we need
to prevent is passing goods intended for selling. This sort of fraud is
usually attempted by deception, and we are pretty sure to detect it,
either by the nervousness or appearance of the person, by the looks
of the baggage, or by having been forewarned by detectives abroad, on
shipboard or here. We get a moiety share of the forfeiture and fine, if
we detect such attempts, and this is so large a sum that our interests
are mostly with the government.”
We will learn more about smuggling. False bottoms and secret pockets
in trunks are an old device for hiding things; but the man who first
secreted diamonds in his boot heel originated something. Secreting about
the person is the ruse oftenest used, and, women’s costumes affording the
best resources for this purpose, women are the most frequent smugglers.
Some of them—reputable women, too—take quite superfluous pains and make
themselves look needlessly ridiculous by loading their persons with
apparel that no one would question if in their trunks, and no one does
on their persons, except to smile at the self-exposure. On a hot July
day I saw elegant appearing ladies in the barge office, sweating under
enormous fur cloaks that made them look like Arctic explorers. This
foible is neatly satirized in “Nothing to Wear,” in which is described
the enormously stout appearance of _Miss Flora McFlimsy_ upon landing.
One day the inspector witnessed a woman waddling down the gang plank with
the body of a two hundred pounder and the face and head of a skinny,
ninety-five pounder. Of course she was invited to the examination room
by the female inspector, where the peripatetic ladies’ furnishing store
was opened up and duty demanded on the whole outfit. The same things in a
trunk would probably have gone through, most of them. Here the open and
honest course were the wisest.
Laces, silks, and linens are wound around the body and limbs, or made
up into extra and superfluous skirts. Coiffeurs are made to serve as
bustles; extra gold watches and jewelry are hung to the inside of skirts,
and a dozen other devices are the suggestion of lovely and ingenious
woman.
Here, as well as on the Canada frontier, women are found most apt at
amateur smuggling. The reasons for this are numerous. Women are by
education and domestic necessity close buyers and can not usually forego
a bargain. The lines of duty, moral or fiscal, are not closely drawn
or clearly defined here. Smuggling is a statutory offense, not a moral
crime, and from time immemorial injustice and favoritism have been
alleged against the whole tariff on imports. You shall hear plenty of
good moral men to-day denouncing all tariff as robbery. Besides, what
deference for or loyalty to government demands should we expect of women
when they are denied all share in government or law-making? Over against
these customs peccadilloes we may set the unanimous verdict of business
men that in positions of financial trust and responsibility, and as
debtors, women are almost universally honest.
The belief is quite common that smuggling through luggage is much
practiced by feeing the inspectors. Of course, the inspectors deny this.
They point to the superior inducements to fidelity on their part in the
share they secure of seizures, forfeitures, and penalties; to the risk
they run of detection in accepting bribes, the inspection being done
openly with many interested spectators and paid spies about, and to the
serious consequences of detection. Moreover, since the courts in the
celebrated Astor suit decided that anything may pass which the person
would swear is for personal or family use, the _necessity_ for bribery
is largely done away. Mr. Astor recovered from government duties upon
$40,000 worth of luggage that had been seized.
This story is told: Two years ago a woman landed with as many trunks as a
banyan tree; the inspector had been notified that she was a fashionable
milliner in New York. She said to the inspector, “I am in great hurry,
and if you will put my baggage right through and come up to my store
this evening I will give you a five pound note.” The collector scented
more than twenty-five dollars for himself in forfeitures, and began the
examination. A dozen pairs of new kid gloves, of four different sizes,
were the first thing uncovered. The lady protested that they were all for
herself, and that she was entitled to a dozen, and they were passed. But
when more gloves of different sizes were found, until there were half a
gross, she began to raise her bid. Then fifty pairs of new shoes of many
different sizes were turned out, and then silks, flowers, ribbons, fans,
and finery _à la_ McFlimsy. She at last offered three hundred dollars to
have the trunks passed, but as there was about twelve hundred dollars
worth of goods on which was a duty to collect of, say, five hundred
dollars, all of which (seventeen hundred dollars) was forfeit, it was no
use. The business had gone to a point where the owner could not afford
to bid against the government for the purchase of the inspector’s honor.
The goods were sent to the seizure room, and the woman was sued for the
penalty, as it exceeded the value of the property. After two years of
obstacles and delay the case was compromised and settled. The inspector
told me that his share of the damages would be much more than the three
hundred dollars she offered. Honesty is the best policy, virtue is its
own reward, and everybody is honest when it pays best, you see. If the
woman had not offered the bribe, and thus put it out of the power of the
official to show her any leniency, she would have been allowed to take
the goods away on payment of simple duty. She at least learned that there
is a time and way for all things, including bribery.
[B] _Harper’s_ for June, 1884.
THE CHRISTIAN REVOLT OF THE JEWS IN SOUTHERN RUSSIA.
BY BISHOP JOHN F. HURST, D.D., LL.D.
There is a little country in the south-eastern corner of Europe,
bordering on the Black Sea, which goes by the name of Bessarabia. It
drops into the angle formed by the Black Sea and one of the three mouths
of the Danube. Before the Crimean war it was a part of Russia, but in
consequence of Russia’s defeat in that war she was compelled, in the
treaty, to give it up to Turkey, and until six years ago it remained a
part of the Turkish Empire. But in the late war between Russia and Turkey
it was Russia’s time to win, and so she took back Bessarabia, and it
again became a part of her dominions. It has always been the scene of a
busy and peculiar life. The very river itself seems to have imparted much
of its current to the people, and they have been thinking, in their own
humble way, of the best means to promote their own interests.
The most recent movement in this small section of Russia is the religious
awakening of the Jews who settled in Bessarabia many years ago, being
driven there by the pressure of persecution, and leading a quiet life,
saying nothing as the lash came down upon them. From one step to another
this religious reformation has proceeded, all the while approaching
Christianity, until now it is a strong and still growing work, and in all
essential respects, save only organic unity, is allied with the Christian
church. It has already attracted the attention of inquiring minds in
western Europe, and threatens to extend into the hitherto firm body of
Judaism, and awaken intense Christian aspirations and sympathies in the
Jewish mind throughout the world. Delitzsch, of Leipzig University,
has given some account of the general features of the revolution in
his _Documente der National-jüdischen Christgläubigen Bewegung in
Südrussland_, but the most that has been written has thus far been in
fugitive form, in the Slavic periodicals of the Danubian principalities.
The whole affair has taken place in such an obscure country, and so far
removed from the busy centers of European thought and life, that it has
not had time to get into the permanent field of literature. Its leaders
have been so little accustomed to rely on the press, or to take it into
view as a means of propagating their opinions, that in this new phase of
their work they have depended simply on the justice of their cause and
the firm principles which they believe underlie it. From various sources,
and especially from the Rev. Dr. Kleinheim, of Bucharest, who has been a
resident of this far-off city about twenty years, and is probably better
acquainted with the internal working of Judaism in eastern and southern
Europe than any other man, I have gathered the most of the data which I
herewith present to your readers. This gentleman has spent his life in
trying to christianize the Jews of Moldavia and Wallachia, and his labors
have been remarkably successful. He has been kind enough to answer all my
inquiries, and to open to me some of the interior views of this important
and unique movement which could not have been secured at a distance.
The prime mover in this revolt against pure Judaism, and in favor of
Christian adaptations, is a layman, Joseph Rabinowitz. He is a lawyer
by profession, and for learning, and as a pure and elevated character,
he has been long held in the highest repute by his companions in faith
throughout Bessarabia. From his very development into manhood he seems
to have been interested in the improvement of their condition, and to
have conceived the idea that there must be some new and easy solution of
their solitude and sorrow. In 1880 he presented a plan, which was more
theoretical and fanciful than practical, by which the Jewish priesthood
might be thoroughly reorganized, and thereby the whole Jewish system
undergo a most salutary rehabilitation. There was, however, no intimation
here that any form of Christianity should be superadded to Judaism. But
he had his thoughts, and applied himself with redoubled energy to helping
his brethren to something better than they had so far possessed, both
in faith and material comfort. The Jews have seldom shown any sympathy
with agriculture. They are a folk of trade, the world’s shopmen and money
changers. But Rabinowitz endeavored to introduce agriculture among the
Bessarabian Jews, and to locate them in pleasant and open homes. By and
by, in 1882, the violent persecution of the Jews of the whole of southern
Russia broke out, and neither life nor property seemed to rest on any
approach to a secure base.
Rabinowitz now turned his attention to the Holy Land. He felt that Russia
was no place for the Jews to live in, that they should go to a country
where their fathers had once been great and strong, that now Palestine
had only a sparse population, that the Jews would not be disturbed there
in any way, and that they should wander hither, become tillers of the
soil, and develop once more into a great people. He went there himself,
made a careful study of the country, and especially of its history, and
came to the startling conclusion that the land itself, from positive
internal evidence, gives the fullest and clearest proof possible, to-day,
that such a character as Jesus Christ did live in it, that he, and none
other, is the promised Messiah, that all further expectation of a Messiah
on the part of the Jews is idle, and that the only proper course for
them to adopt is to accept him as their Savior and Redeemer. This is
concession which lies at the root of all Judaism; once granted, there is
positively nothing essential left.
Rabinowitz had gone to Palestine for the sole purpose of opening the
country for a new immigration, not only of Jews from Bessarabia, but
from every land. He saw in the occupation of the country, by his
fellow-believers, a magnificent future for them. But through some strange
providence, which no one seems yet to understand, he saw a larger
future—the Jews of all lands coming to the cross of Christ. He went back
to Bessarabia, and soon astounded his companions in doctrine by his bold
and impassioned declarations of the divine character of Jesus. With the
genius of the real leader, he adopted a watchword, which has now become
broadly known as the rallying cry of all Jews who share his doctrine:
“The key of the Holy Land lies in the hand of our brother Jesus.”
There is no want of clearness in the creed of this new and striking
departure in Judaism. It is an adoption of the fundamental doctrines
of Christianity; at the same time, however, those who entertain these
doctrines do not propose to withdraw from Judaism completely, but to
retain some of the minor features of the old system, and to refrain from
joining any Christian denomination. They call themselves “The National
Jewish Society of the New Testament.” In their articles of faith, as
communicated by Pastor Faltin, of Kischinev, to Dr. Delitzsch, they hold
the following general views: There is one living and true God, creator
of all things. He made a covenant with Israel, his people, that he would
raise from their midst a prophet, who should have the spirit of the Lord,
and himself be the Lord, who would plant righteousness throughout the
earth. This prophet is the promised Messiah, who taught the people the
truth, and bore their sins, and died for the whole world. He was born
about seventy years before the destruction of the second temple, and died
at the hands of his enemies. He will rule the house of David, and exalt
the horn of his people for ever more. The Jews of his time were stricken
with blindness. The light was before them, but because of their hardness
of heart they were punished with helplessness. Hence they killed their
Lord. It is now time to open their eyes, and see him whom their fathers
slew. He alone is Redeemer. He alone can build up the Jewish people. From
all lands they should hasten to Palestine, and accept Christ immediately,
and expect nothing less than that he will restore Jerusalem to its former
glory, and build there once more the throne of David.
Such is the mere thread of doctrine which pervades this new system, but
there is interwoven with it a certain general paraphrase of teaching,
which it is also necessary to understand. This is furnished Dr. Delitzsch
by Wilhelm Faber (of Kirsanoff), who took notes one afternoon when
Rabinowitz himself gave a survey of his creed. “We Jews,” says the
leader, “who have come into the full vision of Jesus Christ, and now feel
the power of his spirit, have not come to the great light through any
general indoctrination from without. No, we have looked deeply into the
Old and New Testaments, and have found that God takes no pleasure in the
death of the sinner, and that he loves his people Israel, and is willing
to save them. Our reflection has become stirred by the miracles of Jesus.
We see in them the evidences of his divinity and the proofs of his love
toward us. We have come to look to our brother Jesus as the Messiah, and
to find in him our only hope of salvation.”
While Rabinowitz has organized his companions in this new doctrine into
a separate religious body, which does not alienate itself fully from
Judaism, it differs from Christianity widely enough to prevent perfect
affiliation with it. It stands upon the border-line, being neither
positively Jewish nor altogether Christian. Rabinowitz finds fault with
Christians for being divided into many confessions, and congratulates
his fellow-believers from among the Jews on the ease with which they
can build themselves into a new organization without the embarrassment
of subdivisions. In answer to the question as to whether circumcision
should be enforced in this new religious society, Rabinowitz says: “It
is not sinful to abstain from circumcision, but he who does so abstain
cuts himself off from all relation to his people.” He, therefore, makes
this rite a part of the creed of his church, but not a necessity. He
regards the sentences of the Old and New Testaments as of equal validity,
and rejects the Talmud and the writings of the rabbinists as not of
authoritative force, but as valuable monuments of an early time. He
adopts the communion service of the Lutheran church, and makes baptism an
essential part of his system.
Rabinowitz propounded his doctrines to his fellow Jews only two years
ago, and in this brief time over two hundred families have formally
united with him. Of course the regular Jews do not endorse such a
departure. They regard it as a miserable apostasy, and proclaim loudly
against it. On the other hand, the Christian church can not hail it with
unmixed pleasure, inasmuch as the “National Jews” still adhere to some
parts of the Jewish system, and must make some important concessions
before they can be regarded as a thorough religious body.
In what light, therefore, must these Jews, who have accepted Christ and
his full atonement, be held? Can we see in their doctrines a sign of real
hope for the entire Jewish world? We think that only one answer can be
given, the one which Delitzsch and other close students of the Hebrew
mind, both past and present, have been compelled to give—namely, that
we see here an evidence of the breaking up of the old Jewish solidity.
Mendelssohn and others have proven that the Jews are subdivided among
themselves, that there are numerous tendencies which pervade the entire
body, and that these are constantly growing stronger. This, however,
is the first instance where an important part of the Jewish church has
openly adopted the atonement of Christ, and proposes to rise or fall by
that alone. May it not be the great outcome of the Jewish mystery, that
large sections will formally adopt Christianity; that not as individuals
but as vast territorial sections they will renounce their old faith and
take their place among Christian bodies; and that in due time they will
drop the Jewish name altogether, and be thoroughly identified with the
great Christian church in all its activities and grand purposes?
The middle ground of the National Jews of to-day, as occupied and
preached by Rabinowitz, is simply an impossibility for the future. It is
neither one thing nor another. Its exact parallel, in our day, can be
found in the impossible church of Father Hyacinth. His work is neither
all Protestant nor all Roman Catholic. To succeed it must become
Protestant, and formally reject all attachments to the old Romanism.
There must be no looking back when once the “hand is put to the plow.”
Had Martin Luther stood all his life upon the door-sill of Roman
Catholicism, looking out and yet not going out, his work would have been
a total failure, and have shown a lack of that final courage which makes
a successful revolution. We must, however, bear in mind the fact that
he was preceded by men who had taken positive ground, but not the last
step. To their moderate work he owed much. He saw their failure, and the
cause of it, and hence he broke the whole yoke and became a free man. In
the same useful line must we rank the doctrines and work of Rabinowitz.
He may not take all the advanced course which we would like, and which
history reveals as only the true Reformer, but he is the sure forerunner
of one or more who will do this work. It is one of the ways in which God
distributes his honors, that his great movements are not conducted by one
alone. There is always the Baptist, and sometimes many, who must preach
in the wilderness, before the full gospel of the mountain side and sea
shore can be heard from the lips of the world’s Teacher. In this light,
as the prophecy of a new religious awakening among the Jews, who have for
all ages rejected all approaches from Christianity, must we regard the
doctrines and work of Rabinowitz and his friends. His cause is rapidly
growing, and must continue to grow. While it is not a finality, it is in
the right direction, and hence a blessing which all Christian people must
hail with pleasure.
BUCHAREST, ROUMANIA, October 7, 1884.
THE INNER CHAUTAUQUA.
BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
Chautauqua is a place and an idea. The idea was before the place;
although it must be confessed that the embodiment of the thought in a
physical frame-work of soil and forest had a most wholesome effect on
the idea itself, giving it a chance to draw strength from its external
conditions; to “ultimate” its conceptions in action; to experiment with
raw material; to command the attention and elicit the commendation on
which good things thrive, and to adapt its aim and energy to the variety
of people and conditions with which it proposed to deal.
The place is beautiful, and grows more beautiful with the passing years.
Nature has not suspended her beneficent ministries since Art pitched her
pavilion by the side of these waters. Trees still put forth branches and
clothe them with foliage. The old trees stand like venerable giants,
with as much of hope as of memory in their hearts, and in their annual
robe of verdure forget that for so many years they have watched the
coming and the going of the seasons. Young trees that have grown a dozen
years older since the first Chautauqua song broke the silence are now
stately and beautiful, ready to be witnesses for a hundred years, of the
strange things to be done here, and of which we who are looking about
for graves only dream of now. The lake—who shall tell of its moods, its
smiles and frowns, its loud murmurings of unrest when the fierce winds
come down in power upon it; its low sobbings after the storm, trying to
forgive and forget; its sweet answers to the toying breeze; its splendor
when the moon flings a robe of silver over it; and when the sun, making
it a mirror, rejoices in it (as Christ in the true saints) because it
faithfully reflects his own glorious image?
Art has not altogether been useless, although more than once unwise.
Penuriousness has sometimes spoiled lines and angles, and mixed bad
colors. Stupidity has blundered into sad combinations and contrasts;
but on the whole Art has clasped hands with Nature, and made the place
Chautauqua a lovely and fitting tabernacle for the Chautauqua Idea.
There is a Chautauqua within Chautauqua. To see this other Chautauqua,
one must have eyes—eyes that look into the innermost things. He must
see beyond groves and crowds, beyond lake and sky, beyond buildings and
programs. He must be able to see necessities, intellectual and spiritual,
in the individual and in society, tendencies of thought, forces of
conviction, pressures of desire and ambition, the conflict of new and old
civilizations in the personal life, as circumstances bring a man face to
face with the new, while yet from habit and feeling he is held half-slave
by the old.
He who sees Chautauqua must understand the relations (not generally
understood) between gracious culture and the rough, unæsthetic services
which people must render each other and their own lives in this world,
services of feeding and clothing and cleaning and housing—low, gross and
humiliating, as judged from an artist’s studio or a “poet’s frenzied
mood.” He must find out that high and low, noble and ignoble are relative
terms; that a kitchen may for a time cage an angel whose hands dabble
in dough, and whose tired feet in coarse shoes tread rough floors. She
may serve her inferiors and treasure the pittance they give her to buy
books for her brain life, at least that portion of the pittance she does
not need to feed unfortunate people who depend upon her. When crowns are
given out, a marvelous readjustment of relations will take place, and
certain little neighborhoods will be shaken with surprise.
Chautauquans with eyes see the distinctions in advance, and recognize
the crowns that hover in mid-air over the saints, and they pay honors to
“Alfreds in neat herd’s huts” before the throne is ready.
Chautauquans who have eyes to see have discovered the strong and
delicate cords of religious life which run through and unite all the
diverse elements of life into a sacred harmony—a sacrament exceeding holy.
Chautauquans see God in everything and find in everything ways of coming
near to him. They believe in nature and in science—true science—and
abide by her final decisions, and take delight in her processes. But
they believe also in a FATHER whose thought makes scientific thought
possible, and of whose creative and controlling thought science is but an
interpretation.
Chautauquans believe in the God of the Book—the BOOK of Books. They
do not trouble themselves about the _modus_, the _quantum_ and the
_qualitas_ of inspiration. They simply take the book in its entirety, as
the book given to be studied, trusted, loved, and obeyed, as individual
conscience and judgment respond to its contents after calm, devout and
diligent study thereof; and not to be quarreled over or quibbled about,
or forced to sustain preconceived or preaccepted notions by a string of
separated texts on the cord of a curious fancy, or an antiquated dogma.
They put BOOK and soul together, and trust both thoroughly for fair
treatment.
Chautauquans “study the Word and the Works of God.” And so firm is their
faith in the SPIRIT who wrought the works and inspired the Word, and in
the spirit of man for whom the Word was inspired, that they feel it not
strange that God the Father should “dwell in the midst of them,” folding
his own children to his heart and breathing of his own spirit into their
spirits, enlightening, regenerating, comforting, witnessing. And as trust
grows and desire increases this access becomes less and less interrupted,
and they hope one of these days in all wisdom, reason and sense to trust
in God continually, and every day to feel his presence and rejoice in his
grace.
Chautauquans, however, discriminate between this divine possession which
captures and sways intellect and will week days and Sundays, in business
and in church life steadily and effectively, and the mere spasms of
resolution under pressure of occasion; the selfish efforts over fancied
personal security; the studied outward conformity to religious duties
according to the ebb and flow of religious emotion. They believe so
firmly in the kingdom and patience of our Lord that obedience is worth
more than comfort and faith, a firmer foundation than sight or feeling.
To Chautauquans, therefore, all things hold a measure of God’s infinite
wisdom. All things are precious, for in all things one may find traces of
his grace. All things are sublime, for all things are connected with a
glorious unity, which fills heaven and earth, eternity past and eternity
to come. Flowers, fossils, microscopic dust, foul soil, things that
crawl and things that soar, ooze from the sea-depths, lofty heights that
salute the stars—all are divine in origin and nature. A boot-black may be
a king—boot-black and king—both at once. Human eyes see only the black
hands, patched knees and crouching form that bespeak servility. There are
eyes that can see deeper and further. Seeing so much they extend a hand
of greeting. Then kings and saints converse.
Chautauquans believe in Wealth when honesty wins it, prudence protects
it, and benevolence uses it. They believe in Position when worth secures
it, work honors it, and humility attends it. They believe in Culture,
when teachableness goes before it, and all the faculties in true harmony
receive it and religion inspires and controls it. They believe in Labor,
when true social relations distribute it, when no one family of faculties
is abused by it, and when true, reverent and philanthropic motives direct
it.
Chautauquans are believers in a common brotherhood—but are not
“communists.” They are open to truth, and hold an inheritance in all
truth, and are subject only to the truth. But they are not boastful free
thinkers in
“Realms remote, mysterious, divine,”
dogmatizing and denouncing. They believe in truth, God, and humanity.
They seek the first, rejoice in the second, and serve the third.
These are some of the ideas which belong to the Chautauqua movement—the
thoughts within the things—the theories of which phenomenal Chautauqua is
a visible expression.
OUTLINE OF REQUIRED READINGS.
JANUARY, 1885.
_First Week_ (ending January 8).—1. “Preparatory Greek Course in
English,” from page 1 to 21.
2. “Character of Jesus,” from page 1 to 45.
3. “Temperance Teachings of Science,” in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
4. Sunday Readings for January 4, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
* * * * *
_Second Week_ (ending January 15).—1. “Preparatory Greek Course in
English,” from page 21 to 43.
2. “Character of Jesus,” from page 40 to 87.
3. “Greek Mythology,” in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
4. “Kitchen Science and Art,” in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
5. Sunday Readings for January 11, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
* * * * *
_Third Week_ (ending January 23).—1. “Preparatory Greek Course in
English,” from page 43 to 63.
2. “Character of Jesus,” from page 87 to 129.
3. “Old Greek Life,” in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
4. Sunday Readings for January 18, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
* * * * *
_Fourth Week_ (ending January 31).—1. “Preparatory Greek Course in
English,” from page 63 to 83.
2. “Character of Jesus,” from page 129 to 173.
3. “Home Studies in Chemistry and Physics,” in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
4. Sunday Readings for January 25, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
PROGRAMS FOR LOCAL CIRCLE WORK.
FIRST WEEK IN JANUARY.
1. Review of the Persian War.
[Giving cause of the war, date and location of each battle, leaders on
both sides, and a brief outline of the life of each leader.]
2. Recitation—“Picture of Modern Greece,” by Lord Byron. From “The
Giaour.” Found also in Chambers’s “Cyclopædia of English Literature.”
3. Essay—Torricelli and Pascal.
Music.
4. Select Reading—“Ancient Greece,” by Lord Byron. From “Childe Harold.”