All inquiries and correspondence relating to the business management
of Chautauqua should be addressed to Mr. W. A. Duncan, Secretary,
Syracuse, N. Y. Mr. Duncan makes his home in that city, and is in easy
communication with Chautauqua. He has entered upon the work of the
secretaryship with his usual enterprise and zeal, and the management of
Chautauqua is being greatly strengthened by his election.
* * * * *
There is very little of an exciting character in the political world.
General W. T. Sherman has been mentioned by his friends for the
Presidency, but the newspapers and politicians seem to have dismissed
his name from the list of probable candidates. He is too much mixed up
with the Romish church in his family relations. President Arthur has
made a fine impression by the prudence and statesmanlike bearing of his
administration. He has won a high rank as a man, a politician, and a
patriot, since he took the oath of office, much higher than he held in
the thought of the people before, but he will fail of the nomination
for the Presidency. Ohio will not endorse him and his own state did not
elect his Secretary of the Treasury governor, and the logic is that New
York would not endorse him. All other candidates seem to have gone into
private training for the open conflict.
* * * * *
The election of Mr. Payne to the United States Senate by the Democrats of
Ohio, does, it is thought, change the attitude of the Democratic party
on Civil Service Reform. Senator Pendleton, who is a strong champion of
this reform in his party, and one of its earnest advocates in the Senate,
was defeated by Mr. Payne, who is not regarded as an advocate of Civil
Service.
* * * * *
Ever since our government was founded, there have been, no doubt, many
persons who feared that there would eventually grow up a too close
intimacy between the executive and legislative departments. This fear
has in part prevented the heads of departments from being members of
the House of Representatives. And yet they wield a tremendous influence
in shaping legislative action as it relates to their departments. The
secretaries are consulted by members on the floor of the House and
the Senate on all important matters in which they are interested. Why
not give them the rights and privileges of membership, that they may
represent their departments in person? It might be the means of throwing
new light on many vexed questions in the administration of the government.
* * * * *
After sixteen years of neglect and broken treaty stipulations the
Congress of the United States is moving to provide Alaska with a simple,
inexpensive government and school system. Strangely enough the portion
of the bill pertaining to schools is the one that meets with the most
opposition in Congress. That it shall not be defeated, and the native
population of Alaska be deprived of educational advantages, it is in
order for the readers of THE CHAUTAUQUAN to show their interest in
education by petitioning Congress to pass this bill.
* * * * *
Every congressional season we have revived for public discussion in one
form or another, “Who is first lady at Washington?” At the New Year’s
reception, Mrs. Carlisle, the speaker’s wife, stood next the President,
while it is maintained that the wife of the Secretary of State should
have occupied this position, and that Mrs. Carlisle should have stood
“below” the Cabinet. The President settled the dispute by inviting Mrs.
Carlisle to stand by his side.
* * * * *
As knowledge increases, the tests applied to men for service grow more
severe. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company has been inquiring into the
color blindness of their employes, a very important matter, when we think
of the relations of signals as they are used on the road to the safety
of human life, as well as to the protection of the rolling stock of the
company. Dr. William Thompson, the ophthalmologist by whom the work was
conducted, discovered that one man in twenty-five is unfit for service
where prompt recognition of color signals is required. Some who are color
blind do indeed distinguish correctly between danger and safety flags,
but, as Dr. Thompson suggests, they are guided by form, not by color. It
might be some security, therefore, to make every danger signal peculiarly
recognizable by both its form and color.
* * * * *
Shall the government take charge of the telegraph service? is a question
that has not come up in any shape for discussion in Congress, and we
doubt if it will receive much attention in either House or Senate in
the immediate future. There is one objection to the government assuming
control of this branch of public service, viz.: As the leading daily
newspapers of the country are now conducted, they depend on the telegraph
companies for facilities to transmit the Associated Press dispatches, and
since this is the only medium the people have for the quick transmission
of news, and it is feared that if the general government should get
charge of the wires, the administration, if it were Republican or
Democratic, would have the power indirectly, if not directly, to shade
the news, and we would be in danger of losing what we now have—a free
press. While monopolies are to be dreaded, still we believe that the
present management of the telegraph system is preferable to anything we
would be likely to get from the government; a change would be hazardous.
“Better endure the ills we have than fly to those we know not of.”
* * * * *
Wendell Phillips died of heart disease, in Boston, February 5th. Few
men become so generally known in a lifetime, without the help of public
offices, as Mr. Phillips. He was an orator pure and simple, and,
perhaps, when in his prime, the foremost of American orators. He has
written nothing that will mark the period of his life among men, but
he was a great battle-ax against slavery, and on that issue he found
an opportunity to use his powers of denunciation to their maximum. As
a lecturer he will be missed, for since the war here he shone the most
brilliantly. Dr. Vincent expected him at Chautauqua the coming season
to deliver his great lecture—“The Lost Arts.” We shall have more to say
concerning him in a future number.
* * * * *
A letter from the wife of a missionary in Madagascar has been published
in London. It was written on September 24th. She says: “The mourning for
the late queen is ended. It only lasted about two months, and was not of
the severe kind of olden times; this time the people were only forbidden
to plait their hair, wear hats, carry an umbrella, build much, and to
weave cloths, while in former times the mourning lasted at least a year,
and everybody’s hair was shaven close to the head, women’s and all; they
were not allowed to wear clothes at all, just mats round their waist.
The new queen promises to be a worthy successor of her good mother. Her
name is Rayafindrahely, but she comes to the throne under the title of
Ranavalona III. The Malagasy now publish a newspaper, the _Gazety_ they
call it, once a fortnight; it is the first specimen of Malagasy attempt
at printing and composing. It is after the style of our own newspapers,
and gives the news of everything that happens in every part of the
island, and especially of every movement of the queen and prime minister.”
* * * * *
The news from India that Keshub Chunder Sen is dead will occasion
profound sorrow. He was in the midst of a great work, and we hoped for
much from him in connection with needed reforms in India, to which his
life was given. Through his open, manly renunciation of the errors of
Brahmanism, and earnest protests against caste, child-marriages, and
other social evils of their system, and more by his new theology, Mr.
Sen was widely known. In his own land he was reverenced as a religious
teacher, orator, and reformer. In this country and in England, where
those marvelous outbursts of devout feeling stirred the hearts of all
who heard, the chief interest centers in his theology. He, whose words
so thrilled other Christian hearts, did not yet confess himself a
Christian. He had renounced _polytheism_, and all forms of idolatrous
worship, but attempted to show his countrymen, from their own sacred
books, that primitive Hindoos, like himself, were _monotheistic_. The
belief of the Brahmo Somaj, or society of which he became a minister, was
a great advance from idolatrous Hindooism, and in most respects seemed
like true Christian faith. His work as a reformer seemed full of promise.
Who will be his successor to carry it forward, does not yet appear. His
early death will be mourned as a great, if not an irreparable, loss. The
inchoate creed of the community, so sadly bereaved, is not complete or
fixed, and will, we hope, and perhaps now more rapidly, crystallize about
the wisest sayings of their great leader. May a divine radiance from the
cross of Jesus brighten its every line.
* * * * *
Poverty brings its temptations and makes its demands even on the priests
of the church. “The other day a priest in Kerry,” says the _St. James
Gazette_, “went to his Bishop: ‘I want you,’ he said, ‘to give me a
general dispensing power for cases of perjury.’ ‘For perjury?’ said
his lordship. ‘What do the people want with that?’ ‘Faith!’ answered
the good father, ‘they can’t get on without it. For, first of all, the
Moonlighters come to them and swear them that they must say that they
didn’t know who they were; and then there’s the Arrears Act, and they
have to take the oath they’re not worth a farthing; and you know in the
Land Court they can’t get a reduction till they say they can’t pay their
rent. In fact, my lord, the poor people have to perjure themselves at
every turn.’”
* * * * *
Oscar Wilde, in a recent lecture in Dublin, made a remark which deserves
more attention than anything which that gentleman has ever said in regard
to American customs: “American children seem to be pale and precocious,
and that might be owing to the fact that the only national game of
America is euchre, which could hardly, if industriously practiced, tend
to create and develop a fine or manly physique.” It is undoubtedly too
broad a statement to call euchre our national game, but it probably is
more universally played than any other. It puts us as a people in a weak
light, to say that our leisure is spent in a game that calls for little
thought, which gives us no outdoor exercise, and which enervates rather
than strengthens, but it is the true light. We are, as a rule, making of
ourselves hot-house plants. Vigorous games are shunned; weak ones are
adopted. The criticism is just, and worth our attention.
* * * * *
The following item sent us from New York is to the point: “Kings County
Wheelmen’s Club, which numbers fifty members, gave its annual reception,
recently, in Knickerbocker Hall, Clymer Street, Brooklyn. Several clubs
from New York and vicinity attended. The wheelmen gave an exhibition of
fancy riding, and there was also a bicycle drill, in which movements were
made by single file, and by twos, fours, and eights. At one part of the
drill two lines of bicyclers advanced in opposite directions, met each
other, came to a standstill, and saluted.” We feel like encouraging the
use of the bicycle. As a sport it is an improvement on any of the games
on which we have had a craze in late years. Roller skating, or standing
to roll on spools, is not the healthiest or best exercise; perhaps it is
the best substitute that can be invented for skating, but it is a failure
for this purpose. The bicycle is useful and graceful, when in motion, and
the wheelman gets genuine exercise out of turning the wheel.
* * * * *
There are many opinions advanced on the Newton case. Rev. Heber Newton,
of the Episcopal Church, was silenced from delivering a course of
lectures on the Old Testament, in which he advanced some startling and
new opinions. As to their weight authorities differ. One remarks that
they were “The work of a shallow thinker, with fragmentary knowledge,
intent on saying startling things.” Others contend that he thought he
could make the Bible a more helpful book. Let him have charity; he
certainly acted the part of a moderate and wise man in obeying his bishop
without making a hubbub. His attempt is but that of hundreds of other men
in orthodox churches who every winter introduce courses of lectures in
which they instruct their flocks in speculative philosophy, new theories
and scientific teachings. A friend recently remarked to the writer:
“The first idea of doubt that ever entered my mind was on hearing one
of a series of scientific lectures delivered from a Christian pulpit.
Pantheism was presented so invitingly that I went home a pantheist.” If
minds are speculative they should enter another realm; the practical
truth of the gospel is the work of the pulpit.
* * * * *
Decidedly the most sensible opinion on matters in Sudan is that of
“Chinese” Gordon, who says: “That the people were justified in rebelling,
nobody who knows the treatment to which they were subjected will attempt
to deny. Their cries were absolutely unheeded at Cairo. In despair they
had recourse to the only method by which they could make their wrongs
known; and, on the same principle that Absalom fired the corn of Joab,
so they rallied round the Mahdi, who exhorted them to revolt against
the Turkish yoke. I am convinced that it is an entire mistake to regard
the Mahdi as in any sense a religious leader; he personifies popular
discontent. All the Sudanese are potential Mahdis, just as all the
Egyptians are potential Arabis. The movement is not religious, but an
outbreak of despair. Three times over I warned the late Khedive that
it would be impossible to govern the Sudan on the old system after my
appointment to the governor-generalship.”
* * * * *
Charles Scribner’s Sons have decided to begin a new issue of _The Book
Buyer_. It was discontinued in 1877, but the demand for such a concise,
readable and reliable “Summary of American and Foreign Literature” has
led to republication. _The Book Buyer_ is so cheap (fifty cents per year)
that every one can have it; it is so useful and authoritative that no
book-lover can afford to be without it.
* * * * *
Public opinion on the question of woman’s rights has so shaped itself
that we all feel inclined to smile at the speech of the Solicitor of the
Treasury against issuing the license as master of a steamboat on the
Mississippi, for which Mrs. Mary A. Miller, of Louisiana, applied. Had
it been on the ground of inability to fill the position no one would
have commented, but on the ground of its “shocking the sensibilities
of humanity,” the world laughs. The truth is, no one is seriously
shocked—except fossils. Whatever ideas, pro or con, the public may hold
on woman’s suffrage, it does recognize the right of women to earn their
living in any employment for which they are fitted. The weight of public
sentiment would say of Mrs. Miller: “If she be competent to do the work,
let her do it.”
* * * * *
Henry Hart, the designer of the beautiful C. L. S. C. pins advertised
in this number of THE CHAUTAUQUAN, has gone to Atlanta, Ga. He reports
a fine local circle in that city. Mr. Hart makes C. L. S. C. a very
generous offer in promising to devote one-tenth of the proceeds of the
“People’s College” badge to the Hall fund. It is to be hoped that very
many will take this opportunity of helping themselves and the Hall.
* * * * *
The _Manhattan_ for February contains a finely illustrated article on
“Caricature,” by our friend Prof. Frank Beard. We recommend it to our
readers as a most entertaining paper.