To the New England Branch a suggestion is made in the interest of the class, and in behalf of the excellent Secretary of the New England Branch. Will not every member not able to attend at Framingham this summer send (July 15-28) to Miss Mary R. Hinckley, South Framingham, Mass., a postal card with postoffice address, and bearing, if nothing more, “Yours for ’86”? To ascertain those who and how many are affiliated with “the good class of ’86” in New England, is most desirable for weighty senior and graduation interests.
Reports from various quarters lead to the conclusion that, compared with the whole number at any time enrolled in the class of ’86, the number entering upon the Senior year will be exceptionally large. It ought to be large—larger than any class preceding, more thorough, more enthusiastic. We have the advantage of the experience of all who have gone before. Let us rise to our privileges.
“Neglect not the gift that is in thee.”
President—The Rev. Frank Russell, Mansfield, Ohio.
Western Secretary—K. A. Burnell, Esq., 150 Madison Street, Chicago, Ill.
Eastern Secretary—J. A. Steven, M.D., 164 High Street, Hartford, Conn.
Treasurer—Either Secretary, from either of whom badges may be obtained.
Executive Committee—The officers of the class.
At a great camp meeting near Indianapolis, in the first week of August, the Rev. Frank Russell, President of the class of ’87, is to set forth in an address, the nature of the C. L. S. C. as an educational and moral force.
The wake of a C. L. S. C. class is found to kindle a bright way for the next. Much correspondence of the officers of the class of ’87 has been toward the interest of the class of ’88, and is now extending even toward that of ’89. Each succeeding class seems to promise increasing numbers and power.
A member of ’87 has succeeded in forming a circle at Jefferson, Ohio, of ten members. She writes: “I can not tell you all the good our circle is doing for us individually. We have enjoyed our chemistry very much. We were very pleasantly entertained and instructed by experiments given by Professor Perry in April.”
From St. Johns, N. B., Mr. G. A. Henderson sends the following account of the C. L. S. C.: “We organized with five ‘Pansies,’ and were joined this year by seventeen ‘Plymouth Rocks.’ We were the means also of influencing the formation of another circle of ’88, over twenty in number. At present there are about sixty reading the course in our city. We look forward with deep interest to the publication of the book by our chief ‘Pansy,’ and although we have not contributed to it, we hope to meet and march with you through the Gates in ’87.”
Hannah Percival Hamer, a member of the “Pansy” class, died at her home in Taunton, Mass., April 24, 1885. She was a most faithful worker and firm advocate of the Chautauqua course.
On the 9th of April Miss Maggie B. McKnight, of Chambersburg, Pa., a member of the “Pansy” class, died. She was a devoted and enthusiastic Chautauquan, and looked with great pleasure toward the time when she could visit Chautauqua. She was reading with another member of the class, who intends, however, to keep on, saying that she “could not do without it now.”
Westfield, N. J., is the home of a “Pansy” circle, calling itself by the cheerful name of “Hope.” It began with three sisters reading the course together. It was very fitting that they should receive their first inspiration from reading “Four Girls at Chautauqua.” The “Hope” is working hard to increase its membership.
“Let us be seen by our deeds.”
President—The Rev. A. E. Dunning, D.D., Boston, Mass.
Vice Presidents—Prof. W. N. Ellis, 108 Gates Avenue, Brooklyn, N. Y.; the Rev. Wm. G. Roberts, Bellevue, Ohio.
Secretary—Miss M. E. Taylor, Cleveland, Ohio.
Treasurer—Miss M. E. Taylor, Cleveland, Ohio.
All items for this column should be sent, in condensed form, to the Rev. C. C. McLean, St. Augustine, Florida.
Class badges may be procured of either President or Treasurer.
The following are among the circles not yet reported in our column. I first give name of circle, then place and number of members: “Gradatim,” Kennebunk, Me., four; Bloomfield, Ind, seven; Niobrara, Neb., eight; “Master” (motto, “Labor is the price of mastery”), Ionia, Mich., eleven; “Peripatetics,” Chicago, Ill., twelve; “Magnolia,” Marianna, Fla., fourteen; “Philomathean,” Lancaster, N. Y., eighteen. The last named has by quotations, recitations, readings and essays celebrated the “memorial days.” For six months none but ladies composed the circle. They, however, so charmed three gentlemen that they sought admission and became enthusiastic students. The members of this circle so dislike the class name that they have refused to adopt it. They are among the others who express their enjoyment of the class reports in our ’88 column.
The circle at Hastings, Minnesota, twenty-three members, has instructed its secretary to write their objection to our name. Among other things is the following: “In The Chautauquan we read of one class talking of establishing a ‘Heliotrope Bed’ at Chautauqua, and another a ‘Pansy Bed.’ We might send a coop of ‘Plymouth Rocks,’ but we fear they might demolish the beds of flowers.” We have received encomiums of praise of the name. One from Mount Carmel, Connecticut, says: “Our name, like every other worthy thing, in spite of its ‘fowl’ associations, needs no defenders.” One from Toronto, Canada, writes: “I am satisfied with our name, for although it represents a speckled bird it will ‘crow’ a good deal when four years old.” Another from Marine, Ill., after thanking Chancellor Vincent for “How to Read Alone,” protests against a change of name or motto.—A member of our class, a boarder in a Young Women’s Christian Association of New Haven, Connecticut, writes: “I think as one takes up Chautauqua books he loses the relish for stories, e’en though written by good authors. What an opportunity for gaining knowledge of the highest order!”—“Angle” circle, North Groton, N. H., is bereaved in the loss of one of their earnest workers, Mrs. E. E. Merrill, a lady who read much and well, and yet in the five short months had become so fascinated with the C. L. S. C. that almost her last words were those of appreciation of the same.—The East Norwich, L. I., circle is likewise bereaved in the death of a devoted member, Miss Lizzie Franklin.—A class of unmarried ladies complains that they have not been noticed. If they will send us another letter, writing the name of their circle so we can decipher it, and also give the town, or city, and state in which they live, we will gracefully and gladly bow our recognition.
“Among the Indians: Osage Agency, Indian Territory.—Our circle consists of six members—five teachers and one bookkeeper. Although each lives a busy life, we have had weekly meetings, kept up with the required reading, and celebrated two authors’ days, Bryant’s and Longfellow’s. Surrounded as we are by Indians, who still wear blankets instead of citizen’s dress, and who are not far advanced in the arts of civilized life, we feel doubly thankful for the benefits arising from such a course of reading.”
In Bingham Cañon, Utah, a mining camp situated about twenty-eight miles southwest of Salt Lake City, the New West Education Commission has a school established. One of the teachers proposed taking the Chautauqua course alone, but, mentioning it to several, organized a circle of six. Of the name she writes: “I like it so much. My home is in Plymouth, Mass.”
Half of the members of “Carleton” circle, Hudson, Mich., live out of town from two to six miles, yet they are numbered among the most enthusiastic and faithful. They have had full programs at every meeting, and have observed all memorial days. They number thirty-seven, twelve being of our class. The ’88s wear on their hats a symbolical badge (a fac-simile, in brass, of the pedal extremity of a Plymouth Rock). They like the motto, but not the name.
One from Gilbert’s Mills, N. Y., writes: “I can not longer refrain from expressing how much I enjoy the reading of the course, although I am pursuing it alone, occasionally meeting with the circle at Fulton, five miles from here, which I much enjoy. The more I read and learn, the more anxious I am to go on, that I may be no disgrace to our grand class name, that takes me back to dear New England, and home. I would prove myself worthy of it and of our motto.”
The “Chippewas” is the name of a circle of twenty-two members, formed at the city of Eau Claire, Wis., October of 1884. Four of the members belong to the class of ’86, the others to that of ’88. The society has met once a week, and has observed the memorial days. In addition to the prescribed course, the class is reading the two volumes of Timayenis’s History of Greece.
“Mountain City” circle, Frederick, Md., very appropriately and enthusiastically celebrated “Shakspere Day.” The program consisted of a “Sketch of his Life,” and the reading of “The Merchant of Venice,” the members taking the different characters.
Mrs. F. B. Edwards, who with her daughter joined the class of ’88 last fall, and was a faithful and diligent member, died at her home in Hartford, Conn., March 14, 1885. She was a lady of excellent education, and had also the culture of much foreign travel and residence in Europe. She was delighted with the C. L. S. C. plan, and especially with the opportunities it offers for mental and moral growth.
One of the most earnest and beloved members of the “Pierian” circle, of Brooklyn, N. Y., Morgan Morgans, has lately died. Mr. Morgans was a young man of but twenty years of age—a member of the class of ’88, and a zealous Christian.
So much having been written pro and con, respecting our class name, it is proposed to have the entire class vote for or against the name. The circles will send their vote, giving the number in favor and against present name. Those who are not in circles can send their votes as individuals. The vote should be sent to the Rev. C. C. McLean, St. Augustine, Fla., at as early a date as possible.
The writer of this article has visited, in different years, most of the Sunday-school Assemblies, and he has found none, not even Chautauqua itself, where the wave of C. L. S. C. enthusiasm runs higher than at the New England Assembly, South Framingham, Mass. Every class has its headquarters, trimmed with greens and flowers, with the class-motto wrought upon its walls; and every class has its anniversary, with toasts and cream. The Round-Table is crowded at every session with intelligent students, who can both ask and answer questions. If a reporter could have taken down and printed all the replies given one afternoon last summer to the inquiry, “What good is the C. L. S. C. doing?” it would have furnished a valuable document for the use of workers in the cause. The camp-fire is always crowded; last year the ranks, arranged by classes, counted over five hundred members; and this year it will be greater.
The traveler on the railway sees already a white columned building gleaming among the trees on the summit of the hill. If he be a Chautauquan, he needs no one to tell him “The Hall of Philosophy,” for he recognizes it at once as the copy in every detail of the building at Chautauqua. This Hall will be dedicated by the Chancellor during the coming session of the Assembly, when from all New England the faithful will rally to participate in the great occasion. Its dedication will take place on Wednesday, July 22d, and the address will be delivered by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D., one of the Counselors of the C. L. S. C.
The Recognition day services will be held on Thursday, July 25th, when an address will be given by the Rev. Luther T. Townsend, D.D., of the Boston University.
Among the leading lecturers (and lecturesses) of the Assembly during the present season will be the Rev. F. E. Clark, D.D., Prof. W. N. Rice, Dr. E. C. Bolles, Dr. R. R. Meredith, Dr. Geo. C. Lorimer, Robert J. Burdette, Miss Kate Field, and Mrs. Mary A. Livermore.
Monteagle is in the State of Tennessee, upon the Cumberland Mountains, 2,200 feet above the sea-level. We have here the most invigorating, health-giving atmosphere, the purest water, the most beautiful wild flowers, the grandest mountain scenery, the most picturesque views of the valley lying hundreds of feet below, the loveliest vales, the most magnificent forests of native trees—indeed, a combination of all the desirable natural conditions for a pleasant summer resort.
This is the place which has been selected by the Christian people of the South, of broad views, of liberal hearts and generous impulses, of intellectual culture and refinement, for the location of the Monteagle Sunday-school Assembly. This Assembly is permanently established by a charter granted by the State of Tennessee. For two years they have been very successful.
If there is virtue in faithful and capable teachers and honest work, no one in 1885 will go away from Monteagle dissatisfied.
These schools offer to teachers and intellectual people a place where they can spend the heated term of each year, combining study with rest and recreation, in a delightful and inexpensive mountain resort, free from all social dissipation. It is proposed to furnish in the summer schools of Monteagle the best instruction in every department open. All who seek absolute rest on these mountain heights will be free to take it; those who shall seek only lighter courses will find entertainment; and those who wish thorough instruction will not be disappointed.
The summer schools open June 30th. The Assembly opens August 4th, and closes August 28th. Among the lecturers will be Dr. B. M. Palmer, President Chas. Louis Loos, Dr. D. M. Harris, Bishop Walden, Sau Ah-Brah, the Rev. Sam Jones, Dr. Lansing Burrows, Wallace Bruce, and Hon. G. W. Bain.
The Island Park Assembly will hold its seventh annual session on the beautiful grounds of the association near Rome City, Indiana. The Assembly will open July 14th, and remain in session until July 30th. The Tabernacle Lecture Course will be unusually brilliant and attractive. Among the speakers will be Bishop Foster, Bishop Bowman, Prof. C. E. Bolten, Wallace Bruce, Dr. Geo. C. Lorimer, Dr. H. H. Willets, Dr. John Alabaster, the Rev. John DeWitt Miller, and Miss Lydia Von Finkelstein.
The music will be under the general management of Prof. C. C. Case. The Goshen full band and orchestra, and the Hayden Quartette will be in attendance. The Sunday-school Normal Class will be under the personal instruction of the Superintendent of Instruction, and will be one of the most important features of the coming Assembly. The course will be identical with the Chautauqua course, and graduates will be entitled to the Chautauqua diploma.
The visitor finds the Island, some twenty acres in extent, a few minutes’ walk over a bridge and through a shady avenue from the railroad station, Rome City, with the village at an equal distance westward. The Island is naturally beautiful, always fanned by cool breezes, with hills and miniature valleys, romantic nooks, a beautiful beach, and a drive partially surrounding it, many fountains and wells, and a plaza surrounded by hotels and offices. Beyond the rustic bridges of the canal are a Tabernacle seating 3,000, a building containing the Model of Palestine, and the Art Hall with its large lecture rooms.
From the north is to be seen, a mile across the Lake, “Spring Beach,” a well appointed hotel in an elaborately improved park, containing mineral springs and the famous trout ponds.
South of the Island, across a bridge, are the Assembly lands, containing the Amphitheater, and laid out in lots and avenues, with a high bluff to the Lake. Here are opportunities to tent in perfect quiet or in the liveliest streets of the Assembly City.
Two steamers ply on Sylvan Lake, between the Island, the head of the Lake and Spring Beach. Two hundred row boats are kept.
Postoffice, telegraph, bathing and laundry facilities on the ground. Ample hotel and boarding arrangements in the village.
The sixth summer Assembly of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle will be held at Pacific Grove, near Monterey, California, opening with an address Monday evening, June 29th, and closing Friday, July 10th.
This Assembly, in spirit and purpose, resembles the famous Assembly held each summer at Chautauqua Lake, New York. The course of lectures during the coming session will include in its subjects not only scientific themes, but those of art, history, and general literature.
Microscopes, stereoscopes and other apparatus will abundantly illustrate the lectures. The managers also intend to add to each evening’s lecture the attraction of beautiful music, illustrative tableaux, recitations, etc.
The Assembly will open on the evening of June 29th, with an address by Dr. C. C. Stratton, of San José, President of the Pacific Branch.
A few of the speakers and subjects will be as follows: The Rev. Dr. Wythe, Oakland, “Scenes in Great Britain and the Continent;” Prof. H. B. Norton, San José, “The Knights of the Temple;” F. B. Perkins, San Francisco, “Wit and Humor;” Dr. C. L. Anderson, Santa Cruz, “Diatoms;” Edward Berwick, Carmel Valley, “World Federation;” Adley Cummins, Esq., San Francisco, “The Sanscrit Language and Literature;” the Rev. Dr. E. G. Beckwith, San Francisco, “School and Skill.”
Sunday-school Normal Work will receive its due share of attention.
The music of the Assembly will be in the very competent hands of Mrs. Helen M. Cushman, of San Francisco, and will be artistic and delightful.
The morning of Friday, July 10th, will be occupied with the interesting exercises of the Third Graduating Class of the Pacific Branch C. L. S. C.
Pacific Grove is situated on the beautiful Bay of Monterey, and connected with the ancient capital of the State by a pleasant drive of one and a half miles, over a macadamized road lately constructed. In beauty of location it can not be excelled—its graceful pines, extending to the water’s edge, affording a delightful refuge from the heat of the sun. As a healthful place of resort, it is not surpassed by any locality in the State. The value of the Assembly held here has been fully assured by the delightful sessions of the past five years.
The well known facilities for studying Natural History at Pacific Grove have made that one of the important topics of study, and much enthusiasm has been aroused on the coast by the work of the C. L. S. C. in this department.
The prospects for the work of 1885 in this beautiful and healthful summer resort are commensurate with the energy displayed by the zealous management. The grounds are charmingly located on the northern shore of the Peninsula, opposite Sandusky, Ohio; accessible by an hour’s delightful steamer ride from this city, and will probably be connected with the Danbury station of the Lake Shore Railroad by rail this season. The Encampment sessions begin on Tuesday evening, July 21st, the brief enthusiastic “Reunion” to be followed by one of the spicy and wise lectures of the Rev. P. S. Henson, D.D., of Chicago. There will then follow for nearly two weeks a rare program under the superintendency of the Rev. B. T. Vincent, of Philadelphia, Pa., assisted by the Revs. F. Russell and E. Persons. Mrs. B. T. Vincent will have charge of the Primary Teachers’ Department, and also the Boys’ and Girls’ Meeting, assisted by the Rev. J. S. Reager, of Ohio. The Models of the Tabernacle, Jerusalem, etc., will be explained daily by the Rev. Dr. Hartupee and Mr. Tannyhill. Miss Ross, of Chicago, will give daily instruction in Kindergarten work, and Professor Trueblood, of Delaware, Ohio, in Elocution. Daily devotional meetings will be conducted by the Rev. W. H. Pearce, of Erie, Pa. Lectures and sermons are announced from Bishop R. S. Foster, Drs. Henson, Alabaster, Nelson, Bayless, Parsons, Rev. Messrs. Young, Pearce, Russell, Reager; Colonel Bain, of Kentucky, Wallace Bruce and Leon H. Vincent. Brilliant stereopticon exhibitions, with lectures by the Rev. Mr. Young and Professor Bolton. Oriental exhibitions by Miss and Mr. Von Finkelstein, with their gorgeous collection of Oriental costumes, etc. The Meigs Sisters and Professor Underhill will give concerts and elocutionary readings; Professor Trueblood will also give popular readings. Mr. French, of Chicago, a racy and instructive Chalk-talker, will “draw.” The music will be under the able direction of Professor Brierly, of Erie, Pa., and Miss McClintock will delight the crowds who gather at Lakeside. The C. L. S. C. will, of course, have a large place in the attention of the people, as Lakeside is a center of a large field of workers in this line. There will be “Round Tables,” etc., and a public Recognition service for the class of ’85, all of whom who desire it may secure this privilege there, and receive their diplomas, which will be there for distribution, if they inform the Rev. B. T. Vincent in time to see that the diplomas are sent to him for them. A Soldiers’ day, with war songs and a lecture on “Echoes from Round Top,” by the Rev. J. B. Young, of Harrisburg, Pa., will form one of the enthusiastic features. The promises of Lakeside, one of the finest of Chautauqua’s daughters, were never so good, nor so sure of rich fulfillment.
The Nebraska Sunday-school Assembly Grounds consist of one hundred and nine acres on the banks of the Blue River, at Crete, Nebraska. Its first session was held in that town in July, 1882, under the direction of the Rev. J. D. Stewart. Last year, at its third session, a splendid tract of land was donated to the Assembly. It extends along the river bank, with admirable opportunities for boating, contains a beautiful grove and ample grounds for buildings, walks, drives, and other purposes. Two lecture halls and a dining hall have already been erected, and some hundreds of tents provided; while a Normal Hall, several cottages, and other buildings are proposed.
The Normal Department will be in charge of Prof. R. S. Holmes, who has been for many years a teacher of this department at Chautauqua.
The Primary Normal Department will be in charge of Miss Lucy J. Rider, who will also conduct a children’s class daily.
Dr. J. H. Vincent, President of the Circle since its commencement, and Chancellor of the Chautauqua University, will be present and give two lectures. Others who have had wide experience in literary pursuits will give their counsels on the ways of spending time most profitably in reading and study for the people.
Among the lecturers engaged are: The Rev. R. R. Meredith, D.D., of Boston; the Rev. O. H. Tiffany, D.D., of New York City; the Rev. Robert Nourse, of Washington, D. C., and the Rev. H. M. Ladd, D.D., of Cleveland, O.
A course of musical instruction will be given by Prof. J. E. Platt. Prof. W. F. Sherwin will give a lecture and conduct concerts.
By the time that this reaches the readers of The Chautauquan the Inter-State Assembly of Kansas and Missouri will be in session at its home in Forest Park, in the city of Ottawa, Kansas. No other assembly is entertained with such hospitality, for the people of Ottawa throw open to it their public park, in the limits of their city, on the banks of the historic Marais du Cygne, “The Swamp of the Swan,” celebrated by Whittier’s pen in the border days of Kansas. Among the orators whom they expect to hear are many whose names are well known to all Chautauquans, as Wallace Bruce, Dr. Henson, Robert Nourse, Dr. Tiffany, Sau Ah-brah, and our own Chancellor, Dr. Vincent. Indeed, it will be quite a transplanting of the Chautauqua Idea to the western prairie, for as at “the Mecca of us all,” we shall hold daily a Round-Table; the Commencement service will be fulfilled, the Chancellor will deliver the address to the graduating class and confer the diplomas of the C. L. S. C.; Prof. Sherwin will wave the baton before the chorus on the platform; Prof. Holmes will teach the Normal class; Sculptor Spring will instruct the class in clay modeling; and the general Superintendent of Instruction will be Dr. J. L. Hurlbut.
Last year, the C. L. S. C. interest showed a great increase. In 1883, the number of C. L. S. C. members who clasped hands around the camp-fire was twenty. In 1884, it was nearly ninety, and if we could count those who joined before the close of the Assembly it would reach a hundred. We look for twice as many on Tuesday evening, June 30, when we expect to be entertained with stereopticon pictures of “Sights and Insights at Chautauqua” by the Rev. O. S. Baketel, of New Hampshire, and at the close of the lecture, march in procession to the camp-fire, and sing and talk together. We expect also a great day on July 1st, which is given to the “Grand Army of the Republic.” Perhaps no other State went into the war with quite the enthusiasm of Kansas; certainly no other has as large a proportion of veterans settled within its borders. Every year the Assembly recognizes these old heroes, and “Old Soldiers’ Day” always draws a multitude. We shall have a concert of war songs in the morning, and a lecture by General O. O. Howard, U. S. A., in the afternoon, when the Governor of Kansas is expected to preside.
No gathering in Kansas is complete without a Temperance meeting, for Kansas is the banner State in constitutional prohibition. Let it be said, all stories to the contrary notwithstanding, that there is no defection in the ranks of the prohibition army, and no retreat. The cause is as strong as ever, and no one thinks of rescinding or re-submitting the Amendment. We hold “Temperance Day” on July 2, when Dr. Philip Krohn and Col. Geo. W. Bain will speak, and various conferences on different aspects of the work will be held.
The Ottawa Assembly extends a welcome to all Chautauquans who may enter its gates, and gives its assurance that they will find themselves at home.
This delightful summer resort is situated on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, in Garrett County, Maryland. It is 2,800 feet above sea level, in the midst of sublime scenery. The place itself is enough to attract all lovers of the true, the beautiful, and the good, but besides the feast for the eyes and lungs, there is a feast of reason and a flow of soul prepared to profit, entertain, and inspire the hosts who gather to the Assembly.
The principal lecturers are Prof. H. L. Baugher, D.D., of Pennsylvania College; the Rev. G. W. Miller, D.D., of Philadelphia; the Rev. C. P. Marsden, D.D., of St. Louis; the Rev. Z. Warner, D.D., of Parkersburg, West Virginia; the Rev. N. L. Reynolds, of Mt. Pleasant, Pa.; the Rev. J. B. Van Meter, D.D., of Baltimore; J. B. Phipps, Esq., Secretary of Maryland Sunday-school Union and author of pictorial designs for the Berean Lesson Periodicals.
“Thorough Normal Work” is the motto of Mountain Lake Park Assemblies. The Assembly Normal Union course of study will be pursued during the session, and diplomas awarded on Normal Union day, August 19th.
The C. L. S. C. Department was organized two years ago, and Monday, August 17th, has been set apart to this interest. A lecture on “Self-help” will be delivered by the Rev. J. T. Judd, A.M., of Lewisburg, Pa., president of the circle, with special C. L. S. C. exercises. Round-tables, vesper services, class unions, and camp-fires will be enjoyed during the Assembly session.
New Testament Greek will be made a specialty. The Rev. C. E. Young, of Baltimore, instructor.
Geology will receive the attention of the Rev. N. L. Reynolds, who inspires enthusiasm in this noble study.
Elocution classes will be formed as last year, and Amateur Photography will be the pleasant recreation of lovers of the art.
The Assembly meets August 6th and closes August 19th. For further information address the Rev. W. Maslin Frysinger, D.D., Baltimore, Md., or the Rev. Jesse B. Young, Harrisburg, Pa.
The management of the Round Lake, N. Y., Sunday-school Assembly sends greetings to its hosts of old friends and to many others whom it hopes to make warm friends in the near future. The last year was one of the best in its history. Numbers, meetings, speakers, work and workers, influence and the divine blessing, all combined, made it a power for good, wide-felt and lasting. It is the aim to make the coming Assembly better than ever. They have planned on the same generous breadth and scope of the last season, and are confident their work will merit approval.
The program already completed is full and rich and varied. On July 9th and 10th there will be a reunion of chaplains and soldiers. The meeting is most vigorously planned for. There will be a large gathering of the old soldiers; Col. G. A. Cantine will act as Grand Marshal. Gen. John A. Logan has been secured as speaker. The Sunday-school Assembly will hold a longer session this season than ever. Beginning July 14th, it will continue fourteen days, and each day will be packed with varied and most profitable exercises. They have a larger variety of specialties than formerly, viz.: French, German, Painting, Drawing, Clay Modeling, Oratory, Vocal Music, Kindergarten, Calisthenics, Phonography, etc., etc.
On C. L. S. C. day, Tuesday, July 21st, Dr. John H. Vincent, the originator of the Idea and developer of its plans and inspirer of its growing work, will be present and address the graduating class, who will pass the “golden gate” and from his hand receive their well-earned diplomas.
The following is a partial list of the lecturers: The Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., the Rev. John P. Newman, D.D., the Rev. H. A. Buttz, D.D., the Rev. S. W. Dike, A.M., the Rev. A. D. Vail, D.D., the Rev. Geo. L. Taylor, D.D., the Rev. I. J. Lansing, A.M., Prof. J. L. Corning, the Rev. D. H. Snowden, the Rev. C. C. McCabe, D.D., Senator James Arkell.
The Trustees, with great care and cost, have given special attention to every part of the grounds, draining, cleansing and beautifying, rendering the grounds, if possible, more healthful than ever.
Never was this “charming spot of nature and art” more beautiful and health-inspiring than to-day! Never was it more sought for as a Family Summer Home than this spring.
The Sunday-school Assembly at Monona Lake, Madison, Wisconsin for 1885, will hold its session from July 28th to August 7th. The specialties are: Music, Prof. Sherwin; Grand Chorus of 300 voices; Goshen Band and Orchestra; Sunday School Normal; Children’s Class. Some of the speakers are: Bishop R. S. Foster, Wallace Bruce, Miss L. M. Von Finkelstein, the Rev. George C. Lorimer, D.D., Prof. William I. Marshall, Prof. W. C. Richards, Ph.D., the Rev. O. C. McCulloch, D.D., the Rev. D. Read, D.D., the Rev. G. H. Ide, D.D., Meigs Sisters Vocal Quartette, C. F. Underhill reader.
The Assembly at Maplewood Park, Waseca, Minnesota, opens June 30th, and continues in session until July 10th.
Thursday, July 9th, will be Chautauqua day, and on that day a public recognition service of the graduating class will be held. There will be an address suitable to the occasion, and the recognition service as used at Chautauqua will be used here. In the evening there will be a camp-fire.
The names of Prof. H. B. Ridgeway, D.D., the Rev. Frank Bristol, Miss L. M. Von Finkelstein, the Rev. C. A. Van Huda, D.D., and the Rev. J. F. Chaffee, D.D., are found in the list of lecturers. No one has visited Maplewood Park without feeling that Nature has done her part in providing here a delightful retiring place for tired people and for those who are in danger of becoming so.
A dense grove rises forty or fifty feet above the lake. The lake itself is a beautiful sheet of water, around which is a magnificent carriage drive. All so quiet that the busy world seems shut out, while all Nature seems to say, “Come and rest.”
Besides, there are the attractions of the Assembly, calling the mind into new channels and awakening new thoughts and kindling new and noble desires for intellectual and moral improvement.
The time at which the meetings are to be held this year has been selected, with special reference to the convenience of the people.
Bro. Gillet, superintendent of the Assembly, never needs an introduction to the Northwest. He will make the occasion one of lasting good to the interests he represents.
Arrangements are being made by the officers of the Maine Chautauqua Union for a grand meeting at Fryeburg, to begin July 27th, 1885, and to continue one week. The grounds at Martha’s Grove are being put in order and beautified by Mrs. Nutter, the prime mover in this matter, and everything will be done for the comfort and enjoyment of all Chautauquans who visit this lovely spot. There is soon to be erected on the grounds a “Hall in the Grove,” after the style of the one at Chautauqua.
The program for this season is an attractive one and will consist of illustrated lectures, vocal and instrumental music, essays and readings. Some part of each day is to be devoted to the Round-Table, question box, discussions and reports of circles. As a result of our meeting last year, circles have sprung up all over the State. In Portland alone, there are three hundred Chautauquans where there were only nine last year.
The greatest of the French writers of this century has passed away from earth, after eighty-three years of a life which was, like Carlyle’s, full of work to the very end. Victor Hugo’s greatness is difficult to measure at this hour; we are too near to know whether this is an Alp or only a hill. That it has attracted the attention, the admiration, the homage of mankind for half a century would seem to mean that this was one of the three or four great lives of the nineteenth century. Victor Hugo came of a union of aristocratic and plebeian blood. His father’s tribe had been of the nobles since 1531; his mother was the daughter of a seafaring race. The current sketches of his father omit the most dramatic incident of Colonel Hugo’s career. We refer to his long chase and final capture of Fra Diavalo—the brigand hero of the opera which bears his name. In the whole history of brigandage in South Italy, there is no more exciting and romantic story than that of his hunt and capture of the “Friar-Devil” by the father of Victor Hugo. In the blood of the poet the plebeian mother triumphed at length over the Monarchist father, and Victor Hugo’s pen has rendered the Republicanism of France more valuable service than his father’s sword gave to the Napoleonic crown.
His genius was fortunate in the poverty which compelled him to work for bread, and the banishment which in 1853 threw him into exile, and again forced him to take up the severe literary labor which brought forth “Les Miserables” in 1862. This son of the aristocracy might have lived a life with out fruit if he had not abandoned the ideals of his father for those popular sympathies which made him the most dangerous enemy of Napoleon III. The change in his views came slowly. He was a Royalist under Louis Phillippe, and that king created him a peer of France in 1845. It was not until 1849 that he changed his political attitude, and he was then forty-seven years of age—so that he divided his life pretty evenly between the aristocratic and popular causes. His works show the influence of his political thoughts, and the differences between the earlier and later are very marked. The earlier works gave him the ears of the great world; the later won him the hearts of the people. Whether in prose or in verse, all that he ever wrote was poetry. His later prose is a collection of poems of human aspirations. It is idle to seek in them any system, they are emotion rather than thought; but the emotion is the throbbing of the universal human heart. He believed in God and in man. He rejected the religion of his people less under the stress of conviction than through the force of his hostility to the organized human world in which he saw men suffering. It was not his office to resolve the riddles of human pain; it was his to gather men’s tears into God’s bottle. It may be called a one-sided life; but it was on that side where great lives are too seldom found. It may be said that emotion is blind, passionate, dangerous, as Frenchmen have abundantly proved; but it is still true that the emotion which rouses men from lethargy is necessary to beneficent change, and that even though the wail of human misery must go up forever, we must honor the great souls who seek solutions of the mystery of evil in a happier ordering of human society. We need not become socialists to reverence Victor Hugo’s socialistic philanthropy. Its aim was high, and it has its great uses. Though only God’s bottle be large enough to hold the tears of his children, it is a noble poetry which considers the sorrows of the earth and seeks to pour the sunshine or hope into the low valleys of humanity. Hugo’s way may be the wrong way—probably it is—but it is good for men to hold fast the hope that there is some way through the sea to the promised land. There is a desert beyond the sea; but somehow we shall cross the desert into the Canaan of humanity.
It is, therefore, as a poet of the sorrows and aspirations of our race that we shall most profitably think of Victor Hugo. He was somewhat too French in spirit to be a poet of mankind; he was too egotistic to be on the heights of his human song; he would have been greater if his knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth had been deeper, and his imitation of him perfect in the measure of his great capacity; he would have left something unsaid which wounded men whose purpose was as high as his own, if he had been more Christian and less Hugoist. But why do we ask all things of all men? Victor Hugo did a great work in his own great way. A dangerous socialism has temporarily profited by his denunciations of society, but in the end of the account it will probably appear that he has advanced Christian socialism by the uplift he has given to human aspirations. Men are not so willing to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt, not so much in danger of leaving the bones of the whole race in the desert, more anxious to move on to their promised land.
It required fifty years of the Elizabethan age to introduce that revision of the English Bible which has so long been the standard edition of the Holy Scriptures in our tongue. It would be strange if the revision of that standard Bible which has just been completed were to come into immediate and general use. The New Testament revision met with a harsh reception from the critics of conservative temper; and it certainly has some defects, though the sense of the original is more obvious, to use the mildest term, in the new than in the older revision. The revised Old Testament has consumed fourteen years of the labor of the English and American committees, and the most obvious fact is that it is a more conservative piece of work than the revised New Testament. The committees probably profited by the buffetings of their New Testament revision brethren; but they had a simpler task, since they had not to settle the text of the original Hebrew, whereas the Greek text of the New Testament is still a battle ground of criticism. After all, however, the two revisions constitute one “revised Bible,” and must stand or fall together. The general judgment may probably run to the effect that the New Testament is revised too much and the Old too little. There is a special defect, however, in the New Testament English—it is not idiomatic, and it is not always intelligible. There is a rumor that it will be re-revised into harmony with the conservatism which characterizes the new Old Testament. It is not to be overlooked that there are various demands made upon a revision. Those who most earnestly desire one have in view a more plain and understandable text for popular use. Wycliffe’s great thought, “a Bible understonden of the people,” is their desire. But the literary demands upon the revisers exclude intelligibility by the people as a governing rule. This group of demands defies the skill of any revision committee. They ask for improvements; but they object to any changes. The Bible as an Elizabethan classic is their admiration and they seem not to be willing that the people should have any other Bible. There would seem to be ample room for both revisions; let the literary people have their English of 1611, while the people have English of this century. We are not yet, however, sufficiently advanced in the thinking which revision requires to qualify even the critics among us to distinguish between a classic text for scholars and a plain text for the millions. A modern English Bible will come by and by; we can afford to wait, and meanwhile to study the fruits of the labors of a Revision Committee loaded down with a great weight of conservative environments. For it is not the classicist alone who stands guard over the old English text; conservative theologians regard that old text as too sacred to be modernized, and distrust modernizing as involving changes in the moral and religious influence of the Bible upon mankind. The intelligibility of the Bible is not, to such thinkers, a leading requisite; reverence for its mysteries ranks all other considerations. We are probably outgrowing this view of Holy Scripture; but it is an opinion strong enough yet to keep utterly dead English locutions in the revised Old Testament of 1885. This conservatism is much stronger in England than in this country; the American Committee desired to substitute modern for obsolete words.
That any changes have been made under such respectable and imposing auspices is a great gain to Christian knowledge. The thing is done; the grand old text has been subjected to a revision. It is quite possible that we are entering an age of biblical revision; and it should be remembered that the Bible of 1611 closed an age of revision. It was the last in a series of revisions, each of which contributed to the perfection of the English text. We can not be content with an English Bible which employs which for who, wist for knew, earing for plowing and ouches for settings. The American Committee was thoroughly right in desiring to use modern words in these and other cases. If any revision is to stand, it must contain such modifications of the old text. A satisfactory English text can not be attained so long as the English Christians insist upon retaining archaic forms of such insignificance as the foregoing; there must be an agreement to make an English text on Wycliffe’s principle of popular intelligibleness, before a revision can be of very high utility. The present revision breaks the ice; we have begun; some time or other we shall go on to the logical conclusion of the movement—a modern English Bible for all who use our mighty speech. The assent of the conservative to a single change concedes the principle of revision; his assent to many changes prepares the way for all that are necessary to the modernizing of the Book of Books.
The summer is looked forward to with eager desire and it is dismissed without regret by the residents of the temperate zone. The explanation lies partly, if not mainly, in our defective adaptation of ourselves to the hot season. Charles Lamb once wrote, “The summer has set in with its usual severity.” The wit covers a truth; we adjust ourselves so imperfectly to the heated term that we suffer from the high temperature. The art of living must include devices and cautions through which we get the good and shun the evil of each season. Men are slowly learning that to “enjoy life” on this planet one must pay the same price as for liberty—“eternal vigilance.” The summer of the North ought to be our golden time of health and enjoyment. We have the whole of the atmosphere to breathe from—not bits of it let into artificially heated spaces. There is shade for the noonday heats, and the evenings and mornings for exercise and refreshment of muscular energy. But the hot hours are often dangerous and the atmosphere may be poisoned by our own neglect of decaying vegetables or animal matter. We must aim to keep clean and keep all things about us clean; food should be lighter than in winter (less heat-producing); exercise should avoid the hours of fervent heat; the occupations should take a more leisurely pace; the scene of life should, if possible, be shifted for some week or weeks so as to diversify our mental interests and break the dreary monotony of long days spent in one environment of body and soul. The word which describes the art of summer life is moderation; but moderation is not indolence, though there is a natural tendency to drop into the laziness which characterizes barbarian humanity in hot lands. To be healthy and happy one should resist the disposition to be idle. Neither health nor happiness come to lazy people in any desirable measure. The best forms of both depend on activity; but in summer it must be moderate and regular. If, then, one has constant occupation, he should cultivate moderation of interest and exertion, shun the blazing noontide, and take his food as well as his exercise in reduced doses. Too much food, care, exercitation, these are our northern summer dangers. Our civilization is yet very imperfect in this region of art. We have attained to food, clothing, shelter. We do not quite understand how to use them all wisely; but beyond these lie the adjustment of exertion, rest, air, water, electrical and chemical instruments of vitality, and the inner forces of our own being. Happiness is the result of a complex mass of conditions and instruments of life acting upon the spirit and reacted against by the spirit. Our knowledge grows; but while it is growing we have to take for our text moderation, and elaborate the sermon each man for himself.
The great opportunities of the year come to us in summer. Nature is all alive to please and instruct us—to give us the delights of the eye and the inspiration of study. The world has been dressed with infinite art, to afford us a holiday which shall be full of instruction. We need travel to widen our vision of God’s modern Edens dressed by human art. We need an active intelligence, to see and understand the Eden world of summer. But all depends upon our care of our bodies. Health is the condition of all summer pleasures. Is it not strange that we will spend months and years learning how to use lifeless tools, and yet will not spend needed time to learn the management of this vital tool by use of which all happiness comes to us? Let us all try this time to keep the instrument of life in tune for the music of the summer; to make of the season of highest opportunity all there is in it for ourselves. Starting with that selfish purpose, we shall soon find that we need social food, and that here also, “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” Helping others to enjoyment is the healthiest of “health movements;” for no tonic is so spiritually exhilarating as the sight of other people’s happiness which we have made. The man who sends a child out of the city suffocation of summer time has a poor imagination if he can not enjoy the gambols of that child in the country meadows and groves as he never enjoyed a banquet in his own house. Doing as many generous actions as possible is one way to get both health and pleasure out of the summer.
It is somewhat remarkable that at a time when science is indubitably failing to justify the exalted hopes of those who looked to it for a solution of the deepest questions of being, it is enlarging our sense of its value to practical every-day life. The mystery of the molecule is insoluble, but the usefulness of chemistry is rapidly increasing. Professor W. Mattieu Williams proposes to use maltose as a cooking agent to produce foods which are both more palatable and more easily digested. Those who attend the cooking school at Chautauqua this summer will probably learn how this work is to be done, and what results will follow. The theory sprang out of attempts to feed cattle on malted grain. It was found to be too expensive for cattle, and also hardly necessary, because cows have good digestive apparatus. Human beings have impaired digestion, and can afford more expensive food than the beasts have need of. The maltose cooking carries graniverous foods up into an advanced stage of nutritive condition, lessens the labor of weak stomachs, and tickles dull palates with new flavors. There is no near limit to the possible fruits of this thought. The chemist may render us incalculable services along this line. We have suffered something from the chemistry of men who adulterate our food; it is a comfort to know that the good uses of chemistry are coming forward to render us most valuable compensations.
It is a matter of course that in this field we shall often be disappointed; but so many solid gains are secured that we shall readily excuse some fanciful experiments. In lighting public streets and buildings, electricity has made it possible to turn night into day; chemical studies have perfected the grinding of flour; a hundred more of small and great practical advances in scientific living are secure. We shall go on. It is very noticeable that the conveniences of modern life have triumphed in unexpected ways over natural difficulties. The zone of comfort for human life has been widened toward the pole and toward the equator. The gains are more slowly harvested southward; any reader who feels the languor of this season will know why we do not march so triumphantly toward the equator as we do toward the north pole. Moral energy is in larger demand, as we go south, to resist the tendency to idleness. The north wind puts spurs into us and whips us into action. We shall therefore find the northward limit of vigorous life before we find the south boundary of it. And naturally our science, invention and discovery bear upon cold rather than heat. We have the means now of living in higher latitudes, in full moral and mental activity, than were good for body or brain a hundred years ago. We know how to build for warmth in zero weather, and we have cheap fuel and cheap light for the frosts and the dark of the North.
An enthusiastic writer says that natural gas is to be the fuel of the immediate future—the next fuel. We have as yet found it only here and there on the earth; but we are not done searching for it. Imagine, then, that we have found this gas all round the shores of Hudson’s Bay, and calculate the consequences. A new Mediterranean is opened in a region which has always been reckoned uninhabitable. Poets and philosophers flourish far up toward Doctor Warren’s original Eden! For what but a cheap and abundant fuel and light is needed to make possible a large and flourishing empire around Hudson’s Bay? Migration, which is said to move on parallel lines, has been trending northward for twenty-five years. The wheat fields of America are a hundred and fifty miles nearer the pole than they were fifty years ago. The Dakota and British Northwest which we were willing to leave to the Indians fifty years ago, are eagerly coveted for the plow of the wheat farmer. We are undeniably moving north; the limit of that movement will be fixed for us by devices, discoveries, sciences, which will enlarge our fields toward the eternal ice—on principles similar to those which have already extended our domain in that direction. For several generations the silk grown in Lombardy has been packed on the backs of horses or in carts and transported across the Alps to be spun and woven in Switzerland. Why should not our cotton travel by sea to the shores of Hudson’s Bay to be spun and woven? Give them power, heat and light in one natural agent, and the people of the American Mediterranean might excel in any industry. And in default of natural gas, who will now dare to say that the chemist may not solve the problem in a more intellectual way than by the use of the drill? We write here only of a possible expansion of the human domain by the services of science.
A more practicable matter is that the age of steam, out of which, into something better, we are probably to pass at a day not distant, has been a very prodigal one. Waste is its great fault. It wastes three fourths of the coal it consumes; it therefore wastes infinite sums of human energy. It wastes everything, nature and man, the streams, the forests, the vitality and the hopes of men. Its motto is concentration. It herds human beings in towns; it makes transit laborious and long. The age of economies has begun, and new agents, such as electricity and gas, have for their mottoes disperse and distribute. It is probably not extravagant to say that mankind are wasting every week enough of natural bounties to sustain them for a month, perhaps for a year. If science, then, shall only barely help us to the economic use of all natural bounties, it will have enriched human life (for the mass of mankind) at least four-fold. It will probably be well for us if this enrichment comes gradually and is preceded by a moral preparation for the use of abundance. We have never, as a race, been good enough to be safely rich. We have no poets from the equatorial regions. It may be many generations before we are good enough to grow philosophy and high bred cattle in the torrid zone. Perhaps we do not any where keep up in moral training with the march of science.
The student about to enter college has scarcely a pleasanter task than that of examining the course he is about to begin. The prospect of future achievements, how fascinating it is! That Livy which he has heard discussed by learned seniors and professors will soon be his property, too. The problems that are historical among his big brothers and cousins, and sisters as well, sometimes, he will soon grapple with. Whole fields of unknown literature and science and art open to him in his brief glance. He enjoys familiarizing himself with the names of the authors of the text-books, in marking among the elective studies his choice, in looking up the old text-books in the library, in preparing note-books for the next year, in picking up random bits of information. Getting ready for his college course often becomes quite as engrossing as the actual work. The C. L. S. C. student will experience this same interest in looking over what he is going to do another year. The course is now ready, and he will have the entire summer for contemplating his coming conquests. Enjoy the prospect to the full; it is certainly a goodly one. The bone and sinew of next year’s course is to be Roman History and Literature. The place Greece and its men filled in the course of 1884-85 will be taken by Rome. While the subject is equally interesting, the course of the coming year has one great advantage. Greece has no modern history of particular importance, its heroes died with Corinth’s destruction, its literature and art and philosophy faded with its loss of patriotism. Where Rome stood, now Italy stands. The history of the decadence of Roman rule and the growth of Italian freedom is one of the most thrilling chapters in the world’s history. A literature, an art, and a science belong to this new growth. In studying Rome’s life we have a modern chapter that keeps up our interest. The course happily provides for us papers on “Modern Italy” and “Italian Biography,” in addition to the works on the History of Rome, the “Preparatory Latin Course in English,” the “College Latin Course in English,” and “A Day in Ancient Rome.” A practical turn is given to the work by a study of the relations of Rome to modern history.
The more general work of the course is selected from the wide fields of philosophy, science, art and religion. Dr. Geo. M. Steele has prepared a work on “Political Economy,” which will furnish some of the liveliest reading for the year. This subject will be supplemented by two series of papers on “Parliamentary Practice” and “International Law,” to be published in The Chautauquan.
Robert Browning in “Pomegranates from an English Garden” will be the representative of English poetry. It will be seen that, as in the case of Robert Browning’s poems, several studies are introduced to brighten the more solid work; for this purpose we have “In His Name,” by Edward Everett Hale, read in connection with a book by Dr. Townsend on “The Bible and the XIXth Century,” and a series of studies, to appear in The Chautauquan, on “God in History.”
One work which will be a real treat to everybody is “Studies in Human Nature,” by Dr. Lyman Abbott. The additional readings in The Chautauquan are: “Wars and Rumors of Wars To-day,” “The Age we Live In,” “Religion in Art,” “Art Outlines,” “Studies in Mathematics,” “Moral Philosophy,” studies on “How to Live,” by Edward Everett Hale, papers on the past, present and future of electricity, and “Home Studies in Physical Geography.” A better course has never been presented to the members of the C. L. S. C.
The July issue of The Chautauquan closes the fifth volume of the magazine. In October the sixth volume will begin. The outlook for The Chautauquan for 1885-86 is much brighter than ever before. We shall offer our friends a much improved magazine. The place of The Chautauquan will be taken in the summer by the Assembly Herald. The Herald for 1885 will contain full reports of the work of the Assembly for the summer. A glance at the elaborate program printed in this impression will convince the reader of the value of a paper containing such a course of lectures as that of the Chautauqua platform. Besides the lectures many suggestive and useful reports will be printed, which members of the C. L. S. C. in particular will find helpful. Those who may wish to subscribe for both The Chautauquan and Herald will find it profitable to take advantage of our COMBINATION OFFER, found in another column of this impression.
The war rumors of a month ago have subsided almost as quickly as they were aroused. The cries of “On to Khartoum” and “Smash the Mahdi” have died out. Instead of running the frontier below the Soudan, the English have been content to fix it at Wady Halfa. After all the excitement over Afghanistan, peace has been established between Russia and England. The Americans, most of them, have come home from Panama. Riel has been captured. The comparatively easy settlement of misunderstandings between nations is our best hope for the future. Each new victory of arbitration over “bad blood,” even if it be at the sacrifice of a little of our pride and possessions, is so much of a stride toward the millennium.
For the third time Mr. James Russell Lowell has been called upon to speak in Westminster Abbey. This time at the unveiling of the bust of the poet Coleridge. In summing up his remarks he said: “Whatever may have been his faults and weaknesses, he was the man of all his generation to whom we should most unhesitatingly allow the distinction of genius, that is, of one authentically possessed from time to time by some influence that made him better and greater than himself. If he lost himself too much in what Mr. Pater has admirably called ‘impassioned contemplation,’ he has at least left us such a legacy as only genius, and genius not always, can leave. It is for this that we pay him this homage of memory.”
A series of statistics most suggestive to those interested in the temperance question have of late been published. According to this table there was drunk in the United States twenty-five years ago over 86,000,000 gallons of spirituous liquor, while now, with a population almost doubled, the consumption is decreased by about 15 per cent. To balance this comes in the enormous consumption of light liquors, nearly six times as great as in 1860. But it must be remembered that a large proportion of the latter is consumed by the foreign element introduced since 1860.
The tragic fate of the town of Plymouth, Pennsylvania, is one more melancholy example of the result of breaking Nature’s laws. There is no doubt but that an epidemic of typhoid fever is a crime traceable to somebody’s neglect. In Plymouth the refuse from a house situated at the head of the stream which supplied the village with drinking water was allowed to poison the water. This outrageous state of affairs is to be seen in many other towns, and in parts of our cities. If after Plymouth’s suffering a repetition occurs in any part of the country, public sentiment ought to be strong enough to hunt down and punish the guilty authorities that will hold human life and God’s law so lightly.
There is one sure way of securing sanitary reform in every city or town with dilatory health board or indifferent council. Arouse the women. The Ladies’ Health Protection Society, of New York City, has done work in that community during the past six months, before which its large Board of Health seemed perfectly helpless. If cleanliness and purity are not to be secured by the civil authorities, there is no more suitable public work for women than to constitute themselves the guardians of the health of their home towns.
At the recent commencement of the Union Theological Seminary, of New York, the alumni association elected as president an Indian of pure Choctaw blood, now a pastor in the Indian Territory. His son was a member of the graduating class of this year. We are growing broader.
The position that Mr. Phelps will take at the Court of St. James has been agitating the English correspondent of one of our great dailies. He finds that being a minister merely, Mr. Phelps must come in among the ministers, after all the seven ambassadors; and that, alas! he will be literally at the foot of this class of twenty-three. Ministers take social rank according to the length of time they have held their positions, so Mr. Phelps and the stars and stripes trot along after Guatemala and Columbia and Siam and Hayti.
The teachers who tried Chautauqua last summer for their vacations, found the spot so suitable for their uses, so delightful for recreation, that they have spread abroad the rumor of her beauty, and in July of the coming summer two State Teachers’ Associations—that of Ohio and that of New York—will meet there.
There are very few people unfamiliar with law and its phrases, who have not been bewildered over the complicated expressions and seemingly useless repetitions found in almost all documents. This “iteration in law” has lately been made the subject of some interesting computations by David Dudley Field. By his counting every deed contains 860 superfluous words, and every mortgage 1,240. The people of New York State, he calculates, pay every year $100,000 for the recording of useless words. The next reform in law should be rhetorical.
Mr. John Ruskin, of Oxford, and Prof. J. Rendel Harris, of Johns Hopkins, have resigned their professorships in their respective universities because, it is stated, vivisection is practiced in the institutions. There is no reason in such hyper-sympathy. The abuse of vivisection is quite probable, but that does not lessen the force of the fact that vivisection has done much to alleviate human misery, and will in the future undoubtedly do more. The question is, if man or beast must suffer, which life is the more precious.
Houghton Farm, the headquarters of the Chautauqua Town and Country Club, has an interesting history. Several years ago 1,000 acres of land lying about nine miles from Newburgh, N. Y., were purchased by a Mr. Valentine as an experimental farm. About thirty buildings, adapted to every kind of farm work, were erected; the best of stock, the most skillful laborers were secured. The farm soon became a kind of educational institution. Farmers were invited to inspect its work, and to listen to lectures from the learned managers; children had days set apart for their enjoyment. Orange county has been educated by the Houghton Farm. Now its generous hearted proprietor has extended the work by opening its advantages to all those who will join the Chautauqua Town and Country Club.
The strange fascination lurking in dangerous feats which so powerfully affects some minds, was never more forcibly manifested than in the case of Robert E. Odlum, who jumped from the Brooklyn bridge not long ago. For some time the thought had been a passion with him, and although the police were watching to prevent the attempt, he escaped their vigilance and took the fatal leap. His body was three and one-fourth seconds in making the descent of 140 feet, thus corroborating almost exactly the law of falling bodies. He breathed only a few times after he was picked up, being inwardly literally “mangled to death.” His is only one more name added to the list of those who, by their folly, may teach others lessons of wisdom, and so, perhaps, have not died utterly in vain.
Although war-like preparations have ceased in the Soudan, and no more troops are to be transported thither to help “smash the Mahdi,” the railroad across the desert is progressing slowly but surely. The correspondent of the Times telegraphs the following: “The construction of the railway is a curious and interesting sight. In advance is a picket of cavalry, while far off on either side the videttes scout in the bush. At the immediate head of the line is a battalion of infantry echeloned, and advancing as the rails are laid. Streams of coolies carry the sleepers from the trucks, and teams of four artillery horses drag up the rails, two at a time, to the navvies, who lay them in a twinkling, and drive the spikes. In the rear are gangs who complete the line, and further back the ballasting parties.”
Visitors to Niagara Falls this summer will enjoy their trip as never before. Everything that tends to mar the beauty of the natural scenery is to be removed, and after July 15th, access to all points of interest is to be free of charge. To bring about this happy consummation which during so many long years past has been devoutly wished by all right-thinking men, required a long and hard-fought battle against willful ignorance and greed of gain.