  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. 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. decorative line |
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