  The C. L. S. C. received special attention at the summer Assemblies. By referring to the reports published elsewhere in this number, our readers will learn how the Chautauqua spirit spreads, and how the organization is being strengthened in all parts of the land. Recent Presidents of the United States have shown their taste for recreation very positively. Ex-President Grant was fond of good horses and rapid driving; ex-President Hayes visited colleges during the commencement season, and loved his farm as a quiet retreat; President Arthur turns from his arduous labors to the rod and line and long journeys, such as he has made to Florida and the West during the past year. We can supply complete sets of the Chautauqua Assembly Daily Herald for 1883, for $1.00, postage paid by us. Also complete sets of The Chautauquan of volume two and three. Prophecies are numerous from newspaper men as to who will be the candidates for the presidency in 1884. Ex-Secretary Blaine is reported as having turned his attention to literature, and announces that he is not a candidate; Mr. Tilden has retired to the privacy of Gramercy Park; ex-Secretary Windom, it is said by the wise ones, went out of the succession when he failed of a re-election to the Senate. Reports are rife in influential political circles that the Secretary of War is likely to be one of his martyred fathers’ successors, but time alone will show us the true successor. The Chautauquan opens the fourth volume in a new dress. Our printer does the work on copper-faced type, prepared with especial reference to the neat and attractive typographical appearance of the magazine. Mr. A. M. Sullivan, in a recent number of the Nineteenth Century, discusses “Irish Emigration as a remedy for Irish trouble in Ireland.” He says: “Of the group of dynamite conspirators who stood in the dock at Newgate the other day—men whose frightful purpose was to bury London in ruins—not one was born on Irish soil. All were the sons or grandsons of men swept away from ‘congested districts,’ and sent or driven to America ‘for the good of those who went, and of those who were left behind.’ Whoever has recently traveled in America must have been struck with the fact that animosity toward England often displays itself more strongly in the second and third generations of Irish Americans than in the men who were actually driven forth.” The present administration is not all-powerful in a certain kind of its political movements. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Folger, was defeated for Governor of New York in the election last fall, and recently Mr. Chandler, Secretary of the Navy, failed of an election to the United States Senate in the New Hampshire Legislature. Chautauqua grows in favor with the public. The Ohio State Teacher’s Association held their annual convention there in July last, and with social gatherings, lectures, and discussions on live questions, in the educational world, they made it an interesting and profitable session. The Pennsylvania State Teacher’s Association will hold their convocation at Chautauqua Lake for 1884. It is an endorsement of Chautauqua when large bodies of educators go from their own States into another to hold their most important gatherings. The National Teacher’s Association met at this center once, and the Ohio people have been there twice. It is this sort of gatherings that the Chautauqua authorities are especially pleased to welcome to the parks, public buildings, and all the privileges of the classic groves. The Royal Humane Society, in its recently issued report, gives the following advice to swimmers and bathers: “Avoid bathing within two hours after a meal. Avoid bathing when exhausted by fatigue, or from any other cause. Avoid bathing when the body is cooling after perspiration. Avoid bathing altogether in the open air if, after having been a short time in the water, it causes a sense of chilliness with numbness of the hands and feet. Bathe when the body is warm, provided no time is lost in getting into the water. Avoid chilling the body by sitting or standing undressed on the banks or in boats after having been in the water. Avoid remaining too long in the water; leave the water immediately if there is the slightest feeling of chilliness.” The West promises to set a good example to the East in more than one question of morals. The case deserving of mention now is where Governor Crittenden, of Missouri, and Governor Glick, of Kansas, and their Attorney-Generals, notified the two prize-fighters, Slade and Mitchell, that even training for a prize-fight would send them to the State prison. This so alarmed them that they quit the United States and went to Mexico. The laws of the older States are as severe on this brutal practice as those of Missouri and Kansas, but the laxity in the enforcement of the laws is the only license that prize-fighters find to justify their training in New York, Boston, and other old cities. Some of our authorities could profitably “go West” to study how to enforce civil law. Dr. John Roche, an English physician who has had remarkable experiences, gives as his conclusion that cholera is purely and simply a specific fever, only inferior in its ravages to yellow fever, and closely allied to it. Cholera has a period of incubation varying from two to fourteen days; prone to attack the enervated and those subject to depression from any cause. It “The Old South Lectures for Young People” is a pleasing and successful plan for teaching the History of America. Lectures are held Wednesday afternoon at the “Old South Meeting House,” Boston, and the subjects illustrate well the tenor of the meeting. Thus for September the topics are “Franklin,” “How to Study American History,” “The Year 1777,” “History in the Boston Streets.” In the C. L. S. C. Commencement report the Lutheran has been omitted from the list of denominations represented in the class of ’83. On Sunday, the ninth day of September, the steamship “Nevada” landed 682 Mormons at New York, being the fourth company that has been brought over this year. H. H. Evans, the secretary, said that there were in the company 269 British, 106 Swiss and Germans, 284 Scandinavians, and 23 returning missionaries. “Every emigrant,” he added, “paid his or her passage over. No aid is afforded them by the Mormon Church. The majority have a little money with them, enough to establish themselves in America. They will locate in sixteen towns in Utah. All we do is to protect them while traveling from Liverpool to Utah. Some of these immigrants have been years laying up money to pay their passage to this country.” One of the Mormon immigrants did not go through to Utah. Her name is Regina Andersen. She is a Swedish woman, spinster, thirty-five years of age, and is afflicted with blindness. Her brother Leander and her sister Anna, who live in Philadelphia, had heard of her intention to go to Utah and were at Castle Garden to intercept her before the “Nevada” arrived. They insisted upon talking with their blind sister, and soon succeeded in persuading her to abandon the Mormon proselytes and prepare to go with her relatives to Philadelphia. The Mormon missionaries were strongly opposed to the woman leaving the party, but the matter was brought before Superintendent Jackson, and the woman was permitted to go to Philadelphia with her brother. She had prepaid her passage to Salt Lake and did not receive her money back. In conversation with a reporter the woman appeared not to know anything about the peculiar institution of the Mormon Church—polygamy. Congress could quite as consistently, and with better results to the country, enact a law to prevent this kind of emigration, than the one they have leveled against the Chinese. Why not meet Mormonism at New York harbor and prevent this infamous traffic in human lives? The Rev. Henry A. Powell, in his Congregational church in Williamsburg, on a Sunday in September discussed “The sorrows of the Free Thinkers as revealed at their recent convention,” from this suggestive text: “The show of their countenances doth witness against them.” He stated that over their platform were hung the pictures of Thomas Paine, R. G. Ingersoll, and D. M. Bennett—Paine author of a book against the Bible—Ingersoll, dispenser of blasphemy—Bennett, who not long since served a term in the penitentiary for sending foul literature through the mails. “How much better than such visionary wanderings is the old story of a living Father in heaven, of a Savior who suffered on the cross, and angel visitants to lead us from the life mortal to the life immortal.” We call the attention of our readers to the notice elsewhere in this number of the “Chautauqua School of Languages,” the different departments of which are to be organized into schools of correspondence, so that students may, at their homes, study Hebrew, German, French, etc., by corresponding with competent teachers. This is a rare opportunity for members of the C. L. S. C., or any others who desire, to study the languages, but are denied the privileges of the schools. Next month we shall introduce the “Normal Work” into The Chautauquan, in a few initial chapters, from the pens of Rev. Dr. Hurlbut and Prof. R. S. Holmes, and thus extend to our readers through the year the privilege of pursuing this course, which is a main feature of the summer assemblies. The telegraph operators have by their strike provoked a general discussion in the press of the telegraph system of the country, besides exciting the attention of Postmaster-General Gresham, who promises to discuss in his annual report to Congress the practicability of the general government assuming control of all telegraph lines as it does of the postal service. It ought to work as well in the United States as it does in England. Mr. Fawcett, Postmaster-General of Great Britain, reports that “the number of telegraph messages sent in the United Kingdom during the last year was 32,092,026.” Mr. Fawcett says that it has been decided that as soon as the necessary increase of plant can be made, the minimum charge for inland telegrams will be reduced from 24 to 12 cents. A correspondent says, under date of September 9: “The last spike on the Northern Pacific Road was driven this afternoon on the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains, 2,500 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, and 800 miles from the Pacific, and 91 years after the idea of a highway from the Lakes to the Pacific was first suggested by Thomas Jefferson.” Analogous to the Normal Class Bible work of the Chautauqua University is a new movement in Russia. An organization called the Stundists bind themselves to devote an hour (stunde) every day to the study of the Bible. The society has grown to immense proportions, and is said to have reclaimed whole villages from drunkenness and crime. Keshub Chunder Sen, the famous leader of the Brahmo Somaj, is about to visit Europe and America again, to preach a new development of faith, in which Hinduism and Christianity are to be combined. Little good, we fear, will result from the Baboo’s advocacy of an eclectic system; for his adherents will be content to stop in that dim twilight instead of advancing into the full glory of the divine day. The teaching of the leader himself seems latterly to have degenerated into ceremonialism, and he attributes marvelous influence to external things; while some of his followers are giving themselves up with the wildest enthusiasm to perfect a sacred dance of a complex kind, organized with rotating rings of participants dressed in garbs of varied hue. All this mummery is a sad disappointment for those who hoped that Chunder Sen might destroy heathenism besides purifying it. The Louisville Courier of August 9, referring to the great Exposition, speaks thus of one of the exhibitions: “Last night the electric railway was in operation, and the locomotive with two cars attached made the tour of the park. To-day it will be running constantly, and visitors will see what is the latest achievement of science. It is an event of extraordinary interest. It is the practical demonstration of the power of electricity applied as a motor. Without fire or smoke, with no visible agent to propel it, moved by an unseen and even as yet an almost unknown influence, it follows the path marked out with all the celerity and certainty demanded by the most cautious and practical.” The directors of the Western Union Telegraph Company have made a concession to their employes by issuing the following Professor Bell is reported as saying in a recent conversation that there are more than 500,000 telephones in use in the United States, and the manufacturers are unable to supply the demand so as to keep abreast of orders. He said that the progress of the telephone would have been greater but for the opposition of the telegraph companies, who regarded it as, in part, a competitor instead of an ally. In other countries the telegraph companies had very generally adopted the telephone as an auxiliary, especially at city branch offices and at small offices in the country. Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, of England, is in this country, a guest of the American bar. English judges may be aristocrats, but they are generally above corruption. It is to be hoped that American ideas of judicial dignity and honor will be raised by what they may observe in this chief of the English bench. Not a few Americans were astonished at the display of local manufactures which Ireland exhibited in the Boston “Foreign Art and Industrial Exhibition.” Among the objects were bog-wood ornaments, hair ornaments, furniture, marbles, sculpture, etc. The variety of work suggests that in the not distant future the distressed country will have manufactures and arts to employ its people. Its resources are particularly fitted to certain arts. Thus few countries boast so great a variety of marbles; its clay is particularly suitable for modeling: osiers grow readily on its soil, and the natural woods are incomparably fine. With these industries developed, and a system of railroads through the country, much would be done toward settling the Irish question. When a woman marries, and learns that in the race of life she is better qualified to earn the family living than her husband, it will be helpful to have a precedent at hand by which to govern her husband. Here is one, taken from the communication of a successful working woman to a Boston exchange. She says: “I am a milliner, and have made between $1,500 and $2,500 a year in my business for some time past. I married four years ago. My husband is kind and good looking, but he never learned any trade, had no profession and could not average $500 a year. I loved him, however, but I saw that it would not do to depend upon him, so I kept on with my business. After a time I think he got a little lazy, and as we were both away during the day, we could not keep house and got sick of boarding. Finally I proposed that he should keep house and I would run the business and find the money. We have now lived very happily in this way for two years. My husband rises and builds the fire, gets breakfast, and I leave at 7:45 for my place of business. He does the washing, ironing, and cleaning, and I do not know of any woman who can beat him. He is as neat as wax, and can cook equal to any one in town. It may be an isolated case, but I think the time has now come when women who have husbands to support should make them do the work; otherwise they are luxuries we must do without.” decorative line
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