  The steady growth of this country is shown by the fact that in the last fiscal year there was a net increase of 2,154 in the number of post-offices. The total number is now 50,071. About this time it is interesting to learn that there are only 2,323 President’s post-offices with salaries of $1,000 and higher; and there are only 159 free delivery offices. The expenses of the last year exceeded the receipts by more than three millions of dollars. Hostile Apaches continue to be troublesome on the Mexican border. They escape across the line and are safe from pursuit. These troubles will end when the two governments make permanent arrangements for the pursuit of marauders across the boundary. A temporary provision of that kind has existed, but it should be permanent—unless, indeed, our citizens fear Mexican soldiers more than they fear Indians. A United States Court has decided in due form that an “Indian not taxed is not a citizen of the United States.” It is time he was made a citizen. The fiction of regarding the Indians as independent powers, and dealing with them as tribes, ought to be made an end of. The Indians themselves need the discipline of citizenship, and we need to free ourselves from a useless and harmful fiction. By all means keep faith to the last farthing, but make a man of this red brother as soon as possible. A Connecticut paper soberly declares that a citizen of that state did not know the name of either candidate for the presidency until the Saturday before the election. And yet people unreasonably complain that there was too much noise in the late campaign. It is remarked that Presidential electors were scratched to a considerable extent this year. It is as unreasonable a performance as kicking the stone you have stumbled over, more so indeed for the stone has done you some harm, while a Presidential elector is incapable of doing any harm. He is, by our political customs, merely a machine for transmitting a vote to the candidate of the party. But there has been so much of this scratching this year that politicians will probably estimate its influence hereafter. In a close election this species of scratcher might defeat his own wishes and his party by blind stupidity. A new life of the witty Sydney Smith has brought to light a new piece of his inimitable jesting. A friend complained to Smith that in an important interview Lord Brougham had treated him as if he were a fool. “Never mind, never mind,” said the incorrigible wit, in his most sympathetic tones, “never mind, never mind, he thought you knew it.” “Swift as the wind” is not very swift after all. The record of its travels in New York City, for a whole week in November, showed only 1,076 miles. Ocean steamers go nearly three times as fast, and through trains from New York to Chicago travel five times as fast. A good pedestrian would beat an average wind if he did not have to rest. Since the November election there has been a marked increase in business failures. The wages of workmen have been reduced in many places, and many mills have suspended. Politicians are not agreed about the cause, but it is probable that this will be a hard winter for the poor. Heavenly charity will, we trust, be everywhere equal to the tasks laid upon her. Remember the poor. It is positively affirmed that physicians regard canned foods as dangerous. Many cases of poisoning occur from eating such foods, but chemical testimony is divided. Some chemists trace the poisoning to special conditions of the food used; in other words, the food was in an advanced state of decomposition when it was put into the can. This is the opinion recently expressed by an eminent English chemist. In this view, proper caution in examining the food will avert all danger. What impressions would our chief cities make on those of us who do not live in them, if we received all our knowledge of them through the newsy papers? San Francisco, for example, is known in that way as the home of Sand Lot orators, astonishing divorce suits, fighting editors, and swearing preachers. The latest of these picturesque incidents is the shooting of an editor, Mr. De Young, who is the second man in his family to be shot by outraged and bloody-minded readers. Such incidents doubtless misrepresent the City of the Golden Gate; but many thousands of newspaper readers know only these miserable doings in San Francisco. The sacred hen of Brahma has long been at home in American barn-yards; and now we learn that for several years the sacred cow of India has been establishing herself in the South. The Brahma cattle, judiciously crossed with English breeds, are becoming fashionable in New Mexico. Perhaps the most unfortunate man in the late campaign was a distinguished one who ostensibly had nothing to do with politics. Ex-Senator Conkling is credited with depriving, by secret influence, Mr. Blaine of many votes. The misfortune is in the fact that good and bad politicians agree in despising a sneak. The “roller-skating rink” is condemned in vigorous terms by one of the Methodist conferences. It is doubtless becoming a nuisance. The base-ball business is past praying for, so degraded and disreputable has it become. There seems to be no possibility of maintaining any form of athletics in a wholesome, moral condition. They are becoming a worse nuisance each year. The outbreak of cholera in Paris has created almost a panic, in New York, in the middle of November. Cholera has always been a warm weather disease, and the apprehensions of New York were altogether unreasonable. The disease made very little headway in Paris. Perhaps we should provide for its reception in this country next summer; though it could be kept out by proper and sufficient quarantine measures. We advise our readers not to give up Shakspere on account of the so-called cipher of the Hon. Ignatius Donnelly. Authority is of some importance in this case, and whatever authority Mr. Donnelly has is in Minnesota politics. All that has been reported about Mr. D.’s discovery might be true and still not disturb Shakspere’s claim to the writings which bear his name. The last of the patents for sewing machines expired in 1876; but the women of the country are so attached to the old machines that they would not buy the new, and probably better machines. The result is that the new companies go into bankruptcy and the old companies monopolize the business. Here is a plain account of one of the “grasping monopolies” of the country. A few others are explained by the insane attachment of the men of the country to tools of a particular brand or make. We notice in the papers an unusual number of reports of contests over wills containing charitable bequests. Let us say frankly that we think this post mortem method of being charitable rather a sneaking way of discharging the duty of benevolence. Give like a man what you might keep yourself. It is a coward’s way to assess your children to pay your debts to philanthropy. A man who really wants to be benevolent is usually able to execute his own will. Be your own executor. The largest farm in America has been sold to foreign nabobs. It is a cattle ranch of 800,000 acres in Texas. Mr. King, who has just sold it for $6,500,000, built up this property, beginning with nothing. He is now eighty years old and thinks it time to retire from business. The new owners will operate the farm as a joint stock concern, and it will probably be bankrupt in twenty years. One King is better than a score of nabobs for such business. Dr. Talmage is still picturesquely anti-evolution. In a recent speech he said: “There ought to be some place where God could go, where the evolutionists could not reach him. They keep ordering him off the premises.… According to evolutionists we are only a sort of Alderney cow among other cattle. I believe in an evolution of mortality into immortality—a heavenly evolution.” The English House of Lords has obtained a great victory. After a summer of agitation in the form of great meetings, monster processions and burning eloquence, the Ministry has compromised with the Lords on the Franchise bill, on terms dictated by the Lords. The Radicals are very angry; but Mr. Gladstone has secured the extension of the ballot to some millions of Englishmen, and is believed to regard this success as a fitting crown of his public career. He will leave the “reform of the Lords” to his successors. The immigration of ten months of this year brought us 414,000 new citizens; in the same period last year 501,000 came to us. The reduction is less than was expected; but the depression in trade is now acting as a check on immigration, though matters are even worse in Europe. This is, however, a stream which will not dry up in this century, perhaps not in the next. A French chemist has thought of a useful device to prevent accidents in the handling of poisons. A large number of persons are killed every year by mistakes of apothecaries, of their friends, or of themselves. The French chemist suggests that white cylindrical bottles be used for medicines to be taken internally, and colored square bottles for medicines to be used externally. The suggestion can be improved by additional devices to prevent mistakes, but half the errors would be cut off by the proposed plan. A great many Republicans are unhappy because their party has not settled the Mormon question. Probably the Senate will resist the admission of Utah as a state; but the evil is only postponed. Some vigorous measures must be taken, or plural marriage will become one of the established modes of regulating the American family. If polygamy becomes a state institution, it will be as strongly entrenched as slavery was; and it may be held that a plural marriage in one state is good in all the states; this is the rule for monogamous marriage. In New York City, in 1884, eleven thousand and fifty girls under fourteen years of age were arrested by the police; the number of boys of like age was only two thousand two hundred and forty-eight. The disproportion has its melancholy lesson. A story went over the country that the temperance people of an Ohio town mobbed and killed a liquor man. The story should have been that some rejoicing Democrats refused to leave a saloon, where they were drinking, and fatally wounded the proprietor while he was attempting to put them out. Our authority for the revised version is the New York Sun. A decision, under the anti-Chinese laws, seems to nullify them. Judge Brown has decided that a Chinaman has a right to land and visit with us. This looks reasonable, but we have no police to look him up and send him packing when he has visited enough. The Indian question moves to a final settlement. Commissioner Price reports a considerable increase in the number of Indian farmers and students; and General Crook’s annual report on the murderous Apaches of New Mexico and Arizona is full of promise. The General has had no serious trouble with American Apaches for a whole year. Mexican Apaches still trouble us. A story is circulating that the watch of Arctic-explorer De Long and the watch of his wife stopped at the same instant—he with his watch being in the Arctic Ocean, and she with hers in this country. It is added that the clock at home and the chronometer on the far-off ship united with the watches in the conspiracy. It is not worth while to believe this story, at least not until proper corrections for longitude are made. When meridian time shall be used everywhere, such stories will come within the range of intelligent consideration. A ghastly corpse of a woman is found among ashes in a cellar in New York City. The police do not know whether it is a case of murder or of suicide. But the pathetic and blood-chilling fact is that many persons who had mysteriously lost female relatives came to see if the body might be that of their sister, wife or friend. Many people go down out of sight suddenly in the waves of city life. A commercial treaty with Spain is pending in the United States Senate. Its object is to facilitate trade between our country and Cuba. We need foreign markets for our manufactures—and those markets lie in the West Indies, Mexico, and South America. The Centennial Methodist Conference held in Baltimore, December 10th to 16th, commemorated the organization in that city, Christmas week, 1784, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It should not be forgotten, however, that Methodism had existed in this country for about twenty years. The recent celebration represented some 3,000,000 of Methodists. Two pieces of new wit deserve a place in this record. The first is the “288 joke,” and it is explained as “too gross.” Spell too with a w. Pepper and salt to your taste. The other describes a sermon as like champagne. The preacher is elated by the criticism until it is added that “extra-dry” champagne is meant. The most unreasonable man we have heard of during the last month went to a physician to be treated for several diseases. The doctor looked him over carefully, minutely examined all the implicated organs, and informed the patient that there was nothing the matter with him, whereupon the hero of several diseases assaulted the physician, and became the hero of a police court. Quacks receive a blow by a legal decision in Massachusetts that men who administer drugs, whose effects they do not know, are criminally responsible for the mischief they do. It is common sense and deserves a wide circulation. Silver dollars continue to accumulate in the Treasury. The Secretary advises Congress to abolish one, two and five dollar bills, so that all payments under ten dollars may be made in silver. This is the French method, and a good one. It is the best compromise offered, and the silver men ought to accept it. The French are considering a plan to restore the practice of transporting ex-convicts to some far-off French colony. Experience shows that transportation is the best practical measure for securing the permanent reformation of the criminals; but the colonists always object to this class of new citizens. We produce apples for Europe. It is expected that 2,000,000 barrels will be exported this year. Good eating apples are but little cultivated in Europe; ours are the best in the world. This is an apple year. Who says that times are hard? The Rev. Dr. A. G. Haygood has resigned the presidency of Macon College, Georgia, to give his time to the management of the Slater Educational Fund. We regret that Dr. Haygood has taken this step. He is a man of broad views and generous impulses, and useful in a high institution of learning. It is not too much to say that he is better known at the North than any educator in the South. His sermons and lectures in Northern States have awakened new sympathies in the hearts of many people for the cause of higher education in the South, and indeed, Dr. Haygood has been one of the best representatives of the South. Always standing firmly by his college and people, he has done much to strengthen the bonds of union between the two sections. Perhaps his new office will give him a new range on more people, and increase his opportunities for usefulness. It is not the privilege of many men to decline the offices of bishop and the presidency of a college such as that at Macon inside three years, but Dr. Haygood has done both of these things. We predict for him large success in his new educational work. It is refreshing to find that the Christmas idea of making others happy has at last reached our Sunday-schools. For years teachers and parents have made annually an exhaustive effort to feast their schools on Christmas day. However great their efforts the results could never be entirely satisfactory. Somebody was unavoidably overlooked, and the managers were always too nearly worn out to enjoy the holiday. A new plan, we hope, is to be instituted. Last season many schools tried it, more are making the experiment this year. It is to substitute giving by the school. On Christmas eve the classes bring in offerings for the poor. Whatever they wish and their purses allow is offered. The plan meets with the heartiest reception wherever proposed, the smallest children often being the most eager to give. A general adoption of this method of celebrating Christmas would do much to counteract the selfish feeling so often found in Sunday-schools that gifts, entertainments and prizes must be continually given in order to keep the school together. Edward Everett Hale has consented that his name be added to the list of the counselors of the C. L. S. C. This announcement will be received with genuine satisfaction by every one interested in our work. It is an honor to us to number such a man in our faculty. Mr. Hale’s position in the religious and literary world is well established. Last spring when The Critic and Good Literature asked the public to cast a vote for the forty native American authors whom it deemed most worthy to form the “forty immortals” of a proposed American Academy, his name was the eleventh on the list, which ran: Holmes, Lowell, Whittier, Bancroft, Howells, Curtis, Aldrich, Harte, Stedman, White and Hale. His books are known most widely; his sympathies are broad and wise; he is a man of the truest culture of both mind and heart. He will be welcomed most warmly by Chautauquans as one of their honored counselors. Mr. Richard Grant White, whose articles on English form so important and interesting a part of this year’s course of reading, has been for several weeks seriously ill; so ill, indeed, that he has been quite unable to prepare his article for the present issue of The Chautauquan. By another month, however, Mr. White writes us that he believes his health will be so improved that he can continue his work. The announcement of the Chautauqua School of Church Work, found in this issue, associates with the Chautauqua work a name well known and deeply honored by many of our readers. Dr. Geo. P. Hays, the director of this new department at the great summer school, was for several years president of Washington and Jefferson College, and since his connection with that institution ceased he has been the pastor of a Presbyterian church in Denver, Col. His name has several times appeared on the Chautauqua programs, and his appearance on that platform has always been very welcome. Dr. Hays will represent the C. L. S. C. in the West, and we look for large results from his efforts. This new department of church work will be a great addition to the Chautauqua attractions for 1885. |
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