  A highly successful “Chautauqua Day” has been carried out at the New Orleans Exposition, under the leadership of Prof. E. A. Spring, Prof. W. F. Sherwin and the Rev. A. H. Gillet. An audience of over 5,000 people met in Music Hall to hear Bishop Mallalieu on “The Relation of Chautauqua to the Home and Society,” Prof. Sherwin on “The Story of Chautauqua,” talks from Wallace Bruce and the Rev. Mr. Gillet, and music from the Mexican Band. The great crowd was given Chautauqua badges and C. L. S. C. circulars, and taught the Chautauqua salute—the latter in compliment to SeÑor Payen, the leader of the Mexican Band, and the pet of the Exposition. One of the audience remarked on leaving the hall: “I have been at every day entertainment here since the beginning, and this has been the most successful, the best managed, the most interesting occasion there has been.” There has been an almost breathless attention given throughout the world during the past month to the attitude of England and Russia. Words have been weighed and steps measured with the nicest exactness. Affairs which in other times would take up columns are given corners. The prevalent opinion has been that war must come, though peace negotiations are being vigorously pushed. Could war be held off twenty years it might be that we should be so much wiser that arbitration might be made to prevail. The most active business which the United States Navy has had for years was caused by the Isthmus troubles. Our treaty with New Granada guarantees free and uninterrupted passage across the Isthmus. To secure this a force of 500 men and four ships was placed at Aspinwall after the insurgents had burned the city. They thence proceeded to Panama, which they succeeded in restoring to order. Not an easy thing to do, with the natives sympathizing generally with the rebels, and very suspicious of the “Gringoes,” as they call us, and with the French determined to have the credit of whatever restoration could be made. M. de Lesseps is firmly convinced of the advantages to America of the Panama Canal, prophesying in a recent letter that it will reanimate our merchant marine, will greatly enlarge our internal business, and make us, in short, commercial kings. It can hardly be doubted that were any one of the great schemes for interoceanic communication in operation, our whole system of exchange would be modified and our business multiplied. The chief question seems to be now, is the Panama Canal, Mr. Eads’s Tehuantepec Ship Railway, or the Nicaragua Canal likely to be the best for the United States? The recent conviction of two “saints” charged with polygamy is having a wholesome effect. The law which makes such a decision possible in Utah is the Edmunds bill, by which a man believing it right to have more than one living or undivorced wife at a time maybe challenged as a juryman. Under this law it is extremely difficult for a Mormon brought to trial to escape sentence, and the sentence is such that the fear of it will more than probably take a great deal of charm out of the doctrine of “spiritual wives.” The biographical department of the scrap-book compiler has had great opportunities to grow rich in anecdotes of General Grant this past month. His prolonged illness and the wonderfully sustained interest and sympathy of the public have led to many letters and stories getting into print which otherwise might never have been known. All of this matter but shows more and more clearly how just is our love and reverence for “our hero.” For the benefit of the international copyright there were held in New York recently, on two afternoons, Authors’ Readings. A notable galaxy of literary characters gathered on the stage. Among them were George William Curtis, Professor Charles Carroll, Julian Hawthorne, Will Carleton, W. D. Howells, the Rev. Robert Collyer, Prof. H. H. Boyesen, Bishop Potter, Mark Twain, Edward Eggleston, Henry Ward Beecher, and others. The audience which greeted the readers was large and appreciative. One of the most horrible accidents of the month of April was the collapse of eight nearly completed tenement houses in New York City. Twelve persons were injured in the fall. The investigation discloses a deliberate intention on the part of the contractor to use the poorest material obtainable, and a criminal—whether intentional or not—neglect on the part of building authorities to prevent his plan. Indeed, contractors who are honest in their work, state the commission cares more for the fee which puts a contract through than for the material put into the building. A vigorous public sentiment which would put a few such criminals into State prison might prove beneficial. “Arbor Day” is extending its conquests. Its latest subject is none other than the Province of Ontario, whose Minister of Education sends out a communication to all teachers asking that in the interest of sanitation and Æsthetics the 8th of May be set apart as a holiday in every rural and village school, for grading school grounds, laying out walks, and setting out trees. Hon. B. G. Northrop, in a letter dated April 4th, writes: “Sixteen states have adopted ‘Arbor Day,’ and to that result the article in The Chautauquan, and extracts quoted from it, have greatly contributed.” The Bureau of Education sends out a pamphlet on “Arbor Day.” It will help many a teacher to an interest in the scheme, and will tell him what trees to select, how to plant them, and how to arrange a program suitable for the holiday. The trouble which we have with foreign tongues sometimes enables us to heartily appreciate the blunders of the foreigner who tries our English tongue. We can not possibly make worse blunders with French than a late number of the aristocratic RÉvue des deux Mondes, when in its attempts to express in English the idea of a candidate favoring a railway it said, “My politic is railway.” One might almost call Lord Tennyson’s verses on “The Fleet” the literary sensation of the month. It is rather difficult to see just why the verses deserve the unstinted ridicule American papers have given them. Certainly they are tame, but Lord Tennyson is an old man—a man whom this generation ought to honor for the noble pleasure he has left to it and to its posterity. Were his lines much worse, courtesy demands that we remember that with age comes decay. The new Minister of Education in Greece, where the four Gospels are used as a reading book by the advanced classes in the primary department of the public schools, proposes to introduce them into the higher schools. The purity of the diction of the four Gospels makes them, regardless of other considerations, most desirable reading for children who are just forming their literary style. It is a sort of fashion which common sense people will be glad to adopt—the run on plain food which London society is said to be having. The Prince of Wales began it by cutting down every mÉnu over which he presided, and he has had a larger following than usual—both the people who always follow and those whose good sense decides what they do, taking up the custom. It would be a wise lesson for both dinner givers and hotel keepers to learn that the quality of a dinner can not possibly depend upon the number of dishes. Bringing out a successful novelty in flowers or vegetables, is to a nurseryman what a bonanza mine is to a westerner, or a flowing well to an oil producer. The present season has several: There is a new lettuce with leaves like the oak, a red celery, a celery which blanches naturally and bears leaves like an ostrich plume; a pansy with blossoms two and one fourth inches in diameter; a zinnia round as a ball, and a mignonette with spikes twelve to fifteen inches in length, and of pure white. Perhaps the greatest novelty about the business this spring is the fact that in the cities the safe deposit vaults are receiving thousands of pounds of invaluable seeds for keeping—treasures quite as priceless to the seedsmen as the jewels which repose beside them are to their owners. Another compliment to America! When M. de Lesseps, the new member of the French Academy, was installed, in April, he delivered, it is said, the shortest speech ever delivered by an incoming Academician. Thereupon M. de RÉnan complimented him on adopting the pithy, pointed style of l’Amerique. We are very glad to introduce the Chautauqua Town and Country Club, a new branch of the C. L. S. C., for the study of agriculture. Everybody is expected to do something in this novel society of practical out-of-door work. Everybody must raise a plant, or cultivate a bed, or care for an animal. A well known Orange Co., N. Y., farm is to be the working headquarters of the new organization, and its course of reading and experiment is under the control of Mr. Charles Barnard. Chancellor Vincent honors the organization with his supervision, a guarantee of success, and the headquarters of the C. L. S. C. have been extended to take in the business of the C. T. C. C. In July we hope to give our readers a broader look at this charming club. We called attention recently to Dr. Warren’s entertaining theory of the whereabouts of the garden of Eden. And now we have another explorer for this land-one Moritz Engel, of Dresden, who locates it about seventy miles southwest of Damascus. Herr Engel makes his theory almost as entertaining and plausible as does Dr. Warren his. The article on the “Natural History and People of Borneo,” which appears in this issue of The Chautauquan, is in reality an outline of a book, “Ten Years in a Jungle,” written by Mr. Hornaday, and soon to be published by Messrs. Scribner’s Sons. This work is to be fully illustrated and furnished with maps, and will give much desirable information on many of the points but lightly touched in the article. One of the most magnificent pieces of architecture in the world is about to be erected in St. Petersburg as a votive chapel commemorating the murder of the Emperor Alexander II., of Russia. It stands over the spot where he fell, is to be erected by donations from the entire nation, will cost $10,000,000, and will be completed, it is expected, in 1891. Mr. James Anthony Froude says in a recent article that the best histories are those which are written by men who hate “moral evil” and love “moral good,” and who are “afraid to tell lies” to defend their theories; as examples, he mentions, Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Carlyle. The readers of The Chautauquan are familiar with the Chautauqua Assembly Daily Herald, the organ of the Chautauqua meetings. The forthcoming volume will contain all the best things said on the Chautauqua platform and in all the meetings during the coming session, with comments on the great men who frequent Chautauqua during the months of July and August. In short, it will depict in all its interesting details the unique life of the great Assembly. This paper, with its nineteen issues, is the necessary supplement to the The Chautauquan, just as the Assembly is the supplement to the work of the year. Every reader of the C. L. S. C., every reader of The Chautauquan, every lover of Chautauqua should have the Assembly Daily Herald. For rates and address see advertisement in this impression. Evening High Schools are becoming a permanent feature in the school system of a number of our large cities. They deserve the heartiest support of educators and municipal authorities. In Cincinnati there is an evening high school similar in requirements to the upper grade grammar school; in St. Louis one which prepares students for the Polytechnic school of Washington University; one in New York which, in 1883, had an average attendance of 951 pupils; another in Boston which, in October 1884, enrolled 1,592 pupils. The character and the patronage are proofs sufficient that such institutions are in demand. A late circular from the Bureau of Education declares that “it is an institution which has come to stay, and that it has a more important future than can now be understood.” A hopeful sign to temperance workers is the favor with which the scientific temperance education bill has been meeting in the legislatures of various states. During the winter of 1884-5 this bill became a law in Nevada, Alabama, Wisconsin, Missouri, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Kansas, making in all fourteen states which require instruction in public schools concerning the physiological effects of stimulants and narcotics. |
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