What is in a name? Isaac Newton recently committed suicide in New York; Wilbur Fisk is traveling a circuit in Iowa; George Washington was lately sent to prison in Georgia, and Andrew Jackson has escaped from jail in Louisiana. Any attentive newspaper reader can continue the list of great names filling modest roles in contemporary history. Perhaps it is a pity we have not names enough to go around.

In reply to an inquirer: You will learn to write by writing, and by always writing as well as you can.

And art is a fruit of laborious practice. Spend as much time writing as you would in learning to play a piano; then you will begin to begin learning the art.

The public lands of the West are being rapidly transferred to private hands. During the year ended June 30th, last, nearly twenty-seven millions of acres were disposed of. Of this total, little more than seven millions were sold. More than fourteen millions were given away as homesteads and timber tracts; and the rest were given away, some 3,300,000 acres going to railroad companies. The total is an increase of more than eight millions over the previous year. And yet an abundance of land remains in the hands of the government. It will be a good while before we shall be crowded in this country.

At this writing it is difficult to predict the end of the troubles in China. It is most probable that France will secure herself in Tonquin. But a suspicion has existed for months that Bismarck had a hand in this affair, and that he has secretly encouraged France, hoping she would come to grief. It is now rumored that he has intimated to the French that they have gone far enough. Most political affairs in Europe are managed by the Chancellor of the German empire, and he is probably the only who can give a good guess at the result of the French imbroglio in China.

Impure water supply is one of the greatest perils of our great cities. Philadelphia and Chicago have old troubles. Washington is more recently in trouble. There is only one thorough remedy, and that is a system of sewage which transports offal outside of the city and restores to the soil as much as possible of the elements of our food. That gives a chance for clean water, and it gives a chance for food for the next generation. Chautauqua employs this system, and has pure wells on the hillside and a pure lake at its feet.

It seems to us that more property has been burned up this summer than is usual in the warm portion of the year. Insurance agents say that accidental fires are much more common in years of financial depression than in those of prosperity; and they think out a moral connection between the two sets of phenomena. Let us hope that the improvement in the times will go on rapidly, else the winter may be one of unexampled severity—for insurance companies.

A pleasant piece of statistic tells us that our people produce forty-eight bushels of grain per capita, and consume forty-one bushels per capita; and both these figures are the highest in the world. We raise more grain and eat more food than any other people. That test of prosperity is decisive. We have our troubles, but let us “think on our mercies.”

Jerry McAuley, the evangelist of the slums, died last month. There is refreshment in the man’s history. Born and trained among the thieves of the worst quarter of New York, he got into prison under a sentence for fifteen years, became a Christian in prison, and spent the rest of his life reclaiming the fallen men and women of his native city. Men do reform under Christian forces, and a reformed man may do a glorious work.

Stolen marriages are not usually happy ones. In those cases, especially where a well bred, liberally educated, and luxuriously inclined girl elopes with a coachman or a deck hand, the hasty espousals commonly end in misery for the wife. Several such elopements have recently occurred; and they seem to be “catching.” A Canadian girl of wealthy parentage read the story of the Morosini elopement, and thereupon got up an elopement of her own. The “catching” symptom is probably due to the glories of the reporter’s rhetoric.

Dr. Woodrow is the last clergyman who has had fame thrust upon him, for a peculiarly unsuccessful attempt to become an evolutionist. He first succeeded in getting Adam evolved from an ape or something, and left Eve to be created. More lately, he has, if we understand the story, evolutionized the first human pair from a pair of apes by an accidental variation. But there are no accidents in the genuine evolution; and Dr. Woodrow is being made fun of from both sides.

The extraordinary liberality of the English Wesleyans has attracted deserved attention and respect. They have collected very large sums of money for new churches in London and for missionary fields—millions of dollars in a few years. It is now noted that the Scotch churches have been visited with refreshing showers of the grace of giving. In one year the three branches of Presbyterians have raised more than seven millions of dollars for their own work. That sort of grace is proof of other and more spiritual sorts.

The Young Men’s Christian Associations have grown marvelously. Their New Year Book shows that on this continent this child of yesterday has created $3,400,000 in Association buildings, and put a great army of Christian workers into the field. Its rapid growth and vigorous work are one of the marvels of the time.

There is a notable lull in the storm against speculative and religious philosophy. The reason is plain. The hope that we should soon be able to see through creation and its cause with a microscope has begun to expire, if it be not already dead. This relegates science to its proper domain, and recalls reason to her old office. Some abatement of scientific enthusiasm as a speculative force is also to be noted. The British and American Associations at Montreal and Philadelphia did not show a puff of this sort of wind. Both attended strictly to scientific business.

Attention has been called to the fact that people may live too economically, by the havoc made by cholera among the under-fed Italian peasants. Statesmen in Italy complain that the rural peasants will save at the expense of vitality; in short, starve themselves. In this country people do not fast or eat insufficiently if they can get “square meals;” but they often starve their souls.

“Gath” is out with a sound letter against beer guzzling. “Boys,” he says, “were never seen in drinking places so long as whiskey was the standard.” That is so. Everybody knows that beer drinking by boys has become common. The sentimental argument that beer would cure drunkenness has come to this issue.

It is once more remarked that Jews are seldom victims of cholera. In France, it is said, only seven Jews were this year attacked by the disease. But perhaps this was a fair proportion of Jews when we count them and the non-Jews and make allowance for degrees of exposure to attack. It is not time yet to condemn the hog to extermination on this branch of the evidence.

There has been less than the usual supply of hazing barbarities in the colleges this fall. Some tragical results in former years have given the barbaric custom of outraging freshmen serious blows. Here and there a case of hazing has attracted attention this year. The evil has lost the prestige of honored custom, and is now more honored in the breach than in the observance. It will die without being regretted. Only brutal creatures, unfit for decent society, engage in this form of midnight violence.

Jean Robie, the Belgian flower painter, has a surprisingly versatile genius. He is exceedingly able as a colorist, and his flower-pieces have an enduring charm, but are so subtilely rendered that their reproduction is extremely difficult. A very successful effort has recently been made, by L. Prang & Co., to reproduce one of his latest works by color printing on satin. As a publication it is unique, and suitable either for an easel picture, panel decoration, or for framing.

Good Chautauquans everywhere have a warm attachment to the “Chautauqua Bells,” and will, we feel sure, unite with us in a vote of sincere thanks to the McNeely Bell Co., of Troy, N. Y., through whose courtesy, each summer, we hear the beautiful chime on the point.

David Dudley Field renews the demand for a change of the name of New York to Manhattan. It would be convenient, no doubt; but the change is not practicable. Besides, New York is already bigger than Manhattan Island, and Mr. Field wants to take in Brooklyn. The effect of the enlargement of the city is to make old Manhattan a section only of our American metropolis, which, if it gets what belongs to it, Brooklyn and Jersey City, will probably be the largest city on the globe in 1984.

Let no one twit the West any more on the subject of youth and inexperience. Michigan, Ohio and Indiana have participated in an earthquake—and earthquakes have chiefly favored venerable countries. This earth-shiver, following closely upon one on the Atlantic coast, confirms a scientific prophecy that seismic disorders would have a revival over a wide field in these years. Probably destructive earthquakes are not to be expected to occur in new regions.

A bad custom of gambling on the high seas, on the fashionable steamers, has at last been called up for rebuke. The evil has become intolerable to well-instructed people. The present writer has heard more than one man boast that he “made his passage money” by betting on cards during the trip. Fast steamers are rapidly becoming gambling hells.

A fashionable woman went to Saratoga this summer with twenty-one trunks containing ninety-three complete toilets. She wore from two to five toilets a day, and left Saratoga the day on which she had exhibited number ninety-three. This species of fool dies hard, but she is dying, and the world will by and by see the last of her. Respect for her decreases steadily; in a few years she will be less interesting than the shop window in which dresses are displayed on automata.

The United States Court in San Francisco has ruled that a Chinese man and a Chinese woman, though ostensibly married, are not one flesh. Judge Field said the country would be flooded with Chinese if women could come in on the certificates of their husbands. The decision relates to the right of Chinamen to return after visiting their fatherland. The golden gate is being gradually shut against these people; but they are now coming in across the imaginary boundary line between us and Canada. They can not be kept out. The effort to prevent their coming is “love’s (?) labor lost.”

We do not yet realize the greatness of this country. We knew long ago that there is an iron mountain in Missouri. Now we are told that there are four alum mountains in lower California, containing one hundred millions of tons of alum. Please do not invest in alum at present prices. “It may go lower.”

It is reported that a movement for reform in the city government of Chicago is ready to march. We suppose that the object is to influence the elections next spring. Some excellent results have followed these local organizations for good government. Their success depends upon the energy and enthusiasm with which they confine their work to home business. When they mix national politics with local reform they go to wreck. The excellent Brooklyn movement seems to have been close to the rocks this summer, through dabbling in politics. There ought to be no politics in administering the affairs of a city, no more than in a bank or lumber yard.