The Chautauquan, July 1884

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The Chautauquan.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.

Vol. IV. JULY, 1884. No. 10.

Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

President—Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio.

Superintendent of Instruction—Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn.

Counselors—Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.; Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.

Office Secretary—Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.

General Secretary—Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Contents

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THE WHITE HOUSE.

By Mrs. PATTIE L. COLLINS.

When Washington was in its infancy, and the patriots of that early day bethought themselves of the propriety of building a residence for the President, it was with some difficulty that they could decide what it should be called. In truth, this seemed a more serious question than location, expense, or architecture. Anything that suggested monarchies or kingdoms, such as the word “palace,” could not be entertained; not a trace of the effete despotisms of the Old World should be tolerated, even in our nomenclature. At last “Executive Mansion” was settled upon as a proper title. Any gentleman, provided it was sufficiently pretentious, might style his house a “mansion,” and the chosen executor of laws for the nation was not therefore set apart and above his fellow countrymen, when installed as chief magistrate. In the course of a few years, when only its blackened walls were left standing as mute witnesses that our British cousins still loved us, so much paint was required to efface the marks of the destroyer, when it was restored, that it gleamed white as snow in the distance, and naturally, nay almost inevitably, came to be called the “White House” by popular consent. And by this pretty, simple name the home of the Presidents will doubtless continue to be known as long as republican institutions endure. It is as different as possible in external appearance from the habitations of royalty in European cities; no iron-barred windows, better fitted for a fortress than ordinary outlook, no gloomy, gray walls, chilly and forbidding, frowning down upon you, no squalid tenements thronged with degraded specimens of humanity press upon its outskirts to accentuate the beauties of the one and the miseries of the other. Instead of this, the White House rises fair and inviting from an elevation which seems just sufficient to bring it into relief as a conspicuous feature of the landscape. Its north front looks toward Pennsylvania Avenue, commanding a view of Lafayette Square—itself a most interesting spot, containing the celebrated equestrian statue of Jackson, by Clark Mills, and grouped about it the cannon captured at the battle of New Orleans—while around it stand some of the many historic residences of the capitol. To the east and west of the President’s grounds, respectively, may be seen the Treasury, and the War, State and Navy Departments; the southern aspect is the most charming of all; flowers, trees and emerald lawn, with the music of falling water make up a picture as bewildering in loveliness as it is arcadian in simplicity, its boundary line being the Potomac, shining in the distance like a bit of blue sea, but disfigured by no great iron hulks or other sea monsters; only a modest little excursion steamer, now and then a tall three-masted schooner lazily rocking and glancing skyward, impatient to set sail.

With these surroundings a President must be singularly oblivious to the voices of nature, art and patriotism if he does not find about his temporary abode everything to minister to his higher nature.

At present, on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, the President usually receives from twelve to one o’clock; Tuesday and Friday are Cabinet days, and Monday he claims as absolutely his own. Of course if a Secretary, Senator or Representative should present himself upon urgent business, that would not admit of delay, the rule would be violated, but not otherwise.

The official etiquette of the White House remains about the same from generation to generation, but the social regime varies very much, according to the tastes of the temporary occupants. If, by a combination of fortuitous circumstances, an unpretending woman of limited education and provincial habits finds herself suddenly thrust into a position for which she is wholly unprepared by previous training, she fills it more or less acceptably, as she has tact and adaptability. These seem qualities which have not of late years been conspicuously characteristic of the “first ladies” of the land, no matter what their previous station; unless, indeed, an exception be made in favor of a certain beautiful woman, who was herself a more priceless treasure than any the White House contained.

A visitor going for the first time to the White House would suppose at a casual glance that it was a gala day, and all the world was thronging thither. It is rather surprising to learn that it is always the same. There are fine ladies and gentlemen who come in great state, foreigners of all nations, rustics from the depths of the forest, the perfectly blasé, the ignorant clown, the ubiquitous, irrepressible American child—all running rampant over the President’s house. Perhaps it would be just as well to go back to the very beginning, when this surging crowd presents itself at the main entrance. Few, fortunately, make the mistake of the intoxicated straggler who found his way into the grounds, and perceiving the three harmless gilded shells used in the way of very questionable ornamentation in front of the mansion, thus accosted a door-keeper: “Old man in?” Receiving only a look of dazed inquiry by way of reply, he continued, “Old ten per cent. money bags, I say?” At this juncture it dawned upon the official, so far as his sense of shocked dignity permitted him to receive any impression, that this besotted wretch actually supposed himself at a pawnbroker’s shop! But a much prettier story than this can be told of these empty shells: Formerly the birds built their nests in them, and now that the holes have been filled so that they can not, they yet come and perch and twitter and circle around their former dwelling-place.

Eight persons are required to stand guard at the entrance; not all at once, but to alternate and keep a sufficient number on duty. An imperative necessity has drawn the line of demarcation for White House sight-seers. Entering the hall they are ushered at once into the East Room, and having inspected it to their heart’s content, return by the same way they came, unless choosing to ascend to the waiting room on the second floor, and risk an opportunity of seeing the President. In this case, to a student of human nature a rare opportunity for study is presented. Hardened, chronic office-seekers, schemers, conscienceless plotters, shabby women, forlorn, dismal, nay, often heart-broken, pert, self-assured youth, and even the small boy, with ragged jacket, one illy-adjusted suspender and rusty shoes walks in with an air that could only have been begotten by the consciousness that he was a part of the republic. Much patience brings the vigil of each to a close, and if the business be simply to shake hands with the President, that ceremony is speedily accomplished. At present it would be something like this: Entering as other people go out (for the other people are always there, going out before you, and coming in after you), a tall gentleman, very grand and very dignified, quite like a gigantic icicle—but no, that comparison is derogatory—let us say like Pompey’s Pillar—stands Chester A. Arthur. He glances at your card mechanically, he takes you by the hand most indifferently, and in an inexpressible broad voice, without a single inflection, he says, “It is a very pleasant day.” You may say that you are charmed to have an opportunity to pay your respects to Mr. President, or any such nonsense that comes uppermost, but it is not of the least consequence what you say, or whether you say anything at all. That is all, and you may salaam yourself out of the side door.

The East Room is used for all public receptions. It is of noble proportions, eighty feet in length by forty in width, and twenty-two in height. It was originally intended as a banqueting hall, but the first authentic account of its use was that Dolly Madison found it an excellent place for drying clothes. Under its present aspect it would scarcely appear to be well adapted to that purpose. A rich carpet of those soft tints that seem to melt into each other covers the floor. The walls and ceiling are all white and gold; glancing into the immense mirror you find it reproduces an endless vista of panels and columns lost in space. The windows are draped with lace curtains, and in warm weather the breeze comes up fresh and sweet direct from the river, blowing them about at will—just as it does the curtains of other people! But something else happens to these curtains, too, that is not so pleasant, and from which other people’s, as a rule, are exempt. But a short time since an employe of the White House called my attention to the fact that here and there a figure had been entirely cut out by a souvenir-thief. This apartment, as well as several others in the mansion, has been recently done over by Tiffany, and greatly improved; it has now very much the appearance in general effect of the “Gold Salon” of the Grand Opera House in Paris. It contains only two pictures; one of Washington, purchased as the original, by Gilbert Stuart, but of doubtful authenticity, and the Martha Washington painted in 1878 by Andrews, an Ohio artist. This latter shows the same refined, high-bred features that even the crudest representation of her portrays, and the flowing train and satin petticoat are quite regal. The dress was copied from a Parisian costume made for a New York lady to wear at the Centennial tea party in Philadelphia in 1876, and purports to be an exact reproduction, but with a not unusual nineteenth century skepticism, I confess that I boldly decline the sleeve as an anachronism, and leaving the queenly robe out of the question, do not hesitate to say that in my opinion the hand was borrowed—perhaps from a Greek statue. Certainly it is not the strong right hand which accomplished the prodigious amounts of spinning, weaving, and the like, usually ascribed to this wonderful matron; but it is a tiny, symmetrical, extremely pretty hand, in the delineation of which the artist was probably true to his instincts rather than history, and in consideration of the happy result, the departure from fact to fancy deserves to be condoned.

The Green Room, which derives its name from the prevailing color of its decoration, is next in order to the East Room. It contains a portrait of Mrs. Hayes, by Hunt, in an elaborate wooden frame, carved and presented by young ladies from the Cincinnati School of Design; it represents luscious bunches of grapes and graceful foliage, a design which, it has been sarcastically observed, in this connection is singularly inappropriate—since it wreathes the very high priestess of temperance like the fabled bacchanalian god. There are also crystal vase of exquisite workmanship, selected by Mrs. Lincoln, a grand piano, costly cabinets and candelabra, and a bronze clock which is said to be a little childish about keeping time. That is to say, it will do well enough for presidential and diplomatic time, but not for running trains on single track. It was presented by Napoleon to Lafayette, and by him to Washington. Another much-prized antique is a claw-footed round table of mahogany, inlaid with brass, and known to be at least one hundred and seventy years old. A cover almost envelops it, quite hiding its rich color and fine polish; the reason for this being that once upon a time a vandal borrowed some of the brass ornamentation and forgot to return it.

The Blue Room is very much prettier than its title is suggestive. It is here that foreign ministers present their credentials. The furniture, with its gilded framework, and upholstered in a silk damask of blue and gold, is in harmony with the curtains, the carpets, and the decorated ceiling. It is oval in form and the general effect is very beautiful, especially by gas-light.

The Red Parlor is used for general receptions, both by the President and the ladies of the household. This was the last room occupied by Lincoln in the White House. He left it on that fateful 14th of April, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and Speaker Colfax. The tiled mantel represents the style of 1200; this also is some of the high art—Tiffany decoration. And in truth the entire furnishing shows a singular, but not inharmonious, conglomeration. The candlesticks, dating back to Monroe’s time, the gold pitcher and bowl presented by Elkington & Co., of London, after the Centennial, a wonderful screen embroidered in silk and beads, from the Austrian Government during Grant’s administration, vases from France, upon whose delicate surface are portrayed the conviction and sentence of Charlotte Corday, a curious cabinet, of which the entire front is formed of brass tacks and pin heads, and many other things, but the most interesting and probably the most highly prized is the clock used by Lincoln in his private office during the war. A portfolio of engravings, a pot of flowers, and a single book occupy a small table. It is a refreshing oasis, a glimpse of something real and altogether home-like, that rests one after so much overpowering richness and antiquity combined.

The State Dining Room is furnished in green. The heavy curtains with bright borders and lambrequins are themselves pretty enough to excuse their shutting off the river view. The table will seat forty persons as it is, but when arranged in the form of a cross, fifty-four. Only three state dinners are ordinarily given during a season, but nine were interspersed through the last. A sideboard contains wine glasses of every shape, size and description. Some one laughingly explained his by saying: “You know when the little friends of the President’s daughter come to see her, he likes for them to have a real good time, and these are for their dolls’ tables.”

Apropos of the wine question, a colored employe, seeing a visitor taking a copious draught of ice-water just within the vestibule, and return from his explorations through the East Room soon after, complaining of being sick, exclaimed in a triumphant voice: “Boss, I tole you dat stuff wuz only fit to wash clothes in.” Turning to me he added, “Dat’s so, missus, ’cept to cool your head when you got a ra’al bad headache, and can’t git no cabbage leaves to wrap ’round it.”

It is said to be quite a general impression that the expense of state dinners is borne by the government. This is not true, and President Arthur keeps his own horses, coachman, and cook.

The table is ornamented by a center-piece for flowers, the bottom of which represents a miniature lake, and mirrors the floral beauties above and around it. The President’s chair is on one side, at the middle. In speaking of this I am reminded of a young American girl, who, like myself, was upon a certain occasion being shown through one of the numerous abodes of a crowned head. Entering the salon in which foreign ambassadors were received, we perceived that the throne chair stood upon a sort of dais which was entirely covered with superb crimson velvet. This adventurous little spirit inadvertently let fall a profane footstep upon the sacred fabric, when she was immediately reprimanded in an awful voice and solemnly admonished to keep a respectful distance. Proceeding further in this princely residence, we reached the dining room. The king’s chair, like our President’s, stood in the middle, and unlike it was of entirely different and of more elaborate workmanship than the others. Whilst the extremely loyal and obsequious attendant was looking in another direction, young America silently and swiftly drew out the chair from its place and seated herself with a comical assumption of dignity that was very amusing, a perilous position, which even she was not audacious enough to maintain more than a few seconds.

A door from the dining room leads directly to the conservatory, a perfect wonderland of perfume and color. It seems as if all the wealth of Flora had been gathered here; forests of ferns, banks of azaleas, roses in endless profusion and variety, and priceless exotic children of the tropics without number. One stands almost breathless with admiration before the exquisite orchids; and here is a plant with thick, polished leaves, heavy clusters of scentless blossoms, from the southern coast of Africa, named for its discoverer, Prof. Rudgea, while not far off the medinella waves slowly and sadly its long red clusters, as if sighing for its native Japan. Ensconced here and there are receptacles for goldfish, and even a coral bank is to be discovered among the drooping ferns and falling water. It is difficult to come away from these fairy regions to prosaic places, but there is another nook near by into which prying eyes must peep, and after all the transition is not so very trying, since it is into the family dining room, which is a charming picture in itself.

There is something so attractive in this warm, bright looking spot, that I must confess to a fascination here stronger than that inspired by the tiles, mosaics and bric-a-brac found elsewhere. Perhaps every feminine heart is sensitive to the dainty beauty of china, cut glass, and richly chased vessels of silver and gold, but the most unsusceptible would be moved to warmer enthusiasm over the set of Limoges faience, manufactured by the order of Mrs. Hayes. It consists of five hundred pieces, representing the fauna and flora of America, and each is a delicious study, bearing the impress of true artistic skill. The designs were all made by Mr. Theodore Davis, whose studio is upon one of the most romantic portions of the New Jersey coast. There, in his happy home, surrounded by wife, children and mother, far removed from the turmoil of the outer world, and borrowing inspiration from sea, sky and air, he labors, and sends forth the admirable results to an appreciative people. This china is a rich legacy to the White House families.

The grand corridor is hung with portraits of former Presidents; that portion of it from which the private stairway ascends is cut off for the exclusive use of the household. A marvelous light falls through the western window upon the cabinets with their treasures, the many flowering plants and inviting easy chairs. But even here history must intrude; a marble table of hexagon shape is said to have been the property of General Jackson, and tradition asserts that broken places here and there in the smooth surface are the traces of his seal ring when his hand was brought down with that terrible emphasis peculiar to him on certain occasions.

The elevator which was put in for “Grandma Garfield,” she never returned to the White House to use. The dreariest place, perhaps, under the roof, is the shabby, forlorn little cloak room, in which Minister Allen fell dead last January a year ago, at the New Year’s reception.

It is not an uninteresting spectacle, to stand just within the vestibule on Cabinet day, and observe the arrival of the nation’s arbiters, sandwiched between the throng. Perhaps a slight murmur is heard, and strangers turn toward the entrance. It might be a pleasant-faced countryman in his plain black clothes, but instead it is the Honorable Secretary of the Interior. Next, a stylish coupé, with an iron-gray horse, from which Postmaster-General Gresham and his chief clerk alight. The Postmaster-General is in the stalwart prime of life. He is tall and commanding, with strongly marked features. Immediately following him is a British tourist, with a glass screwed in his eye, who pauses to ask, before entering the East Room, “What do you call that cold-looking place there?” Then the Spanish Minister enters and passes so slowly up the stairway that one is involuntarily reminded of the inevitable manana (to-morrow) of his people, not one of whom has ever been in a hurry since the beginning of time. No matter what the service required of these children of the sun, unless a compelling power supplements the order, “Manana, manana,” is the response.

Another carriage rattles over the pavement, and a pale, spare man, with a white fringe under his chin, and close cropped hair, with a mysterious gloom upon his countenance, and bent, as if, like Atlas, he upbore the world upon his shoulders—passes with such an air as has never been known outside of the State Department. There they all have it in greater or less degree, messengers, clerks, and assistant secretaries. It is indescribable, but it is admirable. Even the high-stepping bay horses appear to be distinctly conscious of their position.

Next in order comes Attorney-General Brewster, who is without doubt the most gorgeous man in Washington. I say gorgeous advisedly. He wears an immense expanse of buff vest, a dark necktie, illuminated by a pin of diamonds clustering around a ruby center, light drab pantaloons, and lace ruffles about his wrists.

Secretary Folger has the aristocratic appearance which is the legitimate birthright of those wonderful old Nantucket families and their descendants. I need not ask you to pause longer at the entrance; the other notabilities are out of town to-day.

But after all its artistic finish, its rich decoration, the luxury apparent at a glance, there is a sense of something lacking in this grand habitation. All of these fine apartments leave the impression that they are mere show-places, not the habitual resorts of a family. One of my pet theories is that people’s houses always look like them—they transfer a portion of their personality to everything with which they come habitually into contact. Well, this is nobody’s home; it belongs to the government, and is illustrative of the national wealth and taste, but of no individual peculiarities. The question has often been debated of erecting another residence, which shall literally be the President’s home, while the present mansion shall be devoted exclusively to public receptions and official affairs. Then, and not till then, will the Chief Magistrate taste occasional immunity from outside trespassers, and enjoy a well earned repose.

Angel of Patience! sent to calm

Our feverish brows with cooling palm;

To lay the storms of hope and fear,

And reconcile life’s smile and tear;

The throbs of wounded pride to still,

And make our own our Father’s will!—Whittier.

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[July 6.]

It is true that the task which God lays upon us all is the same—the unceasing surrender of their own wishes to the higher aims which he successively sets before them. But with men of passionate temperament and selfish habits, who are therefore at every turn exposed by circumstances to violent temptation, their natural wishes are, for the most part, so obviously sinful that, though the struggle of renouncing them may be hard, the duty of doing so is clear and pressing. And when such turn to God, their falls in attempting the Christian walk are often frequent enough, or at least their battles with temptation severe enough, to teach them the evil and weakness of their own heart. With men, on the other hand, of calm, pure and affectionate disposition, and trained in conscientious habits, so many of their wishes are for things harmless, or even good in themselves, that it is less easy to see why and how they are to be given up. Such men, just, kindly, and finding much of their own happiness in that of others, live, for the most part, in harmonious relations with those around them, and have little to disturb their consciences beyond the fear of falling short in the path of duty on which they have already entered. But they are exposed to many perils, more insidious, because less startling, than those which beset their more fiercely tempted brethren. They are in danger of depending too much on the respect and love which others so readily yield them; of valuing themselves on a purity which, if ever one of struggle, has come to be one of taste; of prizing intellectual clearness above moral insight and vigor; of mistaking the pleasure they feel in the performance of duty, for real submission to the will of God; and above all, of shrinking from new truths which would, for the time, confuse their belief, and break up the calm symmetry of their lives.

For … different natures require and receive a very different discipline from God. Sometimes it is by outward affliction that God speaks to souls, thus sinking into the lethargy of formalism; and the loss of friends, or health, or influence suddenly seems to cut off, as it were, half the means of serving him, and to rouse long-forgotten temptations to rise up against his will. Sometimes, on the other hand, he speaks to them inwardly, by opening their eyes to heights of holiness which they had never before steadily contemplated. They now suddenly perceive that many of the fancied duties which have till now occupied their lives and satisfied their consciences, have long ceased to be duties, and have come to be mere habits or pleasures; and that while they have been thus living in self love, unseen and unrepented of, they might have been coming to the knowledge of the higher obligations to which they have been so blind, but which were all implied in their first belief if they had but continued to read it with a single eye.—From Susanna Winkworth, in “Tauler’s Life and Times.”

[July 13.]

Especially, too, if they be distracted and disheartened (as such are wont to be) by the sin and confusion of the world; by the amount of God’s work which still remains undone, and by their own seeming incapacity to do it, they will take heart from the history of John Tauler and his fellows, who, in a far darker and more confused time than the present, found a work to do and strength to do it; who, the more they retired into the recesses of their own inner life, found there that fully to know themselves was to know all men, and to have a message for all men; and who by their unceasing labors of love proved that the highest spiritual attainments, instead of shutting a man up in lazy and Pharisaic self-contemplation, drive him forth to work as his Master worked before him, among the poor, the suffering, and the fallen.

Let such take heart, and toil on in faith at the duty which lies nearest to them. Five hundred years have passed since Tauler and his fellows did their simple work, and looked for no fruit from it, but the saving of one here and there from the nether pit. That was enough for which to labor; but without knowing it, they did more than that. Their work lives, and will live forever, though in forms from which they would have perhaps shrunk had they foreseen them. Let all such therefore take heart. They may know their own weakness; but they know not the power of God in them. They may think sadly that they are only palliating the outward symptoms of social and moral disease; but God may be striking, by some unconscious chance blow of theirs, at a sort of evil which they never suspected. They may mourn over the failure of some seemingly useful plan of their own; but God may be, by their influence, sowing the seed of some plan of his own, of which they little dream. For every good deed comes from God. His is the idea, his the inspiration, and his its fulfillment in time; and therefore no good deed but lives and grows with the everlasting life of God himself. And as the acorn, because God has given it “a forming form,” and life after its kind, bears within it not only the builder oak, but shade for many a herd; food for countless animals, and last, the gallant ship itself, and the materials of every use to which nature or art can put it and its descendants after it throughout all time; so does every good deed contain within itself endless and unexpected possibilities of other good, which may and will grow and multiply forever, in the genial light of him whose eternal mind conceived it, and whose eternal spirit will forever quicken it, with that life of which he is the giver and the Lord.—From Rev. Charles Kingsley, in “Preface to Tauler’s Sermons.”

[July 20.]

It astonishes all thought to observe the minuteness of God’s government, and of the natural and common processes which he carries on from day to day. His dominions are spread out, system above system, filling all height and latitude, but he is never lost in the magnificent. He descends to an infinite detail, and builds a little universe in the smallest things. He carries on a process of growth in every tree and flower and living thing; accomplishes in each an internal organization, and works the functions of an internal laboratory, too delicate all for eye or instrument to trace. He articulates the members and impels the instincts of every living mote that shines in the sunbeam. As when we ascend toward the distant and the vast, so when we descend toward the minute, we see his attention acuminated and his skill concentrated on his object; and the last discernible particle dies out of our sight with the same divine glory on it, as on the last orb that glimmers in the skirt of the universe.

The works of Christ are, if possible, a still brighter illustration of the same truth. Notwithstanding the vast stretch and compass of the work of redemption, it is a work of the most humble detail in its style of execution. The Savior could have preached a sermon on the mount every morning. Each night he could have stilled the sea, before his astonished disciples, and shown the conscious waves lulling into peace under his feet. He could have transfigured himself before Pilate and the astonished multitudes of the temple. He could have made visible ascensions in the noon of every day, and revealed his form standing in the sun, like the angel of the apocalypse. But this was not his mind. The incidents of which his work is principally made up, are, humanly speaking, very humble and unpretending. The most faithful pastor in the world was never able, in any degree, to approach the Savior, in the lowliness of his manner and his attention to humble things. His teachings were in retired places, and his illustrations drawn from ordinary affairs. If the finger of faith touched him in the crowd, he knew the touch and distinguished also the faith. He reproved the ambitious housewifery of an humble woman. After he had healed a poor being, blind from his birth—a work transcending all but divine power—he returned and sought him out, as the most humble Sabbath-school teacher might have done; and when he had found him, cast out and persecuted by men, he taught him privately the highest secrets of his Messiahship. When the world around hung darkened in sympathy with his cross, and the earth was shaking with inward amazement, he himself was remembering his mother, and discharging the filial cares of a good son. And when he burst the bars of death, its first and final conqueror, he folded the linen clothes and the napkin, and laid them in order apart, showing that in the greatest things he had a set purpose also concerning the smallest. And thus, when perfectly scanned, the work of Christ’s redemption, like the material universe, is seen to be a vast orb of glory, wrought up out of finished particles.—Horace Bushnell.

[July 27.]

He who would sympathize must be content to be tried and tempted. There is a hard and boisterous rudeness in our hearts by nature, which requires to be softened down. We pass by suffering gaily, carelessly; not in cruelty, but unfeelingly, because we do not know what suffering is. We wound men by our looks and our abrupt expressions without intending it, because we have not been taught the delicacy, and the tact, and the gentleness, which can only be learned by the wounding of our own sensibilities. There is a haughty feeling of uprightness which has never been on the verge of falling, that requires humbling. There is an inability to enter into difficulties of thought which marks the mind to which all things have been presented superficially, and which has never experienced the horror of feeling the ice of doubt crashing beneath the feet. Therefore, if you aspire to be a son of consolation; if you would partake of the priestly gift of sympathy; if you would pour something beyond commonplace consolation into a tempted heart; if you would pass through the intercourse of daily life with the delicate tact which never inflicts pain; if to that most acute of human ailments, mental doubt, you are ever to give effectual succor—you must be content to pay the price of the costly education. Like him, you must suffer—being tempted.

But remember it is being tempted in all points, yet without sin, that makes sympathy real, manly, perfect, instead of a mere sentimental tenderness. Sin will teach you to feel for trials. It will not enable you to judge them; nor to help them in time of need with any certainty.

Lastly, it is this same human sympathy which qualifies Christ for judgment. It is written that the Father hath committed all judgment to him, because he is the Son of Man.

The sympathy of Christ is a comforting subject. It is, besides, a tremendous subject; for on sympathy the awards of heaven will be built.… A sympathy for that which is pure implies a repulsion of that which is impure. Hatred of evil is in proportion to the strength of love for good. To love intensely good is to hate intensely evil.… Win the mind of Christ now, or else his sympathy for human nature will not save you from, but only insure, a recoil of abhorrence at last.—F. W. Robertson.

Hast thou not learned what thou art often told,

A truth still sacred and believed of old,

That no success attends on spears and swords

Unblest, and that the battle is the Lord’s?—Cowper.

GROWTH.

By EMILY J. BUGBEE.

Grow as the trees grow,

Your head lifted straight to the sky,

Your roots holding fast where they lie,

In the richness below,

Your branches outspread

To the sun pouring down, and the dew,

With the glorious infinite blue

Stretching over your head.

Receiving the storms,

That may writhe you, and bend, but not break,

While your roots the more sturdily take

A strength in their forms.

God means us, the growth of His trees,

Alike thro’ the shadow and shine,

Receiving as freely the life-giving wine

Of the air and the breeze.

Not sunshine alone,

The soft summer dew and the breeze

Hath fashioned these wonderful trees,

The tempest hath moaned.

They have tossed their strong arms in despair,

At the blast of the terrible there,

In the thunder’s loud tone.

But under it all

Were the roots clasping closer the sod,

The top still aspiring to God,

Who prevented their fall.

Come out from the gloom

And open your heart to the light

That is flooding God’s world with delight,

And unfolding its bloom.

His kingdom of Grace

Is symboled in all that we see,

In budding and leafing of tree

And fruit in its place.

TENEMENT HOUSE LIFE IN NEW YORK.

By GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.

New York City, which is the soul and center of a series of cities which may be called the Metropolitan District, has not far from a million and a half of people, nearly all of whom reside upon an island of rocky formation, surrounded by deep water. Within recent years a district to the north of the island has been annexed to the city, and city protection and privileges partly extended to it, and new parks have just been legalized there, but little that has yet been done in the outlying districts and cities has been effectual to thin out the population of the great central city, whose inhabitants are gathered from all races.

The island of New York extends over thirteen miles along the North River, and it is densely built up as far as 70th Street, on that river, and on the East River it is almost solidly built up to Harlem, which is six or seven miles from the point of the city at the Battery. The middle of the island, to the extent of nine hundred acres, is occupied by the Central Park and other parks, and broad driveways or boulevards take up considerable of the unoccupied or partially occupied portion, so that the time is admitted to be near at hand when all this island will be covered with houses. The character of these houses is already indicated by the tall flats, apartment houses, or tenement houses which are rising, apparently in the country parts, out of the green fields, and some of these are six, seven and eight stories high. Extensive apartment houses, in which the floors are rented or sold, are also being constructed in the vicinity of the park, sometimes to the height of nine, ten and even twelve stories.

It would therefore appear that the future residence of the New Yorker is to be some kind of a tenement structure after the fashion prevailing on the continent of Europe. For some of these costly tenements the rent is as high as six thousand to eight thousand dollars per annum. The cheapest tenements on New York island probably cost twenty dollars a month. Although a bridge has been built at enormous expense to connect New York and Brooklyn, it is a mere convenience, and has exercised no influence on the general character of New York island. While Brooklyn is growing, Harlem relatively is growing faster, at the northern end of New York island. The elevated railroads, of which there are four parallel to each other up and down the length of the island as far as the park, and three the whole length of the island, or to Harlem River, have rather exercised a recalling influence to the city from the suburbs, and the tendency is to extend New York across the Harlem River rather than across the Hudson or the East rivers and the bay, which are often embarrassed by fog, ice, and storm.

The New York manufactures have so expanded that the operatives do not go from the city to the country parts to do a day’s labor, but come from the country parts into New York to earn a living. The protective tariff has transferred the foreign commerce of New York to foreign nations, while it has made New York City our largest manufacturing city. These manufactories compressed on that small island necessarily partake of the tenement house character, and it has been necessary for the legislature to pass laws prohibiting the making of cigars in the tenement houses where the people live. A few years ago I was requested to visit some of these cigar tenements in the vicinity of Tompkins Square, and further uptown, and I found an extraordinary condition of things which has not yet been checked by legislation, because after the prohibitory law was passed it was found to be defective in phraseology, and has to be reënacted. In these tenements could be seen a whole family, men, women and children, living and working their tobacco, and at the same time cooking, sleeping, eating and entertaining, with the tobacco spread over the floor to be dried at night, the children walking on it, and the vapors of the tobacco filling the lungs of the sleepers. In the morning the man got up and began to cut, trim and fill cigars, and put them on the bench before him, and there he sat all day, for at least six days in the week, seldom going out to let the rooms be aired, and some of these buildings, from four to six stories high, were nothing but pigeon cases of such tobacco tenements.

It is to be doubted whether the law can reach such cases, because detection would always involve an intrusion into the living apartments of families, and would make in time such hostility that the law itself would have to be repealed. As in Lyons, France, and in Belgium, where the silk weavers, the lace makers, etc., take their work home, there is no doubt a tendency in New York City to live and toil on the same premises. The population of New York is made up from most of the laboring nations, and each of these brings its own habits, and expects to exercise them freely in this free country. The vices of European laboring society have been imported with the virtues. The city electing its officials by suffrage modifies its usages and government in the direction of these new elements, and the foreigner soon picks up from his demagogues and the small newspapers published in his own language aggressive ideas, which some think are rapidly becoming a great defensive system, some day to plague the metropolis.

Whatever we native Americans think about the foreign methods of living in New York, those methods are as natural to the immigrants as it is for us to occupy a whole house. Indeed, the American in such cities as New York is becoming of necessity the imitator of the foreigner, because the rent of a whole establishment on that cramped island is out of the reach of any but the well employed and independently prosperous.

As this article may come to eyes which have never seen the great city, I will convey to you some slight notion of the structure of New York island. This island is made of gneiss rock, or hard granite, which apparently extended in ribs or ridges, sometimes depressed, sometimes high, and in places like islands, and between these ridges and islands sand and gravel have been deposited, so that when you come to lay out a street, to lay pipes under the street, or to excavate for a house, you may strike solid rock, or you may find quicksand, and therefore the cost of building on the island is greater than almost anywhere on the globe. Probably the steam drills employed to blast on New York island exceed in number all the steam drills in the entire United States. Most of our cities are built on clay or sandy soil, and a cellar can be excavated in two or three days, whereas I have seen building lots in New York, only a hundred feet by twenty to twenty-five feet wide, which took months, or indeed a whole building season, to get the rock out, and when the cellar is excavated it is like a great trough or hole made in solid stone. Naturally, a man who has been at such expense to start his house looks into the air for his recompense. With that solid foundation in the stone he has procured from the cellar he begins to build a tower instead of a house, and to let it out in floors, and for each of these floors he expects to receive higher rent than is elsewhere paid for a large and complete house.

A friend of mine who recently failed disastrously, showed me one of these new flat houses he had put up. It was three lots broad, each lot one hundred feet deep, making a front of seventy-five feet. Each of these lots he held to be worth $30,000, making $90,000 for the situation, though it was not on a fashionable street, but rather up a side street. He then raised one upon another seven apartments on each side of the entrance, and over the entrance were six bachelor apartments, each consisting of only one room, a bed alcove, and a bath closet. Consequently, there would be in such a building twenty tenants, of whom fourteen would be families. These fourteen paid from $1,800 to $1,300 apiece. Each had the same number of rooms, in the same space, the rents only being modified by the position of the floor. The lower floors of course rented higher than the upper floors. Generally speaking, each living place consisted of a parlor and a side room, either library or sitting room, a bath room, and a servant’s bath also, about three bed rooms, beside a servant’s bed room, a dining room, a kitchen, pantries and wardrobes. The only economy in such living lies in the reduction of the number of servants, and in the less expense of furnishing. The proprietor has to keep an engineer, an assistant engineer, a porter and assistant, and perhaps a housekeeper, and of course a watchman. Elevators front and rear accommodate the landlords and the servants. Such a building, exclusive of the ground, probably cost $150,000, and therefore it would be hard work to make ten per cent. upon it after paying salaries, taxes, etc. The bachelor apartments rented from $50 to $30 per month.

Now this stylish apartment house looks out at the rear upon a series of common tenement houses, where in old brick or frame buildings a dense mass of people look out of the back windows on their more aristocratic neighbors. These latter houses perhaps have a pole erected in the back yard which is as high as the house, and from every floor proceed to this pole clothes lines, attached there by pulleys, and whatever is washed is affixed to the line and run out by the pulley to dry. Most of the people in these back apartments live in one room, or at most in two, and there the good man arises in the morning, takes his early breakfast and goes out with his truck or dray, or hies him off to work and does not return again till night. The wife arises and sends the children off to school, and then she proceeds to wash or iron, or do other work, cooking her meals meantime, and supplying the children at noon, and the old man at night. Perhaps in that room or two live half a dozen people. They may even have a sub-tenant. There must be more or less exposure, more or less bad air, more or less indifference to the decencies of life, and yet it is surprising, on the whole, how much cleaner and better these people live than might be expected. This to some extent arises from the happy construction of the blocks in the new or uptown quarter of New York. Many of our American cities have deep blocks and alleys, or inferior streets, running up between them. The ground is too precious in New York to be sacrificed in such lanes, so the back yards touch each other, and the houses are built high stooped, the basement being the first story, and through the basement hall the slops, ashes, etc., are carried to the front street and there left for the scavenger and the ash-man to come and remove them. Consequently, each of these uptown blocks is one great court, open to the sun and to the sky. New York streets across town are only two hundred feet apart, and therefore the lots are of uniform depth.

The old Dutch city and its English successor in the lower part of the island covered a triangular space not a mile long, and about a mile wide. In the course of time Broadway was opened right up the center of this triangle, and streets called East Broadway and West Broadway were thrown in a course generally parallel to the two rivers, and the attempt was continued to make a more or less rectangular city, and finally, at the distance of more than two miles up, a real rectangular metropolis was secured by opening broad avenues, of which there are about twelve lengthwise of the whole island, and these are crossed by streets running in number up to 220th, and in the course of time in the annexed portion they will run to something like 300th Street. Although the city is thus expanded, business and population are very tenacious of the old and crowded situations. As it is impossible to draw the money and finance out of Wall Street, so it is next to impossible to alter the situation of the market houses, the railroad freight depots, the express offices, the steamboat piers, the ferries, and even the manufactories. As an immense portion of what is manufactured in New York is not sold to the people of the city, but for export, it remains a consideration to manufacture, prepare and pack goods down in the dense, lance-shaped point of the island. Consequently business, tenements, folly, manufactories, everything grow denser as you go down town, and the east side of the city is especially given up to the Germanic races. At that point there is a protuberance of the city into the East River, overlapping the city of Brooklyn, and the avenues here are not numbered, but being to the east of First Avenue they take the names of Avenues A, B, C and D.

Here you find the tenement houses in their glory. Grand Street is the great artery of that side of the town.

Fifty years ago there were but 200,000 inhabitants on this island; thirty-five years ago there were but 500,000; twenty-five years ago there were but 800,000 people; fifteen years ago there were 950,000. By the census of 1880 the population of the island was put down at over 1,200,000. It will not be far wrong to call it in general terms a million and a half. But the stable population of New York bears no comparison with its transient and daily population. It is immediately surrounded by two millions more of people who depend upon the city, and who can leave it at all hours of the night by ferries. It is the resort of sixty per cent. of all the ocean vessels in the country, with their crews. It contains the offices of nearly every corporation in the United States, all of which, after they have attained a certain stability or prominence, keep a commission house or branch office on New York island.

The morals of New York City are therefore to a great extent beyond the reach of mere administration, and have to be lenient according to the temptation and the concourse. Marriage itself is subordinate in such a hive, to society and necessity. The American elements of the population generally adhere to their traditions and decencies, but there is a native American generation in New York, begotten of foreign parents, which knows no other country than this, but is as different from Americans of the old time as we differ from the American Indians. From this secondary growth New York derives most of its mechanical, laboring, and artisan class. These, like their forefathers, adhere to the tenement house method of life. They do not understand the necessity of a whole house, which has to be furnished, cleaned and warmed, when they spend so much of the day and night elsewhere, either at work or pleasure. So does the American element, which goes from the country to New York, content itself with a room. As for the poor, as their families increase they have no resort but the tenement house.

The latest history of New York City says that 500,000 people in New York, or more than one-third, live in tenement houses, and that the densest blocks in London do not compare, in the number of inhabitants, with the same space in the dense quarters of New York. A single block is referred to on Avenue B, which has fifty-two tenement houses, the population of them amounting to nearly 2,400 persons. One single house in New York is said to have 1,500 inhabitants, and often a house with twenty-five feet front accommodates 100 souls. Of course height is the great point to give such area. If you enter New York and walk toward the east side through the streets which run so close together, but which are all happily of fair width, and all straight, you will see row after row of red brick houses, generally built to the height of five or six stories. In themselves they are rather neat to look at, except for the signs of population at every window, where on a hot and steaming day everybody seems to press to get the air. You can see the baby at the breast, the hunchback elder child, the man rolling cigars, the Chinaman washing, the woman running her sewing machine, the musician practicing on the bugle, the dentist, perhaps, filling teeth in a tenement house at modest rates to suit. You may also see some quiet old German smoking his pipe and reading science, unaware that anything is much worse than it generally is in the world. These houses have a common entrance below, sometimes in the middle, generally at the side. Through this entrance pours in and out the population going above; the stairways are generally narrow, the steps worn almost through, sometimes loungers and children are playing in the halls, and our fastidious habits are much shocked at the necessary familiarity engendered.

Yet it is to be remembered that as one’s day is, so is his strength, even in the matter of smells, and while there are tenement evils there are also tenement house virtues. The close sociability engenders another species of Christianity. The policeman is near at hand to correct any evils. While the summers are dreadfully hot, the winters are also long and cold, and the two things most needed in a tenement house are coal and sunlight.

The tenement house laws have been made at Albany by the landlords of these houses, many of whom are rapacious and merciless. Not a single day is given by law, I understand, to a tenant who does not pay the rent. The landlord is permitted to put his agent or constable in any apartment and set the things on the sidewalk, whatever may be the disaster or the disease within. Many of these tenement houses have been built up by the sales of liquor and beer, and probably the majority of our Irish saloon-keepers project a corner in which they do business into a tenement house above, and they both provide the rum and collect the rent. Possibly the men above stairs drink away their wages in the saloon below, while the women work at something to keep the rent up.

In some cases, especially among the more rural Irish, the shanty in the suburbs is substituted for tenement house life. As you walk along some of the newly filled streets, composed of great rocks which have been blasted in one spot to fill up another spot, you will look down into a former meadow, now a mere hole surrounded by four dungeon walls of stone, and there you will see three or four shanties pitched together on suffrance, made of old boards taken out of some fence or from dry goods boxes. Unaware of anybody being about, you can sit there and hear the whole domestic menage going on; see Patrick, very drunk, sociably quarreling with his wife, who is not far behind him in her potations. They perhaps keep a cow somewhere down there under the planks, and this cow is being milked more or less all the time, and if the milk can not be sold it helps to support the life of the squatters.

Again, you will go into some far quarter of this island, many miles from the business centers, and to your surprise you will there find another species of tenement house, showing that this system of herding together and economizing room is the fate of this city at least. There seems to be no future for the tenement house system. The laws passed by our state legislature with reference to this city are more apt to be in favor of the tenement house proprietor than of the tenant. The tenants hardly know where the legislature is, while the tenement house owner is informed by his lawyer or lobbyist of what is going on. As far as philanthropy goes, it despairs of accomplishing anything in the midst of such a dense population. Of course, when things become outrageous, the police report them to the Board of Health, or the tenants take the law into their own hands.

This gregarious life leads to great independence of character among the women; the average survivor of the tenement house is no puny, frightened creature, but a very active animal, ready to scratch, retort, appeal to law, and loves and marries as she wishes. There is some natural deviation from virtue, as from cleanliness, yet the recuperative principle in women, as in men, is at least redeeming, and it is to be doubted whether the vices in the tenement houses exceed those in the fashionable streets.

It is believed here that the worst class of people New York possesses are the Bohemians from northern Austria. This degraded race was at one time, or until the emperors destroyed it politically, the repository of most of the vices of Europe. Among the Bohemians you find the domestic virtues at the lowest ebb, and socialism at its lewdest. A manufacturer was recently telling me of two Bohemians in his employment who grew weary of their wives, and without any other marriage, and without quarrel, they agreed, men and women, to change partners, and continue to live and work together. At a recent strike of cigar makers in this city, a working woman who stripped tobacco was set upon by three men and knocked down because she preferred to take lower wages rather than keep idle and support some of the demagogue patrols.

New York, however, has no such dens to-day as it had forty years ago, when the Five Points was in the height of its orgies. Through that old swampy quarter of the city broad streets have been cut, and manufactories have been established. I have my doubts whether, at this moment, the worst features of New York’s population are not to be found in some of the rougher suburbs off the island. The draft riots of 1863 assisted the peace and order of New York by bringing about a collision between the very bad elements and the law. The police, who are generally hated by the vicious as the visible representatives of the law, received from that moment a degree of discipline which has ever since been kept up, and the militia regiments of New York City have been provided with large armories, and are in a fair state of discipline.

Of course, in such a rank soil as this island, the gentler virtues do not grow, but my observation of some rural districts, many hundred miles from this city, is that they are far below the tenement house quarter in intelligence, and not above it in morals. The matter of virtue is to a large extent involved in the race; it will take a long time to debauch, utterly, people descended from the British and Germanic races. Fortunately, we have not had much immigration from the south of Europe, but the Italian quarter is attracting some attention, as possibly the worst we possess. The Chinese in New York are self-reliant, and a good many of them have shown a decided bias to be Christianized. I lived near a church, two or three years ago, where I one day observed a large number of Chinese, and glancing up at the church I saw that it was a Baptist one. On inquiry I found that a Chinaman who attended the Sunday-school of that church had been murdered by some semi-American roughs, and his classmates had come to pay the last honors to him. Like Americans, they came in cabs, and came filing out of that church quiet, uncomplaining, injured specimens of our common brotherhood.

Legally, a tenement house in New York is one house occupied by more than three families living independently of each other, and doing their cooking on the premises. All tenement houses are compelled to have fire-escapes built outside of the house, of iron. There is one quarter of New York City where 300,000 persons are said to live on a square mile. Observers now say that not one-third, but one-half of the population of New York City lives on the tenement house plan.

A superficial observer here would think that the greatest misery on the globe was to be found in this tenement house quarter, yet I think that much of this sympathy will be thrown away, because in the large majority of cases the people who live under this system would not exchange it for any other.

THE CAÑONS OF THE COLORADO.

A lecture delivered on Saturday, April 26, in the National Museum, Washington, D. C., by Major J. W. Powell, Director of the U. S. Geological Survey.

The lecturer at the outset stated that the valley of the Columbia River might be divided into two portions; the lower third lying but little above the sea level, the other two-thirds of the valley area drained by the Colorado and its tributaries being five to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea.

On the summit and sides of the mountain were thousands of lakes of clear water, which received their supply from the masses of snow which are collecting throughout the winter on the mountain ranges, filling the gorges and half burying the forests. In summer the snow melted and poured down the mountain sides in millions of cascades, eventually forming the Colorado River, which grew into a mad torrent ere it reached the Gulf of California. Eventful indeed would be the history of these waters if traced from their starting point. Some of these streams ran across arid plateaus, being fed in their course by intermittent showers. Each year their channels became deeper and deeper, cutting their way out of solid rock. Every river, brook, creek and rill ran into a cañon, so that these vast areas were traversed by a labyrinth of deep gorges hewn out of the rock by the ever-flowing streams. If the Colorado plateau had been in such a country as the District of Columbia, the land lying adjacent to the river courses would have been washed down by the rains and streams, and instead of cañons there would now be a broad system of valleys. It was an error to regard that Colorado plateau as a region of great erosion or degradation. It was a vast system of cañons, caused by the water eating its way through the hard rock, with lofty stone walls on either side.

Major Powell said that in 1867 and 1868 he had explored the Grand River and other tributaries of the Colorado, and these expeditions thrilled him with a desire to explore the vast cañons of the Colorado River itself. Accordingly in May, 1869, he started for this purpose with a small party of men and four boats from a point a few miles below where now the Union and Pacific Railroad crosses Yukon River. The first forty or fifty miles of their course was through low cañons, cut through the green and alcove lands of that region. Their course was southward. As they descended the river, a mountain seemed to stand athwart their path, and into this mountain the river penetrated. They followed around the base for a hundred miles or so, meeting the river beyond. Now, why had not the river flowed round the mountain instead of cutting its way through? The answer was exceedingly simple. Because the river was there before the mountain, and had the right of way, keeping steadfastly on its southward course, across which the lands had been gradually elevated. These land upheavals had taken place very slowly, enabling the river to force its passage as the land rose inch by inch.

At last they reached the junction of the Grand and the Green rivers—the head of the Colorado River—some three thousand feet below the general surface of the country. At that point the cañon was about three thousand feet in depth. One of the boats had been lost, and one of the men had left them before reaching this point. The walls of the cañon here were about half a mile high. One of these they determined to scale at a point a little below their camp, where there was a gorge—a natural break in the wall. Half way up further progress seemed impossible, but by crawling round a narrow ledge of rock they were enabled to resume their toilsome climb. From this point they could see the river fifteen hundred feet below them, wildly rushing and tossing, and at the same distance above them was the cañon’s brink that seemed to blend with the sky. Again the wall was found to have broken down, but by crawling up a fissure so narrow that they could press against the hinder side with their backs, while forcing with hands and feet their steep and dangerous path upward, they finally emerged into the upper world, where they could look out at the broad expanse of landscape. Away to the north were orange and azure cliffs, two and three thousand feet high; to the west were the Wasatch Mountains, and a plateau with a hundred dead volcanoes on its back, while to the east was another group of dead volcanoes. Thirty or forty miles away in the same direction were seen forests of green and masses of gray volcanic rock clothed with patches of snow; green, gray and silver, resplendent in that noon-day sun. To the south was a labyrinth of cañons.

On the following day they commenced the exploration of the Colorado River. From this starting point it was about seven hundred miles to the foot of the Grand Cañon. Through the entire series of cañons the river tumbled down more than 5,000 feet. The lecturer here stated that the fall of the Mississippi from Cairo down was about four inches to the mile, and of the Ohio some eight inches, and that the Colorado carried about as much water as the Ohio at Louisville. In some places the river was wide, and here its fall did not exceed that of the Ohio or Upper Mississippi. The fall in Marble Cañon, however, was from ten to three hundred feet to the mile! The boats, with the exception of the one in which he and Major Powell traveled, were about twenty-two feet long and decked, so that there were three water-tight compartments in each boat. His boat, in which were two other men, was only sixteen feet in length. This led the way, while the other boats, laden with provisions, etc., followed. The roar of the water in the cañon could be heard a long way off. The chief difficulty in navigating was riding the waves, which differed greatly from that of the sea. In the case of the latter the water remained, simply rising and falling, while the form alone rolled on; but in the former the water of the wave rolled on, the form being fixed. As long as the boat could be kept on the waves, all was well, but the great tendency was to drift into the whirlpool in the center. Three miles below the junction of the Grand and the Green rivers appeared a series of rapids and falls, and nearly two weeks were spent in running through this difficult portion of the river. Having passed through Cataract Cañon, they encountered Narrow Cañon, where the river for seven miles rushed down a steep declivity. Seven miles again below a stream came in on the right side. Up this the leading boat went, and one of the men, in reply to a query from another in one of the boats following, as to the nature of the water in this new stream, called out, “A dirty devil,” and by that name it was designated on the maps. It was a stream of red mud, having along its course hot mineral springs. The odor was fetid and foul, resembling, as the lecturer graphically described it, “One of those alabaster boxes of ointment with which they used to anoint abolitionists in the brazen days of yore.” Below Narrow Cañon was Glen Cañon, stretching for a hundred and fifty miles through homogeneous sandstone of a beautiful color, its walls often perpendicular and indented with glens, alcoves and caves. The latter were formed by the rain-showers running down the sides of the wall, and slowly eating them away. At the foot of the homogeneous sandstone was a soft, friable, crumbling sandstone, and through this the river had cut some fifty miles of its course. In the next cañon—Marble Cañon—was a series of cataracts and rapids which made progress very difficult. Here the falls were too steep to be “run,” and the boats were therefore let down by a line. First one was lowered, then the second passed down to and beyond the first, and then the third past the first and second.

When these falls had been passed, they found themselves at the head of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, which was about two hundred and seventy miles long, varying from five to six thousand feet in depth. Here they stopped several days to examine the cañon before entering it. Where the rocks were sandstone the river was comparatively quiet, but where limestone prevailed it presented a much more threatening appearance. In some places the river was very narrow, the entire volume of water being compressed into a width of not more than fifty feet. For a distance of twenty or thirty miles a curious set of buttresses stood out from the wall of the cañon, and between each two of these was a bay where the waters would sweep around seething and boiling. Sometimes lofty pinnacles of rock rose from the river’s bed, past which the boats darted with fearful rapidity. Many days were spent in traversing this part of the cañon. The weather was gloomy and much rain fell in showers, which in that region had a very different effect from those which fall in our own districts. There every drop was precipitated—as it were—into one vast rain trough, soon causing the waters to swell. At first was heard in the distance the patter of the drops on the rocks; then came the noise caused by the rills and brooks hurrying their streams to the main river, and louder yet the larger creeks and rivulets hurled their foaming waters, soon swelling the river itself into a furious and maddening torrent. The black clouds overhead appeared to be miles above them, mingling with the very skies. Through this dark cañon they worked their way, examining the rocks, toiling from daylight to dark. They were now living on half rations, as the supplies of food were fast decreasing. Suddenly was seen a fearful rapid, only three or four hundred yards below. A landing was effected and the camp pitched on a projecting rock some fifty feet above the water. The boats had to be hauled up out of the way of the torrent. In continuing the journey on the following morning, great difficulty was experienced in rounding this rock. The boats were pitched almost against it, and instantly rebounded on the retiring water. A few days later Diamond Cañon was reached. Here two streams came in, one from either side. A fearful “fall” was in sight, which, after long and careful consideration, it was determined to “run.” Here three of the men grew faint-hearted and left the party. It was afterward learned that they had fallen in with Indians and been killed.

The anxiety attending the resolution to “run” this “fall” was fearful. The lecturer said that he paced up and down a little sand-plot all night without sleeping or resting. In the morning rations were given to the deserters, who determined to watch the fate of the rest of the party. The “run” was successfully made, and it was hoped that the other three would then be induced to follow. This, however, they would not do. On the next day the most difficult point in the entire journey was reached, owing to obstructions caused by lava rocks. In one place a dam was found, the waters rushing over in a cataract. This it was also decided to “run,” on the right hand side. The decision was however reversed when the fearful danger of the attempt was realized. But already one of the boats had been let down to the very head of the fall, where the men were attempting to hold it by winding the rope around a great block of lava. There was one man who had been a whaler—named Bradley—in the boat. The roar of the waters was so deafening that no voice could be heard. At length he was seen to take out his knife with perfect composure, and in an instant he cut the rope, knowing that otherwise the boat would have been dashed to pieces by striking heavily against the wall of the cañon. A moment later, and he and the boat were hurled over the cataract, probably never to be seen again. But a few moments later he appeared a few hundred yards below, waving his hand. All haste was made to reach him, fearing he might be severely bruised, but in the hurry to reach him one of the party (the lecturer) fell overboard and was picked up by this invulnerable old whaler.

On the next day the foot of the Grand Cañon was reached. Thence they went to Virgin River, and from that point to Salt Lake, after which they hastened home.

In conclusion, the lecturer said that if all the sands that had been eroded by the rivers of that region, and washed into the ocean, could be brought into one mass, they would form a rock one mile and a half thick, and bigger than New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania put together.

THE COURTS OF THREE PRESIDENTS.

THIERS, MACMAHON, GRÉVY.

We all read in the newspapers how, on the day when the Duke of Albany’s lamentable death occurred, M. Jules Ferry, the French Prime Minister and Secretary for Foreign Affairs, gave a dinner party. An Englishman having expressed astonishment that this dinner had not been put off, a Frenchman answered by asking whether Lord Granville would countermand a banquet in case M. Wilson, M. Grévy’s son-in-law, were to die? Our countryman seems to have concluded that Lord Granville would not let his hospitalities be interfered with by M. Wilson’s decease; and perhaps he was right. M. Daniel Wilson holds more effective power than was ever possessed by a Dauphin of France; but his father-in-law is only the chief of a government, not the head of a court, and M. Wilson’s existence has therefore never been brought officially to the cognizance of foreign rulers. It does not follow, however, that because M. Wilson is a private person, the French government is bound to look upon the relations of foreign monarchs as being exactly in the same position as this gentleman. It is more than probable that if Marshal MacMahon were still president, the foreign secretary would not have given a dinner on the day when a child of the Queen of England had died suddenly on French soil. It is equally probable that there would have been no such dinner if M. Thiers or M. Gambetta had been president.

Presidents are not all alike. In their views as to the functions of a republic—in their opinions as to the amount of authority which a republican ruler may exercise over his ministers, as to the more or less pomp in which he should live, as to the etiquette which he should enforce, and as to the relations which he should personally maintain with the rulers of other countries, M. Grévy and his predecessors have all differed from one another. The three presidents who have governed France since 1871 have in fact been so dissimilar in their characters, tastes, principles, and objects, that it is really curious to compare their various methods of living and ruling.

M. Thiers was seventy-four years old when he became supreme ruler of France, after the siege of Paris. After the first vote of the Assembly, which appointed him chief of the executive, M. Thiers took up his residence at the Préfecture, in the apartments which M. Gambetta had vacated.

“Pah! what a smell of tobacco!” he exclaimed, when he strutted into the ex-dictator’s study; and presently Madame Thiers, her sister Mdlle. Dosne, and the solemn M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, added their lamentations to his. They had been going the round of the house, and found all the rooms tenanted by hangers-on of M. Gambetta’s government, who had not yet received notice to quit, and who hoped perhaps that they might retain their posts under the new administration. All these gentlemen smoked, read radical newspapers, refreshed themselves with absinthe, or beer, while transacting the business of the state; and played billiards in their leisure moments. They were dismissed in a pack before the day was over; but Madame Thiers decided that it would require several days to set the house straight; and so M. Thiers’ removal to the Archbishop’s palace, where Monseigneur Guibert (now Cardinal), whom he afterward raised to the see of Paris, offered him hospitality. M. Thiers would, no doubt, have liked very much to sleep in Louis XIV.’s bed, and to have for his study that fine room with the balcony, on which the heralds used to announce the death of one king and the accession of another in the same breath. His secretary and faithful admirer, M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, went about saying that it was fitting the “national historian” should be lodged in the apartments of the greatest of the kings; but this idea did not make its way at all. M. Thiers ended by saying that the rooms were too large, while Madame Thiers despised them for being full of draughts and having chimneys which smoked. Nevertheless, M. Thiers was nettled at seeing that the Republicans objected quite as much as the Royalists to see him occupy the royal apartments. “Stupid fellows!” he exclaimed on seeing a caricature which represented him as a ridiculous pigmy, crowned with a cotton nightcap, and lying in an enormous bed surrounded by the majestic ghosts of the Bourbon kings. Then half-angry, half-amused, he ejaculated with his usual vivacity: “Louis XIV. was not taller than I, and as to his other greatness I doubt whether he would ever have had a chance of sleeping in the best bed of Versailles if he had begun life as I did.” Shortly after this, M. Mignet meeting Victor Hugo spoke to him in a deprecating way about the fuss which had been made over this question of the royal apartments. “I don’t know,” answered the poet. “Ideas of dictatorship would be likely to sprout under that tester.” This was reported to Thiers, who at once cried: “I like that! If Victor Hugo were in my place, he would sleep in the king’s bed, but he would think the dais too low, and have it raised.”

It was quite impossible for Thiers to submit to any of the restraints of etiquette. He was a bourgeois to the finger-tips. His character was a curious effervescing mixture of talent, learning, vanity, childish petulance, inquisitiveness, sagacity, ecstatic patriotism, and self-seeking ambition. He was a splendid orator, with the shrill voice of an old costerwoman; a savant, with the presumption of a schoolboy; a kind-hearted man, with the irritability of a monkey; a masterly administrator, with that irrepressible tendency to meddle with everything, which worries subordinates, and makes good administration impossible. He was a shrewd judge of men, and knew well how they were to be handled, but his impatience prevented him from acting up to his knowledge. He had a sincere love of liberty, with all the instincts of a despot. He was most charming with women, understood their power, and yet took so little account of it in his serious calculations that he often offended, by his Napoleonic brusqueness, ladies who were in a position to do him harm, and did it.

M. Feuillet de Conches had to give up M. Thiers as hopeless. What was to be done with a president who, at a ceremonious dinner to Ambassadors and Ministers, would get up from table after the first course and walk round the room, discussing politics, pictures, the art of war, or the dishes on the menu? Mr. Thiers’ own dinner always consisted of a little clear soup, a plate of roast meat—veal was that which he preferred—some white beans, peas, or lentils, and a glass saucer of jam—generally apricot. He got through this repast, with two glasses of Bordeaux, in about a quarter of an hour, and then would grow fidgety. “Is that good that you are eating?” he would say to one of his guests, and thence start off on to a disquisition about cookery. Telegrams were brought to him at table, and he would open them, saying, “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but the affairs of France must pass before everything.” If he got disquieting news he would sit pensive for a few moments, then call for a sheet of paper and scribble off instructions to somebody, whispering directions to his major-domo about the destination of the missive.

But if he received glad tidings, he would start from his chair and frisk about, making jokes, his bright gray eyes twinkling merrily as lamps through his gold-rimmed spectacles. After dinner there was always a discussion, coram hospitibus, between him and Madame Thiers as to whether he might take some black coffee. Permission to excite his nerves being invariably refused, he would wink, laughing, to his friends, to call their attention to the state of uxorious bondage in which he lived, and then retire to a high arm-chair near the fire, where he soon dropped off to sleep. Upon this, Madame Thiers would lay a forefinger on her lips, saying, “Monsieur Thiers sleeps;” and with the help of her sister she would clear the guests into the next room, where they conversed in whispers while the President dozed—a droll little figure with his chin resting on the broad red ribbon of his Legion of Honor, and his short legs dangling about an inch above the floor. It was always very touching to see the care with which M. Thiers’ wife and sister-in-law ministered to him. The story has been often told of how M. Thiers having been forbidden by doctors to eat his favorite Provençal dish of fish cooked with garlic, M. Mignet, the historian, used to smuggle some of this mess enclosed in a tin box into his friend’s study, and what a pretty scene there was one day when Madame Thiers detected these two countrymen enjoying the contraband dainty together.

M. Thiers had naturally a great notion of his dignity as president of the republic, and he was anxious to appear impressively on all state occasions; but the arrangements made to hedge him about with majesty were always being disconcerted by his doing whatever it came into his head to do. His servants were dressed in black, and he had a major-domo who wore a silver chain and tried to usher morning visitors into the president’s room in the order of their rank; but every now and then M. Thiers used to pop out of his room, take stock of his visitors for himself, and make his choice of those whom he wished to see first. Then the most astonishing and uncourtly dialogues would ensue:

“Monsieur le Président, this is the third time I have come here, and I have waited two hours each time.”

“My friend, if you had come to see me about the affairs of France, and not about your own business, we should have had a conversation long ago.”

Precedence was always given by M. Thiers to journalists, however obscure they might be. Ambassadors had to wait while these favored ones walked in. A journalist himself, the quondam leader-writer of the National extended the most generous recognition to the brethren of his craft, but he also did this because he was wide awake to the power of the press, and had generally some service to ask of those whom he addressed as “my dear companions.” He had such a facility for writing that when a journalist came to him “for inspiration” he would often sit down and dash off in a quarter of an hour the essential paragraph of a leader which he wished to see inserted. At the time of the Paris election of April, 1873, when his friend the Comte de Rémusat, then foreign secretary, was the Government candidate with the insignificant M. Barodet opposing him, a writer on the Figaro called at the Elysée and M. Thiers wrote a whole article of a column’s length for him. It was printed as a letter in leaded type with the signature “An old citizen of Paris;” and a very sprightly letter it was, which put the issue lying between M. de Rémusat and his radical adversary in the clearest light. However, the electors of Paris acted with their usual foolishness in preferring an upstart to a man of note, and within a month of this M. Thiers resigned in disgust.

Marshal MacMahon accepted the presidency without any desire to retain it. If anything seemed certain at the time of his accession, it was that Legitimists and Orleanists would soon patch up their differences and that a vote of the Assembly would offer the crown to Henri V. The Ministry formed under the auspices of the Duc de Broglie labored to bring about this consummation, and the Marshal was prepared to enforce the decrees of the Assembly whatever they might be. At the same time he established his household at once on a semi-royal footing, as though he intended there should be at least a temporary court to remind French noblemen of old times, and to give them a foretaste of the pomps that were coming. M. Thiers had been a bourgeois president; the Marshal-Duke of Magenta was a grand seigneur. Under Madame Thiers’ frugal management the £36,000 a year allowed to the president sufficed amply to cover all expenses; under the Duchess de Magenta’s management the presidential income did not go half way toward defraying outlay. The Marshal had a comfortable private fortune (not equal to M. Thiers’), but he was only enabled to hold such high estate in his office by means of the assistance pressed upon him by wealthy relatives.

The first signs of returning splendor at the Elysée were seen in the liveries of the new president’s servants. Instead of black they wore gray and silver, with scarlet plush, hair powder, and on gala occasions wigs. M. Thiers, when he went to a public ceremony, drove in a substantial landau, with mounted escort of the Republican Guard, and his friends—he never called them a suite—followed behind in vehicles according to their liking or means. Marshal MacMahon with the Duchess and their suite were always enough to fill three dashing landaus. These were painted in three or four shades of green, and lined with pearl gray satin; each would be drawn by four grays with postilions in gray jackets and red velvet caps; and the whole cavalcade was preceded and followed by outriders. Going to reviews, however, the Marshal of course rode, and this enabled him to make a grand display with his staff of aides de camp. M. Thiers had a military household of which his cousin General Charlemagne was the head; but this warrior never had much to do, and it was no part of his business to receive visitors. Anybody who had business with M. Thiers could see him without a letter of audience by simply sending up a card to M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire. Marshal MacMahon, on the contrary, was as inaccessible as any king. Visitors to the Elysée in his time were passed from one resplendent officer to another till they entered the smiling presence of Vicomte Emmanuel d’Harcourt, the President’s secretary, and this was the ne plus ultra. Against journalists in particular the Marshal’s doors were inexorably locked. So far as a man of his good-natured temper could be said to hate anybody, the Duke of Magenta hated persons connected with the press. For all that, he did not object altogether to newspaper tattle, for whilst he read the Journal des Débats every evening from a feeling of duty, he perused the Figaro every morning for his own pleasure.

The sumptuous ordinance of Marshal MacMahon’s household was rendered necessary in a manner by the Shah of Persia’s visit to Paris in 1873. It is a pity that M. Thiers was not in office when this constellated savage came to ravish the courts of civilized Europe by his diamonds and his haughtily brutish manners, for it would have been curious to see the little man instructing the Shah, through an interpreter, as to Persian history or the etymology of Oriental languages. In the Marshal, however, Nasr-ed-Din found a host who exhibited just the right sort of dignity; and all the hospitalities given to the Shah both at Versailles and Paris—the torchlight procession of soldiers, the gala performance at the opera, the banquet at the Galerie des Glaces—were carried out on a scale that could not have been excelled if there had been an emperor on the throne. In the course of the banquet at Versailles the Shah turned to the Duchess of Magenta and asked her in a few words of French, which he must have carefully rehearsed beforehand, why her husband did not set up as emperor. The Duchess parried the question with a smile; but perhaps the idea was not so far from her thoughts as she would have had people imagine.

It was a really comical freak of fortune that brought M. Jules Grévy to succeed Marshal MacMahon. The story goes that during the street fighting of the Revolution of 1830, a law-student was kicked by one of the king’s officers, for tearing down a copy of the ordinances placarded on a wall. The officer was armed, the student was not; so the latter ran away and lived to fight another day. For the officer, as it is said, was Patrice de MacMahon, and the law-student Jules Grévy. M. Grévy is a man of talent and great moral courage, but he owes his rise to an uncommon faculty for holding his tongue at the right moment. “I kept silent, and it was grief to me,” says the Psalmist. M. Grévy may have felt like other people at times, an almost incomparable longing to say foolish things; but having bridled his tongue he was accounted wiser than many who had spoken wisely. Under the empire he practiced at the bar, continued to make money, was elected in his turn bâtonnier, or chief bencher as we might say, to the Order of Advocates, and in 1868 was returned to the Corps Législatif by his old electors of the Jura—in which department he had by this time acquired a pretty large landed estate. A neat, creaseless sort of man, with a bald head, a shaven chin and closely-trimmed whiskers, he looked eminently respectable. The only reprehensible things about him were his hat and his hands. He always wore a wide-awake instead of the orthodox chimney-pot, and he eschewed gloves. If his hands were cold he put them into the pockets of his pantaloons. Some pretended to descry astuteness in this contempt for the usages of civilized man, for the wide-awake is more of a radical head-dress than a silk hat. But it never occurred to M. Grévy at any time since he first achieved success, to regulate his apparel, general conduct, or words, in view of pleasing the Radicals.

The Assembly elected after the war at once chose M. Grévy for its speaker, and he took up his abode in the Royal Palace, from which party jealousies had debarred M. Thiers. But he did not alter his manner of life one whit on that account. In Paris and Versailles he was to be seen sauntering about the streets looking in at shop windows, dining in restaurants, or sitting outside a café smoking a cigar and sipping iced coffee out of a glass. He had a brougham, but would only use it when obliged to go long distances. It often happened that setting out for a drive he would alight from his carriage and order his coachman to follow, and for hours the puzzled and disgusted coachman would drive at a walking pace behind his indefatigable master, who took easy strides as if he were not in the slightest hurry.

There is one point of resemblance between M. Grévy and the Marshal, for M. Grévy is a keen sportsman; but in most other things the two differ, though in sum M. Grévy differs more from M. Thiers than he does from the Marshal. His manner of living at the Elysée is dignified without ostentation. His servants do not wear gray and scarlet liveries; but the arrangements of his household are more orderly than those of M. Thiers could ever be. His servants in black know well how to keep intruders at a distance. No mob of journalists, inventors and place hunters calls to see M. Grévy in the morning. On the other hand, three or four times a week a great number of deputies, artists, journalists and officers may be seen going into the Elysée as freely as if they were entering a club. They do not ask to see the President or the latter’s secretary, M. Fourneret, but they make straight for a magnificent room on the ground floor overlooking the garden, which has been converted into a fencing saloon, and there they find M. Daniel Wilson, le fils de la maison. All these habitués, who form the court of the Third Republic, keep their masks, foils and flannels at the Elysée, and set to work fencing with each other as if they were at Gâtechair’s or Paz’s. Presently a door opens and the President walks in. For a moment the fencing stops, the combatants all turn and salute with their foils, whilst the visitors stand up. But, with a pleasant smile and a wave of the hand, M. Grévy bids the jousters to go on, and then he walks round the room, saying something to everybody, and inviting about half a dozen of the guests to stay to breakfast.

M. Grévy has allowed his beard to grow of late, and he is almost always attired in evening clothes, with the moiré edge of his scarlet cordon peeping over his waistcoat. But for the rest he is the same unassuming man as ever, and he takes life very easily. Now and then the Cabinet meets at the Elysée in the Salle des Souverains, and he presides over it. It is worth observing that in this Salle there are the portraits of a dozen sovereigns of the nineteenth century, including Queen Victoria, but not a symbol of any kind to remind one that it is a Republican Government that sits in this room. Even the master of the house has more in him of the Constitutional Monarch than of the President. The Constitution has conferred upon him large powers which he never uses; he seems to keep his eye on the portrait of the English Queen whilst his ministers discourse. Whatever papers are offered for his signature he signs, and then it is Bon jour, Messieurs; au revoir; and while the ministers disperse the President makes his way to his private apartments, where he finds his daughter and his grandchild, in whose company he sometimes takes more delight than in that of statesmen.

Now and then there is a dinner at the Elysée, twice a week at least there are evening receptions, and about twice in the winter there are grand balls. On all these occasions everything is done in the best possible style, and the President discharges his functions of host with a serenity which disarms all criticism. He says nothing much to anybody, but he is the same to all. If by chance he falls into deep conversation with any particular guest, nobody need suspect that state matters are being discussed. The probabilities are that the President will be talking about the next performance of his new breechloader at Mont-sous-Vaudrey. Moreover, what makes M. Grévy more puzzling and interesting at once to those who behold him so simple in his palace, is the knowledge which all have, that when his time comes for leaving the Elysée he will walk out of it as coolly as he went in, without wishing that his tenancy had been longer, and certainly without doing anything to prolong it. His only anxiety will be to see that his gun-case suffer no damage at the door.—Abridged from Temple Bar.

Thus God has willed

That man when fully skilled

Still gropes in twilight dim,

Encompassed all his hours

By fearfullest powers

Inflexible to him.

That so he may discern

His feebleness,

And e’en for earth’s success

To Him in wisdom turn,

Who holds for us the keys of either home,

Earth and the world to come.

—Cardinal Newman.

ASTRONOMY OF THE HEAVENS.

By Prof. M. B. GOFF.

FOR JULY.

THE SUN.

We now enter upon what is usually called the “heated term,” in earnest. The “Dog Days” are upon us, that is, we say they are; but the statement is a somewhat doubtful one. We have the story that the ancients regarded the Dog Star, Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major, as the source of “unnumbered woes,” because it rose a short time before the sun about the season of their year that the hot weather set in, and diseases incident to their climate more than usually prevailed. It is said that they estimated this period as continuing for the space of forty consecutive days, beginning twenty days before, and continuing twenty days after what was called the heliacal (that is, rising just long enough before the sun to be visible) rising of the Dog Star. Now, the difficulty we moderns find in fixing the limits of these days is this: The heliacal rising of the star for any one place can readily be found; but when determined for one place, it would not suit for another in a different latitude. Besides, the right ascension of Sirius, on account of the precession of the equinoxes, is constantly increasing, and hence for the same place these days fall later each year, in the course of time occurring even in mid-winter. Almanac makers, when they notice them at all, seem to take the liberty of treating them to suit their own convenience. For example, one of this year’s publications announces that “Dog Days” begin on the 21st of July, and end on the 30th of August, making, as we see by including one extreme date, altogether the forty days claimed by the ancients. But in this latitude, on the former date, the star rises at 5:43 a. m., one hour and five minutes after, and on the latter date at 3:06 a. m., two hours and twenty minutes before sunrise. Others fix the time from July 3rd to August 11th (forty days), without any respect to the rising of Sirius, which on the former date appears above our horizon at 6:51 a. m., or two hours and seventeen minutes after, and on the latter date at 4:18 a. m., forty-nine minutes before sunrise. Others, again, making an effort, we presume, to adapt them to our climate, regard them as continuing only thirty-two days, namely, from July 24th to August 24th. Taking it all in all, we may as well leave them to the Egyptians and Ethiopians, among whom the ideas in regard to them seem to have originated, as a superstition of the past ages, taking our “heated term” at its usual time, July and August, and throwing our “Dog Days,” as some do physic, “to the dogs.”

Whether we account for it by the extreme heat or not, it is nevertheless a fact that the sun lags along behind our clocks during this entire month; on the 1st, not reaching the meridian till 12:03:41 p. m.; on the 15th till 12:05:44 p. m., and on the 30th till six minutes and nine seconds after noon. The time of the sun’s rising on the 1st, 15th and 30th, is 4:33, 4:43 and 4:56 a. m.; and the time of setting on the same dates is 7:34, 7:29 and 7:17 p. m., respectively. The 30th day of this month will be about forty minutes shorter than the 1st, the latter being fifteen hours one minute, and the former fourteen hours and twenty-one minutes in length. The time from daybreak to the end of twilight is, on the 1st, 19 hours 24 minutes. Sun is due west on the 30th at 5:29 p. m. Its greatest elevation above the horizon in latitude 41° 30′, is 71° 33⅔′.

THE MOON

Exhibits the following phases: Full moon, 5:02 a. m. on the 8th; last quarter, 4:30 p. m. on the 15th; new moon, 7:46 a. m. on the 22nd; first quarter on the 29th, at 4:53 p. m. On the 1st it sets at 12:11 a. m., and on the 30th, at 11:51 p. m. On the 15th, rises at 11:32 p. m. On the 4th, at 7:54 a. m., and again on the 31st at 11:00 p. m. it is at its maximum distance from the earth. On the 20th, at 1:36 a. m. is nearest the earth. Its greatest elevation, equal 67° 13⅔′, occurs on the 19th; and its least elevation, amounting to 29° 42⅔′ on the 5th.

MERCURY.

This planet will be morning star till the 13th, after which it will be evening star till the end of the month. It rises on the 1st at 3:41 a. m.; sets on the 15th at 7:41 p. m., and on the 30th at 8:07 p. m., on which latter date it is possibly visible to the naked eye. Its motion during the month is direct, and amounts to 62° 30′ 31.5″. On the 17th at 6:00 a. m. it is nearest the sun; on the 12th at 1:00 a. m., 6° 20′ north of Venus; on the same date, at midnight, is in superior conjunction with the sun; that is, it is in a line with the earth and sun, and in the order, Earth, Sun, Mercury; on the 23rd, at 3:00 a. m., 1° 10′ north of Jupiter; and on the 23rd, at 7:05 a. m., 6° 30′ north of the moon. Diameter decreases from 5.6″ to 5.4″.

VENUS.

A view of Venus during this month through a telescope of moderate power would be an interesting sight, since she now presents the appearance of our moon in its first or last quarter, and thus seems quite different from the simple star that is visible to the naked eye. She will be evening star till the 11th, at which time she reaches her inferior conjunction, that is, reaches a point directly between the earth and the sun; after which she will be morning star, not only to the end of this month, but for several successive months. Of course, for a number of days both before and after conjunction, she will, on account of her proximity to the sun, be invisible. We shall miss her “beaming countenance,” but we know that she will appear again. On the 1st she sets at 8:14 p. m., and rises on the 15th at 4:38 a. m., and on the 30th at 3:17 a. m. On the 21st at 6:28 a. m. she is 1° 11′ south of the moon; and on the 29th at 11:00 a. m., farthest from the sun.

MARS

Has from the 1st to 30th a direct motion of 15° 36′ 32″, and although much reduced in apparent diameter, is still quite a prominent object in the evening sky, following westward in the wake of Jupiter. His diameter decreases from 5.6″ to 5.2″. He rises in the forenoon, and sets as follows, in the evening: On the 1st at 10:47; on the 15th at 10:11; and on the 30th at 9:31. On the 26th at 5:04 p. m. he is 2° 5′ north of the moon.

JUPITER

Will be evening star throughout the entire month, though at its close approaching so near the sun as to be scarcely visible. He sets at the following times: On the 1st at 9:08; on the 15th at 8:22; and on the 30th at 7:33 p. m. His motion is direct, and amounts from the 1st to the 30th, to 6° 17′ 55″. Diameter decreases from 30.2″ to 29.6″. On the 23rd, at 3:00 a. m. is 1° 10′ south of Mercury; and on the same day at 6:34 a. m. is 5° 21′ north of the moon.

SATURN.

This planet is now one of our morning stars, rising on the 1st at 3:06, on the 15th at 2:17, and on the 30th at 1:25 a. m. Motion direct, amounting to 3° 32′ 30¾″. Diameter increases from 15.6″ to 16.2″. On the 19th, at 1:01 p. m. is 3° 2′ north of the moon.

URANUS,

Whose direct motion during the month is estimated at 1° 3′ 26″, continues its role as evening star, setting at the following times: On the 1st at 11:10; on the 15th at 10:16; and on the 30th at 9:17 p. m. On the date last named, Beta Virginis will be only two minutes south of and will set at the same time as the planet. On the 19th, at 2:00 p. m., Uranus will be eleven minutes north of Mars; and on the 26th, at 9:57 a. m. will be 2° 43′ north of the moon.

NEPTUNE

Scarcely affords this month material for comment. Its diameter at present appears to be 2.6″. Its motion is 40′ 35″, and is direct. On the 1st it rises at 1:44 a. m.; on the 15th at 12:49 a. m.; and on the 30th at 11:45 p. m. At 5:27 p. m., on the 17th, it will be 1° 11′ north of the moon.

FOR AUGUST.

The mid-day shadows lengthening northward indicate to us northern folks that “Old Sol” has departed on his annual southern tour. He now cuts off the day at both ends, on the 1st rising 25 minutes later and setting 20 minutes earlier than on the 1st of July. His change in declination since June 20th, beginning of summer, till August 31st, will be a little over 15°, and the decrease in the length of the day for the same time, will be a trifle less than two hours. He will come to the meridian on the 1st, at six minutes and two seconds after 12:00; on the 15th at four minutes and eight seconds after 12:00; and on the 30th at sixteen seconds after 12:00. On the same dates he will rise at 4:58, 5:11, and 5:26 a. m., and set at 7:14, 6:57, and 6:35 p. m. Daybreak will occur at 3:05, 3:23, and 3:44 a. m., and twilight will end at 9:07, 8:45, and 8:16 p. m. Greatest elevation in latitude 41° 30′ will be 66° 18⅔′.

THE MOON’S

Phases occur in the following order and time: Full moon on the 6th, at 5:58 p. m.; last quarter on the 13th, at 10:00 p. m.; new moon on the 20th, at 4:46 p. m.; and first quarter on the 28th, at 10:34 a. m. The moon rises on the 15th at 12:39 a. m.; and sets on the 1st and 31st at 12:30 and 12:43 a. m., respectively. On the 16th at 11:00 a. m., nearest the earth; on the 28th, at 5:30 p. m., farthest from the earth. Its greatest elevation, 67° 4′, occurs on the 15th, and its least, 29° 50.8′ on the second day of the month.

MERCURY

Reaches its greatest elongation east (27° 21′), very nearly its maximum distance from the sun; yet the opportunity for observation is not so favorable as on many occasions when the elongation is several degrees less. And the reason is, that the planet is now moving southward, is in fact on the 23rd, the date of its greatest eastern elongation, 1° 16′ south, while the sun is still 11° 9′ north of the equator, and sets, therefore, only about fifty minutes later than the sun. The time of the planet’s setting is for the 1st, 8:07 p. m.; 15th, 7:53 p. m.; 30th, 7:16 p. m. It has a direct motion of 32° 49′ 39″. Its diameter increases 2.6″, namely, from 5.6″ to 8.2″. It is farthest from the sun on the 20th, at 6:00 a. m. On the 23d, at 8:00 a. m., 3° 5′ south of Uranus.

VENUS

Again reaches a position of greatest brilliancy on the 17th, and during the entire month will be an object of interest to early risers. On the 2nd she will appear stationary; and on the 17th at 4:37 p. m. will be 23 minutes south of the moon. Her diameter will decrease from 49″ on the 1st to 31.8″ on the 30th. Her time of rising will be as follows: On the 1st, at 3:08; on the 15th, at 2:23; and on the 30th, at 2:01 a. m.

MARS

Seems to grow “small by degrees and beautifully less,” his diameter at the close of the month being only 4.8″. He sets at 9:25 on the evening of the 1st; at 8:51 p. m. on the 15th, and at 8:13 p. m. on the 30th. On the 24th, at 10:29 a. m. he is only 10′ south of the moon.

JUPITER

With his huge form and accompanying satellites fare the fate of all “lights” terrestrial and celestial, and his “glory” sinks into insignificance beside that of his “ruling power,” as he on the 7th, at 1:00 p. m. comes in conjunction with the sun and changes his relation from that of an evening to that of a morning star. On the 1st he sets at 7:26 p. m.; on the 15th rises at 4:44 a. m.; and on the 30th rises at 4:02 a. m. Is in conjunction with and 5° 8′ north of the moon at 2:36 on the morning of the 20th.

SATURN,

Another of our morning stars, rises on the 1st and 15th at 1:18 and 12:28 a. m., respectively; and on the 29th, at 11:34 p. m. His diameter increases from 16.2″ to 16.8″. His motion is direct, amounting to about 2° 43′. He can be found a little north of Zeta, the star denoting the extremity of the northern horn of the constellation Taurus. On the 16th, at 12:41 a. m. will be 3° 17′ north of the moon.

URANUS,

Which on the 30th of last month was so near Beta Virginis, has moved about 1° 35′ farther to the east; but can be more readily pointed out by its proximity to this than to that of any other star. Uranus is an evening star, setting at the following dates: 1st, at 9:10 p. m.; 15th, at 8:17 p. m.; 30th, at 7:20 p. m. Diameter, 3.6″. On the 22nd, at 9:35 p. m. is 2° 25′ north of the moon; and on the 23rd is 3° 5′ north of Mercury, at 8:00 a. m., an hour at which neither planet can be seen by the unaided eye.

NEPTUNE,

Last, but by no means least of the heavenly bodies, gives us this month more than the usual variety, which, however, is not saying much for the spice it affords. But it has a direct motion of 10° 42′, and a retrograde motion of about 1′. On the 14th, at 11:00 p. m. it is in quadrature (90° west of the sun); on the 26th, at 5:00 a. m. it is stationary, and on the 14th is 1° 25′ north of the moon.

FOR SEPTEMBER.

THE SUN

“Crosses the line” on the 22nd at 10:13 a. m.; in other words, enters the sign Libra, giving us a clearly marked time for the beginning of another season—Autumn—which lasts 89 days, 18 hours, 29 minutes, nearly. His greatest elevation above the horizon in latitude 41° 30′ is about 56° 28′, an indication that his time above the horizon is decidedly shorter than it was last June, when his elevation was a little more than 71° 57′. And this also is confirmed by the times of his rising and setting, which are as follows: On the 1st, rises at 5:28 a. m., and sets at 6:32 p. m.; on the 15th, rises at 5:41 a. m., and sets at 6:09 p. m.; on the 30th, rises at 5:56 a. m., and sets at 5:43 p. m. Theoretically, on the 22nd, the day and night should each be exactly 12 hours long; but practically the daylight is longer than the darkness, on account of the refraction of light by the earth’s atmosphere, which has the effect of bringing into view the sun before it actually “rises,” and of detaining it in sight after it has “set.” Twilight also affords us so much additional light that we may safely assert that in any given place on the earth’s surface there is much more “daylight” than “night.” For example, on the 30th, daybreak occurs at 4:22 a. m., and twilight ends at 7:18 p. m., thus giving three hours and nine minutes in which to lengthen our daily toil, if we choose so to do. In the same latitude, and in different latitudes, as was shown in The Chautauquan for June, the length of twilight varies, so that in some instances the entire night is only twilight. Are these facts any indication that we should be awake longer than we sleep? or that we should labor more hours than we rest? Should we be always

“Up and doing,

With a heart for any fate,

Still achieving, still pursuing”?

THE MOON.

The man who attends to his neighbor’s business generally has his hands full. So has the man who attends to the motions of his neighbor, the moon. By the time he investigates her parallax, diameter, distance, revolution on her axis, sidereal and synodic revolutions, the form of her orbit, her phases, discusses her physical properties, determines her heat, height of her mountains, size of her craters, describes her librations, decides upon the effect she exercises on the weather, and a thousand more or less of other things, he had better settle down and make it the business of his life. And if he does, he may be able to show some good results of his labors. It is well for us that not any single man, but many men, have given our satellite so much attention; for it is only by the uniting of the results of their researches that we are enabled with comparative ease to predict what business our neighbor has on hand, and when and how she will perform her duties. Thus, we find that she will this month present the following phases: On the 5th, at 5:47 a. m., full; on the 12th, at 3:08 a. m., last quarter; on the 19th, at 4:29 a. m., new moon; on the 27th, at 5:13 a. m., first quarter. She will rise on the 15th at 1:39 a. m., and set on the 1st and 30th at 1:36 a. m. and 1:18 a. m., respectively. At 12:54 p. m., on the 10th, will be nearest the earth (in perigee), and on the 25th, at 12:54 (exactly fifteen days later), farthest from the earth, or in apogee. Greatest elevation on the 12th, amounting to 66° 54⅔′; least elevation on the 26th, equaling 30° 8′.

MERCURY

Will be evening star till the time of its inferior conjunction on the 19th, after which it will be morning star. It appears stationary on the 6th, and also again on the 28th. On the 19th it is 1° 34′ south of the moon. Its apparent diameter increases from 8.4″ to 10.4″, and then diminishes to 7.4″ at the close of the month. It sets on the 1st at 7:08 p. m.; on the 15th at 6:05 p. m.; and rises on the 30th at 4:37 a. m.

VENUS

Reaches her greatest distance east of the sun, 46° 6′, on the 29th, at 7:00 a. m. Her diameter decreases from 30.8″ to 22″; and her direct motion amounts to 27° 40′ 55.2″. On the 15th, at 1:08 p. m., she is 2° 26′ north of the moon. She rises on the 1st, 15th and 30th, at 2:00, 1:59, and 2:11 a. m., respectively.

MARS

Still retains his position as evening star, setting on the evening of the 1st, 15th and 30th in the same order, at 8:08, 7:36 and 7:11. His diameter decreases from 4.8″ to 4.6″. Direct motion amounts to about 18° 40′ 12″ of arc. He is 2° 20′ south of the moon on the 22nd, at 6:48 a. m.

JUPITER

Is morning star, rising at the following times: 1st, at 3:55 a. m.; 15th, at 3:16 a. m.; 30th, at 2:32 a. m. Its motion is direct, and equals about 5° 45′ 14″ of arc. Its diameter increases one second, being on the 30th 31″. On the 16th, at 8:30 p. m. is 4° 55′ north of the moon.

The satellites of Jupiter, four in number and designated as 1, 2, 3, 4, outwardly from the planet, are frequently used to find the longitude. To do this, however, requires the use of a telescope. By observing the time at which one of these satellites passes into or emerges from the shadow of its primary, and comparing this time with the recorded time of the same event in Washington City, for example, one can determine whether he is east or west of this city, and how many degrees. On the 14th No. 1 enters the shadow of Jupiter at 4:46 a. m., Washington mean time. Suppose the observer at Allegheny Observatory should note the same event as occurring at exactly 57 minutes 50.84 seconds after four, Allegheny Observatory time. He would find the difference of the two times to be 11 m. 50.84 s., which reduced to longitude by multiplying by 15 (since one hour of time equals 15° of arc) gives the difference of longitude 2° 57′ 40.3″. And since the ingress occurred at Allegheny Observatory at an earlier hour (by its local time) than by Washington local time, it follows that the latter place is 2° 57′ 40.3″ east of the former.

SATURN

Continues as in the last two or three months among the morning stars, rising as follows: 1st, at 11:22 p. m.; 15th, at 10:30 p. m.; 30th, at 9:33 p. m. His diameter increases from 16.8″ to 17.8″. His motion is direct, and equal to 1° 7′ 25″. On the 12th, at 9:17 a. m. he is 3° 28′ north of the moon; and on the 16th, at 10:00 a. m. 90° west of the sun, that is, in quadrature.

URANUS

Makes a direct motion of 1° 43′ 22″ during the month. Its diameter reaches its minimum for the year, 3.48″, on the 20th. On the 19th, at 4:13 a. m. it is 2° 14′ north of the moon. It begins the month as an evening, but closes it as a morning star. It is, however, most of the time above the horizon in daylight. On the 1st it rises at 6:54 a. m. and sets at 7:06 p. m.; on the 30th it rises at 5:24 a. m., and sets 5:30 p. m.

NEPTUNE,

On the contrary, is above the horizon most of the month during the night, rising on the 1st at 9:37 p. m.; on the 15th at 8:43 p. m.; and on the 30th at 7:44 p. m. Its motion is about 20′ 52″ retrograde, and its diameter nearly constant at 2.6″. On the 10th, at 5:20 a. m., appears 1° 33′ north of the moon.

RISE HIGHER.

By HELEN G. HAWTHORNE.

Soul of mine,

Would’st thou choose for life a motto half divine?

Let this be thy guard and guide

Through the future, reaching wide;

Whether good or ill betide,

Rise higher!

From the mire

Where the masses blindly grovel, rise higher!

From the slavish love of gold,

From the justice bought and sold,

From the narrow rules of old,

Rise higher!

Art thou vexed

By the rasping world around thee, and perplexed

By the sin and sorrow rife,

By the falsehood and the strife?

To a larger, grander life

Rise higher!

If thou findest