Part 18

The C. L. S. C. is becoming a great social power. From the first it has recognized that one of the great needs of the majority of the people is healthy, active companionship; that for such companionship people will undertake tasks for which they have otherwise little taste, and under its stimulus will do much good work. It has recognized that if the social life be kept clean and invigorating, there is no danger of any one sinking into idleness or vice. Its power for good lies in the fact that its method of work contains the very elements which are necessary for a pure, wholesome social life. In the first place it calls people together regularly and insures their intimate acquaintance. One of the great hindrances to cordial social intercourse is that people do not meet frequently and informally, so that they know each other well. We are prone to invest those with whom we have but a passing acquaintance with a dignity or knowledge so superior to our own that we are actually afraid of them. The local circle breaks this up. We learn to know our associates. No less important is it that the members of society take their rank according to merit. No other standard will be used in local circles. The ability to lead is the only quality which will give a member the leadership. The C. L. S. C. is veritably the People’s College, leveling all ranks.

_The_ reason, we may say, for the flatness of social life in the ordinary town, is that the members have, or find, so little to think about. People will not gossip, nor be recklessly extravagant, nor indulge in insipid flirtations if they have wholesome subjects for thought. The course of reading furnishes topics of vigor and interest. The mind is kept active. The tone of the society is changed, because the members are thinking and are experiencing the pleasure of an interchange of ideas and knowledge. Their society life becomes a recreation, instead, as is so often the case, dissipation.

There is, besides, a hearty good fellowship animating the circles generally, which is one of their most promising features. The true college spirit seems to inspire everyone with its life, energy, and enthusiasm.

To what results have these elements led? Thousands of circles have been formed all over the country, meeting for intellectual culture, but bound together by strong friendship and sociability. In themselves these circles are very powerful, but there are numberless offshoots which are intended to develop cordial feeling among the members. Among these are the large reunions, calling together the different classes and circles. Invariably the reports of these affairs show that all the appointments are in taste, and even elegance. Memorial days furnish frequent opportunities for entertainments as pleasant as the reunions. Large numbers of guests are frequently invited, the hall, church, or parlor is decorated, bountiful refreshments are served, and a carefully prepared and spicy program carried out. Numbers of programs, some of them exquisite in design and finish, are sent to us, giving the exercises of various memorial celebrations, and almost every circle reports some charming novelty in entertainments. Nor are these large and ambitious gatherings all. Informal “socials” sometimes take the place of the usual work. The regular study hour is followed by a merry half-hour devoted to games, music, spelling-matches, pronouncing contests, or “visiting.”

All these pleasant features are combined to develop a strong social feeling in every circle. New and better views of our social relations are opened up, and we learn, perhaps for the first time, what good fellowship means. The good which is done is inestimable. Indeed, we do not hesitate to say that the opportunities of the C. L. S. C. for social culture are excelled only by the opportunities it affords for mental culture.

THE ROEBLINGS.

The slab of black marble in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, which marks the last resting place of the English architect, Sir Christopher Wren, bears the inscription, in Latin, “If you would have his monument, look about you.” In the great Brooklyn bridge, recently opened for travel, people will see for ages the noble monument of those two men of genius—father and son—John Augustus and Washington A. Roebling. The men whose names are inseparably linked with such a work—a work, not for an age, but for the ages—have secured a fame to satisfy any human ambition. In the case of these great engineers we see again the old law illustrated: the world’s good comes from sacrifice. The one sacrificed life, the other health, to the work whose future benefits to mankind are so incalculable.

The elder Roebling was born in Mühlhausen, Prussia, June 12, 1806, and was educated at the polytechnic school in Berlin. He came to this country at the age of twenty-five, and settled near Pittsburgh. He worked for some time as an engineer on certain Pennsylvania canals, and was then engaged for three years in surveying the route of the Pennsylvania Central Railroad through the Alleghenies. In the city of Pittsburgh he established works for the manufacture of wire ropes—which manufacture he introduced into America. The works were afterward removed to Trenton, N. J. It was his aim to bring about the use of wire ropes in the construction of bridges, and in time he was successful. He was the father of suspension bridges in this country. His first work was the suspended aqueduct of the Pennsylvania Canal across the Allegheny River, which was completed in 1845. Soon after this he built the Monongahela suspension bridge at Pittsburgh, and some suspension aqueducts on the Delaware and Hudson Canal. A much greater work than any of these was the Niagara suspension bridge, the building of which he undertook in 1851, and carried to a successful completion. But this was surpassed by the bridge across the Ohio at Cincinnati, which he completed in 1867. The length of the Niagara bridge is 821 feet, while that at Cincinnati has a clear span of 1,057 feet. It was in the winter of 1853, when, at one time, Mr. Roebling, his wife and son, were detained for several hours, while crossing East River, by the floating ice, that the idea, which certain others had entertained, of a bridge from New York to Brooklyn first took possession of his mind; but it was not until 1865 that steps were taken looking to the practical realization of the idea. Then this engineer prepared plans and estimates for the work, and in time the great structure was under way, whose history is now known and read of all men, and which stands as one of the latest marvels of the nineteenth century. The work was hardly commenced when the life of its author was cut short. In July, 1869, his foot was crushed by a ferry-boat, as he was standing on the pier at Fulton Ferry in Brooklyn, and his death followed in two weeks.

The younger Roebling was born at Saxonburg, Butler County, Pa., May 26, 1837. He graduated from the Polytechnic Institute at Troy, in 1857. He early became his father’s assistant in engineering, and came in time to be fully the equal, if not the superior, of his father in his peculiar line of work. He enlisted as a private in the Union Army at the breaking out of the rebellion, and had an honorable career as a soldier, rising to the rank of colonel. After the close of the war he spent some time in Europe, studying the more important works of engineering there. The death of his father left him the work of building the great bridge, of executing his father’s plans. Those plans were greatly modified by himself, and the completed bridge is by no means but the embodiment of the elder Roebling’s conception. In 1872 Colonel Roebling became the victim of the “caisson disease,” so called, and since that time has been an invalid. He is probably an invalid for life. But he continued at the head of the great enterprise, and from his sick-room has directed the work until at length it has been brought to a glorious consummation. He has had in his wife a most faithful and efficient coadjutor in all his work. Mention of her name should not be omitted in the laudations paid to the builders of Brooklyn bridge.

THE CORONATION OF THE CZAR.

After long delay and months of seclusion from his subjects, Alexander III. has been crowned Czar of all the Russias. The coronation ceremonies took place at Moscow, in the Church of the Assumption, in the Kremlin, within whose walls all the Romanoffs have been crowned. Vast concourses of people thronged the streets and crowded the thoroughfares of the city, the Kremlin was packed with a dense mass of humanity, intent on witnessing the imposing ceremonies of the coronation. Princes of every rank and government officials of all degrees were present from all parts of his broad domains to do homage to their master. The crowned heads of Europe sent their representatives to grace the august occasion and to convey their greetings and good wishes to the new-made monarch.

The pageant of the coronation is said to have been the most magnificent spectacle witnessed in Europe in modern times. It is estimated that not less than ten millions of dollars were expended in its preparation. The czar was everywhere received by his subjects with the greatest enthusiasm, seeming to betoken the utmost loyalty and reverence toward their rightful monarch. Nothing occurred to mar the pomp and splendor of the occasion. No bombs were thrown, no mines were exploded, no hostile demonstrations of any kind were made; everything seemed to indicate the return of an era of peace and security in the lately perturbed realm of Russia.

The crown with which the czar was invested is said to be worth not less than three millions of roubles, but it is as heavily ladened with cares as with jewels. No other ruler in Europe to-day has so unenviable a throne or rests under such heavy burdens and responsibilities. His vast domains have no bond of integral unity, save the military power, while in whole provinces the inhabitants are but one remove from barbarism. In addition to this the Nihilistic organization, which pervades all Europe, is strongly intrenched in his kingdom, and may, like a sleeping volcano, burst out in the future, as it has in the recent past, with terrible fury and disastrous results. Its representatives are everywhere; in the towns, cities and country; in the army and palace; among peasants and princes of the realm. Their threats of violence forced the czar into involuntary seclusion, and were the cause of his long delay in assuming the crown.

While the deeds of violence which have characterized the Nihilistic movement can not but be deprecated, they find some palliation in the fact that Russia has been the worst governed country in all Europe. Its czar is an absolute despot, and inasmuch as princes are not usually slow to use all the power placed at their disposal, Russian subjects have for centuries experienced all the ills coincident with an absolute despotism. It is true that serfdom has been abolished, but the tardy justice which accomplished this great work but whetted the appetite of the Russian people for larger liberty, and for the rightful privileges conceded by other European governments to their subjects. Their demands in this direction have been hitherto sternly denied. Every effort for their attainment has been met with the most determined opposition on the part of the government. For even slight political offenses, men are seized, and, with a mere apology of a trial, are condemned, and sentenced to penal servitude in the mines of Siberia. They are compelled to labor there from twelve to eighteen hours per day, at the hardest kind of toil and under the surveillance of brutal overseers. They are furnished but a meager supply of food, and that of an inferior kind. They are exposed to the stern severities of the Siberian winters, with but a scant supply of clothing and little shelter. Within five or six years death usually kindly puts a terminus to the sufferings of the miserable exiles.

It is barbarities like these on the part of the government that has put the sword and the bomb in the hand of the Russian Nihilist. Goaded by opposition and aggravated by the denial of the rights of citizenship, its subjects have resorted to the worst of revolutionary measures to secure the redress of their wrongs and the possession of the rights conceded to the subjects of other European states. It is to be hoped that the new czar may learn from the lessons of the past that the days of despots and autocrats are numbered, and that the nineteenth century of the Christian era is an age when the rights of subjects can not be disregarded, even by crowned heads, with impunity. The only possible way in which Alexander III. can secure the prolonged peace and perpetuity of his kingdom is to adopt a liberal policy toward his subjects, institute measures to redress their many and grievous wrongs, and surrender to the people or their representatives a portion of the power now lodged in his hands, which is by far too great for any monarch to possess, and which renders him alike dangerous to the state and to his subjects.

AMOS K. WARREN.

On the evening of the 9th of June, the well-known Secretary of the Chautauqua Assembly, Mr. A. K. Warren, died at his home in Mayville, N. Y., after an illness of several weeks. Mr. Warren was in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and, since the close of the third Assembly, in 1876, he has had charge of the business at Chautauqua, under the leadership and direction of Mr. Lewis Miller and the Board of Trustees. He grew in favor with the Chautauqua management and the general public from the time he first assumed the duties of his office. It was Mr. Warren that effected the purchase of the one hundred acres of land to add to the original Chautauqua grounds, and with taste and untiring zeal laid out pleasant walks and public parks, continually increasing the convenience and the beauty of the grounds.

Several of the most valued public buildings were erected during these years of his connection with the Assembly—the Children’s Temple and Hall of Philosophy, the Amphitheater and the commodious Hotel Athenæum. He has shown himself to be wise and skillful in executing the plans of President Miller and the Board. His loss will be keenly felt and the position he occupied difficult to fill. In addition to the office he occupied at Chautauqua Mr. Warren has served as sheriff of Chautauqua County, and at one time was manager of the Buffalo, Pittsburgh & Western Railroad. In every position he proved himself to be a man of superior executive ability, born to be a leader of men and a manager of great movements. He leaves a widow and one daughter, well provided for by certain property which he owned and by an insurance of seven thousand dollars.

The funeral services were held in Mayville, June 13, at his late residence, being conducted by the Rev. Milton Smith, of Mayville. The Scriptures were read by the Rev. Dr. Flood, and the prayer offered and remarks made by the Rev. Dr. Vincent. Although not a member of the Church, Mr. Warren was a believer in the Christian religion. Were we permitted to break the confidence of the private correspondence which passed between Dr. Vincent and Mr. Warren just before his death, much would be revealed that would be comforting to the friends of the deceased and inspiring to all believers in Christianity.

His death brought together a large number of people, among them many of the Executive Board, who were obliged to call a meeting at once at Mayville in order to reorganize the working forces of the Assembly and supply the place left vacant by Mr. Warren’s death.

Notwithstanding the great loss sustained, it is expected that under the direction of President Miller and the Board, the work of improvement and building will be carried on as usual. The management is so complete that no work will be neglected nor any department be slighted. The grounds are in excellent condition as are also the streets, walks and public buildings, and improvement will constantly go on.

EDITOR’S NOTE-BOOK.

The _Chautauqua Assembly Daily Herald_ will contain full reports of the July and August meetings. The first number will be issued on Saturday, August 4. There will be nineteen numbers in the volume. Price, $1.00; in clubs of five or more, 90 cents. See our combination offer on another page of this magazine.

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Some railroad managers are employing the machinery of the Young Men’s Christian Association among their men with good results. Mr. Vanderbilt employs a religious worker on a regular salary to keep open a room and conduct religious services for the benefit of his men in New York. The N. Y., P. & O. R. R., a trunk line to the west, running past Chautauqua, has adopted the same plan in Meadville, Cleveland, and other cities. Railroad men are absent from home a good portion of their time when on duty, and, as strangers in strange places, they are greatly benefited by the religious homes provided by the corporations.

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The Rev. Dr. J. H. Vincent will deliver the Fourth of July oration at Ocean Grove, and lecture before the Ohio State Teachers’ Association the fifth of July at Chautauqua.

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The Hon. James G. Blaine seems to have retired from political life. A Washington correspondent, who evidently has studied his habits, says in a New York paper: “It is with his venture into literature that Mr. Blaine has mostly occupied his mind this spring. He seems suddenly to have discovered the charms of the library and the study, and as he has a literary workshop that is as suggestive and delightful as money can make it, he is drinking the newly-discovered cup to the dregs. His library is on the second floor. Here, after he has breakfasted, he repairs and plunges into his work. Occasional visits to the Congressional Library furnish him with much of the data that he requires for his work, and this is supplemented by correspondence, by his own letters and private records, and, more than all, by a memory that seems to be able to recall all the events of his twenty years of public life as though they were all crowded into yesterday. It is not Mr. Blaine’s intention to make the work in any sense a series of personal reminiscences, but briefly to describe, as a historian, the important public events of the past twenty years. There is a good deal of curiosity already to get hints of how he is doing it; but he keeps his own counsel, and asks advice and hints of no one. He spends five or six hours daily on this work, only quitting his desk in time to take his afternoon drive. He expects to finish the work early in the winter.”

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A beautiful satin program of the exercises of Shakspere’s Day, has been sent us by the “Greek Letter Circle,” of Milwaukee. Evidently the artistic as well as the “Literary and Scientific” is being cultivated there.

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The dean of the Chautauqua School of Theology, the Rev. A. A. Wright, of Boston, Mass., is noticed by Dr. Daniel S. Steele, in _Zion’s Herald_, thus: “It was the boast of Tyndale, before he translated the New Testament into English, that he would enable the very plow-boys to know more about the New Testament than the bishops themselves. The attempt of Bro. Wright is more audacious. He has undertaken to make the plow-boys and kitchen-maids know more of the original New Testament Greek than the professionals themselves, who acquired their knowledge in the slipshod and unscientific methods in vogue only forty years ago. In carrying out his scheme he is constructing a serial lexicon on a novel principle. He selects the most important word and groups under it all its derivatives and compounds in Greek and English, requiring a memorizing of these seed-words. Thus the student’s mind becomes a nursery in which a whole forest of Greek is sprouting.”

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In the political arena, young men are coming into position. Governor Pattison, of Pennsylvania, is thirty-three years old, and the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, Mr. Foraker, is thirty-seven.

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On Thursday, August 30, the C. L. S. C. alumni in New England will hold a reunion at South Framingham, Mass. This will be during the session of the Framingham Assembly. Preparations are being made by the officers and committees to insure an interesting and profitable gathering. Mr. A. W. Pike is president and Mrs. M. A. F. Adams is secretary of the alumni association. The C. L. S. C. has more than doubled its numbers in New England during the past year, and the history of New England people is that they don’t give up a good institution when they have once taken it to their hearts.

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John B. Gough says: “The lecture business is declining, because the people are inclining to music and theatricals.” We presume this is true where the people have nothing but _lectures_ and _lectures_; under such circumstances it is not a cause for wonder, but if any person will take the pains to read the reports of “Local Circles” published in THE CHAUTAUQUAN the past ten months they will observe how lectures on a wide range of subjects, scientific and historical, philosophical and practical, have been made popular, intermingled as they have been with concerts, reunions, banquets, social life and a variety of entertainments by enterprising organizations.

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=C=hautauqua’s waters, clear and bright! =L=isten, thence there comes to-night =S=ongs so sweet my heart they win. =C=harmèd Circle, take me in. —E. O. P.

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The symposium on the “Moral Influence of the Drama,” in the June number of the _North American Review_, is an able discussion of the subject. Dr. Buckley wields a keen lance, but there is a time for all things. The editorial management that brings on this discussion in the summer time, when the theaters are mostly closed, is not likely to do so much toward correcting existing evils as if it had brought on the debate when the theaters are opened in the fall time. The adaptation of truth to an end is wisdom, but the adaptation in this case is to the end of the season, when the evil is done, _vapor and effervescence_.

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We have some sympathy with the idea expressed by a correspondent in a western State, that we should have degrees conferred on the graduates of the C. L. S. C., under certain limitations, and in recognition of certain attainments in literature, history, etc. The degree of the Ph.D. is now conferred by some universities and colleges after the applicant has passed required examinations, though he has never been within the walls of the institution.

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Postmaster General Gresham has introduced practical civil service reform into his department. In a recent order he has issued to postmasters, of the second and third classes, he says that the postmaster must be in his office and attend to the business in person; absence from his post, without permission from the Postoffice Department, will be considered sufficient reason for dismissal from the service. This is a wise and timely order, and General Gresham deserves the thanks of the people of the country for inaugurating this reform.

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