Part 7
ON PLEASURE.—The first means of placing a people beyond the temptations to intemperance is to furnish them with the means of innocent pleasure. By innocent pleasures I mean such as excite moderately; such as produce a cheerful frame of mind, not boisterous mirth; such as refresh, instead of exhausting, the system; such as are chastened by self-respect, and are accompanied with the consciousness that life has a higher end than to be amused. In every community there _must_ be pleasures, relaxations and means of agreeable excitement; and if innocent ones are not furnished, resort will be had to criminal. Men drink to excess very often to shake off depression, or to satisfy the restless thirst for agreeable excitement, and these motives are excluded in a cheerful community. A gloomy state of society in which there are few innocent recreations, may be expected to abound in drunkenness if opportunities are afforded. The savage drinks to excess because his hours of sobriety are dull and unvaried, because in losing consciousness of his condition and his existence he loses little which he wishes to retain. The laboring classes are most exposed to intemperance, because they have at present few other pleasurable excitements. A man, who, after toil, has resources of blameless recreation is less tempted than other men to seek self-oblivion. He has too many of the pleasures of the man to take up those of the brute.
[End of Required Reading for November.]
AUTUMN SYMPATHY.
By E. G. CHARLESWORTH.
The primrose and the violet, The bloom on apricot and peach, The marriage-song of larks in heights, The south wind and the swallow’s nest; All born of spring, I once loved best.
But now the dying leaf and flower, The frost wind moaning in the pane, The robin’s plaintive latter song, The early sunset in the west; All born of autumn, I love best.
Tell me, my heart, the reason why Thy pulse thus beats with things that die; Is it thine own autumnal sheaves? Is it thine own dead fallen leaves?
—_London Sunday Magazine._
REPUBLICAN PROSPECTS IN FRANCE.
By JOSEPH REINACH.
On the very morrow of Gambetta’s death, and when that catastrophe had been interpreted by the immense majority of European opinion, as also by many Frenchmen, as the certain presage of the approaching triumph of advanced Radicalism—triumph to be followed by violent interior discords that would infallibly bring about the fall of the Republic and the re-establishment either of Empire or of Royalty—I said that these predictions would not be realized, and, moreover, that Gambetta’s death would but serve to hasten the triumph of his political ideas and party. I will cite, word for word, what I wrote at the end of January in a paper that appeared in this Review on February 1:
“We even believe we may predict that the realization of several of Gambetta’s ideas will meet with fewer obstacles, at least among a certain fraction of public opinion, to-morrow than yesterday. A formidable reaction will take place in favor of the great statesman whom we weep, a reaction in favor of his theories and his principles. In short, we shall most likely witness the contrary of what has taken place for some years. It was enough that Gambetta should defend a theory for it to be attacked with fury. From henceforth it will often suffice that an idea was formerly held up by Gambetta for it to be enthusiastically acclaimed. As in the story of Cid Campeador, it is his corpse that leads his followers to victory.”
What I foretold six months ago has been fulfilled in every point. Those very Castilians who during Cid’s lifetime suspected him of the darkest designs and reviled him as a criminal—what did they do after his death? They put the hero’s corpse in an iron coffin, and the black gravecloth on the bier was the standard which, in the front rank of battle, led the Spanish army to victory. And so has it been, or nearly so, with French Republicans and Gambetta. The political history of our country during the last six months may be thus summed up: Out of Gambetta’s death-bed has arisen a first (not complete) victory for his ideas and friends; from the party more specially organized by him have been chosen most men now in office, that they may execute his will.
As a matter of fact, just after the excitement of the first few days, as soon as it became necessary for the Republicans to unite and stop the Royalists who thought the fruit already ripe, what ministers did the President of the Republic call for? M. Jules Ferry, who for the last five years had been, if not the direct coadjutor, at least the most invariable and faithful political ally of Gambetta, was made Prime Minister; M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the late Minister for Home Affairs under Gambetta, and M. Raynal, the late Minister of Public Works, were both recalled to the same offices. M. Challemel-Lacour, Gambetta’s most esteemed and devoted friend, was named Minister of Foreign Affairs, and M. Martin Feuillèe, Under-Secretary of State for Justice on November 14, Minister of Justice; M. Margue, Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs, resumed the same post. General Campenon could have been Minister of War had he wished it. And a great pity it is he declined his friends’ proposals. Thus, in its general bearings, the Ferry Ministry is the Gambetta Ministry without Gambetta.
Except some secondary modifications made necessary by the change of circumstances, the political program is about the same. Abroad an active and steady diplomacy, the regular development of our colonial politics, the consolidation of the protectorate in Tunis; at home the constitution of a strong government, the methodical realization of social and democratic reforms, the policy of _scrutin de liste_, whilst awaiting the abolition of _scrutin d’arrondissement_. The principal bills adopted last session, except the Magistracy bill, are but legacies from the Gambetta Cabinet. Both cabinets are animated by the same national spirit—national above all, but also progressist and governmental. The halo imparted by the presence of a man of genius is certainly wanting; but Carlyle’s _hero-worship_ is by no means a democratic necessity. There is certainly reason for rejoicing when a nation acknowledges and appreciates in one of its sons, sprung from its midst, an intellect of the highest order. But when Alexander leaves lieutenants profoundly imbued with his spirit, formed in his school, most desirous and capable of continuing his work—when these men, instead of being at variance, remain, on the contrary, more strongly bound together than ever—there is certainly no reason for complaining and giving way to discouragement.
Then it is not only in parliament that the _opportunist_ policy is again getting the upper hand. Throughout the whole country it has regained the ground it had lost by the intrigues of hostile parties. The great majority of Republicans have now recovered from a number of diseases for which Gambetta had always prescribed the remedy—remedy, alas! that too many refused to stretch out their hand for. The mania for decentralization is forgotten. The necessity for a strongly constituted and vigorous central power is almost universally understood and acknowledged. Demagogue charlatans are for the most part unmasked. Our foreign policy is steadier—we are no longer afraid of Egyptian shadows. Intransigeants of the Right and Left still continue to see in our colonial enterprises but vulgar jobbing, and to denounce and revile them in every possible way. But the great mass of the nation is no longer to be made a fool of, and has understood the necessity of extending France beyond the seas. There is a story of an English peasant who locked the stable door after the horse had been stolen. Happily for France she has several horses in her stables. If she has lost, at least for a time, her beautiful Arabian steed on the borders of the Nile, that is but an additional reason for taking jealous care of the others.—_The Nineteenth Century._
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IN 404 Honorius was emperor. At that time, in the remote deserts of Libya, there dwelt an obscure monk named Telemachus. He had heard of the awful scenes in the far-off Coliseum at Rome. Depend upon it, they lost nothing by their transit across the Mediterranean in the hands of Greek and Roman sailors. In the baths and market-places of Alexandria, in the Jewries of Cyrene, in the mouths of every itinerant Eastern story-teller, the festive massacres of the Coliseum would doubtless be clothed in colors truly appalling, yet scarcely more appalling than the truth.
Telemachus brooded over these horrors till his mission dawned upon him. He was ordained by heaven to put an end to the slaughter of human beings in the Coliseum. He made his way to Rome. He entered the Coliseum with the throng, what time the gladiators were parading in front of the emperor with uplifted swords and the wild mockery of homage—“_Morituri te salutant._” Elbowing his way to the barrier, he leapt over at the moment when the combatants rushed at each other, threw himself between them, bidding them, in the name of Christ, to desist. To blank astonishment succeeded imperial contempt and popular fury. Telemachus fell slain by the swords of the gladiators. Legend may adorn the tale and fancy fill out the picture, but the solid fact remains—_there never was another gladiatorial fight in the Coliseum_. One heroic soul had caught the flow of public feeling that had already begun to set in the direction of humanity, and turned it. He had embodied by his act and consecrated by his death the sentiment that already lay timidly in the hearts of thousands in that great city of Rome. In 430 an edict was passed abolishing forever gladiatorial exhibitions.—_Good Words._
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ALL merit ceases the moment we perform an act for the sake of its consequences. Truly in this respect “we have our reward.”—_Wilhelm von Humboldt._
CHAUTAUQUA TO CALIFORNIA.
By FRANCES E. WILLARD, President N. W. C. T. U.
I.
I.—SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
In one thing Chautauqua and California are alike—each is a climax, and both are “made up of every creature’s best.” My sufficient consolation for missing one of them this year is, that I saw the other. Let us speed onward, then, taking Chautauqua as our point of departure, in a Pickwickian sense only, unless for the further reason that it has the high prerogative of making all its happy denizens believe it to be the center of gravity (and good times) for one planet at least; the meridian from which all fortunate longitude is reckoned and all lucky time-pieces set. Our swift train, “outward bound,” races along through the old familiar East and the West no longer new.
“Through the kingdoms of corn, Through the empires of grain, Through dominions of forest; Drives the thundering train; Through fields where God’s cattle Are turned out to grass, And his poultry whirl up From the wheels as we pass; Through level horizons as still as the moon With the wilds fast asleep and the winds in a swoon.”
From a palace car with every eastern luxury, we gaze out on the dappled, pea-green hills of New Mexico and the wide, empty stretches of Arizona, stopping in Santa Fe—Columbia’s Damascus, in Albuquerque—a pocket edition of Chicago, and in Tucson—the storm-center of semi-tropic trade. But the “W. C. T. U.” is a plant of healing as indigenous to every soil for good as the saloon for evil, and in the first city the Governor’s wife has accepted leadership; in the second that place is held by a lovely Ohio girl, the wife of a young lawyer; and in the third a leading woman of society and church work, whose husband is one of Arizona’s most honored pioneers, consents to be our standard-bearer. These way-side errands, with their delightful new friendships and tender gospel lessons over, we hasten on to California. Some token of its affluent beauty comes to us on Easter Sabbath in the one hundred calla-lilies sent from Los Angeles, five hundred miles beyond, to adorn the church where we worship in Tucson, that marvelous oasis in the desert. “Go on, and God be with you,” says the friend who escorts us to the train; “you’ll find Los Angeles a heaven on earth.” And so, indeed, we did, coming up out of the wilderness on a soft spring day, between fair, emerald hills that stood as the fore-runners of the choicest land on which were ever mirrored the glory and the loveliness of God.
We visited the thirty leading centers of interest and activity in the great Golden State during the two months of our stay, but when the courteous mayor of this “city of the angels” welcomed us thither, and children heaped about us their baskets of flowers, rare, save in California, we told “His Honor” that of all the towns we had yet visited—and they number a thousand at least—his was the one most fitly named.
Southern California, and this its exquisite metropolis, have been a terra incognita even to the intelligent, until the steam horse lately caracoled this way. Now it is thronged by emigrants and tourists, men and women of small means reaping from half a dozen acres here what a large farm in Illinois could hardly yield, and invalids hitherto only an expense to their friends, finding the elixir of life in this balmy air, and joyously joining once more the energetic working forces of the world. Flowers are so plenty here that banks and pyramids alone can satisfy the claims of decorative art; baskets of roses are more frequent than bouquets or even _boutonnieres_ with us. Heliotropes and fuchsias climb to the apex of the roof, while the common garden trees are oranges, lemons, limes, citrons, figs, olives and pomegranates. Strawberry short-cake can be had all the year round from the fresh fruit of one’s own garden, and oranges at the rate of nine thousand to one tree, and in some cases fifteen inches in circumference, have been raised in this vicinity. Riverside and Pasadena are adjacent colonies and bear a stronger resemblance to one’s ideal Garden of Eden than any other places I ever expect to see. Through groves of rarest semi-tropic fruit trees you ride for miles, in the midst of beautiful, modern homes, for the American renaissance is not more manifest in the suburbs of Boston or Chicago than in Southern California. Fences are nowhere visible, the Monterey cypress furnishing a hedge which puts to blush the choicest of old England; the pepper tree with drooping branches, and the Australian gum tree, tall and umbrageous, outlining level avenues whose vistas seem unending. Above all this are skies that give back one’s best Italian memories, and for a background the tranquil amplitude of the Sierra Madre Mountains. What would you more? “See Naples and die” is an outworn phrase. “See California and live” has been the magic formula of how many restored and happy pilgrims! The tonic of cold water has electrified this soil, seven years ago an utter desert, so that now three years of growth will work a transformation that fifteen would fail to bring about east of the Mississippi. To my thinking this result is but a material prototype of the heavenly estate that shall come to our America when its arid waste of brains and stomachs, usurped by alcohol, shall learn the cooling virtues of this same cold water. In Riverside my host planted in May of 1880, two thousand grape cuttings (not roots, remember), and in September, 1881, gathered from them two hundred boxes of grapes. Pasadena was founded by a good man from Maine, and is exempt from saloons by the provisions of its charter. Here, from six acres, a gentleman realized thirteen hundred dollars, clear of all expenses, last year, by drying and sacking his grapes, instead of sending them to the winery. “The profits were so much larger that hereafter his pocket-book will counsel him, if not his conscience, to keep clear of the wine trade,” said the wide awake temperance woman who gave me the item. In Pasadena, Mrs. Jennie C. Carr, whose fruit ranche and gardens, largely tilled by her own hands, disclose every imaginable variety which the most extravagant climate can produce, sells at three thousand dollars per acre, land purchased by her for a mere song six years ago. In Santa Ana and San Bernardino, also near Los Angeles, there is the same luxuriance and swift moving life. A county superintendent of schools told me he had one school district that includes 160 miles of railroad, and has a town of 800 people, where three months ago there was silence and vacancy. At San Diego, the most southerly town in California, we found the _ne plus ultra_ of climate for consumptives, its temperature ranging from fifty-five to seventy-five degrees, and its air dry. San Diego is the oldest town in the State, having been established as a Catholic “Mission” in 1769. It is now altogether modernized and is Nature’s own sanitarium, besides being a lovely land-locked harbor of the Pacific. Santa Barbara, which we missed seeing, has a grape vine sixty years old, and a foot through, which in 1867 bore six tons of grapes, some of whose clusters weighed five pounds each. The railroad will soon make this beautiful town accessible to rapid tourists to whom the ocean is unkind. Twenty-one missions were founded over a century ago by Franciscan friars in Southern California. They brought with them from Spain the orange and the vine. They were conquerors, civilizers, subduers of the soil. They brought cattle, horses, sheep, and—alas! hogs. They conquered the land for Spain without cruelty, baptizing the Indians into the church and teaching them the arts of peace. Then followed the Mexican, then our own conquest of their territory, and now the Anglo-Saxon reigns supreme in a land on which Nature has lavished all she had to give. Upon his victory over the alcohol habit, depends the future of this goodly heritage. If he raises grapes he will survive; if he turns them into wine he must succumb.
II.—SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY.
We crossed the famous and dangerous “Tehachapi Pass” at night, and wended our way slowly through this notable valley, three hundred miles in length by thirty-five in width, stopping to found the W. C. T. U. in its four chief towns, Fresno, Tulare, Merced, and Modesto.
Irrigation is the watchword here, and as it takes capitalists to carry this through on a scale so immense, large farms are now the rule. For instance, we passed over one seventy-three miles in length by twenty in width. Later on, it is to be hoped these immense proprietaries may be settled by men whose primary object is to establish and maintain homes. At present, in the agricultural line, “big enterprises” are alone attractive. “Alfalfa,” a peculiarly hardy and luxuriant clover—imported by Governor Bigler from Chili—is the first crop, and grazing precedes grain. This plant “strikes its roots six feet or more into the soil, and never requires a second planting, while every year there are five crops of alfalfa and but two of wheat and barley.”
Varied indeed is the population of this valley. One day we dine with a practical woman from Massachusetts, who declares that the sand storms, which most people consider the heaviest discount on the valley, are “really not so bad, for they polish off the house floors as nothing else could.” The next we meet a group of earnest, motherly hearts from a dozen different States, and almost as many religious denominations, united to “provide for the common defense” of home against saloon. Next day a lawyer from Charleston invites us to his cozy residence, “because his wife knows some of our Southern leaders in the W. C. T. U.” The next we make acquaintance with half a dozen school ma’ams from the East, who have taken a ranche and set up housekeeping for themselves; and in the fourth town visited an Englishman born in Auckland, New Zealand, the leading criminal lawyer of the county, and instigator of the woman’s crusade in Oakland, who gives us a graphic description of that movement, which was a far-off echo of the Ohio pentecost.
So we move on at the rate of two meetings a day, with the hearty support of the united clergy (except the Episcopal, and often they helped us, too), and the warm coöperation of the temperance societies, emerging in San Francisco, Monday, April 16, 1883.
III.—SAN FRANCISCO.
I am glad we did not so far forget ourselves as to arrive on Sunday, for it appears that certain good, gifted, and famous persons, who shall be nameless, telegraphed to certain Christian leaders of their intended arrival on that day, and received answer: “The hour of your coming will find us at church. The Palace is the best hotel.” Now on an overland trip, an absent-minded traveler might fail to note the precise date of his arrival in the metropolis of the Pacific, but that would be no excuse to our guid folk yonder, whose Sunday laws have been smitten from their statute books, and Christians hold themselves to strict account for their example, which now alone conserves the Christian’s worship and the poor man’s rest.
San Francisco is probably the most cosmopolitan city now extant. Its three hundred thousand people sound the gamut of nationality in the most varying and dissonant chorus that ever greeted human ears. The struggle for survival is an astonishing mixture of fierceness and good-nature. Crowding along the streets, Irish and Chinaman, New Englander and Negro, show kind consideration, but in the marts of trade and at the polls “their guns are ballots, their bullets are ideas.” Old-time asperities are softening, however, even on these battlegrounds. The trend is upward, toward higher levels of hope and brotherhood. Eliminate the alcohol and opium habits, and all these would (and will ere long) dwell together in unity. Lives like those of Rev. Dr. Otis Gibson, and Mrs. Captain Goodall, invested for the Christianizing of the Chinese, or like that of Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, devoted to kindergartening the embryo “hoodlum,” or that of Dr. R. H. McDonald, the millionaire philanthropist, consecrated to the temperance reform, are mighty prophecies of the good time coming.
San Francisco is the city of bay windows, and its people, beyond any other on this continent, believe in sunshine and fresh air. In like manner, they are fond of ventilating every subject, are in nowise afraid of the next thing simply because it is the next, but have broad hospitality for new ideas. Rapid as the heel taps of its street life is the movement of its thought and the flame of its sympathy. Much as has been said in its dispraise, Mount Diablo—the chief feature of its environs—is not so symbolic of its spirit as the white tomb of Thomas Starr King, which, standing beside one of its busiest streets, is a perpetual reminder of noble power conserved for noblest use. Everybody knows San Francisco’s harbor is without a rival save Puget Sound and Constantinople. Everybody has heard of its “Palace Hotel,” the largest in the world, and one that includes “eighteen acres of floor;” of its “endless chain” street cars, the inevitable outgrowth of dire necessity in its up-hill streets; of its indescribable “Chinatown;” of “Seal Rock,” with its monster sea-lions, gamboling and howling year out and year in, for herein are the salient features of the strange city’s individuality. For a metropolis but thirty-four years old, the following record is unrivaled: Total value of real and personal property, $253,000,000; school property, $1,000,000; 130,000 buildings; 11,000 streets; 12 street car lines; 33 libraries and reading-rooms; 38 hospitals; 316 benevolent societies; 168 newspapers, and—the best fire department in the world!