Part 17

It is somewhat remarkable that at a time when science is indubitably failing to justify the exalted hopes of those who looked to it for a solution of the deepest questions of being, it is enlarging our sense of its value to practical every-day life. The mystery of the molecule is insoluble, but the usefulness of chemistry is rapidly increasing. Professor W. Mattieu Williams proposes to use maltose as a cooking agent to produce foods which are both more palatable and more easily digested. Those who attend the cooking school at Chautauqua this summer will probably learn how this work is to be done, and what results will follow. The theory sprang out of attempts to feed cattle on malted grain. It was found to be too expensive for cattle, and also hardly necessary, because cows have good digestive apparatus. Human beings have impaired digestion, and can afford more expensive food than the beasts have need of. The maltose cooking carries graniverous foods up into an advanced stage of nutritive condition, lessens the labor of weak stomachs, and tickles dull palates with new flavors. There is no near limit to the possible fruits of this thought. The chemist may render us incalculable services along this line. We have suffered something from the chemistry of men who adulterate our food; it is a comfort to know that the good uses of chemistry are coming forward to render us most valuable compensations.

It is a matter of course that in this field we shall often be disappointed; but so many solid gains are secured that we shall readily excuse some fanciful experiments. In lighting public streets and buildings, electricity has made it possible to turn night into day; chemical studies have perfected the grinding of flour; a hundred more of small and great practical advances in scientific living are secure. We shall go on. It is very noticeable that the conveniences of modern life have triumphed in unexpected ways over natural difficulties. The zone of comfort for human life has been widened toward the pole and toward the equator. The gains are more slowly harvested southward; any reader who feels the languor of this season will know why we do not march so triumphantly toward the equator as we do toward the north pole. Moral energy is in larger demand, as we go south, to resist the tendency to idleness. The north wind puts spurs into us and whips us into action. We shall therefore find the northward limit of vigorous life before we find the south boundary of it. And naturally our science, invention and discovery bear upon cold rather than heat. We have the means now of living in higher latitudes, in full moral and mental activity, than were good for body or brain a hundred years ago. We know how to build for warmth in zero weather, and we have cheap fuel and cheap light for the frosts and the dark of the North.

An enthusiastic writer says that natural gas is to be the fuel of the immediate future—the next fuel. We have as yet found it only here and there on the earth; but we are not done searching for it. Imagine, then, that we have found this gas all round the shores of Hudson’s Bay, and calculate the consequences. A new Mediterranean is opened in a region which has always been reckoned uninhabitable. Poets and philosophers flourish far up toward Doctor Warren’s original Eden! For what but a cheap and abundant fuel and light is needed to make possible a large and flourishing empire around Hudson’s Bay? Migration, which is said to move on parallel lines, has been trending northward for twenty-five years. The wheat fields of America are a hundred and fifty miles nearer the pole than they were fifty years ago. The Dakota and British Northwest which we were willing to leave to the Indians fifty years ago, are eagerly coveted for the plow of the wheat farmer. We are undeniably moving north; the limit of that movement will be fixed for us by devices, discoveries, sciences, which will enlarge our fields toward the eternal ice—on principles similar to those which have already extended our domain in that direction. For several generations the silk grown in Lombardy has been packed on the backs of horses or in carts and transported across the Alps to be spun and woven in Switzerland. Why should not our cotton travel by sea to the shores of Hudson’s Bay to be spun and woven? Give them power, heat and light in one natural agent, and the people of the American Mediterranean might excel in any industry. And in default of natural gas, who will now dare to say that the chemist may not solve the problem in a more intellectual way than by the use of the drill? We write here only of a _possible_ expansion of the human domain by the services of science.

A more practicable matter is that the age of steam, out of which, into something better, we are probably to pass at a day not distant, has been a very prodigal one. Waste is its great fault. It wastes three fourths of the coal it consumes; it therefore wastes infinite sums of human energy. It wastes everything, nature and man, the streams, the forests, the vitality and the hopes of men. Its motto is _concentration_. It herds human beings in towns; it makes transit laborious and long. The age of economies has begun, and new agents, such as electricity and gas, have for their mottoes _disperse_ and _distribute_. It is probably not extravagant to say that mankind are wasting every week enough of natural bounties to sustain them for a month, perhaps for a year. If science, then, shall only barely help us to the economic use of all natural bounties, it will have enriched human life (for the mass of mankind) at least four-fold. It will probably be well for us if this enrichment comes gradually and is preceded by a moral preparation for the use of abundance. We have never, as a race, been good enough to be safely rich. We have no poets from the equatorial regions. It may be many generations before we are good enough to grow philosophy and high bred cattle in the torrid zone. Perhaps we do not any where keep up in moral training with the march of science.

THE COURSE OF READING FOR 1885-86.

The student about to enter college has scarcely a pleasanter task than that of examining the course he is about to begin. The prospect of future achievements, how fascinating it is! That Livy which he has heard discussed by learned seniors and professors will soon be his property, too. The problems that are historical among his big brothers and cousins, and sisters as well, sometimes, he will soon grapple with. Whole fields of unknown literature and science and art open to him in his brief glance. He enjoys familiarizing himself with the names of the authors of the text-books, in marking among the elective studies his choice, in looking up the old text-books in the library, in preparing note-books for the next year, in picking up random bits of information. Getting ready for his college course often becomes quite as engrossing as the actual work. The C. L. S. C. student will experience this same interest in looking over what he is going to do another year. The course is now ready, and he will have the entire summer for contemplating his coming conquests. Enjoy the prospect to the full; it is certainly a goodly one. The bone and sinew of next year’s course is to be Roman History and Literature. The place Greece and its men filled in the course of 1884-85 will be taken by Rome. While the subject is equally interesting, the course of the coming year has one great advantage. Greece has no modern history of particular importance, its heroes died with Corinth’s destruction, its literature and art and philosophy faded with its loss of patriotism. Where Rome stood, now Italy stands. The history of the decadence of Roman rule and the growth of Italian freedom is one of the most thrilling chapters in the world’s history. A literature, an art, and a science belong to this new growth. In studying Rome’s life we have a modern chapter that keeps up our interest. The course happily provides for us papers on “Modern Italy” and “Italian Biography,” in addition to the works on the History of Rome, the “Preparatory Latin Course in English,” the “College Latin Course in English,” and “A Day in Ancient Rome.” A practical turn is given to the work by a study of the relations of Rome to modern history.

The more general work of the course is selected from the wide fields of philosophy, science, art and religion. Dr. Geo. M. Steele has prepared a work on “Political Economy,” which will furnish some of the liveliest reading for the year. This subject will be supplemented by two series of papers on “Parliamentary Practice” and “International Law,” to be published in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

Robert Browning in “Pomegranates from an English Garden” will be the representative of English poetry. It will be seen that, as in the case of Robert Browning’s poems, several studies are introduced to brighten the more solid work; for this purpose we have “In His Name,” by Edward Everett Hale, read in connection with a book by Dr. Townsend on “The Bible and the XIXth Century,” and a series of studies, to appear in THE CHAUTAUQUAN, on “God in History.”

One work which will be a real treat to everybody is “Studies in Human Nature,” by Dr. Lyman Abbott. The additional readings in THE CHAUTAUQUAN are: “Wars and Rumors of Wars To-day,” “The Age we Live In,” “Religion in Art,” “Art Outlines,” “Studies in Mathematics,” “Moral Philosophy,” studies on “How to Live,” by Edward Everett Hale, papers on the past, present and future of electricity, and “Home Studies in Physical Geography.” A better course has never been presented to the members of the C. L. S. C.

EDITOR’S NOTE-BOOK.

The July issue of THE CHAUTAUQUAN closes the fifth volume of the magazine. In October the sixth volume will begin. The outlook for THE CHAUTAUQUAN for 1885-86 is much brighter than ever before. We shall offer our friends a much improved magazine. The place of THE CHAUTAUQUAN will be taken in the summer by the _Assembly Herald_. The _Herald_ for 1885 will contain full reports of the work of the Assembly for the summer. A glance at the elaborate program printed in this impression will convince the reader of the value of a paper containing such a course of lectures as that of the Chautauqua platform. Besides the lectures many suggestive and useful reports will be printed, which members of the C. L. S. C. in particular will find helpful. Those who may wish to subscribe for both THE CHAUTAUQUAN and _Herald_ will find it profitable to take advantage of our COMBINATION OFFER, found in another column of this impression.

* * * * *

The war rumors of a month ago have subsided almost as quickly as they were aroused. The cries of “On to Khartoum” and “Smash the Mahdi” have died out. Instead of running the frontier below the Soudan, the English have been content to fix it at Wady Halfa. After all the excitement over Afghanistan, peace has been established between Russia and England. The Americans, most of them, have come home from Panama. Riel has been captured. The comparatively easy settlement of misunderstandings between nations is our best hope for the future. Each new victory of arbitration over “bad blood,” even if it be at the sacrifice of a little of our pride and possessions, is so much of a stride toward the millennium.

* * * * *

For the third time Mr. James Russell Lowell has been called upon to speak in Westminster Abbey. This time at the unveiling of the bust of the poet Coleridge. In summing up his remarks he said: “Whatever may have been his faults and weaknesses, he was the man of all his generation to whom we should most unhesitatingly allow the distinction of genius, that is, of one authentically possessed from time to time by some influence that made him better and greater than himself. If he lost himself too much in what Mr. Pater has admirably called ‘impassioned contemplation,’ he has at least left us such a legacy as only genius, and genius not always, can leave. It is for this that we pay him this homage of memory.”

* * * * *

A series of statistics most suggestive to those interested in the temperance question have of late been published. According to this table there was drunk in the United States twenty-five years ago over 86,000,000 gallons of spirituous liquor, while now, with a population almost doubled, the consumption is decreased by about 15 per cent. To balance this comes in the enormous consumption of light liquors, nearly six times as great as in 1860. But it must be remembered that a large proportion of the latter is consumed by the foreign element introduced since 1860.

* * * * *

The tragic fate of the town of Plymouth, Pennsylvania, is one more melancholy example of the result of breaking Nature’s laws. There is no doubt but that an epidemic of typhoid fever is a crime traceable to somebody’s neglect. In Plymouth the refuse from a house situated at the head of the stream which supplied the village with drinking water was allowed to poison the water. This outrageous state of affairs is to be seen in many other towns, and in parts of our cities. If after Plymouth’s suffering a repetition occurs in any part of the country, public sentiment ought to be strong enough to hunt down and punish the guilty authorities that will hold human life and God’s law so lightly.

* * * * *

There is one sure way of securing sanitary reform in every city or town with dilatory health board or indifferent council. Arouse the women. The Ladies’ Health Protection Society, of New York City, has done work in that community during the past six months, before which its large Board of Health seemed perfectly helpless. If cleanliness and purity are not to be secured by the civil authorities, there is no more suitable public work for women than to constitute themselves the guardians of the health of their home towns.

* * * * *

At the recent commencement of the Union Theological Seminary, of New York, the alumni association elected as president an Indian of pure Choctaw blood, now a pastor in the Indian Territory. His son was a member of the graduating class of this year. We are growing broader.

* * * * *

The position that Mr. Phelps will take at the Court of St. James has been agitating the English correspondent of one of our great dailies. He finds that being a minister merely, Mr. Phelps must come in among the ministers, after all the seven ambassadors; and that, alas! he will be literally at the foot of this class of twenty-three. Ministers take social rank according to the length of time they have held their positions, so Mr. Phelps and the stars and stripes trot along after Guatemala and Columbia and Siam and Hayti.

* * * * *

The teachers who tried Chautauqua last summer for their vacations, found the spot so suitable for their uses, so delightful for recreation, that they have spread abroad the rumor of her beauty, and in July of the coming summer two State Teachers’ Associations—that of Ohio and that of New York—will meet there.

* * * * *

There are very few people unfamiliar with law and its phrases, who have not been bewildered over the complicated expressions and seemingly useless repetitions found in almost all documents. This “iteration in law” has lately been made the subject of some interesting computations by David Dudley Field. By his counting every deed contains 860 superfluous words, and every mortgage 1,240. The people of New York State, he calculates, pay every year $100,000 for the recording of useless words. The next reform in law should be rhetorical.

* * * * *

Mr. John Ruskin, of Oxford, and Prof. J. Rendel Harris, of Johns Hopkins, have resigned their professorships in their respective universities because, it is stated, vivisection is practiced in the institutions. There is no reason in such hyper-sympathy. The abuse of vivisection is quite probable, but that does not lessen the force of the fact that vivisection has done much to alleviate human misery, and will in the future undoubtedly do more. The question is, if man or beast must suffer, which life is the more precious.

* * * * *

Houghton Farm, the headquarters of the Chautauqua Town and Country Club, has an interesting history. Several years ago 1,000 acres of land lying about nine miles from Newburgh, N. Y., were purchased by a Mr. Valentine as an experimental farm. About thirty buildings, adapted to every kind of farm work, were erected; the best of stock, the most skillful laborers were secured. The farm soon became a kind of educational institution. Farmers were invited to inspect its work, and to listen to lectures from the learned managers; children had days set apart for their enjoyment. Orange county has been educated by the Houghton Farm. Now its generous hearted proprietor has extended the work by opening its advantages to all those who will join the Chautauqua Town and Country Club.

* * * * *

The strange fascination lurking in dangerous feats which so powerfully affects some minds, was never more forcibly manifested than in the case of Robert E. Odlum, who jumped from the Brooklyn bridge not long ago. For some time the thought had been a passion with him, and although the police were watching to prevent the attempt, he escaped their vigilance and took the fatal leap. His body was three and one-fourth seconds in making the descent of 140 feet, thus corroborating almost exactly the law of falling bodies. He breathed only a few times after he was picked up, being inwardly literally “mangled to death.” His is only one more name added to the list of those who, by their folly, may teach others lessons of wisdom, and so, perhaps, have not died utterly in vain.

* * * * *

Although war-like preparations have ceased in the Soudan, and no more troops are to be transported thither to help “smash the Mahdi,” the railroad across the desert is progressing slowly but surely. The correspondent of the _Times_ telegraphs the following: “The construction of the railway is a curious and interesting sight. In advance is a picket of cavalry, while far off on either side the videttes scout in the bush. At the immediate head of the line is a battalion of infantry echeloned, and advancing as the rails are laid. Streams of coolies carry the sleepers from the trucks, and teams of four artillery horses drag up the rails, two at a time, to the navvies, who lay them in a twinkling, and drive the spikes. In the rear are gangs who complete the line, and further back the ballasting parties.”

* * * * *

Visitors to Niagara Falls this summer will enjoy their trip as never before. Everything that tends to mar the beauty of the natural scenery is to be removed, and after July 15th, access to all points of interest is to be free of charge. To bring about this happy consummation which during so many long years past has been devoutly wished by all right-thinking men, required a long and hard-fought battle against willful ignorance and greed of gain.

* * * * *

General Gordon’s “Life and Letters,” recently published, prove him to have one accomplishment of rare beauty and usefulness, but too often nowadays neglected. He was a good letter writer, and that under circumstances the most trying. Here is the picture his biographer draws of the surroundings under which many of his letters were written: “The temperature is over 100°; the ink dries on the pen before three words are written; books curl, as to their backs; mosquitoes are busy at the ankles under the table, and the hands and wrists above; prickly heat comes and goes. How one realizes, for instance, the whole scene in the over-wakeful traveller’s night: ‘I am writing in the open air by a candle-lamp, in a savage gorge; not a sound to be heard. The baboons are in bed in the rocks.’” The letters which the most of us write under the most favorable circumstances are limited to the narrowest space possible. What we would do in Gordon’s place it is difficult to say.

* * * * *

The most beautiful celebration of the month of June is Children’s day. With every season Protestant churches give more time and money to their preparations for it, and it bids fair to take rank in importance with Christmas and Easter. Certainly no day comes at a season when it is more easy to decorate, it being the very heyday of the flower season, and no cause is more worthy our efforts than the children’s.

* * * * *

An important discussion has been going on for a few weeks in the New York papers, concerning the advisability of closing the dry goods stores on Saturday afternoons. Clerks have no day for recreation or for improvement except Sabbath. The same is true of nearly all classes of laboring people. The result is that the Sabbath, instead of being a day of religious rest, is turned into one of pleasure, and often of extra work. A half holiday would enable busy workers to prepare for Sabbath. It is a reform in the arrangement of time that is worthy the attention of Christian people particularly.

* * * * *

There is a capital hint in the following story, told by a lady prominent in mission school work in one of our large cities: “We had some of our Chinese pupils at a church sociable a few nights ago, and we had at supper some candies which are rolled up in paper with printed couplets inclosed—some of them extremely silly. The Chinese boys read them and looked surprised, but were too polite to say anything. Soon afterward they gave an entertainment, and the same sort of candies were provided; but when we unrolled the papers we found they had taken out the foolish verses and had substituted texts of Scripture printed on little slips of paper.”

* * * * *

Here are a few of M. Bartholdi’s interesting figures about his great Statue of Liberty: “The forefinger is 96½ inches in length, and 56½ inches in circumference at the second joint. The nail measures 17¾ inches by 10½ inches. The head 13¾ feet in height. The eye is 25½ inches in width. The nose is 44 inches in length. About forty persons were accommodated in the head at the Universal Exposition of 1878. It is possible to ascend into the torch above the hand. It will easily hold twelve persons.” Compared with other colossi it far outstrips them all, being about three times the height of both the statue of Bavaria and of the Virgin of Puy, and about 58 feet higher than the Arminius in Westphalia.

* * * * *

The French Republic would not allow the remains of Victor Hugo to be placed in the Pantheon until that celebrated structure was again secularized. The priests were allowed just forty-eight hours to vacate the sacred precincts which, as a church, they had held uninterruptedly since 1877. This action plainly shows the position of the Republic toward the Church. “French skeptics,” says _The Nation_, “are not content, like English or German skeptics, with ceasing to go to church.… They insist on proclaiming in every possible way their hostility to the clergy.” The fact that the Pantheon is again restored to its primitive design as “a last resting place for distinguished public men” can but be pleasing to all.

TALK ABOUT BOOKS.