WHEN I got off the Pennsylvania train yesterday I went to a barber shop before I did anything else. I have a thick, Venetian red, chinchilla beard, which grows rapidly, and which gives me a fuzzy appearance every twenty-four hours, unless I place myself frequently into the hands of a barber. At first I used to shave myself, but I cut myself to pieces in such a sickening manner, without seeming to impede the growth of the rich and foxy beard, that until last summer I gave up being my own barber. At that time I was presented with a safety razor which the manufacturer said would not cut my face, because it was impossible for it to cut anything except the beard. The safety razor resembles in appearance several other toilet articles, such as the spoke shave, the road scraper, the can opener, the lawn mower and the turbine water wheel, but it does not look like a razor. It also looks like a carpet sweeper some, and reminds me of a monkey wrench. It is said that you can shave yourself on a train if you will use this instrument. I tried it once last winter while going west. In fact, I took the trip largely to see if one could shave on board the train safely with this razor. I had no special trouble. At least I did not cut off any features that I cared anything about, but I was disappointed in the results, and also in the length of time consumed in cleaning the razor after I got through. I was shaving myself only from Forty-second street to Albany, but it took me from Albany to Omaha to pull the razor apart, and to dig out the coagulated lather and the dear, dear whiskers. I now employ a valet whose name is Patria McGloria. He irons my trousers, shaves and dresses me, and mows the lawn. When I come to Washington, I am too democratic to travel with a valet, fearing that it might cost me several thousand votes some day, and so I leave my maid at home to wash and dress the salad. In that way he does not miss me, and I get the credit at Washington of being a man who spends so much time thinking of his country's welfare that he doesn't have a chance to look pretty.
I did not fall into a very gaudy barber shop. The appointments were like some of the president's appointments, I thought—viz., in poor taste, but this is not a political letter. I do not wish to antagonize anybody, especially the president of the United States. He has always treated me well.
I will now return to the barber shop. It was a plain structure, with beautiful sarsaparilla pictures here and there on the walls and a faint odor of rancid pomatum and overworked hair restoratives.
There were three chairs richly upholstered in two-ply carpeting of some inflammatory hue, with large vines and the kind of flowers which grow on carpets but nowhere else. I have seen blossoms woven into ingrain carpets, varying in color from a dead black to the color of a hepatized lung, but I have never seen one that reminded me of anything I ever saw in nature. The chair I sat in also had springs in it. They were made of selections from the Washington monument.
The barber who waited on me asked me if I wanted a shave. A great many barbers ask me this during the year. Sometimes they do it from habit, and sometimes they do it to brighten up my life and bring a smile to my wan cheek. As I have no hair, the thinking mind naturally and by a direct course of reasoning arrives at the conclusion that when I go into a barber shop and climb into a chair, I do so for the purpose of getting shaved and not with the idea of having my fortune told or my deposition taken. Still barbers continue to ask me this question and look at each other with ill concealed mirth.
I said yes, I would like a shave unless he preferred to take my temperature, or amuse me by making a death mask of himself. He then began to strap a large razor with a double shuffle movement and to size me up at the same time.
He was a colored man, but he had lived in Washington a long time and knew a great deal more than he would if his lot had fallen elsewhere. He spoke with some feeling and fed me with about the most unpalatable lather I think I ever participated in. He also did an odd thing when he went for the second time over my face. I never have noticed the custom outside of that shop. Most barbers, in making the second trip over a customer's face, moisten one side at a time with a sponge or the damp hand as they go along, but in this case a large quantity of lather was put in my ear and, as he needed it, he took out what he required from time to time, using his finger like a paint brush and spreading on the lather as he went along. So accurately had he learned to measure the quantity of lather which an ear will hold that when he got through with me and I went away there was not over a tablespoonfnl in either ear and possibly not that much.
While I sat in the chair I heard a man, who seemed to be in about the third chair from me, saying that a certain bill numbered so-and-so had been referred to a certain committee and would undoubtedly by reported favorably. If so, it would in its regular order come up for discussion and reach a vote so-and-so. I was charmed with the man's knowledge of the condition of affairs in both houses and the exact status of all threatened legislation, because I always have to stop and think a good while before I can tell whether a bill originates on the floor of the house or in the rotunda.
I could not see this man, but I judged that he was a senator or sergeant-at-arms. He talked for some time about the condition of national affairs, and finally some one said something about evolution. I was perfectly wrapped up in what he was saying and remember distinctly how he referred to Herbert Spencer's definition of evolution as a change from indefinite, coherent heterogeneity through continuous differentiations and integrations.
When I arose from my chair and looked over that way I saw that the gentleman who had been talking on the condition of congressional legislation was a colored hotel porter of Washington, who was getting shaved in the third chair, and the man who was discussing the merits of evolution was the colored man who was shaving him.
Here in Washington the colored man has the air of one who is holding up one corner of the great national structure. Whether he is opening your soft boiled eggs for you in the morning, or putting bay rum on your nose, or checking your umbrella or brushing you with a wilted whisk broom, his thoughts are mostly upon national affairs. He is naturally an imitator wherever he goes, and this old resident of Washington has watched and studied the air and language of eminent statesmen so carefully that when he goes forth in the morning with his whitewashing portfolio on his arm he walks unconsciously like Senator Evarts or John James Ingalls. I saw a colored man taking a perpendicular lunch at the depot yesterday, and evidently the veteran Georgia senator is his model, for he cut his custard pie into large rectangular hunks and pushed it back behind his glottis with a caseknife, after which he drew in a saucerful of tea, with a loud and violent ways-and-means committee report which reminded me of the noise made by an unwearied cyclone trying to suck a cistern dry. I think that the colored man exaggerated the imitation somewhat, but he was evidently trying to assume the table manners of Senator Brown of Georgia.
For this reason, if for no other, members of the cabinet, senators, representatives, judges and heads of departments cannot be too careful in their daily walk and conversation. Unconsciously they are molding the customs, the manners, and the styles of dress which are to become the customs, the manners, and the dress of a whole race. If I could to-day take our statesmen all apart, not so much for the purpose of examining their works, but so that we could be alone and talk this matter over by ourselves, I would strive in my poor, weak, faltering way to impress upon them the awful responsibility which rests upon them not only as polite and fluent conversationalists, classical and courteous debators. speaking pieces for the benefit of future conventions, of referring to each other as liars, traitors, thieves, deserters, bummers, beats, and great moral abscesses on the body politic; rehearsing campaign speeches in congress at an expense of $20 per day each, and meantime obstructing wholesome tariff legislation, but as the conservators of etiquette, statesmanship, and morality for a race of people the great responsibility for whose welfare still rests upon us as a nation.
Only the day before yesterday I saw a thin, wiry, and colored gentleman pawing around in an ash barrel for something, and I waited to see what he was after. He resurrected a sad and dejected plug hat, and, though it was not half so good as the one he wore, he seemed much pleased with it and put it on. I ventured to ask him why he had done so without improving his appearance, and he said that for a long time he had been looking for a hat which would highten the resemblance which people had often noticed and remarked in days gone by, both in person, sah, and general carriage, walk, and conversation, sah, also in the matter of clear cut and logical life sentences, as existing between himself, sah, and Senator Evarts, sah. He believed that he had struck it, sah.
As spring warms up the air about Washington the heating apparatus of the capitol building begins to relax its interest, and now you can visit most any part of the stately pile without being scrambled in your own embonpoint. Last winter I heard Senator Frye of Maine make his great tariff speech, and although there was nothing, about the speech itself which seemed to evolve much exercise or industry—for it was the same speech in every essential quality that I have heard every November since I began to take an interest in politics—the perspiration ran down his face in small washouts and sweatlets and fell in the arena with a mellow plunk.
I believe this unnatural heat to be the cause of much ill health among our law-makers, and I freely admit that the unhealthy surroundings of Washington and the great contrast between the hot air of the capitol and the cold air outside have done a great deal towards keeping me out of the senate. The night air of Washington is also filled with malaria and is much worse than any night air I have ever used before.
IT HAS become such a general practice to speak disrespectfully of the United States Navy that a few days ago I decided to visit the Brooklyn Navy Yard for the purpose of ascertaining, if possible, how much cause there might be for this light and airy manner of treating the navy, and, if necessary, to take immediate steps towards purifying the system.
I found that the matter had been grossly misrepresented, and that our navy, so far as I was able to discover, is self-sustaining. It has been thoroughly refitted and refurnished throughout, and is as pleasant a navy as one would see in a day's journey.
I had the pleasure of boarding the man-of-war Richmond under a flag of truce and the Atlantic under a suspension of the rules. I remained some time on board each of these war ships, and any man who speaks lightly of the United States Navy in my presence hereafter will receive a stinging rebuke.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard was inaugurated by the purchase of forty acres of ground in 1801. It has a pleasant water-front, which is at all times dotted here and there with new war vessels undergoing repairs. Since the original purchase others have been made and the land side of the yard inclosed by means of a large brick wall, so that in case there should be a local disturbance in Brooklyn the rioters could not break through and bite the navy. In this way a man on board the Atlanta while at anchor in Brooklyn is just as safe as he would be at home.
In order to enter and explore the Navy Yard it is necessary that one should have a pass. This is a safeguard, wisely adopted by the Commandant, in order to keep out strangers who might get in under the pretext of wishing to view the yard and afterwards attack one of the new vessels.
On the day I visited the Navy Yard just ahead of me a plain but dignified person in citizen's dress passed through the gate. He had the bearing of an officer, I thought, and kept his eye on some object about nine and one-fourth miles ahead as he walked past the guard. He was told to halt, but, of course, he did not do so.
He was above it. Then the guard overhauled him, and even felt in his pockets for his pass, as I supposed. Concealed on his person the guard found four pint bottles filled with the essence of crime. They poured the poor man's rum on the grass and then fired him out, accompanied by a rebuke which will make him more deliberate about sitting down for a week or two.
The feeling against arduous spirits in the United States Navy is certainly on the increase, and the day is not far distant when alcohol in a free state will only be used in the arts, sciences, music, literature and the drama.
The Richmond is a large but buoyant vessel painted black. It has a front stairway hanging over the balcony, and the latch-string to the front door was hanging cheerily out as we drew alongside. During an engagement, however, on the approach of the enemy, the front stairs are pulled up and the latch-string is pulled in, while the commanding officer makes the statement, "April Fool" through a speaking-trumpet to the chagrined and infuriated foe.
The Richmond is a veteran of the late war, a war which no one ever regretted more than I did; not so much because of the bloodshed and desolation it caused at the time, but on account of the rude remarks since made to those who did not believe in the war and whose feelings have been repeatedly hurt by reference to it since the war closed.
The guns of the Richmond are muzzle-loaders,i.e., the load or charge of ammunition is put into the other or outer end of the gun instead of the inner extremity or base of the gun, as is the case with the breech-loader. The breech-loader is a great improvement on the old style gun, making warfare a constant source of delirious joy now, whereas in former times in case of a naval combat during a severe storm, the man who went outside the ship to load the gun, while it was raining, frequently contracted pneumonia.
Modern guns are made with breeches, which may be easily removed during a fight and replaced when visitors come on board. A sort of grim humor pervades the above remark.
The Richmond is about to sail away to China. I do not know why she is going to China but presume she does not care to be here during the amenities, antipathies and aspersions of a Presidential campaign. A man-of-war would rather make some sacrifices generally than to get into trouble.
I must here say that I would rather be captured by our naval officers than by any other naval officers I have ever seen. The older officers were calm and self-possessed during my visit on board both the Richmond and Atlanta, and the young fellows are as handsome as a steel engraving. While gazing on them as they proudly trod the quarter deck or any other deck that needed it, I was proud of my sex, and I could not help thinking that had I been an unprotected but beautiful girl, hostile to the United States, I could have picked out five or six young men there to either of whom I would be glad to talk over the details of an armistice. I could not help enjoying fully my hospitable treatment by the officers above referred to after having been only a little while before rudely repulsed and most cruelly snubbed by a haughty young cotton-sock broker in a New York store.
When will people ever learn that the way to have fun with me is to treat me for the time being as an equal?
It was wash-day on board ship, and I could not help noticing how the tyrant man asserts himself when he becomes sole boss of the household. The rule on board a man-of-war is that the first man who on wash-day shall suggest a "picked-up dinner" shall be loaded into the double-barrelled howitzer and shot into the bosom of Venus.
On the clothes-line I noticed very few frills. The lingerie on board a war vessel is severe in outline and almost harsh in detail. Here the salt breezes search in vain for the singularly sawed-off and fluently trimmed toga of our home life. Here all is changed. From the basement to the top of the lightning rod, from pit to dome, as I was about to say, a belligerent ship on washday is not gayly caparisoned.
The Atlanta is a fair representative of the modern war vessel and would be the most effective craft in the world if she could use her guns. She has all the modern improvements, hot and cold water, electric lights, handy to depots and a good view of the ocean, but when she shoots off her guns they pull out her circles, abrade her deck, concuss her rotunda, contuse the main brace and injure people who have always been friendly to the Government. Her guns are now being removed and new circles put in, so that in future she would be enabled to give less pain to her friends and squirt more gloom into the ranks of the enemy. She is at present as useful for purposes of defense as a revolver in the bottom of a locked-up bureau drawer, the key of which is in the pocket of your wife's dress in a dark closet, wherein also the burglar is, for the nonce, concealed.
Politics has very little to do with the conduct of a navy-yard. No one would talk politics with me. I could not arouse any interest there at all in the election. Every one seemed delighted with the present Administration, however. The navy-yard always feels that way.
In the choky or brig at the guard-house I saw a sailor locked up who was extremely drunk.
"How did you get it here, my man?" I asked.
"Through thinfloonee of prominent Democrat, you damphool. Howje spose?" he unto me straightway did reply.
The sailor is sometimes infested with a style of arid humor which asserts itself in the most unlooked-for fashion. I laughed heartily at his odd yet coarse repartee, and went away.
The guard-house contains a choice collection of manacles, handcuffs, lily irons and other rare gems. The lily irons are not now in use. They consist of two iron bands for the wrists, connected by means of a flat iron, which can be opened up to let the wrists into place; then they are both locked at one time by means of a wrench like the one used by a piano-tuner. With a pair of lily irons on the wrists and another pair on the ankles a man locked in the brig and caught out 2,000 miles at sea in a big gale, with the rudder knocked off the ship and a large litter of kittens in the steam cylinder, would feel almost helpless.
I had almost forgotten to mention the drug store on board ship. Each man-of-war has a small pharmacy on the second floor. It is open all night, and prescriptions are carefully compounded. Pure drugs, paints, oils, varnishes and putty are to be had there at all times. The ship's dispensary is not a large room, but two ordinary men and a truss would not feel crowded there. The druggists treated me well on board both ships, and offered me my choice of antiseptics and anodynes, or anything else I might take a fancy to. I shall do my trading in that line hereafter on board ship.
The Atlanta has many very modern improvements, and is said to be a wonderful sailor. She also has a log. I saw it. It does not look exactly like what I had, as an old lumberman, imagined that it would.
It is a book, with writing in it, about the size of the tax-roll for 1888. In the cupola of the ship, where the wheel is located, there is also a big brass compass about as large as the third stomach of a cow. In this there is a little index or dingus, which always points towards the north. That is all it has to do. On each side of the compass is a large cannon ball so magnetized or polarized or influenced as to overcome the attraction of the needle for some desirable portion of the ship. There is also an index connected with the shaft whereby the man at the wheel can ascertain the position of the shaft and also ascertain at night whether the ship is advancing or retreating—a thing that he should inform himself about at the earliest possible moment.
The culinary arrangements on board these ships would make many a hotel blush, and I have paid $1 a day for a worse room than the choky at the guard-house.
In the Navy-Yard at Brooklyn is the big iron hull or running gears of an old ship of some kind which the Republicans were in the habit of hammering on for a few weeks prior to election every four years. Four years ago, through an oversight, the workmen were not called off nor informed of Blaine's defeat for several days after the election..
The Democrats have an entirely different hull in another part of the yard on which they are hammering.
The keel blocks of a new cruiser, 375 feet long are just laid in the big ship-house at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard. She will be a very airy and cheerful boat, I judge, if the keel blocks are anything to go by.
In closing this account I desire to state that I hope I have avoided the inordinate use of marine terms, as I desire to make myself perfectly clear to the ordinary landsman, even at the expense of beauty and style of description. I would rather be thoroughly understood than confuse the reader while exerting myself to show my knowledge of terms. I also desire to express my thanks to the United States Navy for its kindness and consideration during my visit. I could have been easily blown into space half a dozen times without any opportunity to blow back through the papers, had the navy so desired, and yet nothing but terms of endearment passed between the navy and myself.
Lieut. Arthur P. Nazro, Chief Engineer Henry B. Nones, Passed Assistant Engineer E. A. Magee, Capt. F. H. Harrington, of the United States Marine Corps; Mr. Gus C. Roeder, Apothecary Henry Wimmer and the dog Zib, of the Richmond; Master Shipwright McGee, Capt. Miller, captain of the yard, and Mr. Milligan, apothecary of the Atlanta, deserve honorable mention for coolness and heroic endurance while I was there.
WASHINGTON, D.C. I Have just returned from a polite and recherche party here.
Washington is the hot-bed of gayety, and general headquarters for the recherche business. It would be hard to find a bontonger aggregation than the one I was just at, to use the words of a gentleman who was there, and who asked me if I wrote "The Heathen Chinee."
He was a very talented man, with a broad sweep of skull and a vague yearning for something more tangible—to drink. He was in Washington, he said, in the interests of Mingo county. I forgot to ask him where Mingo county might be. He took a great interest in me, and talked with me long after he really had anything to say. He was one of those fluent conversationalists frequently met with in society. He used one of these web-perfecting talkers—the kind that can be fed with raw Roman punch and that will turn out punctuated talk in links, like varnished sausages. Being a poor talker myself and rather more fluent as a listener, I did not interrupt him.
He said that he was sorry to notice how young girls and their parents came to Washington as they would to a matrimonial market.
I was sorry also to hear it. It pained me to know that young ladies should allow themselves to be bamboozled into matrimony. Why was it, I asked, that matrimony should ever single out the young and fair?
"Ah," said he, "it is indeed rough!"
He then breathed a sigh that shook the foliage of the speckled geranium near by, and killed an artificial caterpillar that hung on its branches.
"Matrimony is all right," said he, "if properly brought about. It breaks my heart, though, to notice how Washington is used as a matrimonial market. It seems to me almost as if these here young ladies were brought here like slaves and exposed for sale." I had noticed that they were somewhat exposed, but I did not know that they were for sale.
I asked him if the waists of party dresses had always been so sadly in the minority, and he said they had.
I danced with a beautiful young lady whose trail had evidently caught in a doorway. She hadn't noticed it till she had walked out partially through her costume. I do not think a lady ought to give too much thought to her apparel, neither should she feel too much above her clothes. I say this in the kindest spirit, because I believe that man should be a friend to woman. No family circle is complete without a woman. She is like a glad landscape to the weary eye. Individually and collectively, woman is a great adjunct of civilization and progress. The electric light is a good thing, but how pale and feeble it looks by the light of a good woman's eyes. The telephone is a great invention. It is a good thing to talk at and murmur into and deposit profanity in, but to take up a conversation and keep it up and follow a man out through the front door with it, the telephone has still much to learn from woman.
It is said that our government officials are not sufficiently paid, and I presume that is the case, so it became necessary to economize in every way, but, why should wives concentrate all their economy on the waist of a dress? When chest protectors are so cheap as they now are, I hate to see people suffer, and there is more real suffering, more privation and more destitution, pervading the Washington scapula and clavicle this winter than I ever saw before.
But I do not hope to change this custom, though I spoke to several ladies about it, and asked them to think it over. I do not think they will. It seems almost wicked to cut off the best part of a dress and put it at the other end of the skirt, to be trodden under feet of men, as I may say. They smiled good humoredly at me as I tried to impress my views upon them, but should I go there again next season and mingle in the mad whirl of Washington, where these fair women are also mingling in said mad whirl, I presume that I will find them clothed in the same gaslight waist, with trimmings of real vertebræ down the back.
Still, what does a man know about the proper costume for woman? He knows nothing whatever. He is in many ways a little inconsistent. Why does a man frown on a certain costume for his wife and admire it on the first woman he meets? Why does he fight shy of religion and Christianity and talk very freely about the church, but get mad if his wife is an infidel?
Crops around Washington are looking well. Winter wheat, crocusses and indefinite postponements were never in a more thrifty condition. Quite a number of people are here who are waiting to be confirmed. Judging from their habits, they are lingering around here in order to become confirmed drunkards.
I leave here to-morrow with a large, wet towel in my plug hat. Perhaps I should have said nothing on this dress reform question while my hat is fitting me so immediately. It is seldom that I step aside from the beaten path of rectitude, but last evening, on the way home, it seemed to me that I didn't do much else but step aside. At these parties no charge is made for punch. It is perfectly free. I asked a colored man who stood near the punch bowl, and who replenished it ever and anon, what the damage was, and he drew himself up to his full height.
Possibly I did wrong, but I hate to be a burden on any one. It seemed odd to me to go to a first-class dance and find the supper and the band and the rum all paid for. It must cost a good deal of money to run this government.
IT WAS not generally known at the time, but about a year ago a gentleman from Jays-burg, named Alanson G-. Meltz, opened a law office in Chicago, intending to give that city a style of clear-cut counseling, soliciting, conveyancing, prosecuting and defending, such as she had never witnessed before. He was young, but he was full of confidence, and as he pulled the nails out of the dry goods boxes, in which he had brought his revised statutes and replevin appliances, he felt ready and willing to furnish advice at living rates to all who would come and examine his stock.
But time kept on in his remorseless flight, bringing in at the casement of Mr. Meltz the roar and hum of traffic, and the nut-brown flavor of the Chicago river, but that was all. He was there, ready and almost eager to advise one and all, but one and all, without exception, evaded him. No matter how gayly he lettered his window with the announcement that he would procure a divorce for any one without pain, married people continued to suffer on or go elsewhere. Even though he had put up a transparency:
No one called at his office, No. 61 Water street, to get one. Day after day innumerable people went by him in the mad rush and hurry of life, married but not mated, forgetting that Mr. Meltz could relieve them without publicity.
Remorseless time had rolled on in this way for three months, now and then picking out a fragment of the cornice on the new court-house and braining a pedestrian with it, when one day Mr. Meltz was solicited by the proprietor of a new remedy for indigestion and brain-fever to try his medicine. He also told Mr. Meltz that in case of cure or beneficial effects he desired to use his endorsement, and as the remedy was new he proposed to issue an edition of 1,000,000 circulars containing the endorsement of prominent professional people of Chicago.
Alanson G. Meltz bought a bottle and began using it. In three weeks the following endorsement entered over a million and a half families in the United States at the expense of the man who owned the remedy:
Chicago, Dec. 13, 1883.
Dr. J. Burdock Wells.—
Sir: I am a lawyer of this city, and for the past year have been seriously and dangerously afflicted with sharp, darting pains up and down the spinal column, dimness of sight, acidity of the tonsils and in-growing spleen. I suffered the agonies of the d———d.
I take this method of informing the world, especially those who may be suffering as I did, that less than a month ago I was in a pitiful state. I have a large practice, especially as an attorney, in procuring noiseless divorces. My office is at No. 6 5/8 South Water Street, and for years I have been engaged in this line, procuring divorces for thousands everywhere, orders filled by mail, etc., by a new system of my own, by which applicants throughout the union may be treated at a distance as well as in my office.
This had so taken up my time and engrossed my attention that, before I knew it, my health had become impaired materially, and I did not know at any time but that the next succeeding moment might be my subsequent one. With clients calling on me and pressing me by mail for their services, with persistent people hurrying and urging me for divorces, so that they could marry some one else without unnecessary delay, I was stricken down with ingrowing spleen and gastric yearning of the most violent character. My physicians gave me up. They said I could never recover. I was in despair.
At that moment, like a clap of thunder from a clear sky, came Dr. J. Burdock Wells, with a bottle of his unerring Bile Renovator and Gastric Rectifier. I took one bottle and called for another. In a little while I began to hope.
When I arose in the morning my mouth did not taste like that of a total stranger any more. In one week my eye had recovered its old brilliancy, and in ten days I was back in my office again at No. 6 5/8 South Water Street, rapidly catching up with my large business and answering all calls made upon me from all quarters. I have not only regained my health, but I have been the humble means, since my recovery, of bringing peace to many an aching heart. One man from Kansas writes me: "Your recovery was indeed a great boon to me. You have saved my life. Whenever I want a divorce again I shall surely go to you. God bless you and prolong your life for many years that you may go on spreading joy and hope again throughout our broad land, furnishing your automatic and delightful divorces to those who suffer." I can most heartily endorse Dr. J. Burdock Wells' remedy and would cheerfully recommend it to those who have tried everything else without success. I would be glad to have any or all who suffer call at my office, No. 6 5/8 South Water street, if they doubt my recovery, when they will find me removing superfluous husbands or wives absolutely without pain.
Alanson G. Meltz.
Attorney and counselor-at-law, solicitor in chancery.
Practices in all the courts. Divorces sent C. O. D. at a moment's notice. Try our home treatment for divorce.
A man who visited Mr. Meltz' office last week says that his business is simply enormous, and that he has added to his former office the gorgeous room at No. 7 1/8 People are now coming from all quarters of the globe to get Mr. Meltz to administer his divorces to them.
THE interchange of letters of introduction between old friends, by which valuable acquaintances are added to the list, is a great blessing, and in good hands these letters have, no doubt, been the beginning of many a warm friendship; but, like all other blessings, it has been greatly abused. I have been the recipient of letters, presented by tourists, which, it was easy to see, had been wrung from some sandbagged friend of mine—letters with sobs between the lines, letters punctuated with invisible signals, calling upon me to remember that the bearer had looked over the writer's shoulder as each sentence grew into a polite prevarication.
To those who are in the habit of giving hearty letters of introduction and endorsement to casual acquaintances, I desire to say that I am perfecting a system by which the drugged and kidnapped writer of a style of assumed sincerity and bogus hilarity will be thoroughly protected.
Let me explain briefly and then illustrate my method.
A casual acquaintance, who has met you, say four or five times, and who feels thoroughly intimate with you, calling you by the name that no one uses but your wife, approaches you with an air of confidence that betrays his utter ignorance of himself, and asks for a letter of introduction (in the same serious vein in which one asks for a match). You are already provided with my numbered Introductory Letter Pad. You write the letter of introduction on a sheet numbered to correspond with a letter of advice mailed simultaneously to the person who is to submit to the letter of introduction.
For instance, a young man, inclined to be fresh, enters your office or library and states that he is going abroad. He has learned that you are intimate with Dom Pedro, of Brazil. Perhaps you have conveyed that idea unintentionally while in the young man's presence at some time. So now he asks the trifling favor of a letter of introduction to the Emperor. He is going to see the President and Cabinet and the members of the Supreme Court before he leaves this country, and when he goes to South America he naturally wants to meet Dom Pedro.
So you fill out the right-hand end or coupon of the sheet as follows:
[International Introductory Letter System, Form Z 23.]
No. B 135,986.
New York, Dec. 25,1886.
Sir: You will please honor this letter of introduction in accordance with the terms of a certain letter of advice numbered as above, and bearing even date herewith, mailed to you this day, and oblige, Yours, etc.,
A. B.
The young man goes abroad with this letter inclosed in a maroon alligator-skin pocket-book, and when he arrives in Brazil he finds that the way has been paved for him by the following letter of advice:
[International Introductory Letter System, Form Z 23,] New York, Dec. 25, 1886.
No. B 135,986.
Sir: Mr. W———, a young man with great assurance and a maroon-colored alligator-skin pocket-book, bearing a letter of introduction to you numbered as above, is now at large. He will visit Europe for a few weeks, after which he will tour about South America. He will make a specialty of volcanoes and monarchs.
He will offer to exchange photographs with you, but you must use your own judgment about complying with this request. Do not allow this letter to influence you in the matter.
You will readily recognize him by the wonderful confidence which he has in himself, and which is not shared by those who know him here.
He is a fluent conversationalist, and can talk for hours without fatigue to himself.
You will find it very difficult to wound his feelings, but there would be no harm in trying.
Should you get this letter in time, you might do as you thought best in the matter of quarantine. Some foreign powers are doing that way.
Mr. W———has met a great many prominent people in this country. What this country needs is more free trade on the high seas and better protection for its prominent people.
I have tried to be conservative in what I have said here, and if I have given you a better opinion of the young man than his conduct on fuller acquaintance will warrant, I assure you that I have not done so intentionally.
You will notice at once that he is a self-made man, so your admiration for the works of nature need not be in any way diminished. With due respect, your most obedient servant,
A. B.
To his Imperial Highness D. Pedro, Esq.,
Brazil, S. A.
No. Z 30,805.
Sir: This letter of advice will probably precede a tall youth named Brindley. Mr. Brindley is a young man who, by a strange combination of circumstances, is the eldest son of a perfect gentleman, who now has, and will ever continue to have, my highest esteem and my promissory note for $250.
Will you kindly bear this in mind while you peruse my pleading letter of introduction, which will accompany Mr. Brindley, Jr.?
All through his stormy and tempestuous career in the capacity of son to his father, he has never done anything that the grand jury could get hold of. Treat him as well as you can consistently, and if you can get him a position in a bank, I am sure his father would appreciate it. A place in a bank, where he would not have anything to do but look pretty and declare dividends in a shrill falsetto voice, would please him very much. He is a very good declaimer. He is not accustomed to manual toil, but he has always yearned to do literary work. If he could do the editorial work connected with the sight-draft department, or write humorous indorsements on the backs of checks, over anom deplume, it would tickle the boy almost to death. Anything you could do toward getting him a position in a large bank that is nailed down securely, would be thoroughly appreciated by me, and I should be glad to retaliate at any time.
Yours candidly,
Wyman Dayton.
To Mr. K. O. Peck, London.
A beautiful feature of this invaluable system is the understanding to which everybody is committed, that the original letter is entirely worthless on its presentation unless the letter of advice has been already received.
IAM GLAD to know Cornell University is to I establish a department of journalism next September. I have always claimed that journalism could be taught in universities and colleges just as successfully as any other athletic exercise. Of course you cannot teach a boy how to jerk a giant journal from the clutches of decay and make of it a robust and rip snorting shaper and trimmer of public opinion, in whose counting-room people will walk all over each other in their mad efforts to insert advertisements. You cannot teach this in a school any more than you can teach a boy how to discover the open Polar Sea, but you can teach him the rudiments and save him a good deal of time experimenting with himself.
Boys spend small fortunes and the best years of their lives learning the simplest truths in relation to journalism. We grope on blindly, learning this year perhaps how to distinguish an italic shooting-stick when we see it, or how to eradicate type lice from a standing galley, learning next year how to sustain life on an annual pass and a sample early-rose potato weighing four pounds and measuring eleven inches in circumference. This is a slow and tedious way to obtain journalistic training. If this can be avoided or abbreviated it will be a great boon.
As I understand it, the department in Cornell University will not deal so much with actual newspaper experience as it will with construction and style in writing. This is certainly a good move, for we must admit that we can improve very greatly our style and the purity of our English. For instance, I select an exchange at random, and on the telegraphic page I find the details of a horrible crime. It seems that an old lady, who lived by herself almost, and who had amassed between $16 and $17, was awakened by an assassin, dragged from her bed and cruelly murdered. The large telegraph headline reads: "Drug from her bed and murdered!" This is incorrect in orthography, syntax and prosody, bad in form and inelegant in style. Carefully parsing the word drug as it appears here, I find that it does not agree with anything in number, gender or person. I do not like to criticise the style of others when I know that my own is so faulty, but I am sure that the word drug should not be used in this way.
Take the following, also, from the Kansas correspondence of the Statesville (N.C.)Landmark:
"There were several bad accidents in and around Clear Water during my absence from home. The saddest one was the shooting of one Peter Peterson by his father. They were out rabbit-hunting in the snow. A rabbit got up and started to run. The son was in a swag of a place and the father was taking aim at the rabbit. The son at the same time was trying to get a shot at it and, not knowing that his father was shooting, ran between the rabbit and his father and was killed dead, falling on the snow with his gun grasped in his hands and never moved. He still carried that pleasant smile which he had on, in expectation of shooting that jack rabbit, when put in the grave. Wheat is selling at about 60 cents; corn, 40 to 50 cents; fat hogs, gross, 44 to 41; fat steers, 41; butcher's stock, 2 cents."
It is hard to say just exactly wherein this is faulty, but something is the matter with it. I would like to get an expression of opinion from those who take an interest in such things, as to whether the fault is in orthoepy, orthography, anatomy, obituary or price current, or whether it consists in writing several features too closely in the same paragraph.
It would also be a good idea to establish a chair for advertisers in some practical college, in order that they might run in for a few hours and learn how to write an advertisement so that it would express in the most direct way what they desired to state. Here is an advertisement, for instance, which is given exactly as written and punctuated:
Mrs. Dr. Edwards,