As a composition, the Declaration [of Independence] is Mr. Jefferson’s. It is the production of his mind, and the high honor of it belongs to him clearly and absolutely. To say that he performed his great work well would be doing him an injustice. To say that he did excellently well, admirably well, would be inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say that he so discharged the duty assigned him that all Americans may well rejoice that the work of drawing the title-deed of their liberties devolved upon him.—Daniel Webster.After Washington and Franklin there is no person who fills so eminent a place among the great men of America as Jefferson.—Lord Brougham.
As a composition, the Declaration [of Independence] is Mr. Jefferson’s. It is the production of his mind, and the high honor of it belongs to him clearly and absolutely. To say that he performed his great work well would be doing him an injustice. To say that he did excellently well, admirably well, would be inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say that he so discharged the duty assigned him that all Americans may well rejoice that the work of drawing the title-deed of their liberties devolved upon him.—Daniel Webster.
After Washington and Franklin there is no person who fills so eminent a place among the great men of America as Jefferson.—Lord Brougham.
His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where, hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in a re-adjustment. The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable and high-toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it. If ever, however, it broke its bounds, he was most tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but exact; liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man’s value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it. His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish; his deportment easy, erect, and noble, the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture and English history. His correspondence became necessarily extensive, and with journalizing his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in a few points indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more completely to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example.
On Books.—It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshhold to sing to me of paradise, and Shakspere to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.
On Labor.—Manual labor is a great good, but only in its just proportions. In excess it does great harm. It is not a good when made the sole work of life. It must be joined with higher means of improvement or it degrades instead of exalting. Man has a various nature which requires a variety of occupation and discipline for its growth. Study, meditation, society, and relaxation should be mixed up with his physical toil. He has intellect, heart, imagination, taste, as well as bones and muscles; and he is grievously wronged when compelled to exclusive drudgery for bodily subsistence.
On Politics.—To govern one’s self (not others) is true glory. To serve through love, not to rule, is Christian greatness. Office is not dignity. The lowest men, because most faithless in principle, most servile to opinion, are to be found in office. I am sorry to say it, but the truth should be spoken, that, at the present moment, political action in this country does little to lift up any who are concerned in it. It stands in opposition to a high morality. Politics, indeed, regarded as the study and pursuit of the true, enduring good of a community, as the application of great unchangeable principles to public affairs, is anoble sphere of thought and action, but politics, in its common sense, or considered as the invention of temporary shifts, as the playing of a subtle game, as the tactics of party for gaining power and the spoils of office, and for elevating one set of men above another is a paltry and debasing concern.
On Self-Denial.—To deny ourselves is to deny, to withstand, to renounce whatever, within or without, interferes with our conviction of right, or with the will of God. It is to suffer, to make sacrifice, for duty or our principles. The question now offers itself: What constitutes the singular merit of this suffering? Mere suffering, we all know, is not virtue. Evil men often endure pain as well as the good and are evil still. This, and this alone, constitutes the worth and importance of the sacrifice, suffering, which enters into self-denial, that it springs from and manifests moral strength, power over ourselves, force of purpose, or the mind’s resolute determination of itself to duty. It is the proof and result of inward energy. Difficulty, hardship, suffering, sacrifices, are tests and measures of moral force and the great means of its enlargement. To withstand these is the same thing as to put forth power. Self-denial then is the will acting with power in the choice and prosecution of duty. Here we have the distinguishing glory of self-denial, and here we have the essence and distinction of a good and virtuous man.
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 theremustbe 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.]
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 whyThy pulse thus beats with things that die;Is it thine own autumnal sheaves?Is it thine own dead fallen leaves?—London Sunday Magazine.
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 whyThy pulse thus beats with things that die;Is it thine own autumnal sheaves?Is it thine own dead fallen leaves?—London Sunday Magazine.
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.
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.
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 whyThy pulse thus beats with things that die;Is it thine own autumnal sheaves?Is it thine own dead fallen leaves?—London Sunday Magazine.
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.
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 ofscrutin de liste, whilst awaiting the abolition ofscrutin d’arrondissement. The principal bills adopted last session, except the Magistracy bill, are but legacies from the Gambetta Cabinet. Both cabinets are animated by thesame 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’shero-worshipis 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 theopportunistpolicy 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.
In404 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.
Allmerit ceases the moment we perform an act for the sake of its consequences. Truly in this respect “we have our reward.”—Wilhelm von Humboldt.
By FRANCES E. WILLARD, President N. W. C. T. U.
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 cattleAre turned out to grass,And his poultry whirl upFrom the wheels as we pass;Through level horizons as still as the moonWith the wilds fast asleep and the winds in a swoon.”
“Through the kingdoms of corn,Through the empires of grain,Through dominions of forest;Drives the thundering train;Through fields where God’s cattleAre turned out to grass,And his poultry whirl upFrom the wheels as we pass;Through level horizons as still as the moonWith the wilds fast asleep and the winds in a swoon.”
“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 evenboutonniereswith us. Heliotropes and fuchsias climb to the apex of the roof, while thecommon 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 thene plus ultraof 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.
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.
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!
The two drawbacks of this wonderful city are its variable climate and its possible earthquakes. A witty writer warns the intending tourist thus: “Be sure to bring yoursummerclothes. Let me repeat: be sure to bring yourwinterclothes.” To state the fact that in August one may see fur cloaks any day, and in January a June toilet is not uncommon, is but another way of stating that the galloping sea breeze, unimpeded by mountains, rushes in moist squadrons on the shore, and has all seasons for its own, in which to battle with the genial warmth of this most lovely climate. As to earthquakes, there have been but three since 1849, and these were insignificant calamities compared with one year of our domesticated western tornadoes. Less than fifty lives have been lost in California by earthquakes, thirty-seven of these occurring in the country outside of San Francisco, and less than a hundred thousand dollars worth of property has been destroyed, while two millions would not cover our loss by cyclone in a single year, to say nothing of the number of victims. Civilization seems to have a naturalizing effect on fleas, snakes and earthquakes, west of the Sierras, but acts as a tonic upon hurricanes east of the Rockies. Will our scientists please “rise to explain” this mystery so close in its relation to human weal and woe?
[To be continued.]
ByLadySTIRLING-MAXWELL.
Silent companions of the lonely hour,Friends, who can never alter or forsake,Who for inconstant roving have no power,And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take,Let me return to you; this turmoil endingWhich worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,And, o’er your old familiar pages bending,Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought:Till, haply meeting there, from time to time,Fancies, the audible echo of my own,’Twill be like hearing in a foreign climeMy native language spoke in friendly tone,And with a sort of welcome I shall dwellOn these, my unripe musings, told so well.
Silent companions of the lonely hour,Friends, who can never alter or forsake,Who for inconstant roving have no power,And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take,Let me return to you; this turmoil endingWhich worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,And, o’er your old familiar pages bending,Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought:Till, haply meeting there, from time to time,Fancies, the audible echo of my own,’Twill be like hearing in a foreign climeMy native language spoke in friendly tone,And with a sort of welcome I shall dwellOn these, my unripe musings, told so well.
Silent companions of the lonely hour,
Friends, who can never alter or forsake,
Who for inconstant roving have no power,
And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take,
Let me return to you; this turmoil ending
Which worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,
And, o’er your old familiar pages bending,
Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought:
Till, haply meeting there, from time to time,
Fancies, the audible echo of my own,
’Twill be like hearing in a foreign clime
My native language spoke in friendly tone,
And with a sort of welcome I shall dwell
On these, my unripe musings, told so well.
These violent convulsions that from time to time shake and rend the earth, are among the most terrible calamities that come upon men, causing immense destruction of property and of life. Their occurrence is often most unexpected.
Villages, cities, and whole districts of densely populated countries sink beneath a sudden stroke, overwhelmed in a common ruin. If any warning is given, the alarming premonitions rather confuse and paralyze effort, because, with the appalling certainty of disaster, there is nothing to show in what form it will come, or to indicate a place of refuge.
While the recent horrors at Ischia and in Java excite much painful interest in the public mind, they naturally recall similar scenes of other years. Earthquakes of less destructive violence are very frequent, and suggest greater power than is exerted. Even the slight trembling, or vibratory motions, that produce no material injury, remind us of the prodigious forces that may at any moment burst their barriers with great violence.
In every perceptible shock we feel the mighty pulsations of the agitated molten mass whose waves dash against the walls that restrain them; or the struggling of compressed elastic gases, that must have vent, though their escape rend the earth. The crust between us and the seas of fire, whose extent no man knoweth, may be in places weakening, cut away, as the inner walls of a furnace by the molten metal; so the danger may be nearer and greater than is known or feared. A devout man finds refuge and a comfortable assurance in the truth, “The Lord reigneth; in his hands are the deep places of the earth. The strength of the hills is his also.”
There are records of earthquakes more ancient than any books written by men. They antedate the earliest chapters of human history, and probably belonged to the pre-adamite earth. If no human ear heard their tread, the footprints are still visible. In all mountainous regions the evidence of their upheaval by some mighty force is too plain to be doubted. The marine fossils found far up on their heights, the position of strata, often far from horizontal, with immense fissures, and chasms of unknown depth, all tell of disturbances that may have taken place before the historic period. If in those primitive times mountains were literally carried into the midst of the sea, and vast tracts of the ocean’s bed shoved up thousands of feet, it was only a more terrible display of the gigantic powers still in action, and of whose workings the centuries have borne witness.
No country seems to have escaped these terrible visitations, though some suffer more than others. Volcanoes being of the same origin, they are more frequent in volcanic regions, and perhaps by their shocks the seething caldrons have been uncovered.
The same localities, as Southern Italy, and the neighboring island of Sicily, have, from a remote period, at times been terribly shaken. From 1783 to 1786 a thousand shocks were made note of, five hundred of which are described as having much force. Lyell considers them of special importance, not because differing from like disturbances in other places, but because observed and minutely described by men competent to collect and state such physical facts in a way to show their bearing on the science of the earth. The following, collected from Lyell, Gibbon, Humboldt, and the encyclopædias, are facts respecting some of the principal earthquakes on record. Their statements, much condensed, are not given in chronological order, but as we find them:
In 115, of the Christian era, Antioch in Syria, “Queen of the East,” beautiful in itself, and beautiful for situation, a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, was utterly ruined by earthquake. Afterward rebuilt, in more than all its ancient splendor, by Trajan, the tide of life and wealth again flowed into it, and for centuries we read of no serious disasters of the kind. All apprehension of danger removed, the people became famous forluxurious refinements, and, strangely enough, seem to have united high intellectual qualities with a passionate fondness for amusements. In 458 the city was again terribly shaken, and twice in the sixth century. Each time the destruction was nearly complete; but each time, in less than a century, the city was restored again, but only to stand until 1822, and from that overthrow it has never recovered, being now a miserable town of only six thousand inhabitants. The destruction of five populous cities, on one site, involved a fearful loss of life. Probably more than half a million thus perished. The most destructive earthquake in that, or any other locality, of which we find any mention, was in 562. An immense number of strangers being in attendance at the festival of the Ascension, added to the multitudes belonging to the city. Gibbon estimates that two hundred and fifty thousand persons were buried in the ruins.
Among the earliest accounts of earthquakes having particular interest, is the familiar one of that which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii in the year 63—about sixteen years before those cities were buried in scoria and ashes from Vesuvius.
Of modern earthquakes three or four are here mentioned as presenting some interesting phenomena. That of Chili, in 1822, caused the permanent elevation of the country between the Andes and the coast. The area thus raised is estimated at one hundred thousand square miles, and the elevation from two to seven feet. Shore lines, at higher levels, indicate several previous upheavals of the same region, along about the same lines. The opposite of this, a depression of land, was occasioned in the island of Jamaica in 1692, when Port Royal, the capital, was overwhelmed. A thousand acres or more thus sank in less than one minute, the sea rolling in and driving the vessels that were in the harbor over the tops of the houses.
The earthquake of New Madrid, below St. Louis, on the Mississippi, was in 1811, and interesting as an instance of successive shocks, and almost incessant quaking of the ground for months, and at a distance from any volcano. The agitation of the earth in Missouri continued till near the time of the destruction of the city of Caracas, in South America, and then ceased. One evening, about this time, is described by the inhabitants of New Madrid as cloudless, and peculiarly brilliant. The western sky was a continual glare from vivid flashes of lightning, and peals of thunder were incessantly heard, apparently proceeding, as did the flashes, from below the horizon. Comparatively little harm was done in Missouri, but the beautiful city of Caracas, with its splendid churches and palatial homes, was made a heap of ruins, beneath which twelve thousand of its inhabitants were buried. Just how these events were related we know not. Whether the same pent-up forces that were struggling in vain to escape in the valley of the Mississippi, found vent in that distant locality, God only knows. The supposition allowed may account for the relief that came to the greatly troubled New Madrid. The evils they dreaded came but in part—enough only to suggest the greater perils they escaped. Over an extent of country three hundred miles in length fissures were opened in the ground through which mud and water were thrown, high as the tops of the trees. From the mouth of the Ohio to the St. Francis the ground rose and fell in great undulations. Lakes were formed and drained again, and the general surface so lowered that the country along the White River and its tributaries, for a distance of seventy miles, is known as “the sunk country.” Flint, the geographer, seven years after the event, noticed hundreds of chasms then closed and partially filled. They may yet, in places, be traced, having the appearance of artificial trenches.
Fissures are occasionally met in different parts of the country, which extend through solid rock to a great depth. “The Rocks” at Panama, N. Y., have been elsewhere described, and furnish a profitable study.
A more remarkable chasm of this kind extends from the western base of the Shawangunk Mountain, near Ellenville, Ulster County, N. Y., for about a mile to the summit. At first one can easily step across the fissure, but further up it becomes wider, till the hard vertical walls of sandstone are separated by a gorge several feet wide, and of great depth. At the top an area of a hundred acres or more is rent in every direction, the continuity of the surface being interrupted by steps of rocks, presenting abrupt walls. The gorge traced up the mountain becomes a frightful abyss, more than a hundred feet wide. Among the loose stones at the bottom large trees are growing, whose tops scarce reach half way to the edge of the precipice. Most such disruptions of rocks and mountains were doubtless caused by earthquakes at some unknown period.
The great earthquake at Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, was in 1755. “The ominous rumbling sound below the surface was almost immediately followed by the shock which threw down the principal part of the city; in the short space of six minutes, it is believed, 60,000 perished. The sea rolled back, leaving the bar dry, and then returned, in a great tidal wave, fifty feet, or more, in height. The mountains around were shaken with great violence, their rocks rent, and thrown in fragments into the valley below. Multitudes of people rushed from their falling buildings to the marble quay, which suddenly sank with them, like a ship foundering at sea; and when the waters closed over the place no fragments of the wreck—none of the vessels near by, that were drawn into the whirlpool, and not one of the thousands of the bodies that were carried down ever appeared again. Over the spot occupied by the quay, the water stood six hundred feet deep; and beneath it, locked in fissured rocks, and in chasms of unknown depth, lie what was the life and wealth of the place, in the middle of the eighteenth century.”
Earthquakes, of especial interest, from their recent occurrence and destructive effects, are those of 1857-58, in the kingdom of Naples, and in Mexico; but we have not room to more than mention them. The past summer will be remembered as the period of at least two terrible disasters from earthquakes, in localities distant from each other. The first, July 28, was at Ischia, a beautiful island at the north entrance of the bay of Naples. The principal town, Cassamicciola, was mostly destroyed, and much injury done at other places. The town was a noted health resort, and it is feared many distinguished strangers perished in it. The shocks began in the night, when a majority of the citizens, who frequent such places, were in the theater, and the scene there was terrible. Lamps were overturned; clouds of dust arose, and then the walls of the building opened, and fell, giving no opportunity for escape. The ground opened in many places, and houses and their inhabitants were swallowed up. The hotel Picola Sentinella sank into the earth, with all its inmates. The number destroyed, first estimated at three thousand, was much larger, but how much is not yet certainly known. Years must elapse before the town is restored, when it will be with a new class of inhabitants.
The sad tidings of disaster in Italy were soon followed by still more startling intelligence from Java, where, as in regions bordering on the Mediterranean, earthquakes are not a new experience with the inhabitants. A recital of the calamities occurring in Java during the last century would make a gloomy chapter in history, suggesting the insecurity and transitory nature of all earthly possessions. The island is one of the largest and, commercially, most important, in the Indian archipelago, six hundred and sixty miles in length, and the width varying from forty to one hundred and thirty miles. It is densely populated, and governed by a Dutch viceroy. In the mountain range extending through the center, with a mean elevation of seven thousand feet, are many volcanoes; and earthquakes are of frequent occurrence, as in other volcanic regions. In 1878 record was made of some sixteen, in different parts of the island. One of the most famous, accompanied by a vast eruption of Papandayang, the largest of the volcanoes, took place a hundred years ago, overwhelming an area of a hundredsquare miles, and destroying three thousand people—the island at that time having fewer inhabitants. There were two similar eruptions from volcanoes at the same time, respectively one hundred and thirty-four and three hundred and fifty-two miles from Papandayang, suggesting the fact that the power of producing them, and the earthquakes, may operate through a field of vast extent, and breaks through where the barriers give way. It is safe to say both have the same origin.
Ischia and Java, though almost antipodes, are companions in disaster, and possibly felt the dashing of the same billows, striking with violence here or there, according as some mighty impulse drove them on. The great calamities of the past summer, besides their appeal to our humanity, will be of interest to scientific men, and may throw light on the relations of earthquakes and volcanoes, and their cause, after which they have been searching a good deal in the dark, and with results not yet satisfactory.
The accounts of the last fearful disaster are yet incomplete, and may not all be verified. The latest, and apparently most reliable reports, place it among the most terrible calamities known in the history of the race, since the deluge. The earth trembled and shook—rocks were rent—buildings tumbled in ruins. A large part of the city, full of wealth and life, sank out of sight. Tidal waves carried destruction along the coast. Volcanoes belched forth smoke, ashes and lava, overspreading fertile valleys; and when the sulphurous clouds that hung over them, black as night, were lifted, turbulent waters rolled over fifty square miles of pasture lands that the day before were covered with flocks, and the homes of men. It is estimated that seventy-five thousand people perished. It may be a few thousand less, or more, as there are yet no data from which to form more than a proximate estimate. The whole number will not be known till the graves and the sea give up their dead.