—Wecannot successfully imitate Europeans in their graceful follies; but in their soberer and more practical habits we might well follow their example. A step has been just taken in Germany which is more needed here, and which yet there is hardly any hope that we shall profit by. The union of German apothecaries has addressed a petition to the Federal Council demanding that the secret medicines concocted and advertised by quacks shall be officially tested before they are permitted to be sold. A more creditable and needful step was never taken, or one which was more indicative of enlightenment and high civilization. Quack medicines are on the whole a curse to mankind. They are generally imposed upon the ignorant and credulous by men who care not what harm they do so long as they profit by their business. Many of these medicines—so called—are very injurious, and a still greater proportion of them are entirely useless. The very fact that their composition is kept secret is against them. It is a law absolute among all honorable physicians that no remedial agent shall be kept secret. Such physicians, if in their practice they discover a remedy for any disease, at once make it known to the whole profession. To keep such a discovery secret would be to lose caste, if not to be entirely excluded from honorable professional association and recognition. If such an examination as that proposed in Germany is needed there, here it is required by a tenfold greater necessity. America is the great field of operation for the patent medicine vender. Here he thrives. Here he accumulates huge fortunes if he will only advertise persistently and with sufficient disregard of truth. And his chief victims are women and children. He is one of the pests of our society. We cannot exclude him, or extinguish him entirely; that would interfere with the individual liberty of the citizen; not only of the seller, but of the buyer. If people choose to poison themselves gradually, they insist upon their right to do so unhindered by government action. But at least we might do what the German apothecaries ask to have done, and require as a condition of the granting of a patent for a medicine that it should be tested and its contents officially declared. The effect of such a measure upon the general health would be in the highest degree beneficial; and at least the public would be protected against the fraudulent representations of the majority of patent medicine makers and venders.
—Inanother matter, church chimes, we have imitated Europe, and not discreetly, and we have had our first check. A certain chime of church bells in Philadelphia became annoying to the people in the neighborhood, who complained to the courts, and obtained an injunction restricting the use of the chimes to certain times of day. Even were this often bell-jangling not the annoyance that it is, the whole American public would owe something to these good Philadelphians simply for the good example of their action in this matter. They were annoyed by some one, the agent of a corporation, who, although he did not commit murder, burglary, or arson, interfered with their comfort and marred their enjoyment of life; and they, like sensible men, instead of putting up with the annoyance after the American fashion, and saying, "Oh, no matter! What can we do to stop it? Let it go!" set themselves to work to see if they couldn't stop it. They tested the question whether a certain number of men might please their taste or their religious fancy at the risk of disturbing and annoying others; and they succeeded. It is to be hoped that the lesson will not be lost in regard not only to the specific annoyance which was the cause of complaint, but all other selfish indulgences by which some men interfere with the rights of others. The law of common sense and justice in such matters is that every man may enjoy himself as he pleases so long as he does not interfere with the enjoyment of their natural rights by others. A man may give his days and nights to ringing chimes so long as they are not heard outside of his own house; but if they are so heard, and they deprive a single person of rest, or even of a quiet enjoyment of life, he has passed the limit of right. A dozen men may like a strong perfume; but they have no right to load the common air with it to the annoyance even of a thirteenth. This matter of ringing church chimes has become somewhat of a religious and sentimental affectation. Chimes have a very pretty effect in literature; and at a distance in the country they are charming. But when they clang daily in the tower of a city church within a few hundred yards of you, they become a great nuisance. Nor is the annoyance they give diminished when the chimer, instead of ringing such changes as are suited to bells, will insist upon playingaffettuoso. In fact, all church bells are an annoyance in cities, and a needless one. They were first used to call people to church when there were no clocks, and before watches were heard of. Now, when the humblest apartment has a clock that strikes the hour, "the church-going bell" is entirely superfluous for the object for which it is rung, and is really a great annoyance not only to the sick, but to those who are in health. It is a noisy anachronism which clamors with iron tongue and brazen throat for its own suppression.
—Andso at last the marriage of Adelina Patti to the Marquis of Caux has come to its natural end. What could the Marquis or the lady expect? He married her for the money that she earned, and that he might own so charming a celebrity; she accepted him as a husband for his title. Years have passed, and nothing has occurred to bind them more closely. The lady has no children, or any prospect of one; and so there is nothing in the way of a judicial separation on account of incompatibility. It is not necessary to suppose that the distinguished prima donna has actually run away from her husband with a lover; but it would only be natural if there were a man in the distance more to her taste. It is remarkable, by the way, that so great an interest should be taken by Americans in the fortunes of this lady, who, since she has developed her extraordinary talent, has turned her back entirely on this country. She is spoken of here often as an American prima donna. This can only be the result of a very great and an absurd misapprehension. Adelina Patti is an Italian. Her father and mother were both Italians, who could speak hardly a word of English. Her education and habits of life have been entirely Italian. Even if she had been born here by the chance of a professional residence here by her mother, that would not have made her anything else than Italian, more than a like chance residence in Russia or in Turkey would have made her a Russian or a Turk, or than the Irishman's being born in a stable would have made him a horse. When a family emigrates and resides permanently in another country, assuming the life and the habits of that country, and intermarrying there, it changes its nationality, but not otherwise. The eagerness which many Americans show to claim as American everything meritorious in art over whose supposed origin the Stars and Stripes may have been thrown, is a witness to our real native poverty in that respect, which we reveal by the very means by which we would conceal it. And besides all this, Adelina Patti was not even born in this country. She came here from Europe a little girl, with her mother, Katarina Barili-Patti, a prima donna, who, although she had not her daughter's facility of execution and range of voice, sang in the grand style, and who, as a dramatic vocalist, was far beyondla diva, as Adelina is absurdly called. As to her parting company with M. Caux, nothing is more probable than that the restraint—at least external—which belongs to the life of a marquise became too intolerable to her inborn Bohemianism, and that she seeks deliverance not only from an unloved and unloving husband, but from the galling restraints of dull respectability.
—Thereis a club in London, the Albemarle, which admits both men and women as members, and which the wags have therefore nicknamed the Middlesex club. An English gentleman being urged to join this club on the ground that he could take his wife there, plumply refused on that very ground, saying that the chief good in a club consisted in its being a refuge for married men. Whereupon the average woman exclaims, "The brute! What did he marry for if he wanted to be rid of his wife?" A view of the case not unnatural perhaps in a woman, but most unwise. Passing by the not very remote possibility that there are women (as there are men) who in the matrimonial lottery could not be regarded as prizes, there are strong reasons for the exclusion of women, even the most charming, from clubs. For women a man may see at home daily or in society. It is in those places that he expects to find them; there they naturally belong; there they are attractive. But when he sets up a club it is for the very purpose of enjoying man companionship and indulging his mannish tastes. He wishes there to be entirely at his ease, and not to be called on for "little attentions." He wears his hat in the club-house if he likes, and he does not wish to be called upon to take it off unless he likes. In short, he wishes there to be free, for a time, from the restraints which the presence of ladies puts upon the conduct and conversation of men, even of those who neither in act nor in speech pass the bounds of reasonable decorum. Women in clubs are pretty annoyances, fine things very much out of place. Moreover, it is true, although by most women, particularly married women, it will not be believed, that clubs, by their exclusion of women, make the society of the sex more pleasant to the average man, and tend to keep warm the marital love of the average husband. Woman, whether to her credit or not we shall not undertake to decide, can bear the continued companionship of a favored man much better than man can bear that of a woman, no matter how beautiful, how charming, or how much beloved. But even women are happier for the inevitable separation from them of their husbands every day and during a greater part of the day. As to men, unfortunately many of them would begin to weary of a woman, and at last to dislike her, if they were compelled to pass every evening in her company. Here the club steps in (we are not speaking of the mere "club man"), and interposes its conservative influence. Many a man's love is kept fresh by his having his club for a refuge; and many a love which has cooled almost to indifference has been prevented from turning into aversion by the soothing influences of that refuge. For the leisurely classes of men clubs are a benign invention; and women should in their own interests avoid giving them anything of a "middlesex" character.
—Whilewe write a new grand scandal is impending of the Beecher-Tilton kind, which will attract less attention than that did because the parties to it are less widely known. But as the principal person is a late minister of Trinity Church in New York, and now the head, of the far-famed charitable association known as "St. John's Guild," and as the principal witness and complainant is this gentleman's wife, who is the daughter of a late rector of Trinity, and as she has already, before the investigation is begun, shown an inclination to have no connubial reserves with the public, the affair promises to be what the journalists call a rich case. It certainly is a very deplorable one, however it may result to the persons principally interested. It is much to be regretted that the investigation has been announced with such a flourish of trumpets, calling in the wife, who declares herself so much injured, inviting the press, and announcing that the investigation will be held with open doors; and this after a publication almost in minute detail of all the charges brought against the Reverend defendant—at whose own request, by the way, the investigation is set on foot. Investigations like these must needs sometimes take place; but everything should be done to confine a knowledge of them to those who are called upon to take part in them, either as parties, as referees, or as advocates. On the contrary, everything is done to make them as public and as injurious and offensive as possible. In this the press is chiefly culpable. Nothing is gained for justice by such public exhibitions, and much is lost to decency.
Footnotes
1Total polls of Boston, 85,243. Four-ninths of these will go into $15,114,389—total expenditure of the year 1875-6—$399 times.
2"The Galaxy" for March, 1877.
3Mr. Jennings, late editor of the New York "Times," now London correspondent of the "World," in a recent letter describing the opening of Parliament by the Queen in person, on which occasion the House of Lords was filled with peers and peeresses, writes thus with regard to the beauty of the women and the presence and figures of the men:
"On this occasion the ladies overflowed the House. Early as it still was, the floor was covered with them—large blocks of the benches were occupied, and the galleries were crowded. All these ladies were in evening toilets, the peeresses wearing coronets of diamonds—most of them being fairly ablaze with diamonds on head and neck. If the daylight was not very favorable to the shoulders or complexions of some of these noble dames, the gorgeousness of their costumes and the glitter of their precious stones served to divert attention from the defects of nature or the ravages of time.... Not many of these ladies in the House were very pretty, although here and there was a face such as makes one stop short and hold one's breath, and wonder at the divine perfection of nature's handiwork when she is at her best.... As for the old bald-headed gentlemen, some of them very short and stumpy, they looked painfully like a collection of 'senators' in some opera bouffe. One of them in particular, with four ermine bars on his cloak, denoting his high rank, was exactly like the funny-looking dummy Englishman which the French delight to exhibit in their farces. He had very little hair left to boast of, and that little was very red, and his face was round and red also, and he was altogether so comic a little man that one could not look at him without a smile. I could not find out who he was till the royal procession entered, when he suddenly reappeared in great pomp and state, standing on the throne by the side of her Majesty's chair and carrying the 'Cap of Maintenance.' Then I knew that he was the Marquis of Winchester—fourteenth of that ilk—John Paulet by name, and the Premier Marquis of England. So much for appearances."
"On this occasion the ladies overflowed the House. Early as it still was, the floor was covered with them—large blocks of the benches were occupied, and the galleries were crowded. All these ladies were in evening toilets, the peeresses wearing coronets of diamonds—most of them being fairly ablaze with diamonds on head and neck. If the daylight was not very favorable to the shoulders or complexions of some of these noble dames, the gorgeousness of their costumes and the glitter of their precious stones served to divert attention from the defects of nature or the ravages of time.... Not many of these ladies in the House were very pretty, although here and there was a face such as makes one stop short and hold one's breath, and wonder at the divine perfection of nature's handiwork when she is at her best.... As for the old bald-headed gentlemen, some of them very short and stumpy, they looked painfully like a collection of 'senators' in some opera bouffe. One of them in particular, with four ermine bars on his cloak, denoting his high rank, was exactly like the funny-looking dummy Englishman which the French delight to exhibit in their farces. He had very little hair left to boast of, and that little was very red, and his face was round and red also, and he was altogether so comic a little man that one could not look at him without a smile. I could not find out who he was till the royal procession entered, when he suddenly reappeared in great pomp and state, standing on the throne by the side of her Majesty's chair and carrying the 'Cap of Maintenance.' Then I knew that he was the Marquis of Winchester—fourteenth of that ilk—John Paulet by name, and the Premier Marquis of England. So much for appearances."
Mr. Jennings, it should be remembered, is an Englishman; but he lived eight or ten years in New York; and I may be pardoned for saying that he carried away a constant reminder of "American" beauty, and a standard of comparison which would be likely to make him fastidious.
4Now, I believe, in the Boston Athenæum.
5Mê nyn en êthos mounon en sautô phorei,Hôs phês sy, kouden allo, tout' orthôs echein.—Antigone.
6I quote from the translations in Stigand's "Life."
7This is somewhat in excess of the actual amount, which is, however, quite large enough, $3,809,722,765; viz., customs, $1,973,589,621; internal revenue, $1,826,185,813; direct tax, $9,947,331. It is well to remember, too, that the expenditures of the Government have decreased one-half in this period; viz., from $520,809,417, in 1866, to $258,469,797 in 1876. Of this decrease, thirty-three millions is in the interest on the public debt.—Ed. Galaxy.
8Not only that government is tyrannical which is tyrannically administered, but all governments are tyrannical which have not in their constitution a sufficient security against arbitrary power.—Burgh's Pol. Disquis., 378.
9"History of French Literature." ByHenri Van Laun. I.From its Origin to the Renaissance. 8vo, pp. 342. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
10"Sidonie." From the French ofAlphonse Daudet. 16mo, pp. 262. Boston: Estes & Lauriat.
11"Why Four Gospels?or, The Gospel for all the World." ByD. S. Gregory, D.D.New York: Sheldon & Co.
12"The Shadow of the Sword." A Romance. ByRobert Buchanan. New York: Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Co.
13"Lessons to be Learned from the Cholera Facts of the Past Year." ByEly McClellan, M.D., Surgeon U.S.A. Reprinted from the "Richmond and Louisville Medical Journal."
14"Philosophical Discussions." ByChauncey Wright. With a Biographical Sketch of the Author by Charles Eliot Norton. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
15"The Convicts and their Children." ByBerthold Auerbach. Translated by Charles T. Brooks. Leisure Hour Series. New York: H. Holt & Co.
16"Notes on Assaying and Assay Schemes." ByPierre de Peyster Ricketts, E.M. New York: The Art Printing Establishment.
17"Acoustics, Light and Heat." ByWilliam Lees, M.A. With 200 illustrations. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.