—And with it all there is such a foolish, deplorable, ruinous neglect of the proper instruction of young women. They are taught heaps of things that are of no possible use to them, and they are not taught those which concern them most nearly. Here is this miserable "Throop-Price" affair, as it is called, in which a young lady belonging to a family of some culture and social position is actually taken before a clergyman and half married before she knows it; but suspecting that something is wrong, and being assured by the clergyman that the ceremony he is performing solemnizes a real, binding marriage, she flies off, but is immediately induced to go before the Mayor, and is there married out of hand when she meant to do no such thing. It seems incredible; but it is actually true. We make, as we should do, an awful fuss about marriage, and a good marriage is, as it should be, the desire of a young woman's heart, and yet in regard to all the essentials of marriage as well as the duties and personal relations of married life, we leave them in ignorance. There would seem to be but two ways about this matter: one, the French way of keeping young girls in seclusion and absolute ignorance, and then marrying them off as a sort of business transaction—an arrangement that does not suit our social life, and which, it must be confessed, does not tend to produce the best state of morals in France; the other to give young girls reasonable liberty, under the general supervision of their parents and family, but in this case to arm them with knowledge, to let them know what marriage is legally, ceremonially, socially, and physiologically. This is a safe way, and the only safe one. Let this be done, and then if a girl "goes wrong" in any way, it is merely one of those unavoidable misfortunes which some of us have to encounter.
—Was there ever anything so amazing as this blue-glass craze that has taken possession of about two-thirds of those who are included in the term "everybody"? It would seem as if there were no limit to man's credulity, particularly upon those subjects which concern him most nearly, religion and the preservation of bodily health. In both he is ready to listen to any plausible person who will tell him to "do some great thing." Tell him that he must live a life morally pure and physically clean and sober, that he must not sin against his own consciousness of right, and that he must wash himself and eat simple, wholesome food, conform himself to the indications of his physical structure, and he will assent in a careless way, and immediately violate every rule of sound morals and physiology. But tell him that he must make a pilgrimage to Rome, or that he must lift six or seven hundred pounds daily, swallow pills and bitters, or live in a blue conservatory, and he will prick up his long ears, and do it if he can. What wonder that quacks all make money, and that the "patent medicine interest" should have a representative in Congress! But quacks and patent medicines usually must have the benefit of a few years of copious advertising before they effect their purpose; whereas blue glass was written into popular favor with the dash of a pen. It trebled in price in less than so many weeks. The notion that light should be filtered of every ray but the blue one to produce the best effect upon the human body and brain is certainly one of the most fantastic that has been broached since the days of the medical mountebanks. The best use to which this glass can be put is to the making of hot-beds. Let our early lettuce and pease by all means be brought forward under sashes glazed in blue. What cauliflowers we shall have, and what cabbages! At present the crop of cabbage heads, to be sure, promises to be very large through the intervention of blue glass; but much the greater number of them appear to be growing upon human shoulders.
—Science, or self-styled science, however, insists on playing its tricks with colors as with other matter—if color be matter. There is now a budding theory that the eye is and always has been in a state of development, and that we are yet to discover new colors of which we have at present no idea. In support of this it is urged that in early literature we find only the strong primary colors mentioned—red, blue, black; black, however, being the absence of true color. It is supposed that the other colors were not seen; and in support of this it is urged that Aristotle assigns only four colors to the rainbow. But surely this is scientific trifling. It is natural that early writers upon any subject should notice only the strongest and most salient points connected with it. Its finer gradations become the subject of subsequent discussion. Particularly might this be expected to be the case in the ruder states of society. It is not that the senses cannot perceive; for the savage senses are very keen, as is well known, but that language, perhaps even the mind, does not discriminate. It is content with broad and marked distinctions. So with regard to the eye and color. We may be very sure that a perfect eye sees, and has always seen, all possible color. But unless led thereto by science or art, or love of beauty in dress or ornamentation, the observer is content with noticing the strong tints, red, blue, yellow, black, white—and green also, which is so widely spread over nature. But as to a new color, that is quite impossible, unless some new gradation or combination of color may have a new name given to it. For in the spectrum we have a perfect gradation of colors, all that are in the ray; and after we pass the primaries, the others are but combinations and gradations. To get a new color we must wait for a new eye and a new sun.
—Where will the desire for championship not lead some one of us, and where will it end? We have champion walkers and skaters, champion boot-blacks and bill-posters; and out at the West the other day a lad employed in a newspaper office to wrap papers for the mails announced himself as the champion paper-wrapper, and challenged anybody to wrap with him—the most in so many hours. The last champion performance is that of a "professor of dancing" (Anglèce, a dancing master), who waltzed for five consecutive hours. It was an occasion. We are told how, after waltzing some half-a-dozen persons, male and female, out of breath, the "intrepid professor" kept on; how he changed partners without stopping his regular steps; how he drank a glass of wine now and then, while stepping in time to the music; and how, when after waltzing steadily for four hours and a half, he showed some signs of faltering, slices of lemon were put into his mouth, ten minutes after swallowing which "the professor revived." Then he became dizzy, and peppermint lozenges were given him. On he went, and in the last five minutes of his stint showed his pluck by "putting in fancy steps"; and his wife, who was now his partner—a sort of nursing partner, it would seem—occasionally whispered "nods of encouragement," a performance which beats the professor's all hollow. "Nods and becks and wreathed smiles" are very natural and very charming on appropriate occasions; but whispered nods are something quite inconceivable. The professor held out, and at half-past twelve "a grand huzza rang out." Is not this rather a pitiful spectacle? If a man dances, let him dance well. If to teach dancing is his vocation, let him get, and let him prize, a reputation for teaching it well. That is reasonable and respectable. But that a man should spend five whole consecutive hours, nearly a quarter of a day, in dancing for the mere sake of showing that he could keep it up and dance ever so many people down, is rather a sad exhibition of smallness. All these exhibitions spring, not from the desire to do well, which is always and in all things honorable, but from that of doing something that other people cannot do, which is not very admirable. Some other "professor," not to be bluffed, will now challenge this professor; and we shall have a dance for the championship. Then some other professor in Europe will be fired with ambition, and we shall have a grand International Dancing Contest for the Championship of the World. Well, it will be a little better, but not much, than the eating and drinking matches which sometimes take place in England, in which two half-beastly creatures gorge and guzzle in a contest wherein the victor would probably be beaten by almost any four-legged swine. Emulation is a spur to exertion the moral excellence of which is at least questionable; and when it leads to dancing five hours on a stretch or eating five pounds of bacon at a sitting, we see a little what its essence is.
—The curiosities of advertising come out strongly at the far West. Here is the "Denver Rocky Mountain News" all ablaze with displayed announcements, some of which are of an extraordinary and whimsical character. One man cries out in enormous type, "Deadwood on getting rich if you only save your money; no need of going to the Black Hills if you can buy Groceries at these figures"; another exclaims in very big black letters, "Store your Stoves! and avoid trouble, dirt, rust, hard work, andprofanity"—the latter a piece of advice very pertinent, it would seem, to the region; another insinuates in a sort of colossal pica that although "Bragg and Stick'em may have a larger stock of men's furnishing goods than all the other houses in the United States put together," the right place to get things cheap and elegant is his establishment (who are the loudly advertising rivals that he pillories as Bragg and Stick'em does not appear); another firm of traders announce themselves as the "Chicago Square-Dealing House"; another, a jeweller, informs the Western world that in consequence of the "great failure of the Milton Gold jewelry company in London, their entire stock has been consigned to us to raise money as soon as possible"—the idea of a consignment from London to Denver does not seem to strike the Western mind as it does us who are somewhat nearer London; two undertakers announce their business by enormous prints of black-plumed hearses; and the paper itself publishes a "black list" of debts for sale, ingeniously adding that a dollar a week will be credited to the debtors during the publication; one advertisement is headed, "Drunkard, Stop!" an appeal which seems quite in place; for the most important and interesting announcement of all, headed, "Don't you forget it!" is that a certain man has "the best stock of Straight Kentucky Sour-mash Bourbon and RyeWhiskeyin the Far West." He may be sure that the Denver people will not forget that.
Footnotes
1"Biographie de Alfred de Musset: sa Vie et ses Œuvres."ParPaul de Musset. Paris: Charpentier.
2"Alfred de Musset." VonPaul Lindau. Berlin: Hofmann.
3Reports to the Senate in 1825, 1835, and 1844, contain able discussions of "Executive Patronage."
4For an able setting forth of the claims of Orlandus Lassus, see Frederic Louis Ritter's excellent "History of Music," First Series, published by Oliver Ditson & Co.
5It is not necessary that I should give authority for this to any competent person who is acquainted with the music of the ancient composers; but whoever chooses to do so may find the subject fully discussed in Helmholtz's great work,passim.
6Amphora cepit Institui, currente rota cur urceus exit?—Hor. Ad Pisones.
7No. 6, Breitkopf and Härtel.
8"Shakespeare, from an American Point of View: Including an Inquiry as to his Religious Faith and his Knowledge of Law. With the Baconian Theory Considered." ByGeorge Wilkes. 8vo, pp. 471. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
9"An Analysis of Religious Belief." By ViscountAmberly. 8vo, pp. 745. New York: D. M. Bennett.
10"The Spirit of the New Faith.A Series of Sermons." ByOctavius Brooks Frothingham. 16mo, pp. 272. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
11"United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories."F. V. Hayden, United States Geologist in charge. Annual Report, 1877. Colorado and adjacent Territories. Government Printing Office.
12The Same.Catalogue of Publications. Second edition, Revised to December 31, 1876.
13The Same.Report on Invertebrate Palæontology.F. B. Meek.
14The Same.Monograph of the Geometrid Moths or Phalænidæ. ByA. S. Packard, Jr., M.D.
15"Report of a Reconnaissance to the Yellowstone National Park in the Summer of 1875." ByWilliam Ludlow, Captain of Engineers. War Department, Washington.
16"Essays on Political Economy." ByFrederick Bastiat. Translation revised by David A. Wells. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
17"The Jukes.A Study In Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity." ByR. L. Dugdale. With an Introduction by Elisha Harris, M.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
18"Seeking the Golden Fleece.A Record of Pioneer Life in California." ByJ. D. B. Stillman. A. Roman & Co.
19"Sir Roger de Coverly:Consisting of the Papers Relating to Sir Roger, which were Originally Published in the 'Spectator.'" With an Introductory Essay byJohn Habberton. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25.
20"The New Church:Its Nature and Whereabout. Being a Critical Examination of the Popular Theory, with some Illustrations of its Tendency and Legitimate Fruits." ByB. F. Barrett. 16mo, pp. 213. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger.
21"Volume Third The Swedenborg Library." Edited byB. F. Barrett. Freedom, Rationality, and Catholicity. From the Writings of Emanuel Swendenborg. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger.
22"How to Teach according to Temperament and Mental Development; or, Phrenology in the School Room and the Family." ByNelson Sizer. 16mo, pp. 331. New York: Wells & Co.
23"King Saul:A Tragedy." ByByron A. Brooks. 16mo, pp. 144. New York: Nelson & Phillips.
24Published by Osgood & Company.