Life — July 12, 1883 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

VOL. I. JULY r2tH, 1883. T1155 BROADWAY, New York. NO. 28. Published every Thursday, $5 a year in advance, postage free. Single copies, 10 cents. [egy-Subscribers leaving town for the summer may have their copies forwarded by sending their summer address in full to this office. BY the death of Archbishop Purcell the world loses a man of great purity of character, exemplary habit and undoubted integrity, yet a man who was guilty of what, in a secular person, would rightfully be termed criminal carelessness. Undertaking a vast banking business for the benefit of his flock, he received deposits amounting to millions, kept no books, made rash invest- ments and expenditures, and, as a matter of course, failed, leav- ing his creditors in the lurch to the extent of over three millions. There is no doubt that the dead prelate was merely guilty of an error in judgment and of ignorance of worldly matters in this proceeding. No one questions fora moment his intention to do good by this most singular ecclesiastical enterprise; but the fact remains that 10,000 people lost their savings by it; that the Mother Church, with millions upon millions, refused to come to the aid of her distressed prince ; and that a life which contained much that was worthy of highest praise and but little deserving of censure, was ended under clouds of shame and sorrow. e* 6 ¢ WE hive had a really and truly duel at last—editors, seconds, surgeons, pistols, twenty paces and all. A ‘Texan editor and an Italian sculptor were the principals. They took great care to advertise the affair well by elaborate replies to the excited reporters, by loud and continued pistol practice in public galleries, and by harangues upon the subject of their courage in the corridors of their respective hotels, Despite these broad hints, however, the police refused to interfere, and the belligerents were forced by their seconds into a meeting, where Editor Knox, who had been called a liar by Sculptor Sheahan, received calibre 45 amends from that gentleman through his arm. This establishes a precedent, of which amateur duellists of the future will no doubt take heed. The police do not always in- terfere, and duels are sometimes dangerous. * ¢ « THAT twenty-one members of the Thirteenth Regiment were prostrated by the heat Wednesday, while engaged in that brilliant piece of tomfoolery known as a “ sham battle,” is a fact which prominent and wise militia grandees would do well to consider. It is no doubt quite a frolic for doughty officers who never commanded at a real battle to charge raw men hither and thither over a peaceful field before a crowd of idle women, but when human life is imperilled, the seething ambition of the ama- teur general should be repressed. NE hundred and twelve persons were killed by the cholera at Damietta, on the Fourth. Honors were easy. We had the toy pistol. * 8 & THERE seems to be a disposition on part of the long-suffer- ing public to rebel against that barbarous jangling pande- monium known in church parlance as ‘* Sabbath Chimes.” Exactly how this metallic uproar tends to the welfare of pious souls has never been made quite clear, but it is certain that its effect upon the average sinner who lives within ear-shot of the steeple, is one which must make the prince of fiends caper with delight. To sufferers from nervous complaints the bells are a source of dangerous torture, and it is time now for the legis- lature, if it can get a lucid interval, to proscribe this ecclesiastical species of tomtom as a public nuisance. s 6 «@ THE severity of Mayor Wasson’s sentence for embezzling public moneys to pay debts incurred in draw poker, does not seem to stand much chance of mitigation, despite the earnest efforts of influential friends in the matter, and it is to be hoped that disbursing officers will take the lesson to heart when next temptéd into a series of social jackpots. * 8 « Learns having struck and demolished a Fourth of July orator at Goodland, Indiana, the people of that section are disposed to think there is a kind Providence governing the elements after all. o 8 6 HE Society for the Encouragement of Amateur Liars has decided to confer the Perkins Special Medal on the Moose- head City(N.C.) correspondent of the Philadelphia Press for his story of how little Birdie Elliott was carried four miles by a bunch of toy balloonsaccidentally attached toher by an Alabama major, and rescued by two Georgia captains and a Virginia major, and brought back to her mamma, who was lying in a dead faint, at- tended by four Louisiana surgeons-general. e ¢ «# THE humane example set by the captains of the Seventh Street Ferry-boats, allowing mothers to spend the day on the river with their little ones, without extra charge, is one emin- ently worthy of universal adoption. * 8 -« jews has just paid off the last dollar of her war indebtedness, She was one of the first to offer aid to the Union in the hour of peril, and one of the most generous in responding to subsequent appeals. Het enviable position to-day has been obtained by careful retrenchment and a judicious use of the ballot, which other states with large debts and small credit would do well to imitate, |