Life — May 7, 1885 — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

- LIFE: IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. From Léon VERDI, IN NEW YORK, TO PROSPER GOBAIN, AT LILLE. May Ist. My DEAR PROSPER: BLAME myself for my negli- gence, and I had been negligent indeed to have forgotten to tell you more of literary Boston. Here Plato flourishes in the | Street cars; in New York the women carry poodles, in Boston they carry books. Perhaps Mrs. De Sorosis is a fair specimen of the feminine ostrich de- scribed in my last. She is bilious and provincial; she be- gan as a writer of obituary verses for her bereaved friends. | Then she wrote ver- | ses in a paper pub- | lished here weekly. This particular paper occupies the place among journals that a mosquito holds among insects; it was born at the South End, nurtured at the Back Bay, and now lives in luxury on feminine curiosity. Here Mrs. De Sorosis began. She is now a wasp-waisted imitator of Madame de Sevigny. At her “evenings at home” are as many lions as can be induced to appear. The rising young men and women are invited, and are sometimes allowed to read one of their own produc- tions. Here you will meet a certain scientific defender of orthodoxy —a kind of John L. Sullivan made theological. His quotations from the German (German is the court lan- guage) are as fabulous as his support of prohibition was stormy and inaccurate. Here in his day came the blue-eyed and vegetarian supporter of the thesis that “everything is spiral.” Here, too, are all the “ too-cultured-to-be-Christian” wielders of homiletical clubs — men who approve of God and are gracious to St. Peter, and who live on the attraction of a fine choir. Here, too, you may see the last novelist, youthful in looks and morals, who disguises French fiction in Sam Ward's epigrams and lives a saint where Paul de Koch would be burned at the stake. Here are his older brothers in the art, who look at America through old English and Venetian glass spectacles; emasculated Puritans in the pour-point and | purple of English praise. In fact, mon gros Prosper, there are more desiccated litterateurs of stunted growth, more liter- ary fledglings with hardly feathers enough to cover their intellectual nudity, in Boston and vicinity than would satisfy the demands of the most ravenous of autograph collectors. You see, a great many people in Boston have money, and the offspring of Harvard University and a century and a half of | money are what I describe ; and why not, for when /'or a-¢- 259 al perdu la plus petite occasion de se montrer stupide? Except, perhaps, when ft is in possession of a father and the daughter falls indiscriminately ir love, then sometimes “/'or"" is unnecessarily and painstakingly clever. So thinks, at least, thy tout devoud and perhaps experience-suffering Lon, THE AFGHAN EMBROGLIO. ENGLAND Passes A WAR CREDIT OF $55,000,000— RUSSIA PASSES THE GATES OF GUDDEH. SIR PETER LUMTUM DENIES GENERAL KOM-OFF'S STATEMENT. [By Special Cabul to Lire’s WAR Bureau.] OUR correspondent called at the British Headquarters at Penjayday last evening, and learned from Sir Peter Lum-Tum that war would certainly be declared before night. Upon being pressed for information as to which night he meant, the gentleman refused to commit himself further. Mr. Gladstone was then telephoned for information in regard to the War Credit, and it was learned that just as the Russians passed into Afghan Territory, at Guddeh, the English Government passed a credit for £11,000,000 sterling, | to be used in carfare for the hardy Britons who are to up- | hold the cause of the Ameer. The Czar sent down an ultimatum to your correspondent, requesting his presence at a boating party on the Kushk River last evening. Of course I] went and had a long chat with the Autocrat on the back steppes of his palace. He informed me that Generals Whuppinkoff and Bootsoff, together with Prince Boodleritch, had that afternoon set off for Sherat with a large force of native Vitches, Koffs and Hiski'’s, wherewith he had no doubt the enemy's boundary could be captured and painted green, so that the British forces, brought up on geographies in which boundaries are all red, couldn't tell it from the grass over which they marched. Sir Peter Lumtum, I also learned, wrote to M. Big-Ears, the Russian War Minister, denying Kom-Off’s statement that he, Lumtum, ran off on the approach of the Muscovites, Phosphites and Trilobites, leaving nothing to be caught but a Ta-Ta regiment. The Ameer has demanded protection from the ravages of border ruffians, who steal everything they can lay their hands on. Two yucatans, four flights of steppes and a can of tiffin have been taken from his ancestral tent at Pull-I- Gottem. The Czar, in bowing me out, stated that he was tired of ultimating and thought he ‘d begin a little intimating just for a change. Just as I withdrew from the audience I learned that General Wolesley was to be sent to the scene of the trouble, and the Czar sighed as he said adieu, and I left him mur- muring to himself: “I thought we'd have something of a scrimmage before I died, but if Wolesley has charge! Why, I'm forty now. I shan’t live till | 'm 120!" comicbooks.com