Life — April 22, 1886 — page 2: what you’re looking at

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

e c) “While there's Life there'o VOL, VII. APRIL 22, 1886. 1155 Broapway, New York. Published every Thursday, $5 a year in advance, postage free. Single copies, 10 cents. Back numbers can be had by applying to this office. Vol. I., $1.50 per number; Vol. II., 25 cents per number ; Vols. III, IV., V. and VI. at regular rates. Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. I" is painful to see esteemed contemporaries falling into error; and yet they do, and force us to play the good Samaritan and drag them out. Here is the New York 777- éune on record ina paragraph that disparages pretty girls because of their propensity to make trouble—poisonings, elopements and such—and cracks up the “ plain girl” who “never figures in scandals or tragedies; and, although she may be homely enough to stop a clock, she is never heard of as breaking her father’s or her husband's heart.” In the same spirit is the advice of the Boston Transcript, which says: “Do not fall in love with a pretty face, my son. Marry a homely woman if you would be happy.” How is it that adult and experienced journals like the 7rzbune and the Transcript have not learned that there are no homely women. It ought not to be necessary for us to remind them that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and that the beholder who cannot discern it is either defective in his scrutiny or handicapped with an ocular apparatus that lacks some important lenses. The 7y/éune never made blunders of this sort while Dr. Gfeeley was alive. * . . AY additional error into which our Boston contem- porary more particularly falls is implied in its exhorta- tion to marry a so-called “homely woman.” It is customary to speak of the “ accident of birth,” but birth is only a corol- lary to the accident of marriage, and experience and obser- vation combine to teach us that one is as essentially a casualty as the other. The 7ranscript owes it to the boasted intelligence of its environment to recognize that the selection of matrimonial accomplices is less a matter of intelligent dis- crimination than of fate, a matter in which propinquity and the nice adjustment of obstacles influence volition to so great a degree as practically to destroy it. There are a good many things that the 7ranscrifé does n't know. * . * PAINFUL feature of Mr. Gladstone's plan for Ireland is the banishment of the Irish members from the House of Commons. How will Mr. Parnell like to be exiled? Will the society of the bog-trotters and the delights of Dublin make up to him for the loss of the excitements of the British capital? No doubt Mr. Parnell wants to be an Irish legisla- tor, but no doubt he wants to be an angel, too. It is easy to understand that he may not be in a hurry in either case. If Mr. Gladstone's proposition should go through in its present form, the Irish members will be in a position to understand the feelings of a hornet who is promoted to be a working member in a hive of honey bees, . . . UR congratulations are tendered to.the editor of the Sun at the successful result of his efforts to bring the editor of the World to a realizing sense of his delinquencies as a Congressman. It will be noted that Editor Pulitzer was | able to sustain his double responsibilities until the opening of the baseball season. When the important work of journalism begins it is proper for every editor to be at his post and give his undivided attention to the duties of his profession. LIFE trusts that Editor Dana will recognize the demands of the season and cease to distract his mind with china vases or the habits of hens in Ohio. * * * Sax JONES met Chicago, and he seems to be her's. At least she is not his. It seems as if for the first time Sam had bitten off rather more than he can chew. It has been a lesson to him. He does not chew any more, nor even smoke cigarettes ; that much good, at least, he has got out of Chicago. The newspapers report that when he left the Queen City of the West (Is n’t that what she calls herself ?) he was greatly downcast and discouraged ; but he ought not to have been. The Queen City is big and lacks very little of being superlative in all its properties. It has the wickedest Aldermen except New York; Buffalo, for all her bragging, being nowhere in comparison. It has the most explosive socialists this side of San Francisco. It generally has the wickedest Mayor in the United States, and the rest of its criminals are bad in proportion. On the other hand, it has the biggest Baptist Church in America; the biggest Presbyterian Church, except two in Brooklyn; the biggest Congregational Church, except Beecher’s. It is ap- parent that in the Chicago alley both the pins are enormous and the balls are very big and tumble around right smartly. Sam was not used to this, His habit has been simply to blaze away on his own hook and have his fun with the pins ; but in Chicago it took half his time to keep out of the way of the balls of the other participants, until finally he assailed pins and balls with almost equal force. Sam should take comfort in the reflection that a man has to be very bad indeed before his experience as a reformed sinner can do Chicago any good. comicbooks:com