Life — February 13, 1890 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

“Wile there's if there's Hope.” VOL. XV. FEBRUARY 13, 1890. No. 372. 28 West Twenty-THIRD STREET, NEw York. Published every Thursday. $5.00 a year in advance, postage free. Single copies, 19 cents. “Back numbers can be had by applying to this office. Vol. 1d, 00; Vol. I1., bound, $10.00; Voie itt Si, Mi, and Nite; bound cr ip Mar numbers cted contributions will be destroyed unless accompan Py directed envelope. Subscribers wishing address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address as well as new, regular rates. bya stamped 6 Die inevitable invasion of the home life of public men makes a sort of public property even in their private griefs. To thousands of American homes over which had fallen the shadow of Secretary Blaine's repeated bereave- ments the news of the overwhelming blow that had fallen upon Secretary Tracy came with a painful shock. Mr. Blaine lately said that he had been greatly comforted by the fellow-feeling expressed for him in the loss of his son. Both he and Mr. Tracy will be able to test how far a great wave of public sympathy can alleviate the sting of private and personal loss. * . . T the time of this writing it is a little too soon to pro- nounce authoritatively which of several gentlemen, lately interested in the Sixth National Bank, are entitled to be ranked as Napoleons of Finance. No doubt, however, exists in the public mind that the grade has been won and that in a complete and overwhelming manner. UCH has been said in disparagement of the virtue of the bank cashier. Note, if you please, the convin- cing imputations that the cashier of the Sixth National was an honest man. . . . J" is instructive to hear it reported that the excuse given by the Sixth National Bank plunderers to Mr, Leland for offering him an excessive price for bank stock was a hint that it was wanted by an English syndicate. The contem- porary American must learn to suspect that when a nebulous British syndicate offers him six figures for his grandmother's grave somebody is in danger of being cheated. A simple application of the golden rule is all that is needed to regulate his ensuing conduct. . . . OME of Mr. Cleveland's critics are fond of dwelling upon his ingratitude, and accuse him of the saddest neglect of obligations of friendship and politics. There is a little passage in the final installment of the “ Life of Lincoln,” in the last Century, which such critics ought to note. It is very short—the mere record that Mr. Lincoln “said one day, with a flash of cynical wisdom worthy of Rochefoucauld, that honest statesmanship was the employment of individual meannesses for the public good.” . . . ESIDES maintaining a dispute in the courts, Mr. E. H. House and Mr. Mark Twain are having a good deal of fun with one another in the newspapers. Mr. Twain's organ is the Hartford Courant, which published a Twain interview the other day, purporting to give some facts about the lawsuit. Our neighbor, the Mew York Times, found room for Mr. House's repartee, and, without venturing any opinion on the merits of the question, it seems safe to affirm that Mr. House was ahead when he left off. The eminent Nutmeg humorist seems in these days to be pretty constantly on his defense. He has hardly parried the underhand attempt of the authors to extort a copyright reading from him when Mr. House fetches this lunge at his ribs. And then there are the Saturday Review, the world, the flesh and the pirate publisher always at him. LiFe’s sympathy is much with Mr. Twain in these trials, but, of course, without disparage- ment of Mr. House. . * “6 Wt a noble thing it is,” wrote Mr. C. D, Warner, in his note of regrets to the Browning memorial meeting in Boston, “that you thus honor a poet—only a poet. I should think it significant of a change in public ideas.” Mr. Warner, who is a worldly person who writes prose only for cash at a high rate of remuneration, will please take notice of the current report that an American poet in good standing lately received a thousand dollars for a single short piece that he contributed to a popular American weekly journal. . . . “peek is too much disposition to decry poetry as a com- modity, the production of which is inadequately recom- pensed. That is a great mistake. Mr. Warner can safely wager the price of a couple of columns of his best prose that if poetry did not pay and poets were not held in very high consideration there would not be such a constant squeeze to get verses into the magazines. . . . R. HOWELLS will need another new wig. He is accused of having said the other day that there was nothing left of Dr. Johnson but Boswell, and the contempo- rary press has since been illustrated with handfuls of his hair. One of a set of sworn resolutions that LIFE filed at the beginning of this year was not to say anything unkind about Mr. Howells, but to leave that to him. Otherwise, it might be in order to point out that as a target for the sar- castic American paragrapher he is next in importance to the London Saturday Review, comicbooks.com