Life — October 2, 1890 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

VOL. XVI. OCTOBER 2, 1890. No. 405. 28 West Twenry-ruirp Street, New York. Published every Thursday. $5.00a year inadvance, postage free. copies, so cents, "Back numbers can be had by applying tothe office. Vol, 1. i bo $ts.c0; Vols TIL, IV. V., Vi, VIL, 2 IVland XV., bound or in Hat humbers, at regular rates, Rejected contributions will be destroyed untess accompanied by a stamped irected envelope abscribers wishing address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address a3 well as new. and LL New York and Brooklyn and the outlying districts talked last week about the Bowery lovers, who took a sudden and simultaneous leave of a world in which there seemed to be insuperable obstacles to their union. It was too bad that they should have hurried out of the world as they did, for though it is not such very great shakes of a world even for lovers, it provides considerable compensation for people who bear with it, and make the best of its trials. Besides, in America, if lovers can only bide their time, they are pretty sure to enjoy all the opportunities in the way of marriage and divorce that the law provides. Nothing is surer to come to lovers who wait, than a chance to marry, Putting obstacles in the way of marriage is a disagreeable business, of which the most enthusiastic preventers soon tire, and then, if the affianced have waited, the wedding may go on, But thwarted lovers, who kill themselves, spoil every- thing, since there is high authority for believing that they exchange an existence in which marriage is merely difficult, for one in which it has no place at all. T is interesting news that the Hon. Charles Emory Smith, of Philadelphia, thinks that he can do better than act any longer as a perch for the American eagle at St. Peters- burg. He intends shortly, it is said, to resume the editorial burdens of the Philadelphia Press. If Col. Shepard is too busy with local politics to leave home just now, and the President has no editor handy to put into the vacancy that Mr. Smith will leave, perhaps he will thank us for suggesting that Col. Eugene Field, of Chicago, is now in London and other parts of Europe recruiting his health, and might possi- bly be induced to undertake the job. What Col. Field's politics may be, LIFE doesn’t know, but that he would be persona gratissima to the Czar, no one can doubt who is familiar with his poetry and his stories of high life in Chicago and London. The affection of the midriff, which compels Col. Field to exchange for a season the airs of Illinois for those of Europe, without absolutely sapping his vitality has niodified his energies just about enough to qualify him for diplomatic duties. The chance to get him is a cl i thousand. If offered the place he would probably accept, for though it is notorious that the Russian mission is the reverse of lucrative, Col. Field, being on a vacation anyway, could better afford to take it than Col. Smith, to whom every day spent abroad means the neglect of a profitable job at home. . * . LLE, BERNHARDT has given out that when she I comes to this country to play Cleopatra, the snakes she will use for snake-bite in the closing scene will be real snakes. This is considerate of Mlle. Sarah, but LIFE can assure her that if she uses Bengal tigers in that last scene, she cannot hope to make a notable sensation in New York, New York's capacity for gasping astonishment over the death of Cleopatra was all used up in a single experience. . . . [DROF. SHALER, the geologist, notes it as an extraor- dinary fact that the New World has made only one addition to the animals in domestication, and that is the turkey. LIFE is sorry that it should be so, and rather than have Prof, Shaler mortified at his Continent’s shortcomings, it will cheerfully contribute Col, Elliot Shepard to the animals’ list. Col. Shepard is easily domesticated, and there is nothing like him in all the Eastern hemisphere. HAT a wonderful man w Dion Boucicault, and what an extraordinary amount he seemed to get out of life. He succeeded at the very threshold of his activity, and his success, however it may have varied, never left him. For nearly fifty years he seemed to defy time. He worked prodigiously and he played prodigiously. He made fortunes and spent them. He married wives, and, alas, he unmarried one of them, Setting aside the discredit of his treatment of Agnes Robertson, there is great attraction about so full and busy a life as his, and yet, if you are critical, you may say that he seemed to n a treadmill of existence, and that his defects of character were such that after half a century of tremendous hustling, he ended just about where he began. It is not quite satisfactory to live and labor sixty- seven years and die best known as the author of a play you Wrote when you were in your teens, IR EDWIN ARNOLD announce marry a Japanese lady, to hear it, not only on Sir FE ‘s these days, the continuance of any married sta that he isn’t going to as was reported. LIFE regrets ccount, but because, in inglishman in the un- ¢ is more or less of amenace tothe American girl. comicbooks.com