Life — April 30, 1891 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

“Mile there's Life there's Hope.” VOL. XVII. APRIL 30. 1891. No. 433. 28 West Twenty-Tiirp Srreet, New York. Published ever Rs $5.00 a year inadvance, postage {ree Single gontes ro cents.” Back numbers can, be had by applying to this office. Vol Pound, $33.00; Vol, It. Bourd. Grego; Vols it te Vit. vane’ SPs SIT: SIV8 XV and SVIY bound or ia Had pi at reuters rates, Rejected contributions will be destroyed unlessaccompanied by a stamped and directed envelope Subscribers wishing address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address as well as new. ~ PEAKING for the State of New York and contiguous vicinities, it is perfectly safe to say that if there are six weeks that could be spared out of the year without doing it any harm, it would be the six weeks beginning on the first Monday in March, They make usa lenten quarantine that we have to keep whether we like it or not. The real, true Spring and this issue of L1FE will be put upon the market in these latitudes at about the same time. Spring threatens sporadically and intermittently as early as the middle of April, but so long as it yields two sprigs of pneumonia to one of arbutus it is hardly worth talking about as Spring. When base-ball becomes a marketable sport, and one’s flannels have been oppressive three days running, then we may begin to believe that there really is a Spring and that we are in it. It has been said by a favorite author that at this time of year a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love. That may have been so in other climes and times, but contempo- rary observation hereabouts persuades the observer that what our young men’s fancies turn to in May, and as muchas to any- thing else, is horse. When the town begins to warm, and the mud is known to have dried on the country roads, the desire to go on or after a quadruped begins to wrestle in many minds. with the other reasonable desires that cost money, and in a certain percentage of minds, every year, horse prevails. A lover, even a successful one, is an affecting sight to any- one with due appreciation of the chances he is taking; but only to a man who is ignorant of the possibilities of horse- flesh, is a lover half so affecting as a young man who is buy- ing his first horse. There is so much that he does not know, and it will cost him such a pretty penny to learn it! Still, though a little knowledge of horse is a dangerously expensive thing, if one can afford to acquire it, it is a knowl- edge that has only one superior in its power to add to one’s intelligent interest in life. The noblest study of mankind is man, as heretofore ; but the study of horse is gloriously sup- plementary thereto. It is worth a reasonable bit out of one’s surplus in the glad, hopeful Spring,to get in the way of learn- ing how many things a horse may have the matter with him, and still be able to get about. There are so very many of them! More than even with the worst luck the beginner can hope to learn in one season, for a single horse, nor two, nor four, do not have them all. ceriainly not in any one summer. A horse's blemishes are like virtues, in that they have to be de- veloped ; but the beginner may assure himself that the less he knows about horse the more blemishes he will be able to develop, so that his ignorance and his opportunities of cur- ing it will go hand in hand. Craniology is a very interesting study, but the bumps on your head come ready-made, or grow out so very slowly that you cannot note their progress. With the bumps on a horse's legs it is different. If the horse is young enough, and the country is hilly, or the carriage heavy, or if your notions of driving or riding are a little crude, a notable lot of knobs will sometimes accumulate on a set of legs almost while you are looking. It is as interest- ing to watch them as it is to see the seeds come up in the garden after a warm rain, . . . HAT was a very unkind trick that was played on Mr. Wm. Henry Hurlbert by the deceased friend who took advantage of his hospitality to stow a lot of erotica in his apartments. Possibly the decedent did it in anticipation of his demise, for, of course, to be found dead with erotic literature upon one’s person or in one’s room would be enough to embarrass a corpse. To be found alive with such literature in one’s apartments is bad enough, and seems to have embarrassed even Mr. Hurlbert, and the unsophisticated mind may be excused for wondering how Anglo-Saxons of fair pretensions to decency can bring themselves tocollect erotic literature, or indeed to meddle with it at all. It is not a pretty taste, and Lire is much more disposed to jibe at persons who find themselves embarrassed by its cultivation, than to condole with them, . . REPO’ TS of this year’s Yale crew are interpreted by anxious enquirers to betoken the appearance, in June, at New London, of a boat- load of exceptionally invincible blue oarsmen. Not only is Captain Cook so busy this spring that he can hardly get to New Haven for a moment, but the Easter vacation spent by the Yale crew under his supervision on the Schuylkill is carefully reported to have been time thrown away, since the notorious Easter tide ran so strong, it seems, on the Schuylkill, as to make practice spells almost impossible. Of twelve candidates for this year's Yale boat, seven are understood to be consumptives, and the other five are puny creatures who have never pulled before this year, except at bottles. On the strength of these revelations betting is 17 to 3 against Harvard, and Captain Cook is understood to be arranging a race with Oxford. comicbooks.com