Life — April 6, 1893 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

- LIFE: “While there's Life there's Hope.” VOL. XXI. APRIL 6, 1893. No, 536. 28 West Twenty-THIRD STREET, NEw York, Postage to foreign es, ro cents, by a stamped Published every Thursday. $5.00 a year in advance. countries in the Postal Union, $r.r4 a year, extra. Single ¢ Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanie and directed envelope. HEREAS it is April, and Easter is past, and the new administration begins to feel settled, and the crocuses are up in ladies bonnets and other latitudes favorable for their develop- ment, it is not too soon for us, (with proper reservations of our win- / / ter flannels and like particulars) to open our arms to the glad Spring,and welcome the warm side of her to our bosoms. It isa curious trait of Spring, that, venerable as she is, her surprises never grow stale. Persons who have welcomed her sixty or seventy distinct times are just as enthusiastic over her sixty-first arrival as though it was her coming-out appearance. No female, with the single exception of Adelina Patti, is to be compared with her in this felicitous quality. The starting of the buds and the upheaval of green blades in the Park meadows are just as enlivening this year as though it was Creation’s opening performance and the curtain had never fallen on anything more conclusive than a March rehearsal. + dont hy by i BOTS COLMA EL ree Piste ere eed . * . Pevee eee feels pretty much the same about Spring, \ but if there is any class in the community that feels, if t<m possible, more so, it is that which includes those of us who are trying to get along without doing any work. About ¢ |. the time the frost fetches permanently loose from the soil, the leisure class attains an intense realization that » it has had a very exhausting winter. Those of its 6! constituent members who, since Thanksgiving, have enjoyed the hospitality of their fellows in poor-houses and kindred institutions, welcome the returning - warmth which makes mere merchandise of coal again, and hastens the hour when they can shake off a distasteful restraint, and start on their summer pilgrimage. Persons of kindred longings but more adequate means, dare at last to be conscious how tired they are of dances and dinners and Lenten pastimes, and set themselves industriously to ascertain which particular kind of change will fit in best with their capacities and afford their jaded constitutions the most relief. To lead an idle life is never quite the simple thing it seems to working people, but from April to October, when out-of-doors*is in session, it is a mere bagatelle compared with what it is from October to April. Horse has begun again now, and the country roads are drying up. Intending yachtmen begin to hurry their builders. Heads of urban families are already making pil- grimages of inspection to places by the sea. People with new clothing take it out and sun it onthe avenues. Young fellows and maidens—what a time the Spring must always be, and is this year, with them, and how uncommonly hard it is just now to get them past a flower-shop. OF course Spring isn’t the only thing that has happened, but it is so much the best thing and so much the most in everybody's mind, that it is the most vital subject to talk about. The cheerfullest of the other subjects—the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the April weddings; the Naval Review and the desperate hustling at Chicago—are all part of it, and included in the consideration of the general subject. . . * AY D, by the way, any one who wants todoany- thing and have due notice taken of it, will . please do it this month. This is the month to be married and to die in, to settle the fate of Hawaii, to fill all consid- erable offices, the tenancy of which requires discussion, to have the streets cleaned, and put everything in order. On May day the Fair begins, and will last six months, and we will be expected to talk about it and nothing else (except possi- bly a general railroad strike) Was long as it lasts. Conversely, if any one has planned any action that he does not care to have discussed, his chance will come after May first. Then will be a good time to settle the silver question, to make a lot of appointments (if so many should be necessary), to get Congress together and fix the tariff, to reform the Pension Bureau, to rehorse the Fifth Avenue Stages, to kill pool-selling, to abolish prayers at Yale, to take effectual measures against cholera, to eliminate pro- fessionalism from college athletics, and to do all the other jobs that everybody wants to see done, and no one wants to clamor over any more. * And if any Americans who have had the hardihood to plan to go abroad this summer will wait until the Fair opens, they can probably slip off unobserved. Much more attention is likely to be given this season to the people who come into the country than to those who go out. If one could but spare the time, it would be interesting to go abroad, since not for a generation has there been such a chance to see Europe as it must have been and looked half a century or so ago, before its discovery by the Americans. comicbooks.com