Life — May 25, 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.” XXI. MAY 25, 1893. No. 543. 28 West Twenty-Tiirp Street, New York, VOL. Published every Thursday. $s.00a year in advance, Postage to foreign countries in the Postal Union, $1.04 a year, extra. Single copies, 10 cents. Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. NE of the advantages of going early to the Fair is to get there before Chicago civilization has had too perceptible an effect on the manners of the foreign population of the Midway Plaisance. At last advices, the Dahomeyans had not succumbed to the prevalent Chicago prejudice in favor of clothing: A recent traveler up the Nile wrote home: ‘The natives come and stare at us and we stare back at them, but we think we get a better money’s- worth than they because they don’t wear clothes and we do.” Owing to our climate, it seems unlikely that Americans will ever rise superior to raiment, but the Fair may do a good work in helping us to realize that garb is rather a matter of taste and custom than an indispensable necessity. See the Dahomeyans then before they take on clothes. See the Eskimosearly, too. They will undoubtedly be fatter and more complaisant in May than in September, and the Turkish dancing-girls also will be more oriental in their manners and less shopworn. . . IFE learns with sincere regret that the Fair authorities have come so seriously to logger- heads with Mr. Theodore Thomas as to be threatened with the loss of his services. On the merits of the controversy it cannot attempt to pass. That Mr. Ee Thomas's talent for harmonizing sounds beats i his capacity for harmonizing men is no secret. 3 Nevertheless, he is so sincere and able an artist, <“7/ and so worthy a man, that one is bound to hope that the embarrassments which have involved him may be straightened out. * . * ISCUSSING the reasons why Harvard undergraduates do not write better English, Mr. Schoolmaster Green- ough, of Boston, suggests certain remedial measures which he thinks, if adopted, might bring it about that “we shall not have classes of freshmen in Harvard College to whom allusions to any literary work except the last number of LIFE are absolutely unintelligible.” We trust that Mr. Greenough’s educational remedies may be tried, and that the fruits of them may be commensurate with his expectations. The more familiar the Harvard Freshmen become with the Bible, and Shakespere, and Robinson Crusoe, and the other pure wells of English, the better qualified they will be to appreciate the limpid flow of that literary fountain which, at present, it seems, they exclusively affect. But in the case as it stands, if Mr. Greenough’s diagnosis of it is accurate, there are more encouraging symptoms than at first appear. Twenty years ago it was remarked as a circumstance fit to excite grave concern that Harvard freshmen read 7he Nation, deriving therefrom a pessimistic cast of thought which was justly felt to be detrimental to their prospects of future usefulness. If they read Lire now instead, the change is one to rejoice at. We will wager a new hat with Mr. Greenough that a com- parison of Dr. Sargeant’s report about the Jast freshman class with the records made twenty years ago by General Lister, will show a notable improvement in the working of the Harvard freshman liver. . . . I T would be a considerable relief to many sincere persons, who are anxious to think right, if someone who has been able to keep his mind on New York politics, would determine whether Wm. F, Sheehan of Buffalo is really and truly a wickeder politician than D, Cady Herrick, of Albany. There are times when Judge Herrick, as a representative of the virtuous element of the New York Democracy, seems somehow to stand in less violent contrast than could be wished with the Machine's unscrupulous Lieutenant-Governor. . HERE has been a general omission to thank Governor Flower for vetoing the Epileptic Colony bill. Some things appeal to the Governor and some do not. If the five hundred or more epi- leptics at present in unfit State institutions could be gathered on a raft and anchored conspicuously off Sandy Hook, we might perhaps see Governor Flower stirred up to the point of using his private means to secure them the Sonyea property. . * . OME Philistine has been quoted as saying that commer- cially speaking the value of the Madison Square Garden was simply the value of the land it stood on. The building, he declared, must be torn down before the site could be made to pay. It is desired that there should be no talk—not even a suggestion—about tearing the Garden building down. Sell it to Tammany Hall for a new wigwam, or to Mr. Croker for a stable, or to Uncle Sam for a Post Office, or house the Tilden Library in it, but don’t meddle with the building itself! comicbooks.com