Life — August 27, 1896 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

LIFE While there is Life there's Hope.” AUGUST 27, 1896. Tuirty-First STREET, VOL. XXVIIL. 19 West EW YORK. Published every Thursday. $5.00 @ year in advance. Postage to foreign countries in the Postal Union, $1.04 a year extra. Single copies, 10 centa, Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. The illustrations in LAFE are copyrighted and are not to be repro- duced without special arrangement wit with the publishers. No. 713. ‘in I" is suggested to intending political e) stump-speakers on the sound money side, that the ancient fable of the Belly and the Members still has as much virtue in it as ever and is proper to be revived in the recollection of voters. Mr. Bryan's vociferation Von the wrigglings of humanity on the cross of gold is in very much the same key as the clamor 1b of the Members that the Belly was a lazy imposition on a hard- Pes community. Just as the Members felt that justice demanded that they should starve the Belly out, so Mr. Bryan and his supporters feel that it is high cime that every plunk of the tyrannous and grasping yellow metal was driven out of the country. The Members, as will be remembered, went out on strike and stayed out until it was concluded that, on the whole, their movement was untimely and ill-advised. That will do ina fable, but in Mr. Bryan's case we prefer that the inevitable conclusion should be reached by the reasoning process without resort to ace experiment. . * Ever other man you meet now-a-days is a golfer, and four golfers out of five are in a permanent condition of protest and dis- satisfaction with their game. The average golfer’s idea of the game he is really entitled to put up is a striking illustration of the arrogance of human hopes. The average man can see why he should not excel at baseball or even at tennis, but once he has the rudiments of golf there seems : to be no limit to his aspirations. If he doesn’t doas well as he hopes, he never seems to suspect that it is because he is too feeble or too fat or too green or too utterly unused to any kind of sport to golf well. His cry is always that he is off his game. A game that can fool otherwise sensible people into the expectation of eventual proficiency while giving them the immediate benefit of gentle and salubrious exercise, is a thing to be thankful for. It has some of the good points of religion without its perplexities or responsibilities, and at_ much less expense. As a supplement to piety no sport can beat it. . . . ROFESSORS' LANGLEY, Maxim, and the other students of manflight have doubtless taken sorrowful note of the fate of Herr Lilienthal, whose flying ma- chine dropped with him the other day to his mortal hurt. As long as flying machines wont work at all, they are comparatively safe playthings. It is possible that in the fullness of time they may come to work so well as to be safe again, but in the interval, while they work just well enough to tempt personal experiments in aerial navigation, they are bound to be dangerous pets. It is an open question, after all, whether flying machines that would really fly would make this world materially more desirable. Con- servative people, however, need not worry yet awhile, for even if the extreme hopes of scientists are fulfilled, the successful flying machine that carries a man will be as far beyond the reach of ordinary people asa steam yacht. . . . HE report that Lord Chief Justice Russell and Sir Frank Lockwood, M.P., Q.C., have been visiting Mr. Henry Villard, at Dobb's Ferry, recalls the vague and nebulous condition of current inform- ation as to Mr, Villard’s present standing in this community. It is not generally known where Mr. Villard was left the last time his plans and hopes for Northern Pacific went agley. Perhaps his standing is not a matter of knowledge at all, but only of opinion, which may vary in indi- viduals who are agreed as to the facts. If the Lord Chief Justice should come to a conclusion as to whether Mr. Villard is an honest man or not, many Americans, and especially those who live in New York, would be glad to share it with him, though, of course, they wont expect to hear it unless it happens to be such an opinion as a gentleman may properly circulate about his host. * * * IVE successive days of extreme heat is a touch of nature that makes all the adjacent world kin. Such a spell of weather as came to earth the second week of this month offers as good an approximation to a plague as our times are likely to afford. comicbooks.com