Life — December 16, 1897 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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“While there is Life there's Hope.” VOL. XXX. DEC, 16, 1897. 19 West Turty: iT St., New York. Published every Thursday. $5.00. year in advance, Postage to foreign countries in the Postal Union, $1.04 a year extra. Single copies, ro cents. Rejected contributions will be destroyed un- tess accompanied bya stamped and directed envelop The illustrations in LiFe are copyrighted, and are not to be reproduced without special arrangement with the publishers. ENTUCKY women are Kentuckians as well as Kentucky men. Of course, if that were not so, Kentucky could not long mai in the peculiaritics which distin- guish it from other gardens of the earth. For example, here is the case of Miss Richardson and Secretary Herbert, whereof the newspapers have printed such full and vivacious reports. The Secretary, it seems, while still in office, supped out one evening in Washington and met Miss Richardson, a glowing Kentucky belle. It was suggested to him by his hostess that she was a proper person to christen the new battleship Kentucky. The Secretary gallantly as- sented, and allowed Miss Richardson to believe that that honor would fall to her. Afterwards, learning that she was counting on his invitation, he wrote her that he could not make it good becs he would not be in office when the shi, was launched. Secretary Long coming into offi and finding no record of pro- vision made for a lady to christen the Kentucky, asked Governor Bradley to name one. The Governor, agreeable to the suggestions of his friends, as well as doubtless to inclinations, named his daughter, Then comes to the fore Miss Richardson in defense of hts,” with her cohort of ad- mirers and kinspcople to back her. She has not called Secretary Herbert out, nor threatened to break over his head the bottle of bourbon whi: which she had provided for the christening of the Kentueky, but she has published in the newspapers a letter over her own name, stating with apparent accuracy the cir- cumstances of the case, and alluding to Secretary Herbert as ‘‘an old widower his own *LIFE: in his dotage, who cannot remember honest facts.” It is a bad business for Secretary Ilerbert, who will doubtless be a can- didate for admission to the next expe- dition in search of the North Pole, pro- vided he escapes with his life. But, bless us, how like it all is to the good old times When ‘Omer smote his bloomin’ lyre, and told how Juno, riled to the roots by disparagement of her slighted beauty, tall polite creation by the ears, The surprising thing about Kentuck is that it has not produced a great epic poem. It has all the ingredients. Men, brave and big, impenitent and quick of temper; belles, shoals of them, beau- tiful, high-spirited, rash ; — limestone blue grass; race-horses; corn whiskey in bottles, j and barrels, limitless in quantity and always handy to take. The world is perennially young in Kentucky. Each county seems to have its Olympus, witha big row hatching at the top. All the rest of us may be effete, but Kentucky isn't. Why hasn't she produced a real top-sawyer poet? Is it possible that the old-time grape liquor had qualities of inspiration which corn-liquor lacks ? Sree } AJOR McKINLEY is a lucid and agrecable writer, and his recent publication addressed to Congress has already attained a wide circulation. He thinks we must swallow Hawaii, but dis- believes in the immediate necessity of Uncle Sam's playing Perseus to the Cuban Andromeda. He is emphatic about the need of amending our currence: laws. On the whole, he has promuls a reassuring document Le ] ILEY say another airship has been seen cavorting in the empyrean in the neighborhood of Duluth, This way of stating it implies that airships have before been seen aloft, and that there may have been some truth in last year’s yarns about aerial navigators. The New York Herald claims to have learned that aluminum fittings are being made at Pittsburg for an airship company, of which Hiram Maxim is manager. Areall these recurring rumors fabulous, or has Darius Green succeeded at last? One thing is certain: that some of the most ingenious minds in the world are at work on the problem of man-flight, and that the wonderful development of mechanical skill and scientitic knowledge make things possible to-day which even ten years ago were impracticable dreams. Maxim is an able man; so is Professor Langley. But the newspaper correspondents are able, too, in their line of business, and our realization of that $ us groping and skeptical I" is discreditable to the enterprise of American newspapers that Captain Dreyfus has not been interviewed, After Nansen, he is just now the best adver- ised man on earth, and his views on his own case would be willingly read by numbers of persons, He dwells on an island somewhere, in charge of a squad of gendarmes. Telephone connec- tion with his bedroom would be worth and it would be good business to sh it, nat con: Why have our editors overlooked this chance ¢ lerable cost. from injuries re- ed in a football game, led to the passage of an anti-football bill by the slature, but the boy's mother opposed the bill ina letter to Governor Atkinson, and report says the Governor will veto it. That was very nobly done by Mrs. Gammon. Her letter was wise, womanly, and calm, and deserved to be effcetive. If there are many mothers like her in Georgia it won't make much difference whether football flourishes in that State or not. They will grow men there, anyhow. Brave, wise mothers have more to do with the development of sound American men than any amount of football, which, honestly, is some- what too destructive of raw material to be an ideal means of upraising mankind.