Life — August 17, 1899 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

“ While there is VOL. XXXIV. A 19 West Taikry-Finst Published every Thursday. $500 a year In ad- vance. Hostage to foreign countries In the Pratal Union, $1.04 a year extra Single current coples, locent’s. “Back numbers, after three months from date of publication, 25 cents, No contribution will be returned unless accompanied by stamped and addressed envelope. The illustrations in Live are copyrighted, and are not to be reproduced without special arrangement with the publishers, Prompt notification should be sent by sub- scribers of any change of address, EVEN in mid-August the world does not quite stop turning. Things happen. Work getsdone. Plans are considered. Folks who work with their hands out of doors are for the most part busy; folks who work with theic heads are, as a rule, no busier than they can help. Sewers and pavements and street improvements in cities are going down and coming up again actively. But they always are. Nothing stops the up-tearing of street surfaces in American cities, Winter and summer the pick bites the pavement, the pipes lie in the gutters, and the paving stones stand in heaps. Organized labor is busy in August, either working at its lawful jobs, or striking and working out strike measures. Organized leisure is also busy. Yachtsmen are yachting. The great and superlatively important work of court- ship progresses with particular zest in vacation time. Girls in summer dresses dot our coast, rock-bound or sanded, in acontinuous row from Chesapeake Bay to the Bay of Fundy, and in mid-August there is a spattering of men to supple- mentthem. Swarms of Americans cre straggling over Europe, and at home, on the coast, in the mountains, on the shores of lakes, great and small; in all the good places the more fortunate people are doing time, and are having fun or get- ting bored, according to their several er- vironments and circumstances, and the company they are able to keep, and the ra “LIFE quality of their meals, and other things. In spite of the Philippines and the strikes, and the succession of lynching storics that come from the South, it is a comparatively peaceful summer, for the times are good, and the public mind is occupied even more intensely than usual with making money and spending it. We have no great camps of volunteer soldiers to think about this year; no war that is near enough or great enough to keep us stirred up. We have problems, it is true; great problems, but in mid- August we ouly contemplatethem. Later, when vacation time is past, we ehall buckle to them seriously. HE President is resting on the shore of Lake Champlain, the Shamrock is on her way across the water to sail for the America’s cup, Admiral Dewcy is making his leisurely and distinguished progress through the Mediterranean, and the trial of Dreyfus is coming near, ‘There are pretty lively times ahead for us in the fall. The whole country is deliberately planning to go as nearly mad as possible over Admiral Dewey, and the Admiral seems fully to appreciate his prospects, and to look forward to his reception with various and conflicting anticipations, Part of the sport of wel- coming him is the general conviction that his personal comfort would be vastly promoted if he could get leave to come in the back way and sit down quietly on one of the rear seats. Everyone is sure that posing as the national hero is not at all to his taste, but it has no effect on the national purpose to have him pose. He comes with discreet resignation to his doom, It may not be true, as rumored, that twice every day while on shipboard he shakes hands for practice with every man aboard the Olympia, but ina general way he is making his preparations and recruiting his energies, so that when the weather gets cool he may be physically fit to face the ardors of our welcome. ET us hope that the President, too, is recruiting his strength, and getting ready to put his best foot forward. The next twelve-month is 8 momentous period for him, for by this time a year hence he will either be renominated or laid on the shelf. eS FXTREME differences of opinion obtain about the President. Num- bers of intelligent persons, without regard to party, regard him as a preposterously feeble being, governed always by consid- erations of political expediency, and in- capable of shaping a course of his ownand keeping it. Other fairly intelligent per- sons, perhaps not less numerous, think him very able indeed, and not only an adroit politician, but the real leader of bis party by virtue of gumption and brains. Nodoubt, when we cometo view hiscourse in retrospect, we shall reach gurer con- clusions about him than we can now, but the question whether he and his party are to be kept in control of the country cannot wait for the conclusionsof history, but will have to be settled soon, and will be determined largely by next winter’s work, The Philippines are the biggest lion in the Major’s path, If the air of Lake Champlain enables him to devise a scheme that will put those detrimental islands out of American politics it will help him vastly in his business, and bring welcome relief to the American mind, o8 Sty $ Go fiers times being dull, there has been @ great, superficial stir over Mr. William Waldorf Astor's abandonment of his native land. His action lias been abused with a fervor worthy of something more important. The newspapers told the other day that some foolish persons actually burned him in effigy in one of the streets of New York. Mr. Astor is not a bad man, nor a fool, though he had done a foolish thing. Heisa clean living, upright person, of very fair intelligence, and much good conduct to his credit. His great misfortune seems to have been in his lack of humor, which made him take things hard, and in mistakes of early training, which kept him in his younger days from close and wholesome relations with his fellows. Heisa pretty good man, who has been, not the pet, but the sport of fortune, Poor man; hiscase is pitiful, comicbooks.com