The New York Herald Newspaper, June 24, 1874, Page 6

6 NEW YORK HERALD BROADWAY AND ANN STREET. JAMES GORDON BENNETT, PROPRIETOR THE DAILY HERALD, pubdétahed every day in the year. Four cents per copy. Annual! subscription price $12. All business or news letters and telegraphic despatches must be addressed New Yorx Hisnax. Letters and packages should be prop- erly sealed. Rejected communications will not be re- turned. LONDON OFFICE OF THE NEW YORK HERALD—NO. 46 FLEET STREET. Subscriptions and Advertisements will be received and forwarded on the same terms as in New York. —= No. 175 Volume XXKIX.........0scecceerere ee, AMUSEMENTS THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING eect ceerenecied he geal GARDEN, Broadway, between Prince and Hotiston {THE TWO HL-TERS: OK, Toa Dis PORMED, ats P. M.; at 10:45 P. M. dir, Joseph Wheelock and’ Miss Tone isurke’ TERRACE GARDEN THEATRE, Fifty-eighth street, near fhird avenue.. —Concert, Dram- aig amd Operatic Performance, at 8 ¥. M.; clasts at ll THEATRE om No. dway,—JARTIN bi: Tin You RIEENTH, at eee . 7. Stewon aud Marion Sommers. Okt THE PRIDE sor closes wt 10:30 P. WALLACK’S THBATRE, Bropdvay, and Thirteenth street—EAST LYNNE, ats jeloses at ll P.M. Miss Carlotta Le Clercq. OLYMPIC THEATRE, Trosdway,, betwoen Houston and, _Biogcker streets. — ‘ aa AY ENTEIC TAINMENT, at 7:45 P. M.; closes at WOOD'S MUSEUM, Proadway, corner of Thirtieth street —' HAND, at'2 P. aL. closes at 4:30 P. «loses &t 10:0 2. M. Hernandez Fos t SKELETON me at 8 P. M.; MRS. CONWAY'S BROOKLYN THEATRE, THE S©A OF ICE, at 8 P. M.; closes at 10:4) P.M. irs. Charlotte Thompson. TONY PASTOR'S OPERA HOUSE, Mowery.—¥ TAINMENT, at 8 P. Mu; reir. Mates aa P Be BRYANT’S OPERA HOUSE, ae third sivect, near sixih avenue.—NEGRO MIN- a ¥, d&c., ats P. M.; closes at 10 P.M. OENTRAL PARK GARDEN, ‘fy-nintn stree: and Seventh avenue.—THOMAS' OON- 4 UT, a8 P.M; closes at 0:30 P.M. COLOS3BUM, (roadway, comer of Thiriy fifty ‘street.—LONDON BY i HT, at i Mi clones at t 5 P.M. Same at7 P.M; Closes at 10 rs ROMAN HIPPODROME, Madison avenue and Twenty-sixth ‘street.—GRAND oh NT—CONGRESS OF NATIONS, at 1:30 P. M. and at ‘TRIPLE SHEET. Tew York, Wednesday, June 24, 1874, bron. our reports this morning the probabilities ure that the weather to-day will be hot, with pos- »sibly occasional rains. Wann Srazer YxsTerpay.—Stocks were ain strong and active. Gold, however, re- d from 112 to 111§ and closed at 1114. Brazm. any Porruaan have at last been euabled to shake hands over the wide Atlan- tic. The new cable has been successfully laid ‘between the two countries and the usual inter- change of courtesies has been made. The cables are messengers of peace and good will. Let them be more and more multiplied. We cannot have too many. Sparx.—According to our news of this morn- ing an attempt is to be made to give fresh strength to the republican cause in Spain. Castelar, the representative of the more conser- vative section of the republicans, and Martos, the representative of the more radical sec- tion, have had an interview. It is said that the radicals are not unwilling to consent toa fusion on condition that a new Cortes will be elected. This condition is suggestive of grave difficulty. Serrano has the ball at his foot, and without Serrano’s consent there can be no dissolution, and, of course, no election. Tae Travan Cumpren.—Senator Conkling is entitled to the thanks of the community for the manner in which he has pushed through his bill for the protection of the poor Italian boys and girls who, under false pretences, have been brought to this country. It is well known that they are practically the slayes of their brutal masters. This Italian slavery has been a standing grievance and a public offence. The bill of Senator Conkling having been unanimously passed by the Senate we hope that some of the vagabond owners of these white slaves will be summarily and se- verely dealt with. Tae Guost Assumes a Devine OUTLINE. — It is said by a city journal, which somewhat plumes itself upon political sagacity, that “the evidences that General Grant means to wun a third time are multiplying almost daily ;” and ‘‘we are satisfied that Grant is in4grim earnest in his endeavor to secure a third nomination and a third election as Presi- dent,’’ With definite recognition of this sort from people supposed to be above the ran of humanity in capacity to distinguish between real and imaginary evils, may the third term be regarded as a legitimate subject of political discussion in these days, or is it still merely ® ridiculous imagination and a newspaper sengation? Here is » conundrum for those who flouted at us as uttering imputations on Grant's patriotism when we first discussed the third term as possible, but who now deem it @ very pretty fancy. Sap Enpine or « Stnawperry Festrvar.— Another sad illustration of the reckless | manner in which buildings are run up in this country has been furnished by the fall of a house in Syracuse. Some hundreds of people belonging to a Baptist church were assembled at a strawberry festival, when the upper floors of the house gave way, precipitating hundreds of persons among those assembled below. Five persons are known to be killed and some two handred in- jared more or less gravely by this terrible accident. This lamentable result is due to thewant of solidity in the building, and to the | NEW YORK HERALD, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 1874.-TRIPLE SHEET Grant’s Slaughter of Presidential As- pirants—The Tragi-Comedy of the Fimance Debates. The great Italian poet entitled the master- piece of song in which he depicted the wails and anguish of the damned, ‘Commedia Divina’’—a divine comedy. Itis only in some such sense'as this that Messrs. Morton, Conk- ling and Blaine gan look upon the recent cur- rency battles as a political comedy. However diverting the dénouement may be to the planner of the entertainment and to the spec- tators, it must excite something very different from ungovernable laughter in the victims. When Dante approached the abode of lost spirits he read with horror and dismay the tamous inscription over the gate, ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here.’’ When the am- bitious trio we have named approached the currency Inferno they failed to perceive the inscription, and now, too late, they find them- selves forever shut out from Presidential hopes. While the country will not try to restrain its merriment over this commedia divina, of which President Grant is the poet, each of the sufferers may say, 1n the language which Milton puts into the mouth of Satan, ‘Tis true, I am that spirit unfortunate who kept not my happy station.” As the too aspir- ing leader of the revolted angels fell by his ambition, so these too aspiring candidates to the supreme place in our government have ruined themselves by their overweening haste to get the inside track for the succession. If it be true that ‘‘nothing sucoecds like success’’ the converse of that saying is equally true. Nothing so exposes a public man to derision as ‘‘vaulting ambition which o’er- leaps itself and falls on t’other side.” This is what has happened to poor Morton. Had the inflation legislation succeeded he, as the leader of tho inflation hosts, would have occu- pied a very high and commanding position. Space would have been cleared around him as it always is around a man of indomitable will who carries his purpose. But to fight a battle and lose it, to go into the field with | filguating banners and great pomp of mani- festo and then encounter the mortification of being outgeneralled, is a blow to reputation. and influence from which Morton can ever recover. en fi MCN It is wonderful how promptly the followers of a leading politician discover when the tide has izreversibly turned against him. Evena majority of the Indiana members voted in the House against the last Inflation bill, evincing their sense that the Indiana Senator is a dead cock in the Presidential pit. If the Republican National Convention were to be held this year Morton, since the strategy of Grant has so completely checkmated and cir- cumvented him, could not get a majority even of the Western delegates ; and as the inflation tide ebbs, as it is sure to ebb during the en- suing two years, it will be found that Morton is beached high and dry upon the sand—a deserted hulk which has made its last voyage, and a salutary warning to all public men of abilities against the extreme peril of playing the demagogne on questions that involve the gravest public interests. If Morton is laid out cold as a Presidential candidate no better fate attends Conkling, his foremost rival in the Senate. Conkling has gained no more by supporting the President's policy than Morton has by opposing it. Though an able man, his pomp of self-con- scious egotism is not calculated to win popularity, and his offensive bear- ing towards the Western inflationists has created a prejudice against him which will abide in the Western mind. Not daring, or at least not caring, to wreak their pent-ap vengeance on the victorious President, who has patronage to bestow, the Western repub- licans will see that Conkling gains nothing by his opposition to their wishes. They will make sure that no Western delegate is sent to the national convention who would tolerate the idea of Conkling’s nomination, ‘‘which, if not victory, is at least revenge.” Conkling’s Presidential chances are a8 dead as Morton's ; and it would not be easy to express the blight which has fullen on his hopes by a stronger comparison. The shifty, dexterous Blaine, who has tried to sail between Scylla and Charybdis, will meet the fate of all trimmers in important controversies. His position is like that of the imbecile: Bell-Everett party in the stormy, convulsive election of 1860. Disputes which take a strong hold on the public mind and the public conscience can be settled only bya clean victory on one side or the other. Neither inflationists nor anti-inflationists will feel any tolerance for a statesman who trims between oil and water, which can never be brought to mix. The country wants to see the currency question settled; but views so irreconcilable can never be settled by a compromise. Before the country can be quiet one side or the other must achieve a de- cisive triumph, a triumph so absolute and overwhelming as to crush both effort and hope on the part of its adversaries. The currency question can no more be compromised than the slavery question could in 1860. Blaine's éfforts to harmonize Congress on some bill which the President could approve have proved utterly abortive, and the public esti- mate of his character as a statesman is lowered by his failure to perceive that there is no mid- die ground on which such a controversy can be adjusted. Asa New England man anda repregentative of his section Mr. Blaine should have been a sturdy and strenuous ad- vocate of a sound currency. His trimming on this question will be ascribed to his Presiden- tial aspirations. It has defeated its own pur- pose by creating the impression that he has no principles on a subject upon which the dis- putants are in deep and deadly earnest. Asa Presidential candidate he “falls between two stools’’ in a vain attempt to sit upon both. General Grant having disposed of these three prominent aspirants to the republican nomination the apparent field of choice is so narrowed as to include only himself and his friend Mr. Washburne, our Minister to Paris: If he chooses to take the nomination he will encounter no rivals formidable enough to thwart him. Though several of our cotempo- raties who just now see through the third term millstone—and one lively one in this General Grant of a want of fidelity to benefactors, and there is no man to whom he owes so much as to Mr. Washburne, who put him in the way to make his splendid mil- itary reputation and thus laid the foundation of his political good fortune. Washburne, if Grant voluntarily retires, will be brought into the canvass under the most favorable aus- pices. All the world does him homage for his noble and philanthropic conduct at Paris during the siege. He will return to his native country with a much brighter reputation than he had when he left it. Having taken no part in our recent controversies he has made no enemies. The inflation dispute will have been substantially decided before he comes back, and it will be an easy thing for him to side with the victorious party. Having never at- tempted to be a rival of President Grant, no motives of jealousy will prevent his receiving the full support of the administration. He is a Western man, and his nomination would conciliate the sectional pride of the West. He is, moreover, the safest and most convenient of all candidates for President Grant to hold in reserve until he makes up his mind whether he will be a candidate himself. He is out of the country and will take no part in any in- trigues. If Grant wants the nomination him- self Washburne will interpose no obstacle. So, as things look just now, the next republi- can candidate will be either General Grant for a third term or Elihu B. Washburne. The Last Hours of Congress. The first session of the Forty-third Con- gress is over. Both houses adjourned yester- day evening without having secured a worthy place in history or earned the gratitude of the country tor wise and timely legislation, The last day of the session was characterized by the usual despatch of business which ought to have been disposed of long before, and it may be some days until we shall know with cer- tainty all the measures that were passed or I that failed to pass. Among the more impor- tant measures it may be noted that the Utah bill was passed and that the Tariff bill went over till the next session. All the appropriation bills were disposed of; but General Garfleld’s ‘| boasted determination to have them all out ot the way long before Congress adjourned was not realized, and too many of them remained till the last day of the session, Even the Postal bill had to be settled by means of a conference committee, and the criticisms aS pen it in the House show clearly enough that iE not i in all respects an honest measure. The samé wit is likely to prove true of the River and Hamc? bill. The Sundry Civil Appropriation bill was paved without any appropriation for the Civil Ser- vice Commission, and the unexpended bal- ance of ten thousand dollars in their hands will be covered back into the Treasury. “In- deed, the whole day seemed to be given to the measures from the Committee on Appropria- tions, which had gone through the usual evil courses and come back at last for final action from the unsafe hands of committees of conference. Nothing is. more to be regretted, for nothing can be so menacing to purity in legislation. The annual appropriation bills ought to be the first care of Congress, and all of them should be considered and passed before general legis- lation is seriously attempted. The temper of the country will not much longer permit ex- cuses to be made for frauds in the Post Office and other bills on the ground that tho haste of the last hours of the session prevented the necessary scrutiny. The appropriation bills ought not to be last hour bills, and whatever faults are found in the measures of yesterday will bear hardly upon the republican party. The great ease of the last two or three hours of the session gave Mr. Garfield an opportunity to eulogize himself, and Mr. Dawes had also a smiling bit of testimony for the Committee on Appropriations. With this parting blessing the session came to an end, and the Congress- men went home to look after their re-election. How Some Young Ladies Amuse Them- selves. ‘His body will be preserved on ice till his friends arrive."" What a ghastly realism there is in the sound! And yet it is the last sentence of a love story—one of those love stories that only become known to the world through the intervention of that grim functionary the Coroner, the Rhadamanthus of our modern life. Wiley was from Boston and lived in San Francisco, and he loved very desperately, it seems, a certain Miss Jennie Short. They were engazed to be married, and Wiley had in his eyes the golden mirage of a happy future with the woman he adored. But, to use Miss Jennie’s own phrase, “the charm had passed with her.’ She had got over it. It was “‘a youthful folly indulged in to pass away the time pleasantly ;'’ and the time had passed pleasantly enough, and that, she thought, should be the end of it ; and all this she wrote to her heart-broken lover in what she calls “plain English."’ Her letter to the effect that she did not love him and would not marry him was written on June4 On June 7 he made an excursion with a friend to visit some ladies who lived near her, but they did not see her ; so the last hope that was covered by that thin pretext failed, and on the 10th of June somebody went up to Wiley’s room and found him quieted forever from an overdose of laudanum ; and now Miss Jennie Short's jilted lover is ‘‘on ice.” Tae Porz on American Lisenty.—It is in- teresting to know that the value of the ab- solute religious freedom guaranteed by the American constitution to all sects is properly appreciated by the Roman Pontiff. In reply to an address the Pope made the remarkable admission that it was only under our republi- can institutions that the Catholic Church en- joyed absolute freedom. Under all other forms of government, whether in Catholic or Protestant States, the acts of the Head of the Church are subjected to interference and super- vision by tho authorities. Yet, strangely enough, the Catholic Church has been one of the strongest enemies of republicanism in modern Europe. Everywhere the Courch organization has been devoted to upholding the govern- ments of kings and empérors. May we hope that the Pope and his advisers begin to see thoughtless crowding of » number of people | city—propose a desperate effort to defeat the | their error, and to recognize that the interests into house without regard to the nature of its | nomination fora third term, which they aro | But if, on a | Similar occurrences are much now convinced will be sought. too frequent, and it seems that it is only by | final survey of the field and the likelihoods of Gome stringent law making builders and archi- | election, Grant should think it more pru- tects responsible for inseoure structures that | dent to retire, he will be able to dic- the publio oun be guarded against similar acc | tate bis Banta... successor for the republican pomination, Nobody bas ever accused are best advanced by republican institutions, which leave the trammelled? If the Church would only recog- nize this truth one of the greatest obstacles to | the spread of liberty and popular government | would be done away with. of religion as woll as of civilization and liberty | S | own eccentric fancy he is an excellent man to | conscience free and un- | Commencement Day. The present week is noteworthy os the Commencement Week of what may be termed our sectarian colleges. But, for that matter, all of our colleges are sectarian. Harvard represents Broad Church Unitarianism; Yale is the exponent of the more liberal school of Calvinism; Princeton is the mouthpiece of Scotch Presbyterianism; Brown University oversees Baptist teachings and Dickinson is representative of Methodism. The Com- mencement at Harvard will not take place for a fortnight, but this is Commencement Day at all the other colleges we have named and for the divinity school at Harvard. To-day the members of half a score of classes will receive their diplomas, and, saying their adieus to Alma Mater, go out to begin the battle of life, But it is to be noted how little im- fluence these sectarian schools have really had upon the young men they profess to have prepared for the struggle with the world. For all practical purposes the instruction they afford has been purely secular. As President Smith, of Dartmouth, remarked, in his ser- mon to the graduating class of that institu- tion, doctrine in theology is at a damaging discount and dogma is no longer honored, even in the colleges which were founded as the exponents of particular forms of belief. This is a strange result, but one that was to be expected from the peculiar genius of Prot- estantism and the necessity of making the once broadly marked sectarian colleges the adjuncts of the common schools. All that is left now of these old theological seminaries and of their dogmas and doctrines is to be found in the baccaleaureate sermon, while outside of it, and excepting the religious ex- ercises in the college chapel, all the energies of these institutions are devoted to a purely intellectual and independent course of study. Commencement Day, in consequence, has be- come a mereexhibition of intellectual acquire- ments and mental training. Even Dr. McCosh, with all his Presbyterian zeal, can make little more of the college at Prince- ton than a high school for general education, and the Professors at Yale have recognized this fact alsd in swelling that institution into 0 university where the elementary aim of the public schools may be expanded and glorified. This is not to be regretted, because the more completely our colleges place themselves in co-operation with the modern ideas of educa- tion the more fully will they subserve their own interests and the interests of the Ameri- can people. At the same time a question often asked be- fore may be repeated now—namely, whether most of our colleges really acoomplish their miseic? Of fitting young men for the prac- tical dutlayprtife, It niust.be confessed that many of them fall short in th{s work partly on accountiof an iron botitid course of aftidy ant partly frdm the want of sufficient etidow- ments, Thegreat want of our colleges is the want of monéy. Even Harvard and Yale, with all their repated wealth, have not as yet the means of realizing the full conception of a great university. Win, then, shall be said of the minor colleges springing up like mush- rooms in every part of the country? These half-starved institutions, vost of them not even possessing the facilitixs of the higher grades of the public schools, ate the bane of the educational interests of Yhe country. Institutes founded upon meagh) bequests that they may bear the names of thekr patrons area curse. Three universities at moa! would be sufficient for all the needs of New England. One great institution, nobly endowed, would be better than all the coileges in and about New York. It is not much to be wondered at\ that it is mostly the graduates of Harvard and Yale and Princeton who hold the highest places in public and business life—that they are able at least to cope with the ‘self-made men’’ whose daily struggles have been the best uni- versity education—for the curriculum of the minor colleges. is adry-as-dust and standstill course of study. If these better institutions are not a complete ‘finishing school” for young men they at least give an excellent foundation for a good beginning, while to the poor fellows let loose from the others Com- mencement Day means only the day of release for caged inexperienced and ignorant birds. It ought to be a season of great interest every- where, but until all our colleges are able to afford the means of a practical. edtication Commencement Day will not have:the signifi- cance which ought to attach to it. The Japanese Expedition to Formosa. In our correspondence from Amoy, pub- lished to-day, will be found an interesting history of an expedition by which the Empire of Japan comes before the world in an entirely new character even for this age of rapid Oriental growth. For a nation and a people that came into the family of nations as it were only yesterday, to be to-day organizing an ex- pensive and arduous expedition against a distant shore, not to secure its own aggrandizement, not to conquer rich provinces or try its prow- ess against a rival Power, but simply to inflict punishment in the interests of humanity and as an assertion of public law upon a race of bloodthirsty savages—this seems to us an admirable indication that Japan certainly of the Eastern nations comprehends the true spirit of modern international politics, All commercial nations have an equal interest in subduing the Formosans, and several. have tried it with unsatisfactory results, Our own. expedition thither will be generally | remembered. It was brought about by the | murder. of the crew of two American ships cast away on the island; but it was without any but. moral results, which are of small value with savages. Japan therefore is fight- ing the battle of commerce and humanity against a race of savages that more distant | nations must always find it very difficult to | deal with, and we are glad to know that sho has the sympathy of our government. At | least we infer that she has such sympathy, | because American officers are engaged in the | expedition, and have received leave from our | government for the purpose ; but as it appears | that the expedition has been greatly crippled | by the hostility of Mr. Bingham, our Minister to Japan, there may be some doubt on this head. It seems incredible that his opposi- tion can be the result of instructions from Washington, and if it is only o freak of his come home. in rifle practice by the State militia since the the value to be derived from the systematic train- ing of our citizen soldiers in the use of their arms. In every instanco the scores made by the regimental teams exhibit a steady im- provement, and there is reason to hope that a little steady perseverance on the part of the National Rifle Association will thoroughly popularize trials of skill with the rifle. There is no good reason why Creed- moor should not be the scene of friendly con- teste as interesting ond as popular as those which annually take place at Wimbledon. The coming contest for the championship between the Irish and American teams will no doubt have the effect of turning attention to this subject and promoting a desire to excel with what we have always claimed to be our na- tional weapon. The Expenses of tne City Government and the Board of Apportionment. Although the full information of the de tailed expenditures of the several departments of the city government which has been de- manded by Messrs. Vance and Wheeler in the interests of the taxpayers has not yet been seoured, the. report received yesterday from the Park Department is sufficient to justify the position assumed by those members of the Board of Apportionment. The enormous salary list is shown to foot up a total of $268,000, exclusive of laborers, cartmen, teams, blacksmiths, skilled laborers, garden- ers, division gardeners, carpenters, painters, helpers and plumbers. From the torce of these unenumerated employés set down as necessary in the former revised estimate of the Park Department the expense would be increased $467,000 if the numbers stated were employed all the year. Thus we have the exorbitant sum of nearly three-quarters of @ million dollars expended annually, from tax and - construction account, on salaries and labor alone in the Park De- partment. The exhibit may well startle our taxpayers and will at least show them the ne- cessity of a thorough unveiling of the mys- teries of the construction account, behind the hitherto sacred secrecy by which these out- Tageous expenditures have been possible. But there is reason to believe that the de- tailed statement of the Park Department, startling as it is, does not contain the whole truth. We do not find in it any mention of the large percentages on certain expenditures paid to an architect whose name does not ap- pear in the salary list, but which percentages are paid in lieu of salary. A superintendent is mentioned with a salary of $5,000, a land- scape gardener with $3,500, a landscape archi- tect who costs $6,500, and hasan eighteen hun- dred dollar clerk and a thousand dollar messen- ger, bearing the same name as the acting Cham- berlain ; a superintending architect at $5,200, with a draftsman at $1,095; an engineer at $5,200, with an expensive attachment of , assistants, ‘draftsmen, rodmen and axmen, footing op about $10,000 more; a civil and topographical engineer, who draws $5,200 and carries at bis tail an assistant, four division engineers,.three first assistant engineers and a squad of draftamen, rodmen, chainmen and other subordinates who add $32,000 more to |. the engineering expensé. Then we have an “engineer in charge’ who gets $5,200 more, and ‘another engineer’ who draws $1,214 in addition; for these architects and engineers keep multiplying and doubling up like the @lasses of lager beer consumed by Doesticks on his famous visit to Niagara Falls. But the report is silent as to the perquisites of the per- centage architect, who draws the biggest plum out of the Central Park pie. It is very clear that the Park Department is ap.expensive treasury leakage which should be at once stopped. It costs altogether too much to support ‘incompetent triends” out of the public purse, and there can be no necessity whatever for the services of all:these fancy architects and engineers, The people are satisfied with the Park as it is, and only ask an improvement that, without entailing any large expenditure, will give them an en- joyable rendezvous like that in Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne. It is to be hoped that Messrs. Vance and Wheeler will insist firmly on cutting off all these expensive lux- uries, and so reducing the Park appropriation as to puta stop to such foolish and unneces- sary expenditures. They should also in- sist ‘upon a full exhibit from the Park Department of all the works in progress, the amount heretofore expended and the esti- mated final cost similar to that very properly called for by the Comptroller from the De- partment of Publio Works, Let the people know where they are drifting and what ther ultimate liabilities are likely to be before any more of their bonds are issued or any more of their money is squandered. The detailed report, which the Finance Department still obstinately withholds, should also be de manded before a dollar is appropriated to that department. The people have been kept in the dark long enough. Now let us have some light. Tax Dovsrrun Court Hovsa Comuisston- ers have a curious conception of their duties. First, placing themselves under the protect- ing wing of Comptroller Green they claim the right to appoint and.control all the employés of the new.Court House. Baffled in this by the opinion of; the. Corporation Counsel they next break open an apartment in the Court House building and take forcible possession, without waiting until the Board of Aldermen, in whom alone the power vests, shall appro- priate a room for their use. They next rail at two of the members of the Board of Appor- tionment, who have very properly advised them that there is no money for them to use in the work which the Mayor pretends to ap- point them to perform, and that the Comp- troller’s statement to the contrary is errone- ous, They thus prove that if their ap- pointment is not illegal it is at least un- fortunate. The Board of Apportionment should take caro that the blunder of the Mayor is not an expensive one to the city. It has al- ready been announced that one of the archi- tects of Central Park is to make a plan for the completion of the Court House. This. job, unwarranted by law, should be stopped at once. A Sprxcrmzn Brick.—As the Board of Ap- portionment at its mecting to-day will no doubt require information as to the neces- sity of the employment of o small army of spies, detectives ond ‘temporaries’ by the Finance Department, we will supply Cnrrepmoon.—The marked progress shown | them with a specimen brick of the latter class. The “temporary clerks” are found mainly | responsible for the charitable character of the asylum over which he presides, Hy» does not make his own appointments, but is compelled to recognize the appointments of the Comp- troller, although the whole space occupied by his offices should be thickly covered with drones. At certain times of the year, for four or five months at the outside, the business of the Receiver’s Bureau may require additional help; but we find one Alonzo B. Caldwell paid 6166 66 each month during the whole of 1872 and 1873 for services as ‘‘temporary clerk to the Receiver of Taxes.” A clerk who has drawn pay monthly for two years, and who com tinues to draw pay at the present time, must be somewhat of a “permanency.” Will the Board iriquire into the duties of such ‘‘tem- porary’’ employés ? The Insect War on the Westerm Crops. The recent reports of vast swarms of grass hoppers in the grain-growing States of the Northwest are of alarming interest, and the inquiry comes, Is there no remedy? The emi- nent American astronomer, Dr. B. A. Gould, writing from his observatory at Cordova in the Argentine Confederation last fall, reported enormous numbers of grasshoppers then fre- quenting that part of South America, One train of them he computed to be five miles in width, literally darkening the sun, and borne northward in a dense band not less than two thousand feet thick. They were evidently drifted in the strong trade wind blowing along the Andean Sierras, and appeared to be en- tirely at the mercy of the wind. Is it possible that, as the winter of the southern hemisphere closed, these roving clouds of grain-destroy- ing insects have migrated, with springy across the Equator and entered the Western States? The question, how- ever preposterous it may at first sound, is not so easy to dispose of. Whatever answer we may give the observations of Dr. Gould show, at any rate, a congeniality of the soil and climate occupied by these dangerous insects in both hemispheres. The Argentine Republic, lying under the shadow of the Andes, with its undulating, treeless pampas, swept by the howling pamperos or westerly mountain winds, corresponds precisely with the geographical prairie belt in the United States, swept by the Rocky Mountain winds and subjected to great thermometric extremes, This striking fact may prove suggestive of the conditions under which these insect armies breed, and, if the hint is sued by the sagacious and scientific agriculturist, may lead to some method of predicting or preventing their ruinous invasions. The habits and haunts of such insects are of national importance to determine and to make known, for they often threaten national famine. The Colorado beetle, whose true domicile is the Rocky Mountains, where it feeds on a species of wild potato; had, in 1859, advanced eastward only as far as Omaha? Leaving behind it flourishing colonies, it entered Iowa in 1861, and crossed the Mississippi into Illinois in 1865, reaching Canada and New England by slow marches in 18670. It is said that its passage across the Atlantic is a mere question of time, if it has not already been effected. If it enters Europe and finds there a congenial home the potato erop and garden crops generally must suffer immense depredations. But we re- fer to the subject of these insect ravages on the grain and garden crops to show the necessity for some corrective. {t is in- credible that well directed and patient investi- gation of agricultural scientists can supply no remedial agent, or devise no method of de- atroying the young while in the ground. The jmvasion of such swarms of grasshoppers as» Dr. Gould leisurely observed for two days over the arid plains of La Plata*it may be beyond human power to deal .with But not so the ordinary bands whiehdie in the soil in the Western winter and germinate with the warmth of spring. Cannot some relief measure be pro- vided by ‘the original investigators of agri- cultural science? PERSONAL INTELLIGENCE, Mr. Francis Kernan, of Utica, is at the Hoffman House, Bishop Lee, of Delaware, 1s staying at che Everett House, Bishop J. P. B, Wilmer, of Louisiana, 1s residing atthe Hoffman House. Baroness de Overbeck, of Germany, is sojourning &t the Sturtevant House, Mayor Charles A. Otis, of Cleveland, is stopping at the St. Nicholas Hotel, Bass won't bite—not at such a bait as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. Captain Cook, of the steamship Russia, nas quar- ters at the Brevoort Mouse. Thomas Donohue, of this city, committed suicide at San Francisco on the 16th inst, Ex-Senator J. B, Henderson, of Missouri, nas apartments at the Clarendon Hotel. The Cincinnati Inquirer says that Kate Field should get married. 1s that a proposal? People found tipsy in the streets of Charieston are arrested and sentenced to ‘turee or ten.'"” Knoxville is deliberating whetuer to pay Westen. $160 to walk at ite agricultural fair. Oh, glory! Ex-Congressman Richard J. Haldeman, of Pean- sylvania, has ar:ived at the Fidth Avenue Hotet Coggia’s comet troubles the codgers who manage our meteorology. Will it make the weather cooler? Congressmen W. HB. Lansing and Thomas 0, Platt, of New York, are registered at the St, Nisho- las Hotel. ©. G. Memminger’s daughter was married at Charleston, June 18, to & “distinguished citizen of Brusseis.’’ Rev. Dr. Fatrbairn, of St. Stephen's College, and Rev. Dr. Cady, of Poughkeepsie, are at the Cole man iiouse, President J. H. Devereux, of the Atlantic and Great Western Railway Company, is at the St Nicholas Hotel. Sin, they say in Chicago, was consumed in their great fire, What must they have been belure that copflagration? Senator Aaron H. Cragin and family, of New Hampshire, arrived from Washington yesverday, at the Westmoreland Hovel. Professor Spencer F. Baird, of the United States Fisheries Commission, is, among the recent arrie vals at the Fitth Avenue Hotel, Jobn Cochrane met the liberal republicara 1%, conference at Buffalo. One of the papers out tat way says they all slept in one room, Pere Hyacinthe will agree with the Pope if his Holiness will renounce his pretension to ‘personal wmfallibility.”” Is the Pope infallible as Mastal Per- reti or as Pius LX., personally or officially ¢ On Sumner’s lamp was engraved “The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep,” and Sum- ner wrote “of all colors,” which addition shows how much better he understood it than the good shepherd did, Moran will scarcely appreciate the honor of being promoted from London to Washington, even though they call him “Third Assistant Secretary of State.” Is this one Of the resuits of Schenck’s establishment of the Creedmoor range shows | crowded into the office of the Receiver of | recent trip nome? And who does he want the Taxes. General MacMahon, we know, is not | piace for?