The New York Herald Newspaper, March 2, 1879, Page 10

NEW YORK HERALD, SUNDAY, MARCH 2, 1879—QUINTUPLE SHEET. 10 NEW YORK HERALD BROADWAY AND ANN STREET. JAMES GORDON BENNETT, PROPRIETOR, es addr 1 telegraphic despatches must ERALD, nuld be properly sealed. s Will nos be returned. ” Letters and pac Rejected comn O. 112 SOUTH SIXTH ! NEW YORK MERALD— LPHIA OFF v's Priknp. . PENavore, BOWERY THE: STANDARD THEAT! PARK THEATE BROADWAY THEATER! FIFTH AY ACADEMY OF MU MASONIC TALL—Twk Mim TRE—Banws 1x Tue Woon. The probabilities aye that the weather in York and its vicinity to-day will be warmer and cloudy or fair, with occasional light rain. o- morrow it will be cooler and fair. Watt Srreer Yrstervay.—The stock mar- ket was active and very weak, particularly for the granger and coal stocks. Government bonds were firm, States lower and railroads generally weak. Money on call lent at 3a4 per cent and closed at 3 per cent. TaKkeEN ALL IN ALL the session of Congress has been a rather unprofitable one fof the lobby. Busixuss Is so Far Brinn in the Senate that an extra session is now considered as inev- itable. Tr Stx@ Stnc’s Morar Divipenps were equal toits financial ones it would be a model insti- tution. THe Free Canat advocates have wisely come to the conclusion that half a lout is better than none at all, Tue Rerorr of the Nursery and Child’s Hospital presents av excellent redord -in well- doing during the past year, Aw Arrictr on Axotukr Pace throws some light on the adulteration of tea. A veto on that business would be approved by every one. Enctanp Is Learsinc Grapuatry. Her latest discovery is that our Indian corn is the best and cheapest food she can find for her horses. Licur Is Dawsixc upon the Lynn crunk mystery. If an expressman is not greatly de- ceived the detectives have found two men whe can probably explain ull about it. AtrHoven’ NrwrounpLaxp dollars as her‘share of the Halifax award she is wailing over the decline this year of her fish- eries. It is as bard to satisty some countries as if is to satisfy some people. Tue Ansorp Ciarcks against Speaker Ran- dall have been completely disproved, and a unanimous report to that t will be made by the committee. It was hardly ‘worth while to dignify them by an investigation. Tut Dirverent Arreurts wade to reach the Pole were summarized in a lecture in Washing- ton last evening by Mr. Bryan, of the Hall expedition, He traced the history of Polar ex- ploration back as far as the thirteenth century. Tr REPUBLICANS who have seen the major- eport of the Potter C mittee are, it seems, chagrined at its extremely partisan character. It is not improbable thatthe demo- crate will be equally dissatisfied with the report of the minority. Ir Is To Be Recretrep that the bills provid- ing for a national quarantine and a national health board have failed. Both projects were killed by the State rights men of the South, which section would have been chiefly benetited by the proposed legislation. Goversor M authorities are pi N and the New Jersey paring to deal with the dis- eased cattle question in the same cuergetic style as Governor Robiuson and the Brooklyn Health Board at Blissv: The Legislature of that State will, it is to be hoped, speedily enact the legislation necessary to secure so desirable a reform. Tux Weraturn.—Southerly winds, increased temperature and decreased pressure. with gen- eral cloudiness, marked the conditions that vailed on the Middle Atlantic aud New afternoon, Tho Pp sngland coasts yesterday great aren of high pressure is moving slowly eastward into the ocean, the cen- tre being uow off the New England const. The centre of low barometer has moved from direction over the Jakes, aud is now in the re- gion south of Hudson’s Bay. In the Northwest the barometer has again risen very high, and another area similar to that whieh has passed off the coast dominates the weather weat of the Upper Mississippi. It is, however, likely to be tollowe Manitoba, Dakota and Montana by falling pressures and the advance of another storm centre from British Colombia, The barometer is low northward from Utah and is falling again slightly over Texas and North- eru Mexico. Snow and rain have fallen north- ward of the Ohio Valley and snow in the West and Northeast. Owing to the peculiar distribution | res the winds vai 1 direction consid- yver the United States. They are north. Valley, southerly in Manitoba, ble over the lakes, where they follow the isobars of the depression receding into Canada; south land and Middle Atlantic coasts, northeast to eusterly on the South Atlantic and ex ou the Gulf coasts. Temperatures have rise the Eastern districts, and have fallen but risen again in the Northwest. They are high in the Gulf and South Atlantic States. The weather in New York anc its vicinit, ly on the New Eng: | ail today will be | warmer and cloudy or fair, with, possibly, occa | sional light rain. To-morrow it will be cooler and fair. the Lower Missouri Valley in a northeasterly | 2°°4 Shattered Ideals. One of the primury necessities of every human organization, whether political, re- ligious, moral, literary or scientific, is to have a platform, a programme, a banner, a battle-ery, a watchword, a creed, a great idea or acause, the maintenance of which is at once its oceupation, its justitication and its glory, Loyalty to the distinctive ideal becomes among the members of such associations a real article of faith, a condi- tion—as the theologians say, stantis vel ea- dentis ecciesie—by which its success or fail- ure must be judged. There is in human nature, whatever dogmatists may say, an | immense fund of altruism and willingness to sacrifice personal happiness to the gen- eral weal. Man cannot live by bread alone, and there are millions of our race who are vaguely groping for some ideal high enough and grand enough to warrant them in con- secrating to it their best energies and, if need be, their life blood. ‘To each of them, as tothe hero of ‘Tennyson's great poem, it would be true happiness In some good cause, not in his own, Yo perish honored, wept for, known, And like a warrior overthrown! Our young Republic has had such an ideal during the century of its existence, and by its cultivation has managed to get along with tolerable self-complacency to the present time. It was expressed in the Declaration of Independence and all the other public documents of the Revolution- ary epoch, It was re-echoed fifteen years later by the leaders of the French Revolu- tion ; was engrafted upon the ‘‘constitu- tions” of a score of Hispano-American re- publics, and has taken deep root in modern Europe. That “grand idea” was the doc- trine that average humanity is competent, without any special enlightenment, to pro- vide for all its own needs and require- ments by the magie contrivance known as the ballot box. In order that ‘‘government of the people, for the people, by the peo- ple, should not perish from the carth” two millions of American citizens ranged them- selves in opposing camps a few years ago. ‘This theory, so complimentary to our frail human nature, has had among us a hun- dred years’ probation. What are its present results? 2 ‘There was never a time in the history of the world when the very foundations of all human institutions were rogarded with such thorough scepticism as now. Not our polit- ical system alone, but the whole range of distinctively American ideals totters to its fall. ‘The title of ‘‘politician,” which once carried the brevet rank of nobility, has be- come aterm of reproach. Patriotism, long esteemed the crowning glory ofa citizen, has become synonymous with greed for office. ‘Trial by jury, once the ‘palladium of our liberties,” has become so prostituted that the verdict of “twelve” good mién and true” constitules but a slight presumption ‘as to the facts at issue. ‘The ballot box has fallen into equal disrepute, A majority vote is no longer regarded as binding upon the whole people, but is intrigued against as a matter of conrse by the defeated party and annulled without scruple. Our colleges are complacently dealing ont hommopathic doses of fact combined with allopathic doses of senile speculation. ‘The triumphs of Ameriean industry and invention, which justified the complacency of two genera- tions, have lost much of the glamour they once cast over the average imagination. We no longer ‘“‘point with pride” to the Cumberland National road, the Erie Canal, oreven the Pucific railroads. A new gen- eration has grown up which knows little of the tastes of its elders im literature, ‘art or science. The “Complete Writings” of Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Calhoun, Webster and Everett rest unopened upon the wpper shelves of the libraries. ‘The Federalist exists in vain for nine-tenths of our lawyers and legis- lators. ‘Lhe works of Irving, Cooper and Prescott, once regarded as national glories, are little read by men and women who have reached maturity since the war. As for the lesser lights—Paulding, Percival, Mrs. Sigourney—there are none so poor as to do them reverence. Even the venerable maj- esty of *‘Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” has been profaned by ruthless iconoclasts. It is coming to be admitted as an axiom that there is no American science, literature or art worth mentioning in comparison with that of Europe, In religious opinions the change is even more marked, ‘I'he distinctive doctrines of the creeds are no longer preached—the creeds themselves are unknown to their professed believers. Modern Methodists know little of the writings of Wesley, Watson and Fletcher, which are, neverthe- less, held to be their standards of doctrine, Few Congregationalists outside of New Eng- land can give an intelligible account of the “Saybrook Platiorm,” and few Presbyteri- ans would venture to undergo examination upon even the bare outlines of the West- minster Catechism. The Unitarians are suffering from lack of unity and the Uni- versalists fiud that they have built upon too narrow a creed. The ‘New Church” has become an old story; the various ‘‘reformed” bodies admit their of reformation. Lutherans, Cal- vinists and Arminians are alike ig- norant and curcless of the views of the men whose names they bear. The Pos- itivists bemoan their lack of certitude, the Materialists the insabstantiality of their tenure of doctrine and the Spiritualists are eager for materinlizations. In politics no one can any longer define the existiag dif- ferences between the leading parties, which are as yet uncommitted upon the really im- portant issues of the times. There is no living American statesman whose name awakens a tithe of the enthusiasm freely given not many years ago to Web- ster, to Clay, to Calhoun, to Jackson, ‘the once idolized constitution of the United States is froely admitted by many to be one of the stiffest and most primitive pieces of political mechanism now extant, ‘he old robust faith in Anglo-Saxondom and in the Caucasian race is rudely shaken since our people has become a composite one. New York city is now quoted as the classical example of the impossibility of self-government by a great metropolis, and even ot the failure of representative insti- tutions. The recent ghastly disclosures as to our sanitary sins, and the horrors of our tenement houses deepen into gloom the sombre tints of municipal inea- pacity. The biennial holocaust of thou- sands of bills unacted upon by an expiring Congress and the shameless jobbery of those enacted en masse at the la‘est moment urgently demand a heroic remedy, It is certain that the twentieth century will not celebrate with rapture the Fourth of July or the 22d of February, It will not regard Washington as the greatest of all soldiers and patriots, Franklin as the greatest philosopher, Jefferson as the great- est statesman or Hamilton as the greatest economist. It will not enthuse over lib- erty, equality or fraternity; over free schools, free trade, free soil or freedom of any kind, ‘The past triumphs of inven- tion—the railway, the steamer, the tele- graph, the telephone, the phonograph and the electric light—will inspire but a feeble thrill; while the jury system, female suffrage, the law of gravitation, the nebular and Darwinian hypotheses, and the correlation of forces, will not even excite the pulse. What shall we conclude from this general decay in the faiths and enthusiasms of our fathers? Will the twentieth century be quite destitute of generous ideals? By no means. Enthusiasm is a vital quality of every prosperous people, and there is no reason to believe that our children will be at all deficient either in prosperity or in high ideals. ‘Lhe present moment is one of transition, when ‘‘the old has passed away and the new has not yet come ;” but even now the men and women who read the signs of the times find abundant cause for hope and joy. ‘The new ideals will be grander, nobler than the .old, The fact that such lavish admiration has heretofore been wasted upon ideals now shattered in the dust only proves the pos- sibility of a higher enthusiasm for higher aims. ‘he destruction of the false is but a necessary step to the substitution of the true goals of humanity. What the new ideals will be it is of course impossible now to predict in detail, but the broad lines are already visible. The foundations of all human institutions have been rudely shaken; they must therefore be fully tested and not left insecure, ‘the new enthusiasm will be largely in the direction of science, and especially of that great social science which will absorb within itself both poli- tics and political economy. The struggle between individualism and Communism will find its solution in that generous altru- istic impulse which will consecrate the highest efforts of individual genius and talent, and find its supreme reward in the highest welfare of society. Veto of the Chinese BUll. By the veto of the Chinese bill’ President Hayés has, we believe, acted in sympathy the'country} with perhaps the exception of California; and probably the project to suppress Chinese immigration is not with- out its opponents even there; but those opponents are not of the classes that make most noise in popularagitations, Pe- rusal of the veto will put the reader in pos- session of the reasons which have led ‘the President to regard this sort of legislation as objectionable, for the message goes into the history of our treaty relations with the Chinese Empire and of the immigration of Chinese subjects, and is, in fact, discursive and narrative in its character. It deals very plainly with the method by which the bill proceeds as a fulse pretence, points out that as‘the limitation of numbers of immi- grants’ to be brought has no relation to’ the “size of ships, and is not otherwise a provision for the safety of passengers, it is a subterfuge the pur- pose of which is to suppress a right guaran- teed by the treaty. It then touches the provision for the abrogation of two articles of the Burlingame Treaty, and points out that these articles, if we are to keep the treaty, are the very ones that would give us the right to demand of the Chi- nese themselves the correction of abuses in emigration, It is the theory of the message, apparently, that all our treaty provisions with China must stand or fall together ; that the Burlingame ‘Treaty and the treaty of 1858 are, in fact, one treaty, amplified by additional clauses, and all our commercial relations with the Chinese Empire stand upon that treaty and should not be imperilled in order to rem- edy evils that can be as efficiently reme- died in another way. In fact, wo believe that to be very near to the general opinion of the country. There are people who believe all the allegations made about the bad character of the Chinese immigrants, and others who believe that those stories are mere chimerical tales, invented in the interest of the agitators; but even those who give full faith to all that is said do not want to get rid of the evil except in an honorable way. People do not want to dis- credit the nation in order to keep out of San Francisco an clement of population which may be disorderly, but for the dis- orders, of which the. government of that city isas much responsible as the immi- grants themselves, The bill was taken up in the House yesterday evening, but failed of the requisite two-thirds majority, and consequently the veto kills it. Costly Street Cleaning, From a report of the Street Cleaning Bureau we get some inkling of o reason why our streets are not cleaned more fre- quently and effectively, for the cost of re- moving dirt, &., is set down ata fraction over sixty cents per load. At this rate it is, of course, impossible that fhe streets should be kept clean, so long as the yearly appropriation remains at its present figures; but no one outside the bureau, and prob- ably no one within it, is disposed to believe that the cost of removing the dirt need be anywhere near so great as is stated. It should be remembered that what is called a load is really a very small amount of mate- rial when reckoned by weight or cubic measure, and that the longest distances between streets from which the dirt is taken and the rivers at which it is dumped are too short to allow of any of the cost to be explained away on the plea that a great deal of time is consumed in going to and from the dumping places. No private con- tractor would think of paying any such price for so little work, and the Commis- sioners owe it to themselves and their long- suffering victim, the city, to conform more nexrly to busines:-like figares. Rapid Transit Junctions and Cross= ings. In the efficient operation of rapid transit even the remote possibility of danger to the life of the passenger musty be carefully guarded against. Otherwise the luxury and benefit of comfortable and quick travel may be paid for at too high a price. In a city like ours there ought to be no difficulty in avoiding those perils which always attend junctions and crossings of steam railroad lines. ‘To-day we print an article, with diagrams, on the subject of insuring “safety on the ‘Ls,’" one which our readers will recognize as being as important as safety on the seas to which we have given so much space. We do not object toa junction when it is of a main and branch line controlled by one company, and when the running of trains can be regulated in the strict sense of the term. Such junctions may be.seen at Fifty- third street and Sixth avenue, Forty-second street and Third avenue and soon at Thirty- fourth street and Third avenue. We do not apprehend any danger at these points be- yond that incidental to the ordinary opera- tion of an ‘L” road, But if the two com- panies persist in using the proposed Beaver and Pearl street junction, and a common track northward to Chatham square, we con- sider that such an arrangement will be very dangerous to the public. si The Chatham square crossing, which, as we show, is one that may be pronounced impracticable on the conditions so inju- diciously laid down by the Rapid Transit Commissioners, nevertheless can become a centre of extraordinary danger if the com- panies endeavor to tinker up a plan that will not do away absolutely with every- thing approaching the character of a cross- ing. No consideration of money expended, time lost, traffic suspended, public in- convenience or any other plea should be listened to that can lead to any other system than independent tracks for the two “LL” roads at Chatham square. The plan proposed in our columns to-day is a feasible one in every engineering particu- lar. But its adoption, or that of one sim- ilar in principle and object, must depend on the willingness of the ‘‘L” companies to concede mutually the interests they claim in the main and branch downtown termini. If they cannot do this their plans will be self-defeating, and a selfish disregard of public safety will perhaps react as dam- agingly on the “‘L” companies as an equally selfish disregard of public decency and comfort did on the horse car magnates, Death of Shere Ali. Our telegram from Turkestan, published yesterday, and which announced the arrival at Samarcand ‘of news of the death of the Ameer of Cabul, is confirmed from another source. Yakoob Khan reports the death of his father in a despatch to the Viceroy of India, who he presumes may take some in- terest in the fact, as his father ‘was an old friend of the British government.” ‘This may seem a quaint form in which to an- nounce the demise ofa prince whom Eng- land had driven from his throne, and whose friendship found'no other recognition than an invasion against which he sought the assistance of a Power that he supposed to be England’s enemy; but the son and heir may have thought the moment not inopprotune to” recall to English recollection the happier days of his father’s reign. By this news the death is said to have occurred February 21. Our despatches from Tashkend, published on the 23d and 24th ult., gave the first account of the Ameer’s illness, with all the particulars of his condition as then reported by the Russian surgeon whose advice had been called for. An elaborate statement of the case, written on thé 13th ult., or eight days before the death, was sent by the Russian doctor, with the judgment that re- covery was impossible. Upon the state- ment of the Afghan ambassadors that they had received later and more hopeful news all the Russian surgeons at Tashkend held a conference over their colleague's re- port, and agreed with his judgment on the hopelessness of the case, which judgment is now sustained by tho fatal fact he had predicted as inevitable. By this death Yakoob Khan acquires a legiti- mate claim to succeed his father, though there are several claimants who will doubt- less be heard from. But Yakoob's claim is aclear one, and he is in possession, It is probable that he, warned by the fruitless. ness of his father’s appeal to Russia, and hopeless of his capacity to resist the Zng- lish unaided, will make sach terms with them as will leave him in possession of the throne witha British Resident at his elbow, while the ambassadors at Lashkend will find their occupation gone, and may turn their faces homeward. Now for Work. The committee appointed by Mayor Cooper, in accordance with the resolution adopted at the Cooper Union meeting, to devise measures to carry tenement house reform into effect, is composed of gentle- men who are in every respect qualified to perform the work assigned to them. They have character and position to give force to their recommendations, intelligence and business capacity to guide them in their task and a large enough stake in tho welfare and progress of the city to insure an earnest effort to remove an evil that is calculated to retard its growth and to add to its poverty and crime, they decide after proper deliberation that the remedy must be sought through legislation their influence will be suftie ciently powerfal to insure the considera- tion at Albany of such provisions of law as they may suggest. If they see that in or- der to get rid of the present abominable system it is necessary to invest money in building better residences for the poorer classes in the upper parts of the city they will certainly be able to enlist capital in the enterprise. Mr. Choate in his spéech at the meeting on Friday evening made a practical hit when he said that there is only one way by which the present wretched tenement houses can bo improved and better If; j buildings secured in the ‘future— {of the human copy of the divine vigil, “by some means, direct or —_ we must reach the pockets of e owners, and there we will find their con- sciences,” ‘This is literally true. The greed of the owners has built the present inconvenient, badly constructed houses, and has crowded them with as many human beings as can be packed into such a space. The eighty-two million dollars invested in such dens in ten years has been made to yield an enormous profit through the suf- ferings of the wretched tenants and at the risk of physical and moral pestilence in the city. Lhe easiest way to reach the pockets of the present tenement house owners is, first, to supply the tenants with better, healthier homes at as cheap or cheaper rents than they pay in the miserable rooms they occupy, and, next, to enforce such stringent sanitary laws as will compel the immediate alteration or tearing down of all buildings that are perilous to life and health. To these points the committee should direct its attention, and ‘its work should be short, sharp and decisive, Is Christianity a Failure? The discussion commenced in the Herarp two weeks ago on the subject of the dis- turbed condition of the Christian churches has caused a lively excitement in the relig- ious world. We are in receipt of a large number of communications, following up or criticising the positions taken’ by our former correspondents, eyidently written by men of intelligence and sincerity, and the tone of the religious press shows that the questions involved are not such as it can afford to ignore. We have space for only a few of the letters we have received, but these will serve as an _ indica- tion of the bent of the public mind. In some instances, it will be seen, the preju- dices of sects are allowed to overshadow the real and vital issues involved in the discussion. ‘The apparent falling off from Christianity ; the disposition te give up re- ligious duties for worldly vanities ; the dis- content among congregations ; the quarrels and scandals in the churches ; the ‘‘search- ing afier false gods ;” these are the evils that have awakened a feeling of alarm among truly religious men, and the object of the present discussion is to discover the causesand apply the remedy. In such a work calmness, impartial justice, fearless- ness and sinoerity are essential. If the fault lies with the churohes themselves, then it is proper that the truth should be known and the purification of the Temple commenced without delay. But the wornout controversies between Catholicism and Protestantism, or be- tween any one sect and any other sect, have no bearing on the subject. One writer thinks that Christianity cannot triumph until there is but one Church known among men, and that, of course, the Church of which he is a follower. Another repeats the stale charge of idolatry against those who assign to the Mother of God a position which others give only to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. But from neither of these are we likely to learn the true source of the prevailing troubles in the religious world or the means by which they may be allayed. One of our correspondents separates Christ from creeds and goodness from mere ceremionials, and maintains that Christ and goodness cannot fail, for they are eternal. Another believes that the remedy for exist- ing evils is to cust off mere doctrines and to take Christ as life and the end of life— allin all, Among our religious contempo- raries we find expressions of opinion that the churches are too much given to luxu- ries and show; that professing Christians are too often slaves to worldly pleasures, unjust in their dealings with their fellow men, avaricious and censorious; that the remedy sought for is to be found in more devotion, piety and activity and less intel- lectuality than are now to be met with in the pulpits. It is evident that many minds are turned in the righf direction, and that there is an earnest desire to see a reaction inside the Church which cannot fail to have its due effect on all the followers of the Church. Let us hope that the discussion thus evoked may result in good. Connecticut's Murderers, Bassett, the associate of Mrs. Alexander inthe murder of the straggler known as “Stuttering Jack,” was yesterday found guilty of murder in the second degree and sentenced to imprisonment for life. It will be remembered that the woman has already received a similar sentence. If these per- sons were guilty of any crime whatever it was one for which they should have been hanged. ‘They assailed a victim whom they intended to kill, as they could not have sold his body otherwise than dead, and this intentional murder was planned beforehand and the victim enticed to the place where he was killed, If that is not murder in the first degree it would be difficult to find one. But Connecticut juries are apparently squeam- ish about the use of the rope, and if they want to indulge themselves in the luxury of great considvration for human life they must not wonder if life becomes less safe in their State. Every miscarriage of justice like this is an encouragement to the mur- dering classes. Mrs. Alexander's statement to the public gives a fine account of the mental distress of that person over the ill words spoken of her and of “the good she has done for suffering humanity; more,” she soys, “than any woman of her age in the State of Connecticut,” which is hard on the other women, A Lenten ‘Test. There are various religious methods of observing Lent, and each Church and indi- vidual worshipper claims to know which is best and to be able to demonstrate by argu- ment the accuracy of their views. But the world does not take to claims and argu- ments as kindly as once it did; it has a brutal habit of demanding proof, and the more important the subject the moro per- fect the proof is expected to be. Sinners outside of the churches have sometimes read of the origin of the Lenten fast, mar- velled at the mystery of Deity incarnated and undergoing privation of the flesh out of love for humanity, and have then looked to the churches to seo what is the result Do the season and its ceremonies increase love toward God and man? Of the aspirations of the love-spirit heavenward no man is competent to judge any one but himself; but of love to man, out of which sprang Christianity and the earthly manifestation of its Founder, the evidences are visible wherever they exist atall, There never was a time ora day in which their manifestation in New York, in and through the churches, was more needed. Poverty has for several years been working unusual havoc among the humbler classes, and disease and the rigors of winter have lately intensified the afflictions of the poor to a frightiul degree, Public and pri- vate charities have been utterly inadequate tothe requirements of the helpless and suffering, and the cry of woe has been heard so often that it has seemed to dull the ears of thosé who should have regarded it. Is there any other season of the year better in which to change all this? Would not an immediate, earnest, individual movement for the amelioration of the condition of the wretched, of whose whereabouts no one need remain for half an hour ignorant,’ be the most genuine evidence which any one could give of the intelligence and sincerity with which he commemorates the great fast of humanity's truest and most practi- cal friend ? Ticket Speculating. ‘The letter published in the Hegarp a few days since on the subject of ticket specu- lating at the theatres has called forth a large number of communications, for which we cannot tind space. The fact that they are all emphatic in denuneiation of the system and in condemnation of the managers for permitting its existence proves that it is re- garded as an abuse and that the responsi- bility is placed by the public at the doors of the theatres themselves, One corre- spondent sends us the draft of a bill which it is proposed to introduce at Albany, with the object of putting a stop to the business of the speculators by requiring them to . procure licenses and prohibiting the sale of tickets within three hundred yards of a theatre. We publish the text of the bill for the purpose of eliciting an examination and discussion of its merits. At the same time we believe that the Aldermen have the power of regulation and license with- out such a law, the charter authoriz- ing them ‘to regulate traffic and sales in the streets, highways, roads and public places,” and to provide for the licensing of pedlers, under which category these ticket speculators certainly come. Besides, after all, the real remedy lies with the managers and with the public. It ig absurd to pretend that the managers of our theatres cannot prevent the ticket specula- tors from gobbling up all the good seats in the house day after day ifthey-have any honest desire to doso. If the -people who goto theatres would refuse to buy of the speculators and: leave ‘the houses.empty rather than submit to the extortion of an additional fee on the top of war prices of admission the objectionable . business would soon be discontinued. Of conrse it is unpleasant for a gentleman to turn back when he is escorting ladies to a place of amusement; but a few such annoyances might well be endured in preference to submission. to a vexutious imposition. Tha manager who first stamps out the ticket speculating business at his theatre wiil gain s “popularity that will be far more profitable to him than any percentage he may receive of the speculators’ gains. PERSONAL INTELLIGENCE. Cotywayo says:—“Chrjstian Zulu is Zulu epoilt.”” John Sherman, do not bake your bread too brown, “Reményi’s fiddle ts of fine timbre.”"—Puck, Yes, we pine for it. A Wisconsin man has a collection of 100 skunks, He must be a scenternarian. Senator Wilham Sharon, of Nevada, arrived from Washington yesterday at the Gilsey House, Some of those who try to raise the wind afterward let their money go the way the wind blows, Drink deep, New Orleans Zimes, or taste not of the Pierian spring; alittle paragraphing is a dangerous thing. If actresses insist upon being constantly robbed the criminal classes will soon possess all the dia- monds. A postal cant correspondent, who signs himself “Merchant,” asks what “H. M. 8. Pinafore’ means, Why pianoforte hymns, goose. ‘ Was it Hood who asked tho urchin not to set his pinafore atire? There are people who wish that “Pinafore” had been afire or scuttled or something. Pigeons are so plentiful in some parts of Michigan that market gardeners have started a society against prize shooters and it is to be catled the society for the prevention of cruelty to glass balls, ‘The President has recognized Julian Alfredo Prin- cipe, as Consul of Spain at Savannah, Antonio de la Corte, as Vice Consul of Spain at Baltimore, and Ottmar Vou Mohl, as Consul of the German Empire at Cincinnati. Florence, the actor, recently remarked to @ restaurant owner in San Francisco, as they were looking at a big, old-fashioned pie, “My friend, the works look very nice, but I don't like the heavy double cases.” The English troops went into Afghanistan, and when they found one poor fellow with a knife they wave him thirty heavy lashes—merely because he carried a knife in his own country. The captain is to be made a colonel, The Boston Traveller, in an interesting article, shows that Secretaries of the Tréasury, many of whom have been eminent men, have not become Presidents, It may be well to suggest to the Traveller that there was at least one reason why Alexander Mamilton could not bo @ President under our consti- tution. : A shrewd manager of popular amusements says that gentlemen need not plume themselves because ladies complain that gentlemen like to go where those of the gentler sex wear clothing of the mere atmosphere; for in his experience he finds that where there is @ play in which men perform gymnas- tice to best advantage there aro to be seen in the audi- ence the wives of men who love the “Black Crook." Dr. Lightfoot, nominated for Canon of tho See of Durham, was called thereto both by Derby and by Gladstone, Truth says that Dr. Lightfoot is the soundest and most brilliant schoiar in the Church of Kngland, but that he is @ very slow man in his work, Decause he is thorough and in style finished, He has very little of a voice and his style is unpopular; but ho is carnest and impressive. He is a friend of Gladstone and in politics he is a liberal, London World:—'There are ladies of all ages, and of every variety of personal attraction, of whose husbands the polite world sees infinitely less than it does of their maids, He is one of the impedimenta of travelling, and he is left at home whenever practicas ble, on the principle that those journeys are the casiost on which least luggage is taken. Society a¢ large only knows of him as an asthmatic encaim- brance, who lives principally in the back dining room and has no taste for London hours, It is aston- ishing how soon the husband, from thus being in the backgrotind, fades into the absolutely mythical; and indeed it is only when the world hears of his dosth ‘that it Orst clearly realizes the fact of his existenco,"*