The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 19, 1898, Page 6

[ THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JUNE 19, 1898. THE WAYS OF ANNEXATIONISTS. |menced to understand the nature of the prospect which gs RRURRQRUVURULUNV NNV NNNNN RN R R LK | vard, a man of words, but neither phil- —_— had been opened up, and a grand raid on the prop- §8 | osopher nor patriot. I would not con- mhz @a'l‘l HE ways of the hired newspaper sometimes | erty-owners was inaugurated. Half a dozen “com- : WlTH ENTIRE FRANKN ESS_ 58 ger:ngxim u'.terly,l becautss?i l';e n}xlaycx;:;t seem past finding out. The Chronicle springs to | missions,” with secretaries, clerks, engineers and o 8 c:g: p:;:rcf:;?:}: ’;&:: \e\'h:\'tl ;u‘;pon; <L \DAY JUI\E 19, 1808 the attack on Senator White for his opposition | other attachments, sprang up in a night, and things be- & By HENRY JAMES. g ioha histngiage) TrNorton saldthe JOHN D. SPRE(.KELS. Proprietor. e e e e e Address All Communications to W. S, LEAKE, Manager. R O e S S A PUBLICATION OFFICE......Market and Third Sts., S. P. Telephone Main 1868. EDITORIAL ROOMS... ..2I7 to 221 Stevenson Street Telephone Main 1874 THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL (DAILY AND S8UNDAY) Is served by carriers In this city and surreunding towns for I5 cents a week. By mall $6 per year; per month 66 cents. THE WEEKLY CALL...... ....One year, by mall, $1.50 OAKLAND OFFICE.. cessenne 908 Broadway NEW YORK OFFICE Room 188, World Bullding DAVID ALLEN, Advertising Represcntative. WASHINGTON (D. €.) OFFICE.. .-Riggs House C. €. CARLTON, Correspondent. CHICAGC OFFICE Marquette Building C.GEORGE KROGNESS, Advertising Represcntative. BRANCH OFFICES—527 Montgomery street, corner Clay, | open untll 9:30 o'clock. 387 Hayes street, spen untlil | 9:30 o'clock. 621 McAllister street, open untll 9:30 o'clock. 615 Larkin street. open untll 9:30 o'clock. 1941 Misslon street, open until 10 o'clock. 2991 Market street, corner Sixteenth, open untll 9 o'clock. 2518 Mission street, open untll 9 o'clock. 106 Eleventh street, open untll 9 o'clock. 1505 Polk street, open until 9:30 o'clock. NW. corner Twenty-second ana Kentucky streets, open until 9 o'clock. —— AMUSEMENTS. Columbia—*" Number Nine Baldwin—* The Passion Play. Alcazar—+A Celebrated Case Morosco's—"Under the Polar Star. Tivoli—“An American Hero." Orphenm—Vaudevilla The Chutes—Zoo, Vaudeville and Cannon, the 613-pound Man, Olympia—Corner Mason and Eddy streets, Specialties. Sutro Baths—Swimming, El Campo—Music, dancing,boating, fishing, every Sunday. Recreation Park—Baseball this afternoon. Coursing—At Union Coursing Park. Coursing—Ingleside Coursing Park. HUNTING A PLATFORM. JHETHER it is a result caused by the defeat of \ the fusion ticket in Oregon or a slow return of sense after the stunning defeat of two years ago is not clear, but the Democratic leaders seem at last to be seriously engaged in searching for a platform that is not Bryanism and a leader who is not Bryan. Moreover the search is being actively prosecuted at Washington, and in a wandering, uncertain way the Democrats in Congress are engaged in it. : According to the latest reports from the capital the programme of policy outlined for the national De- | mocracy is to be one of opposition to territorial ex- | pansion, to the increase of army and navy, toa “Brit- ish alliance,” and to everything which they call “im- perialism.” That no party in the nation favors im- perialism, and no alliance with Great Britain is under | consideration, does not matter in the least to the plat- form seekers. They intend to get Democrats out of the slough of Bryanism somehow, and, seeing no other way to do it, they propose to set up a bugaboo and scare them out. The Richmond Times is one of the influential papers | of the party which warmly commends the proposed policy. It exclaims with something of joy: “Happy thought this, and happy the Democratic party if it shall formulate a platform with that great principle as a nucleus, abandoning its free silver and Populistic heresies generally and returning to the good old Dem- ocratic doctrine of attending to our own affairs and | keeping ourselves safe from all foreign entangle- ments.” Nothing, however, is ever done in a Democratic camp with unanimity. No matter how joyfully | some Democrats may greet a proposed policy there | are always others. In this instance there are a good many others. There are Democrats in Congress who believe the party has made a bigger blunder on war issues than it made on the financial question. There is the exuberant Lewis of Washington, for example, who attributes the defeat of his party in Oregon to an to the silver plank in the platform. He is quoted as having said in a recent interview on the subject: “We dragged the Republicans into this war, thinking we had digged a pit for our neighbor. We lmc got it in the neck, where the chicken gut the ax.” Lewis, of course, was indulging in large, loose talk lared his party had dragged the Repub- licans into war. The contest with Spain has not been the result of dragging of any kind. The demand for the overthrow of Spanish despotism in this hemis- pliere was the spontaneous outburst of an indignant long worn, was finally ex- Neverthe- the war rather t when he dec people whose patience, hausted by the destruction of the Maine. less Lewis was right enough in holding that his party | This country is not | has gone wrong on the war. going to support a party which denounces every ac- tion of the Government in the prosecution of the war as a tendency to imperialism. opposition to the gold standard more quickly than an opposition to the Government itself in a war with a foreign land. Never was there a better illustration of the blind leaders of the blind than in the Democratic camp at this juncture. The very men who are trying to lead the party away from the slough of Bryanism are con- ducting it to a deeper slough on the other side of the To escape from the Pesthouse is such a simple mat- ter that it is strange more lepers do not do it. The idea that some of these afflicted people are moving about at will is far from pleasing, but so is the plan of herding them in a hovel unfit for beasts. Certainly nobody can blame the lepers, and if they manage to communicate their ailment to the officials responsible for the disgrace the Pesthouse constitutes the fact will have to be recognized that substantial justice has been done. Advices from the East are that steamship com- panies there have not responded cheerfully to the Government’s appeal for the use of their steamers. There is no disposition to do any boasting, but it is fair to remark that the Government found things dif- ferent here. The son-in-law of Robert Lincoln has enlisted as a private. Perhaps this will not be pleasing to the son of Abraham Lincoln, but if the old war President is so situated as to maintain cognizance of human af- fairs, his approval may be counted upon. b aramiog By the time the boastful statement of a German naval officer in the throes of a joyous jag have been sifted through the intellectuality of a yellow corre- spondent it is really not much upon which to base an estimate of the intentions of the Emperor. There will not be unanimous indorsement of the scheme for barring disreputable attorneys from the city jail. The doors should be shut in their faces, it is true, but the faces ought to be on the inside. Once in a while Editors Pulitzer and Hearst must get the impression that they are being haunted by the ghost of Editor Dana. PRSI TSy R T 1y The people can pardon | to the annexation of Hawaii, and, against all the ap- parent and .implied facts, makes another appeal to prejudice by linking him and the sugar trust together in that cause. In that connection the Chronicle takes occasion to refer to “the sugar trust organ in this State,” meaning perhaps thereby The Call. This paper is not the organ of the sugar or any other trust. Nor is it the organ of contingent contracts made with the sugar planters of Hawaii. Its zeal, if it show zeal, has a radix in its conception of the public good only. It takes no fees, in hand or in prospect, from island oli- garchists who have learned that by buying the edi- torial columns of a few newspapers they can play Uncle Sam for a sucker, get him to pay their debts and accept anything they have stolen when it gets too hot to hold. The annexation of Hawaii under offer from Dole was always a shameful proposition. It made the | United States a receiver of goods stolen while we I held the owner to be robbed. Annexation now, since our military venture in correction of Spain, is an in- | delible national disgrace. We demand that Spain with- i w from Cuba, on the assumption that her Govern- there is intolerable to the people of the island. | To enforce this demand we are summoning an army of a half-million men and spending prospectively a billion of treasure. While we are doing this costly piece of international correction we propose to gob- ble Hawaii against the protest of 98 per cent of her people. When these people whom we rob and outrage are compared with the Cuban negroes and mongrels whom we release from Spain the crime becomes more glaring. ~ The native Hawaiians, the soul of hospi- tality and amiability, are as much superior in all the gentle qualities and love of order which make good people to the turbulent and murderous Spanish ne- groes of Cuba as a Quaker preacher is to a head- hunting Malay. To be consistent in our national career of knight-errantry, as we said to Spain, “Take your hand from the throat of the Cubans,” we should have said to Dole, “Take your hands out of the pock- | ets of the Hawaiians; withdraw your sniveling oli- | garchy and let the majority rule.” It looks well, very well, in history, to highly resolve that “the people of Cuba are and ought to be inde- pendent,” and then subject the far superior people of Hawaii to a galling theft of their country without granting a voice to its rightful owners. Of course these are considerations which do not | move the Chronicle. It accepts the dictum of Bob | Toombs of Georgia, that in politics one prejudice is worth a thousand reasons, and it will continue to paroquet about the sugar trust until the American taxpayers have assumed Dole’s public debt and he has paid his private debts to the papers which help play Uncle Sam for a sucker. STATE PRIDE AND WAR. \Vlhe monotony of reports of routiné work in getting the army and navy ready for the war by thrilling the nation with glorious news of battle | and heroism, the State of Vermont sent forth a shout | of shriller exultation than other States and proudly | pointed to Dewey as a native of her soil. Her people felt a local pride in having their State illustrated in | tattle by such a hero, as well as a national pride in | the feat performed by the fleet of the nation. | p HEN the splendid victory at Manila broke | When Lieutenant Bagley fell at his post of duty on [ the deck of the shattered Winslow North Carolina | felt her grief at his death tempered by a patriotic fer- vor of exultation that one of her sons had the destiny | to fall in the foremost rank of the defenders of the i Union. All Alabama has been ringing lately with the lpraisc of Hobson, her heroic representative in the war, and now comes the Boston Journal and exults: “As usual, the okd Bay State is to the fore when our i tars perform a deed of cool and brilliant daring. Four | of Hobson’s seven brave blucjackets are Massachu- | | setts born.” Tao this form of State pride there is not likely to be any protest. Certainly none will come from Califor- ‘ nia. We have our own State pride in this war de- rived from the facts that our State was first to re- spond to the call for volunteers, that a California regi- ment was first to embark for service beyond the sea, | that a California-built battle-ship was first to land marines on the soil of Cuba, though she had to steam 13,000 miles to get to the scene of action, that a Cali- fornia-built cruiser served Dewey as a flagship at | Manila, that California women have led in the good work of the Red Cross, and that the people of San Francisco have surpassed those of any other large city in showing hospitality and giving aid to soldiers of all States on their way to war. There no longer remains among the American peo- ple any trace of the spirit of sectionalism. American ] patriotism recognizes no north, no south, no east, no | west as divisions of the indissoluble Union. Never- theless State lines remain and State patriotism lives. | There is among all classes of the people of all the | States a generous emulation as to which can do most | for the nation in peace and in war. The people of | each commonwealth are justly proud of those among | their fellow-citizens who distinguish themselves in the performance of deeds of patriotism, and there can be little doubt that among the noble incentives to noble action in the minds of aspiring youth throughout the country is a desire to be ranked among the illustrious men of whom their States are proud. A SCRAP OF HI;TORY. "l“HE last boom attempt of the real estate specu- lators who between 1887 and 1893 undertook to open, widen and extend various streets in this city came to grief at the City Hall a few days ago. On that occasion City Attorney Creswell rendered an opinion in the case of the Potrero-avenue Commis- sion, in which he held that so far as the extension of that thoroughfare is concerned under the proceedings so far taken it is dead. The principle enunciated ap- plies to the other extension, opening and widening schemes, and therefore it may be assumed that they are all dead. It is not necessary at this time to review the history of the “commissions” thus put to death by Mr. Cres- well. They were mostly attempts to turn back yards into front lots and boom the property of the specula- tors who inaugurated them. For these reasons they were bitterly opposed by the people upon whom the expense was forced, and they came to grief mainly because these people raised a howl of disapproval which overwhelmed the Legislature. The interesting feature of the entire crusade is the tendency it shows among the tax-eating classes to overdo things. The street widenings and openings began with the improvement of Mission street to the county line in 1886, That scheme was successful. Then followed the opening of a number of streets in the Laguna survey. That scheme was also successful. | By this time the tax-eaters at the City Hall com- l gan to boom at the municipal building. It was pro- posed to widen, open and extend streets which had never been heard of. One commission was organized to open highways at Bakers Beach, and another began operations in the vicinity of Lake Merced. At that time the town was luxuriating with a “Solid Nine” Board of Supervisors. These nine statesmen put everything through, notwithstanding th: protests of property-owners, and it finally became necessary for the latter to move on the Legislature. They did this in 1893 and secured the passage of a law which dismissed the expensive commissions and ousted their army of employes. The statutes under which street widening, extend- ing and opening may be undertaken are exceedingly beneficent and necessary. Had the City Hall tax-eaters been reasonable in their demands a great deal of good might have been accomplished under them. But the temptation to loot the property-owners was too strong to be resisted. The consequence was that the street extensions and openings of 1889-g0 overthrew the Buckley machine at the election held in the Ilatter year. Had the political bosses of that period re- strained their retainers they might have been saved much trouble. But they killed the goose that laid the golden egg and put the city back many years. OPPOSITION TO THE CANAL. ENATOR MORGAN’S statement that he be- S lieves it possible to frame a Nicaragua canal bill that will pass the Senate at this session will be received by the people with hope, but not with faith. The Senator is of course in a position to know the sentiments of his colieagues with regard to the measure, but he is known to be an extremely san- guine man in matters in which he takes a keen inter- est, and there will be fears that in this instance, as in so many others, he has permitted his wish to be father to his thought. The opposition to the Nicaragua canal project has taken a form since the outbreak of the war quite dif- ferent from that it assumed before. The long voyage of the Oregon around the Horn to join the fleet in the West Indies, while it has given rise to a just pride in the accomplishment of such a journey by a battleship, has also made clear to the country the need of a shorter route between our eastern and western coasts. This has of course increased the popular demand for the construction of the canal across the isthmus, and the opponents of the measure no longer dare to op- pose it directly and absolutely. Furthermore the war has set aside all the old ob- jections to the enterprise based on the ground of cost. The estimate that the construction would entail an ex- penditure of upward of $100,000,000 no longer fright- ens the people as it did in times past. The country has voted $50,000,000 simply for war preparations, and is now expending nearly $2,000,000 a day for war pur- poses. Under such circumstances there would not be much haggling over the expenditure necessary for the construction of a canal so requisite to our welfare in both peace and war, even if the cost amounted to as much as the exaggefated estimate made by its oppo- nents. The opposition at the present time neither denies the need of the canal, nor does it assert that the water- way would not be worth to our fleets und our com- merce the money it will cost. The latest form of ob- jection is that the Nicaragua route is not the best for the purpose. An attempt is now being made to show that it would be cheaper to buy the stock of the Panama Canal Company and finish the work begun there by De Lesseps. Over and over again it has been shown that a ma- jority of the members of both houses of Congress are ostensibly in favor of the Nicaragua canal, but with a1 equal frequency it has been disclosed that a ma- jority of the members cannot agree upon the terms on which it is to be carried out. Senator Morgan therefore will have few people to accept readily his belief that a bill providing for the construction of the work can be passed in the Senate at this session. It is none the less gratifying, however, to find the cham- pions of the enterprise so sanguine and hopeful. If the Senator will act on his belief and bring a canal bill to the front at once he will find abundant support from the people to help him push it through. COLONEL BRYANS LEADERSHIP. OLONEL BRYAN, who has recently clothed C his neck with thunder and girt his belly with a red sash, as colonel of a Nebraska regiment, finds time to lay his volume of tactics aside and pause in the study of regimental drill long enough to dictate the execution of personal spite on Mr. Harrity of Pennsylvania. Let it not be supposed that Colonel Bryan's regi- ment will mark time while its distinguished comman- der takes this excursion into civil affairs. The Gov- ernor of Nebraska, though a Populist, has a head that is periodically level. He did not propose to trust a thousand of the flower of Nebraska’s younger male population. to the command of Colonel Bryan as a soldier. He might do as a company officer to put the raw recruits through their “hay-foot, straw-foot” no- vitiate as sons of Mars, but his appointment was not for any further military purpose. It was a political move. Colonel Bryan found himself forgotten. He had ceased to be an object of interest. War wipes out personalities with a rough besom and burns powder where reputations go into the ground so that they don’t sprout again. The only way to keep in sight was to get a commission. A real, burning patriotism would have dictated to Mr. Bryan enlistment in the ranks. He is of military age and has no business nor profession to abandon. But fancy him, under a burn- ing tropical sun and the command of a gold bug cap- tain, marching while his superior reiterated: “Left; left; left; left; Left a good home in the West; 1 Left; left; left; left; Left his cross and his crown; And then he left town; Left; left; left; left!” He must be a titular commander, if anything, and not a mere speck in the blue sky of privates. So Governor Holcomb made him a colonel, but put the regiment in the experienced hands of Colonel Vifquain as lieutenant-colonel, who was sent as Con- sul-General to Central America by Mr. Cleveland, and is a trained French soldier. It is this fortunate forethought of the Governor that gives Colonel Bryan leisure to persuade the Demo- cratic National Committee to make another blunder and set up the insufferable practice that that body can deprive a State of its member of the committee and itself fill the vacancy so created. A few years ago such a thing would have caused a revolt in the party in every State in the Union, but under the leadership of Colonel Bryan the organization has learned to de- prive States not only of their committeemen but of their delegations in national conventions, and call it “regular,” for “regularity” is the only rag and tatter of authority left to the party since Colonel Bryan has been in the saddle. LR R R AR AR AR AR R R R R R AR R Last week I presented a bit of verse from Ouida, with such comment as seemed appropriate. This week I take pleasure in drawing upon another font of poesy, but every reader must sup- ply the comment for himself or her- self. If space permitted I would give the whole thing, for thers runs through it a beauteous continuity of thought. The poem appeared in a recent num- ber of the Eskual Herria, a publica- tion to the title of which is added the following qualification: “Berriketari Eskualduna argitaratzen dena Califor- nia-n aste guziez.” Realizing this, there can be no misunderstanding. Here is the verse: Pilotari handiak zoin diren ikhusgarri Trinket eder batean direnean hari Munduko hoberenak ikhusiko sarri Ai, ai, ai, muthila, ikh ko sarri. Anybody may obtain the rest of the verses by sending for them. For such as may be of a musical turn and in- clined to warble information is append- ed that they can be sung with pleasing effect to the air, “Ai, Al, Ai Muthila, Chapela Gorria. - . It had been in mind as a duty un- mixed with pain to this week penetrate the hide of the only writer in America Who has had the effrontery to assail and insult the women of the Red Cross. The task has been taken from me. One of the women neatly stripped the hide from the wearer to whom it had so long been an armor, and hung it over the fence as a warning to the impertinent and pachydermatous. Pity often checks an fmpulse to correct the thin skinned, and the heart is robbed of all hostile intent by the spectacle of a palpitant carcass devoid of any skin at all. SE et Now that Frank Belew has been hanged it may be said of him that for 2 poisoner he possessed some surpris- ing elements of character. He told me at the time of the arrest that the man who had committed the deed deserved to be executed for it. He said also that he believed in hell and wanted the assassin to go there with all reasona- ble speed. Then he confessed that he was the assassin, kicked aside every obstacle between himself and the gal- lows, and for what may be beyond the fall of the trap took his chances with- out any maudlin moan. But while the man merited the extreme punish- ment I fail to summon up any sense of admiration for friends of the victims who stood about and gloated. They should have had the decency to stay away and do their joying in private. I fancy the man who, as the rope be- came taut, exclaimed, “This is too good to be true,” lacks much which goes to make up a model disposition. T Several weeks ago remark was made in this column that an American citi- zen, Spanish by birth, had by reason of his nativity lost his engagement to tour with a distinguished fiddler, the fid- dler being foreign both by birth and desire. In the place of the Spaniard a | Frenchman was secured, and the same public that had scorned his predecessor extended to him' glad hands with coins in them. Now the Frenchman an- nounces that he is going home to join the army, this being the French method of working out the polltax. He hasa right to do this, of course, but I like better the Spaniard who comes to this country by choice and elects to re- main, than the Belgian fiddler or the French pianist whose only object while here is to get all the American money possible and go abroad to stay until necessity arises for making a new haul. i 5 ceugle: It is gratifying to note that Life is mending its ways. It now has the grace to try to hide the disapproval it entertains toward the Government for making war on Spain while there was possibility of backing down, with no worse result than lasting dishonor. PRI Friends of the late Thirteenth Regi- ment of New York assert that the or- ganization was disbanded for having misunderstood an order. Out here an opinion had existed that the Governor dismissed it in disgrace because it de- liberately set itself up as above both the State and Federal powers, and de- clined to go to war unless it could go in its own way. The Thirteenth had good clothes, but even a circumstance so fortuitous did not seem to the au- thorities to raise it to a level superior to the volunteers. Of course the Thir- teenth could not understand this. e . The editor of the Western Watchman is a candidate for sympathy. It would seem from his extended and pathetic lament that a conscienceless pair of de- signing villains had beaten him out of $6. To the consequent burden of woe weight is added by the disinclination of Jjournalistic neighbors to weep with him. Some of them, I regret to say, far from being impressed by the loss, are inclined to jest unfeelingly. Six dollars, all in one lump, seems to me a serious matter. Out upon the heart- lessness of the ribald, decrying the sor- row of the stricken. I weep with him and shall not charge him a cent. »terie Judge Wallace has sent some more robbers to the penitentiary for life. Possibly there will be some to find fault with this, but it must be displeas- ing to the robbers, a circumstance suf- ficient to commend it to all who are engaged in other lines of industry. A few years ago the footpad business was flourishing here. Judge Wallace began to impose sentences of twenty or forty years, or life. Immediately the busi- ness languished. Now a case of rob- bery by violence is rare, and as there is no evidence that human morals are improved as a whole, there is no es- caping the conclusion that the firmness of the Judge in dealing with this class of offenders is the agency by which re- form has been accomplished. -~ as There reaches me a marked copy of a small magazine. In it appears no name of editor, publisher nor other re- sponsible party. Therefore I refrain from mentioning the publication. If it is ashamed of itself, I respect its good taste thuswise manifest. It is a puzzle magazine, the puzzle being for the reader to detect the purpose of the, perpetrator, and it contains several bits of well written lunacy. To re- buke, much less to argue with a per- son who says Kipling is a “literary charlatan” were a waste of time. It happens, under Providence, that Kip- ling is the best writer of fiction now alive. He adds to this the distinction of being the best writer of poetry. But the condemnation of Kip- ling is only an incident. The marked, and I therefore take it the importaat, portion of the stuff is in relation to a necessary change of the national col- ors to red, white and green. The wri- ter says this would be a delicate com- pliment to Ireland. With all respect to that beautiful isle from which na- tives escape as rapidly as they can acquire the price of passage across, I do not see that it needs a deiicate compliment. If there is rampant a desire to show that the United States and Ireland are one and indivisible a few stars and stripes grafted on the emerald banner of Erin would fulfill the purpose. We have become so ac- customed to the national colors just as they are that we really like them, and do not feel eager to alter them | even for so laudable a purpose as the | paying a compliment, doubtle: de- served. But the extraordina and unnamed individual proceeds to dem- onstrate to his evident satisf on that the red, white and blue do not | harmonize, that they constitute a bad color scheme, “jarring the aesthetic apprehension.” If this is the variety of apprehension that ails him he would be wise to make a change. Not being an expert as to color schemes I con- sulted several artist friends. They were so enthusiastically unanimous in calling the unknown an ass that I had to conclude them right. There are shades of blue and red that do not harmonize, but the man who can look at the flag and not detect harmony is neither artist nor patriot. When a flag is new, and the white glaringly | Wwhite, there is sometimes a lack ut4 tone perfection. But when the white has been slightly yellowed by time there is no combination of hues more pleasing. Green is but a tint, a mix- ture. Blue is the pure stuff. It is in the sky, in the billow, in the starry flag, and it will remain. My friend of “aesthetic apprehension” would better be employed in searching pink pas- tures for a purple Burgess cow than in telling people with minds and eyes how to think and see. ot e It is not with a thrill of pride one reads that “six men killed all their birds.” They were men from the Olympic Gun Club, reckoned good members of society and not as a rule thirsting for gore. What did they kill the birds for? I am unable to state. It seems to me this sport is cruel and inexcusable. To loose a scared pigeon from a box in front of a gun ready for aiming, to slay the bird, even to break a wing or a leg, does not seem to me a brave achievement. I think the birds have as much right to live as the men who consider it a delight to kill and mutilate them. If the making of laws were left to me, the next individual to shoot a trapped bird would spend sev- eral subsequent seasons in breaking rock on the highway. We abhor the Spanish bull-fight, but to face a bull in the ring demands courage. The bull has at least a chance to make things interesting for the opposition. Occa- sionally one of the torturers is gored to death, a circumstance whereat all right-minded people rejoice. But the pigeon is helpless. The person who slaughters the innocent flock seems to me but a larger and worse edition of the boy who impales a fly’ "on a pin. Catching flies for this purpose requires a degree of skill, and the fly at liberty is a nuisance. So from an ethical standpoint the bird-killer is an in- stance of degeneration. Colonel Finigan of San Rafael has been, on his wife’s complaint, arrested for perjury. I had expected this for a long time and hasten to congratulate the colonel on the inexplicable delay. His affairs, of course, are none of mine, but in the capacity of a rank outsider I have taken the liberty to wonder if a rich man would be allowed indefi- nitely to swear that he was poverty stricken, everybody knowing that he was rich and not poverty stricken. I am not qualified to give advice in these delicate family matters, but as a busi- ness proposition it would seem reason- able for the colonel to pay the price like a man, even if this involve the tell- ing of the truth. * An Orinda gentleman, who shows ap- preciation of the truth as set forth here, writes to know what I meant by the insinuation that Tom Reed had es- caped the Southern Pacific branding iron through moving from California. If I have done Reed an injustice I am ready to recant. I did not want to say that Reed had been branded, but to give him the benefit of the doubt. Ac- cording to my friend there is no doubt. Wi eie o . For a time saloons at Richmond, near Camp Merritt, sprang up, not like mushrooms, but like toadstools. There is something of good about a mush- room. One hall which had been de- voted to religious services was teken from the regular tenants so that it might be used as a place for dancing. Underneath there was to be a grog- gery. I am glad to say the groggery failed of getting a license. The peo- ple who were expelled naturally felt a righteous indignation, but I hope not to the degree that they will be pre- vented from getting another place and continue to devote themselves to the upbuilding of the morals of the vicin- ity. What, with the laxness of mili- tary discipline and of the Supervisors, there is ample occasion both for po- lice and prayer, and the police do not seem to Le active. Chauncey Depew has been to France and dined well there. So hospitable were his entertalners that they went so far as to listen to his stories. There- fore has Chauncey conceived the no- tion that an Anglo-American alliance fs out of the question, and that an alliance with France would appeal,at once to the sensibilities and the judgment of Americans. But, delv- ing into history, he dragged forth and delightedly exhibited a reasan. It seems that 250 years ago, by ancestral proxy, Depew came from France under the name of Depuy. Of course this constitutes a bond which all must re- cognize. I suspect that the first De- puys to land brought with them the stock of yarns which Chauncey draws upon yet. Nothing, save perhaps in- clination, is now wanting to make the Franco-American union complete. Chauncey has declared himself the missing link. Last week I had occasion to mention a college president, and this week a things ascribed to him he deserves to be hissed from America into perpetual exile. He is credited with having said of Americans: “They cannot distin- guish between what is honest and dis- honest,” and “I could be proud of my country if it were not for my country- men,” though he had the surprising grace to attribute the last to Sir Hor- ace Walpole. It is difficult to believe that Norton said this, because there is a supposition that he is a person of brains. The man who adjudges his fellows to be dishonest is apt himself to be a knave. Argument with such a man is useless. He is a creature of immovable prejudice. Norton may de- spise Americans as he will, and be sure that the feeling is reciprocated. To inguish betwee hat which is hon- est and that wh not is the privi- ege of ven the thief nd yet the thief able char- ave the him he looks in v Harvard is to be congratulat reached the age of r the bad advice he has been giving fell upon unheeding ears. He regards the present war as an outgrowth of de- fects in the national character. Yet Harvard students have been swift to enlist and thus uphold the reputation of the university which a few Nortons would be able to drag in the dust. w Sime e Norton has rent, and that It seems that the postoffice facilities at Tampa were rather scant for the ac- commodation of the residents, and that when 35,000 soldiers were suddenly add- ed to the population there was a clog of mail which kept many a sweet- heart’s letter for days where it did not do any particular good. But the Gov- | ernment was equal to the emergency. It added to the local postoffice one clerk at the salary of $300 per annum. It is not easy to see how he can earn his pay. Perhaps in an excess of ambition to do so he will lick the stamps. SONG OF THE RAPID FIRES You may take the thirteen-inchers, And the eights and six and fours; You may take the heavy battery, And the rain of shells it pours; You may take the grim projectils And the mighty solid shot, But we, the rapid-fires, Are the guns that make things hot. Oh, it's swift the turrets swing us, And with steady, ready ken We reach the decks and sweep them With their living walls of men! It's ping, and sping and splutter. And it's beautiful to be The tenors in the chorus That is sung across the seal Swing your broadsides into action, Let the forward turrets play, Hark the thunder of the cannon As they dance in death’s chasse! Sweep the courses with the squadron. Let them give and take again, Send the foe the thunder-challenge— But it's we that take the men! Oh, it's terrible to hear us And it’s lively when we sing, As across the heaving billows To the foemen's deck we We are tenors of the choru But on starboard or on lee, We are heard above the th That is sung across the sea! ‘We are flame and fire and terror, We are twenty to their one; ‘We are up again and at them Fre they charge the heavy gun; And our lips are red with battle, And our throats are hoarse with smoke, ‘When we land upon their quarter And they feel our lightning stroke. Oh, it's rapid, rapid, rapid, Jolly rapid-fires are we, Singing round the ranging turret And across the surging sea. We are brothers to the hes And V\P strike where th()‘ have sed, And tl\(‘r(- s doom upon the quarter ‘Where our twenty bolts have kissed. Swing the pounders into action, We shall beat the batteries vet! From the furnace to the funnel, Where the naked seamen sweat, We are heard amid the cho ‘And they know our surging shout, As we sing across the waters From our triple steel redoubt. Oh, it’s rip and roar and rumble When the thirteens sink the. fos, And it’s death upon the billows When the solid pounders go; But {t’ swift the turrets swing us And with steady, ready ken We search the decks and sweep them With their living walls of men! —Baltimore News. CONKLING AND BLAINE. Postmaster-General Charles Emory Smith, belng interviewed by George Al- fred Townsend, compared Conkling and Blaine, as he recalled them, as follows: “Mr. Blaine had more tact, more breadth, more of the character of a public policy. His ideas were large, his views decided. He was the more affectionate. His absorption of knowledge from books and men and his own philosophy were constant, and he imparted his glow to his friends. He also originated plans in trade and diplomacy which have not perished and which affect the present time. But Mr. Conkling, though narrower, had a force that was greater when exerted. Ha ‘was so_intense that he swept opposition away. The quality of dramatic poetry was then aroused in Conkling; the man and the action fitted each other as if Shakes- peare was enacting his own verse on the stage. Those glorious rhapsodies and in- vectives were the delight of Conkiing’'s friends, He had a flerce, supremacy-like chieftainship, and yet, if Conkling be- lieved that you meant to be fair and that you had no sinister intention, and if vou treated him with the respect of an equal, you could not only differ with him but he could be persuaded. Blaine leaves upon my mind a sense of gentleness, of con- sideration and of a full mind; Conkling that of a splendid tempest from the thunder peals, floods and showers to the rainbow. The one was like an essence, the other a personality. I do not think ‘\r(l‘ Conkling did justice to his talents in the way he diverted them to accumulation of patronage, but the temptation to do that was inherent in the custody of so much power.” —_——— Genuine eyeglasses,specs,15 to 40c. 65 4th.* e Prof. Windsor, the eminent phrenologist, will give a free fllustratcd lecture tu~nlght at Metropolitan Temple. —_—————— Treat your Eastern friends to California Glace Fruits, 50c Ib in fire etched boxes. 627 Market street, Palace Hotel building. * —_—e————— supplied daily to Special information business house}ss and l:\}\l;}lc n):enwb o(nhl. wreau (ALlen's), o 5 By mbeet Biliiphone Matn 1042 @ gomery street. —_— re———— The Town Run Loose 1s what the ladies are saying after buying hats at Mrs. S. R. Hall's millinery sale, a8 Market street. Ladies keep eve on the e, $1 9, §2 %0, 34 50 hats this week. Sl ety S oAl ‘When a British regiment left Halifax recently the American flag was waved almost everywhere with the Union Jack, and the bands alternated “The Star Span- gled Banner” with “Rule Britannia.” —_—— Excursion to the Yellowstone Park. A personally conducted excursion will leave this city July 12 for the Yellowstone Park, via the “Shasta Route” and Northern Pacific Rall- way. Tourists will be accommodated in frst- class Pullman cars; tickets will be sold, in- cluding berths, meals and trip through the Park. Send for circular giving rate and icner- ary to T. K. STATELER, General Agent Northern Pacific Railway, 638 Market st., S. F. —————— The Santa Fe Route will run second excur- sion to Grand Canyon of the Colorado, Arizona, on Thn!ldl’ June 30. Noted scientists will ac~ college professor seems in need of it ImcucnuxumvtNomnotnu lum Get tull the party. A pleasant and profitable particulars at No. 644 Market sto