Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY.

Ar Union Bridge, Md., on the 22d of last month, many of the friends of Solomon Shepherd, the oldest, and one of the most esteemed members of Friends' meeting there, gathered to congratulate him on having completed his eightieth year. He was in good health and spirits. A suitable poem, prepared by one of the company, was read, from which we take a few stanzas, the whole being somewhat too extended for our space :

"We have met to-day in thy pleasant home,
Thy friends and children dear,
With kindly thoughts and loving hearts,
And a foretaste of Christmas cheer.

We meet to honor thy eighty years

With never a thought of sorrow,

To brighten the day with our words and smiles,
And bid thee God-speed for the morrow.

"And now, may our Heavenly Father,
Whose Spirit abides in thy breast,
Make the rest of thy voyage peaceful,

And its ending be crowned with sweet rest.'

ABOLITION SOCIETY'S ANNUAL MEETING. THE Annual Meeting of what is commonly known as the 'Abolition Society," (it has a much more extended official name), was held at the Parlor, Fifteenth and Race streets, Philadelphia, on the 30th ult.

[ocr errors]

The full name of the organization is the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully held in Bondage, and for Improving the Condition of the African Race," and it was organized previous to the Revolution. Its work, so far as the abolition of slavery and the relief of free Negroes unlawfully held, is, of course, entirely obsolete, but the remaining purpose, that of improving the condition of the colored people, remains operative, and as it has some permanent funds, which gives it an annual income for its work, the administration of the Society remains a matter of importance.

At the annual meeting officers were elected, including William Still, President, Henry M. Laing and Alfred H. Love, Vice-Presidents, Joseph M. Truman and Lukens Webster, Secretaries, and William S. Ingram, Treasurer. Committees were also appointed.

The Society has an income of about $1,000 a year, and part of this is derived from a fund left by John Parrish, and must be spent in Pennsylvania; other funds have been for some years used to aid schools for the colored youth in the southern States.

SPEAKING THE SHIPS.

UNTRAVELED dweller by the haven-side,

I saw the great ships come, sojourn a day,
Then set their eager sails, their anchor weigh,
And give themselves to rocking wind and tide.

I spake them not, nor they to me replied,

Of where their void and lonely journey lay ; Now, since my lips have tasted mid-sea spray, In common speech I hail those wanderers wide. To this: "Proud Scotia gave thy ribs to thee!'' To this: Thy masts have known the Apennines!" Or, Tagus empties where thy frame was planned.' Or, "Say, thou gallant one, if true it be,

"

Thou hither cam'st with hoard of Levant wines And dulcet fruits from many a sun-loved land !'' -Edith M. Thomas, in the Century.

UPON the threshold of the year
Expectantly we stand,

And wonder what lies on before
Within that unknown land!

We know not, but our joy shall be

That all is known, O Lord, to Thee!

-Charlotte Murray.

THE EARTH'S WEAR AND TEAR.

From a lecture by Prof. W. B. Scott, of Princeton University, delivered at the Wagner Institute, Philadelphia, the following excerpts are taken. (Stenographic report by George B. Cock.)

AMONG the subaerial geologic agencies, none is more important than the atmosphere. The atmospheric work, the destructive effects of rain, wind, frost and the like,-attacks the rocks, and destroys them both mechanically and chemically. The mechanical agents are, first and most important, rain itself, then frost, then the wind, then changing temperature. Of all mechanical agents nothing is so important as the rain. The hardest rocks are slowly but surely disintegrated, chemically and mechanically, by the rain; and thus the country is gradually worn down.

While the work of the atmosphere is not so striking }

as that of rivers, it is infinitely more important. While rivers are confined to their channel and the sea confined to its coast line, the atmosphere is universal,— every particle of dry land is exposed to it, nothing can escape it. These destructive activities have the general effect of wearing the land down,-destroying it,breaking up the hard rocks chemically into soft soil, and then sweeping them away into the river to be carried thence into the sea.

While the effect of all these agencies ceaselessly at work is thus to wear down the land to sea level, or very near it, yet the first effect is not to produce a general uniformity of level but to produce relief or differences of level; and this because certain parts of the rocks or a newly upheaved land are removed more rapidly than others.

Look at an old brick sidewalk, worn down until the bricks are not more than a half-inch thick. They are uneven. If you take one of the bricks you will see that one will be an inch and a half thick, and alongside of it another only one-fourth inch thick. This is because the steady wear of so many feet over it has removed the soft parts first, and thus made the brick surface uneven. That is just what happens with the land when the atmosphere gets at it. There are certain parts which are removed more rapidly than others. This rapidity of removal is due to the fact that along these particular lines the rock is more easily destructible, or because the agencies concentrate there. The first effect of these agencies is thus relief or inequality of surface.

The work of these agents varies very much in different regions. There is a climatic difference everywhere to be observed. In regions where there is an abundant rainfall and a mild climate, rain is the most important agent in the destruction and removal of rock; but we have over the surface of the earth great areas of country where there is no rain, or practically none. There is really hardly any absolutely rainless country on the face of the earth; but there are plenty of desert regions where it does not rain sometimes for three or four years; then there will be a heavy shower, and that will be the last of it for years again. Material is being disintegrated and destroyed here and removed -transported; for all the agents that do this work and

ذا

do it very slowly are agents which in the countries of moderate rainfall play a very subordinate part. These are, first, the action of the wind, which by driving sand and gravel along the surface of the ground continually wears away the rocks.

In the deserts of Arizona the hard, black basaltic rocks are channeled and polished by the action of the sand, just as if they had been in the hands of the lapidary. One of these pebbles is gouged out while the harder parts are standing in relief, thus giving you the general effect of the destructive agencies which are working upon the land.

The fierce sun beating down upon the rocks in the daytime heats them. They get very hot. I have seen in Wyoming, five and six thousand feet above sea level, the temperature of the ground raised to 140 degrees in the sun; the rocks get so hot you can't touch them without getting your fingers blistered. This heating of the rock means the expansion of it. At night, when the sun sets, the temperature immediately begins to fall. Sometimes there will be thirty to forty degrees difference; after sunset (or 10 o'clock) it will be freezing, when it was 85 to 90 before sunset. The outside layers which are chilled immediately commence to contract; the outside contracts against an unyielding hot inside and splits off; and thus there is in all desert regions a continual bombardment among the hills and canyons of falling blocks produced by this surface contraction of the rocks upon the still heated and expanded interior.

The wind blows steadily for weeks in one direction. Hundreds of miles may take them in one direction into the sea; as the Atlantic, off the west coast of

Africa, is often loaded down with sand blown from the Sahara. Then again this wind may transport these particles of sand and gravel to rivers, and thus in turn they get carried off to sea; and so, even in desert regions we find the work of disintegration and destruction going on in spite of the practical absence of the rain.

The work of these temperature changes is not only to break off rocks into big pieces; it breaks them up much finer than that. Most rocks are not made up of a single mineral, but of a great many different kinds of minerals. In a piece of granite, while three minerals make the bulk of it, you will find eight or ten, all told. Every one of these different minerals has a different rate of expansion and contraction when heated and cooled. These different kinds of minerals press together and pull away from each other according as they are heated or chilled, and the different parts gradually remove themselves loose; and thus you may start with a cliff of the hardest granite, and the result of these continual temperature changes will eventually crumble it down to a sand, decomposed by the mere strain and stress set up in the interior of this mass by the action of the continually contracting and expanding minerals.

Frost does just the same kind of thing, only much more evenly, in moist regions. All rocks, as we have seen, are made up of blocks. In moist regions, where

there is a moderate rainfall, these crevices or joints between the blocks get filled with water. In all countries with cold winters and in all high mountains, as this water freezes, it pries the blocks out with irresistible power. Freezing water is one of the most irresistible agents; within its own narrow limits it is as violently destructive as dynamite. Take a 10-inch shell of steel and fill it with water; and the ice will break that shell as if it were an eggshell. Every cliff and every exposed mass of rock in every cold country is being broken up as the ordinary changes of the air are doing in a desert without the help of water at all. In this way the whole mass of rock is gradually being worn down. The first effect is to wear it out along certain lines,—to give us, at a certain stage of maturity of topography, the extreme of relief, or difference of level or elevation.

DISCONTENT AND TAXES IN GERMANY. New York Tribune.

In

GERMANY, with all her progress, is wretchedly poor. With one of the greatest armies in the world and with commerce whitening-or blackening-every sea, her people are grovelling in abject poverty. The facts in the case are actually startling. In England the line of exemption from income tax is drawn at $800. Prussia it is drawn at $225. One would think that would leave all except paupers subject to taxation. On the contrary, it taxes only 8.46 per cent. of the people. No less than 91.54 per cent. of the people of Prussia, then, have to live on incomes of less than $225 for each family! That is a picture of poverty literally appalling. Only one person in 550 has an income of more than $2,375, and in a total population of 32,000,000 only 37,000 have incomes of more than $7,625 each. That there are no more large or medium incomes is significant, but that more than 29,000,000 out of 32,000,000 people should be living on incomes of less than 62 cents a day, such an income generally having to suffice for a whole family, is the blackest picture of German social economy that any enemy of the Fatherland could wish to draw.

are now.

A generation ago matters were not as bad as they Or, if they were, the people had not yet been waked to a realization of the fact, and they had no one in particular to blame for it. But Germany is now wide awake. The people know and feel how wretchedly poor they are. Rightly or wrongly, they blame the Government for it. Some demand more aid from the Government, in tariff protection and bounties. Others clamor for free trade, which may not increase their incomes, but would, they imagine, lessen their expenses. Others see in the vast expenditures for army and navy the source of all their woes. And others, weary of the problem, seek to escape it by expatriation. There is a desperate chance that foreign war, or at least colonial conquests, may for a time allay the rising discontent. But that will be an anodyne for the pain, not a remedy for the disease.

SOME one offers a bit of advice for which most of us might find daily application : Never be guilty of the folly of neglecting to do little because you cannot do everything.

:

PHILADELPHIA IN 1774.

Senator H. C. Lodge, in Scribner's Magazine.

[ocr errors]

DIVORCE IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. In England, 353 divorces were granted in the year IN 1774 Philadelphia was the largest town in the 1895 on the application of husbands, and only 220,on American Colonies. Estimates of the population, the application of wives. An English paper is moved which are all we have, differ widely, but it was prob- by these figures to remark: "It seems as though ably not far from 30,000. A single city now has a woman is at heart a rake, and as an entity more In America, where about twolarger population than all the colonies possessed in immoral than man." 1774, and there are in the United States to-day 104 thirds of the divorces are granted on account of unthe part of cities and towns of over 30,000 inhabitants. Figures faithfulness or other misconduct on alone, however, cannot express the difference between husbands, the anti-woman party complain that women those days and our own. Now a town of 30,000 peoare chiefly to blame for "the_divorce evil," because more women than men apply for divorces. ple is reached by railroads and telegraphs. It is in land, where more men apply than women, the antiIn Engclose touch with all the rest of the world. Business brings strangers to it constantly, who come like shad-wives are more often unfaithful than husbands. The woman party draw the astonishing inference that ows and so depart, unnoticed, except by those with simple fact is that, under English law, unfaithfulness whom they are immediately concerned. It was not so on the part of the wife entitles the husband to a in 1774, not even in Philadelphia, which was as nearly divorce, but unfaithfulness on the part of the husband as possible the central point of the colonies as well as does not entitle the wife to one unless extreme cruelty the most populous city. Thanks to the energy and can be proved in addition. This inequality in the law genius of Franklin, Philadelphia was paved, lighted, is quite sufficient of itself to explain the disparity in and ordered in a way almost unknown in any other the number of divorces granted to husbands and town of that period. It was well built and thriving. wives in England.-Woman's Journal. Business was active and the people were thrifty and prosperous, and lived well.

Yet, despite all these good qualities we must make an effort of the imagination to realize how quietly and slowly life moved then in comparison to the pace of to-day. There in Philadelphia was the centre of the postal system of the continent, and the recently established mail coach called the "Flying Machine," not in jest but in praise, performed the journey to New York in the hitherto unequalled time of two days. Another mail at longer intervals crept more slowly to the South. Vessels of the coastwise traffic, or from beyond the seas, came into port at uncertain times, and after long and still more uncertain voyages. The daily round of life was so regular and so quiet that any incident or any novelty drew interest and attention in a way which would now be impossible.

WATER IN TYPHOID FEVER. THE Bacteriological Review commends the practice of water-drinking in typhoid fever, the importance of subjecting the tissues to an internal bath having, it appears, been brought prominently to the notice of the profession by M. Debove of Paris, believed by some to have been the first to systematize such a mode of treatment. The practice of that eminent physician consists, in fact, almost exclusively of water-drinking, his requirement being that the patient take from five to six quarts of water daily, this amounting to some eight ounces every hour. If the patient subsists chiefly upon a diet of thin gruel, fruit juices, or skimmed milk, the amount of liquid thus taken is to be subtracted from the quantity of water. The important thing is to get into the system and out of it a sufficient amount of water to prevent the accumulation sufficient amount of water to prevent the accumulation of ptomaines and toxins within the body. Copious water-drinking does not weaken the heart, but encourages its action by maintaining the volume of blood. It also adds to the action of the liver, the kidneys, and the skin; and by promoting evaporation from the skin it lowers the temperature.

[ocr errors]

WOMEN WORKERS IN ITALY.
Susan Nichols Carter, in Scribner's Magazine.
A GREAT deal has been said and felt about the women

Fisherwomen at

of the lower classes working in the fields, and of the
hard manual labor they are called to perform. In the
light of the ideas that women should be delicate and
refined physically, doubtless the broad backs, hard
muscles, and heavy, knotted frames of peasants we see
appear discordant and unseemly.
Dieppe or Whitby, we know, and along-shore every-
where, hold their own against town councils when
they dictate the policy of town governments. In mo-
ments of danger, when the signal-gun summons the
populace to scenes of danger, then these women, the
wives and mothers of the fishermen, man the lifeboats
and breast the waves, going to the rescue of their rela-
tives in distress. Yet these fierce, strong women
scarcely fill the modern idea of what womanhood
should be.

Now, however, very recently, when it is the fad
that women should be athletic, broad-shouldered, and
deep-lunged, to say nothing of the wider education of
our high-bred and healthy modern girls, the question
arises among the observant, why working in fields or
carrying burdens is, after all, such a hardship and
degradation to the peasant woman more than to the
peasant man? Too much labor and great toil doubt-
less break down and age both sexes.

But Disraeli spoke of women as of the gentler, if not the weaker, sex; and when, in Monte Sacro, I saw women swinging the scythe with broad swathes, or cutting the sweet hay on the mountain-sides with their kets, which they bore away on their shoulders filled sickles, and then filling up tall, pannier-like straw baswith fragrant grass for the cattle, I asked myself if, after all, in their present civilization, these women of Varallo-Sesia, at least, could be better or more healthily employed. They sang as they worked, and bright and bronzed cheeks spoke of healthy toil.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

MOVEMENTS IN THE RELIGIOUS FIELD. AN interesting movement is in progress among the Polish Catholics in Chicago, Buffalo, and some other cities. It has developed a definite withdrawal from the Roman authority, and a priest of Chicago, Kozlowski, has been made a bishop, by the "Old Catholic" bishops in Europe. The ceremony, called " consecration," took place at Berne, Switzerland, on the 21st of Eleventh month last, and the new bishop, returning to this country, will have charge of some eight churches, representing about 30,000 people. Three of the churches are in Chicago, and two in Cleveland.

The Polish Catholics have long been restive under the strict control of the Papal authority. They particularly dislike the denial of all congregational right of government, ownership of property, etc. It is probable the new movement will spread somewhat, though if confined to Catholics of Polish origin it cannot be very extensive.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

self grounded in mystery? Who can trace the origin of his inner aspirations?"'

CURRENT EVENTS.

THE finances of the national government have assumed a more favorable aspect. The Treasury receipts last month were $59,646,698, and the expenditures $27,634,092. The receipts and expenditures for December include $31,715,204 received during the month from sales of Union Pacific Railroad, $900,000 paid out to secure bid on Kansas Pacific and $517,428 interest paid on Pacific Railroad subsidy bonds not due until January. Excluding these items the receipts amount to $27,931,494 and expenditures $26,216,663, leaving a surplus for the month of $1,714,831.

DR. SHELDON JACKSON, the missionary and agent of the U. S. Bureau of Education in Alaska, sailed for Europe, on the 25th ult., with power from the United States War Department to purchase 500 reindeer, with their harness and sleds, and to hire fifty Lapland drivers who will be accompanied by their families. The reindeer and sleds will be used to forward supplies to the Yukon Valley. A despatch from London, on the 3d inst., says several steamers have been offered there (for hire) to transport the reindeer.

THE transfer of the government of the cities composing "Greater New York" to the new municipality took place on the 1st inst., and the new Mayor, Van Wyck, entered upon his duties. He immediately removed practically all the officials who are subject to his power of removal, and appointed new men of the Tammany Hall Democracy, or Republicans who are followers of Senator Platt. The Democrats, it is commonly asserted, were the selections of Richard Croker, the Tammany "boss." This action was anticipated.

Ar London, Ontario, on the evening of the 3d inst., a shocking accident occurred, by which many lives were lost. A crowd of people, perhaps 2,000 had gathered into the City Hall, at the close of a warmly contested municipal election, when part of the floor gave way. A dispatch at 1 p. m. on the 4th says that thirty dead bodies had then been taken from the wreck, while of the many injured it was probable some would not recover.

etc.

THE fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Girard College, Philadelphia, was celebrated on the 3d inst., with addresses, Speaker Thomas B. Reed, of the U. S. House of Representatives, delivered an address, and the other speakers included Marriott Brosius, M. C., of the Lancaster district of this State. The College was established by Stephen Girard, a rich merchant of Philadelphia, who died 1831, and left his estate mainly for this purpose. It is for the free maintenance and education of white orphan boys. The endowment fund, originally $5,000,000, is now $26,000,000. There are now 1,500 pupils, and about 4,500 have passed through the institution.

THE work-people in the cotton mills of Fall River yielded to the reduction of wages proposed on the 3d inst. At New Bedford, a dispatch says, the weavers and spinners propose to strike, and will try to secure the co-operation of the Fall River operatives. Notice was given on the 3d of a reduction in wages in the cotton mills in Biddeford, Auburn, and Lewiston, Maine. The reduction will be general in all the cotton mills of New England. The price of plain cotton goods, "sheeting," etc., has fallen to the lowest point ever reached.

NEWS AND OTHER GLEANINGS.

FOR several years the city of Cambridge, Mass., has not had an open saloon. Even those who are not total abstainers have united in abating the grog-shop as a public nuisance. This no-license policy has been secured and maintained largely by the co-operation of the clergy of all the Protestant churches and of four out of all the five Roman Catholic churches.

-The following statement is a curious commentary on the alleged high average of education in Germany. A Prussian officer in the German army has been in the habit of questioning raw recruits on simple matters of national history. Here are a few replies to his question, Who is Bismarck?:"Bismarck was Emperor of the French." Bismarck is dead." Bismarck is a pensioner and lives in Paris. 'Bismarck took part in the campaign of 1870, and received a medal for good conduct. Bismarck descends from the Hohenzollern, and was born on April 1." Of sixty-six recruits whom the officer had to instruct twenty-one had never in their life heard the name of the " Iron-Chancellor.'

[ocr errors]

-F. Marion Crawford, the author, who has resided mostly in Italy for many years, is lecturing in this country. At Boston, in a reported lecture, he said that as many tongues have built up the English language to what it is, so "we, too, are made up of many elements of which the many-sided AngloSaxon is but the first.” He thought that out of the great mixture, "something is coming which is to be not only strong but beautful and noble, something of which we are already more than half conscious I mean a civllization, a literature, an art, broader in purpose and deeper in meaning than all that has gone before."

[ocr errors]

-The Union Signal says: "In round numbers 7,000 women and 3,000 men went as delegates to the Christian Endeavor Convention-outside of California, which had 2,000 delegates. Among these were many brilliant speakers, but the brethren crowded to the front and took up all the time. They also filled up all the offices, though it is perfectly well known that women do at least two-thirds of the Christian Endeavor work at home.'

-Temperance people in England are noting with much gratification the fact that the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Temple, has dispensed with the use of wines at Lambeth Palace, where during all episcopal regimes since the Reformation such refreshments have been habitually served.

NOTICES.

-The American Dittany (Cupila Mariana) is so generally in use among he poorer classes in some parts of the South as an herb drink that to many negroes the word "tea" means only dit'ny tea; and the story is told of a thirsty Englishman in the North Carolina mountains who gladly accepted a cup of "tea" from an old colored woman and then, bewildered at its unfamiliar taste, exclaimed, "Do you call this tea ? What is it?" The prompt answer came: Yes, chile, dat's tea. Some folks make deirs ob horsemint, but I always make mine ob dit'ny."'

—American tree planters find no difficulty in moving large trees. Trees up to three feet in circumference, are frequently moved, and generally with great success. The Gardeners' Chronicle reports the removal of a large Purple Beech, which was 40 feet high and 6 feet 3 inches in girth at 4 feet from the ground. The tree was moved in 1880, and is still growing vigorously. Our friends Isaac Hicks and Son, at Westbury, Long Island, have, we think, made something of a specialty of this business.

-The Italian correspondent of the New York Observer gives an account of the fifteenth Roman Catholic Congress, held in Milan last September: "All the speeches made at this congress were first submitted to the criticisms of the ecclesiastical authorities, thus preventing dissensions among the members from being manifested." This is an effectual way to secure unity.

-Dr. S. Amelia Barnett, one of the oldest women physicians of New York city, died on the 26th ult. She had almost completed her eighty-fourth year, and up to a few weeks ago had been in good health. She was born in Newark and was a graduate of the Women's Medical College of New York. She was a professor in the College for several years.

Currants may be pruned during the winter, Meehans' Monthly says. Red and white varieties should be thinned of young, weak wood which does not fruit.

MAN is not God, but hath God's end to serve,

A master to obey, a course to take,

Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become !
Grant this, then man must pass from old to new,
From vain to real, from mistake to fact,

From what once seemed good to what now proves best,
How could man have progression otherwise?

*** Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting's *** The_Sub-Committee on Temper- Visiting Committee has made the following appointments :

ance and Tobacco of the Committee on Philanthropic Labor of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends will meet in Room No.

[blocks in formation]

FIRST MONTH, 1898:

16. West Philadelphia, at 11 o'clock. 30. Reading, at 10.30 o'clock. CHARLES E. THOMAS,

Clerk of the Committee.

*** The Visiting Committee of Baltimore Yearly Meeting have arranged for meetings during First month, as follows: 9. Oxford and Gunpowder. 16. Fawn Grove and Sandy Spring. 23. Goose Creek and West Nottingham. 30. Washington.

JOHN J. CORNELL, Chairman.

* The Philanthropic Committee of Burlington Quarterly Meeting will hold a meeting at the Friends' meeting house, Mansfield, N. J., on First-day, First month 16, at 2 30 p m. Amanda Deyo, of thiladelphia, expects to be there to address the meeting on the subject of "Peace and Arbitration.” All are cordially invited.

FRANKLIN S. ZELLEY, Clerk. ·

-Browning.

[merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »