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SUNNY SOUTH.
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ATLANTA. OA.. Saturday, September 36, 1896.
AND THOU, BOSTON.
Boston has been a bright star in the galaxy
of cities in this country to which the citizens
of other cities and hamlets have been pointed
as a paragon of intelligence and morals for
very one of them to emulate. It is true that
the people of that aristocratic town were a
cold, exclusive aggregation of humanity.
Self esteem has been a trait of Bostonians,
while their women have been awarded the
most consummate skill in “freezing” those
not of their “set.” But it is not the freezing
quality those people carry around with them
as a thing of which to be proud that we pro
pose to speak.
Boston has occupied a proud position in the
moral world which made it the cynosure of
the pulpit and the press, and the latter con
tinually dinned its praises into the ears of
the reading contingent, until there was none
to question whether anything good could
come out of Boston; that was taken for
granted without so much as a mild protest.
But the whirligig of time is turning up to
the gaze of astonished thousands some facts
that reflect unfavorably upon Boston’s morals.
Prof. Francis G. Peabody, of Harvard
Divinity School, contributes an article to The
Forum in which he gives some remarkable
results of an investigation into the drink
habit of Bostonians, the investigation being
restricted to barrooms.
“It appears, with a population of 496,020
inhabitants in Boston, that no fewer than
226,752 persons, or nearly half the popula
tion of the city, patronize daily the 606
licensed saloons. In this estimate each patron
is counted every time he enters. The num
ber of individual drinkers is, therefore, re
ducible by the number of repeaters. There
should also be subtracted the large number
of drinkers in Boston who are residents of
other towns, and especially of adjacent towns
under no license rule. How much money is
expended upon alcoholic drinks in Boston ?
According lo Prof. Peabody, the preponder
ance of expert opinion favors the belief that
the average patron spends ten cents every
time he enters a barroom. If this estimate be
not excessive, there is daily disbursed in the
saloons of the Hub $22,675, or in a year of
three hundred days the portentous sum of
$6,802,500. Now compare these figures with
the fact that the total running expenses of
the Boston public school system for 1894—5
was $2,061,160; the total cost of the Boston
Fire Department, $1,041,296; the aggregate
outlay on the Police Department, $1,318,186;
the total expense of the city park system for
the year, $2,214,814. All these items of ex
penditure, taken together for a uniform
period, amount to a smaller sum than was
spent during the year in the barrooms of the
New England metropolis.”
But this is not all in which Boston is fall
ing behind its traditions. Bostonians have,
from the years that run back beyond our civil
war asserted for themselves a peculiar friend
ship for the brother in black, and this claim
was never to our knowledge gainsayed.
Zion’s Herald, a leading Methodist paper of
Boston, gives some facts regarding the re
lations between the negro and his pale-faced
brethren which will astonish people generally.
That paper states that:
J, The increase in the number of negroes
aoes not keep pace with the increase in popu
lation, and few avenues of business are open
to them. The negro may become the most
obsequious of waiters or even attend a soda-
water fountain, but he is not wanted as an
apprentice ; he has very little chance to be
come a skilled workman; the colored barber
is disappearing and there are no negroes in
the mills or factories employed as skilled
workmen ; they are only teamsters and labor
ers. Yet all the schools and colleges are open
to them ; they can get education ; but the
chances seem to be few for them to use their
education. A man does not have to be a
college graduate to whitewash a fence, or
carry a hod, or clean a stable. According to
this statement there are many more fields of
labor men for a colored man in Atlanta than
there are in Boston.”
Fie ! fie ! Boston ! thou that lovedst the
runaway slave that came to thee by way of
the underground railroad and other question
able ways, and harbored and guarded him as
“the apple of thine eye,” how has thou
fallen ! Is the free black man a degenerate
specimen of those that were obtained in ways
that were darker than those of the Chinese ?
It is enough to make the spirit of poor old
Mrs. Stowe “revisit the glimpses of the
moon” and breathe out a curse upon the
Pharisees of the Hub who now pass by the
brother in black after the manner in which
the priest and the Levite passed by the
wounded Jew between Jerusalem and Jericho.
Can it be possible that the old adage, “famil
iarity breeds contempt,” finds illustration in
the very place where the Wendell Phillipses,
the Garrisons, the Stowes, and others of that
ilk, were wont to almost worship the slave
man or woman who came consigned to them
through questionable ways? The brother
in black appears to be regarded with little
less aversion in Boston than does a leper in
Eastern climes.
Female Inebriates.
Don’t that sound shocking, and yet it
seems to have become a serious question in
England. Lady Henry Somerset’s latest plan
for the treatment and salvation of female ine
briates is this: She has obtained possession
of one hundred and eighty acres of land in
the town of Duxhurst, situated beyond easy
reach of all drinkable forms of alcohol. Upon
this tract she has begun the construction of a
small village to consist of scattered cottages,
which the patients will occupy. There will
be a hospital, a chapel a children’s home,
office buildings and laundry for general use.
Six patients will occupy each cottage, and
they will be expected to take part in the in
dustries which are being organized on the
estate. There will be be light agricultural
work, poultry raising, bee-keeping, dairy
work, flower culture, jam-making, and a
small amount of needlework and washing.
Lady Henry Somerset is of the opinion that
nothing has been worse for habitual drunk
ards than the sedentary employment usually
assigned to them in reformatory homes. The
idea of the new colony is to put the women
to work on the land, where they can observe
and take pride in the results of their labor.
She can not provide for free patients, she ex
plains, and here will be a minimum charge
of $1.25 per week upon the inmates. If,
however, a patient has worked out the cost of
her maintenance while in the village, the
amount is credited to her, and when she is
cured and discharged the amount is handed
to her in the form of wages earned.
Elocutionary Perversions of Literature.
“Vocal expression or elocution is an in
terpretative art, and unless the true spirit of
literature is apreciated, the reader can not in
terpret a piece. The study of literature, how
ever, and the acquisition of a noble literary
taste have not been considered necessary by
many, and not a few schools of elocution are
schools for the propagation of ignorance.”
To illustrate the degradation of literature
by inartistic rendition, Boston Expression
for June cites among others a reader who
gives Poe’s “Raven” thus:
“When he comes to the words 'suddenly
there came a tappping,’ he knocks on the
table with his finger to represent the pecking
of the crow at the window, and imitates—as
I am sorry to say many others do—the voice
of the bird in the word ‘nevermore.’ Such
literal imitation and representaion take away
the attention of the mind from the thought
of the poem; There is no suggestion,
but no awakening of the imagination,
only a description of a literal scene or fact
which is foreign to the thought of the poem.
“While ‘The Raven’ is not one of the
great poems in the language, the degraded
conception of it on the part of some, that it
was written when Poe was recovering from a
state of inebriety, causes us to overlook its
real character and to miss its artistic purpose.
The raven is despair; it sits upon the bust of
Pallas, which is the human mind; the word
‘Lenore* is possibly chosen on account of its
beautiful sound, but it also stands for youth
ful innocence. Thus, everything in the poem
has some symbolic significance, and to end
each stanza with a squeezed throat and a
struggle to croak like a raven, is to destroy
its expressive character The funda
mental law of all art is unity and consistency;
and whenever dialect is given at all, it must
be in subordination to character and to modes
of thought.”
Women in Catholic Choirs.
The singing of women in the Catholic
churches of France has recently been forbid
den. There is also a movement on foot
against the use of modern music in religious
services and in favor of a return to old devo
tional music. In an interview published in
the New York Sun, Rev. Father Graef, an
authority on ecclesiastical music in this
country, said:
“It is only in the United States and in
Austria that women go into the choirs and
actually sing the arts the mass. This practice
was prohibited in Germany forty years ago,
and through Cardinal Manning’s influence it
was stopped in England. In France these
women soloists may sing at mass, but it is at
the grand organ, and usually it is not a part
of the mass that they sing, but some religious
song. In the same way St.-Saens, who is the
organist at the Church of St. Eustache in
Paris, does not play the music of the mass at
the altar organ, but at the grand organ in the
loft he plays an introit or offertorium. There
is only one occasion on which the mass is
sung in its entirety by mixed voices of men
and women, and that is on St. Cecilia day, at
the same church, when various singing socie
ties and well-known soloists meet together
and sing in honor of St. Cecilia.”
Why There are so Few Really Good Singers.
Assuming that there are few really good
singers, John Towers offers an explanation
thereof in the Philadelphia Musician for July.
We give the points consecutively, without
his elaboration:
(1) “The teacher should be more exacting,
conscientious, honest, if you will, in giving
an opinion to the vocal aspirant seeking his
advice. . . . Setting aside all personal and
other considerations, he ought to tell the
candidate, in no uncertain tones, exactly,
fairly, and squarely, all he feels and knows to
be true. He may, assuredly, qualify his judg
ment in the delivery thereof, by giving assur
ance that such and such defects may, possibly
disappear with training, practice and experi
ence, but he ought to avoid the faintest suspi
cion of self-interest prevarication or temporiz
ing by calling a spade a spade. (2) The pupil
should at once disabuse her mind of the total
ly erroneous impression that she is going to
be a Patti without going through the severe
apprenticeship and the agony of Patti’s mar
tyrdom of trouble and labor. (3) The public
is not altogether blameless in the matter. So
long as they give the preference to the crude,
mediocre, and the vulgar, so long will there
be an ample supply of artists ready, waiting,
and willing with the necessary wares and just
so long will the refined and cultivated ones
languish wither and die. (4) The press must
take its due share of responsibility for this
depraved state of things and indirectly for the
present earth of really good public singers.
Instead of paying the necessary recompense
for properly-equipped expert and experienced
professional musical critics, newspaper pro
prietors with rare exceptions, are content to
relegate the important duty of musical criti
cism to Dick, Tom, or Harry. This certainly
ought not to be.”
John B. Gough.
In the July number of the Cosmopolitan
Major James B. Pond in an article “Great
Orators,” thus describes his impressions of
John B. Gough, the famous temperance lect
urer :
“Gough was a more popular lecturer for a
longer term of years than any favorite of
the iyceums. He was a born orator of great
dramatic power. Men of culture, but less
natural ability, used to be fond of attributing
his success to the supposed fact that he was
an evangelical comedian, and that the ‘unco’
guid,’ whose religious prejudices would not
suffer them to go to the theatres, found a
substitute in listening to the comic stories
and the dramatic delivery of Gough. This
theory does not suffice to explain the univer
sal and the long-continued popularity of this
great orator. He never faced an audience
that he did not capture and captivate, and not
in the United States only, not in the North
only, where his popularity never wavered,
but in the South where Yankees were not in
favor, and in the Canadian provinces where
they were disliked, and in every part of Eng
land, Scotland, and Ireland as well. It is
true that he was richly endowed with dra
matic power, and if he had taken to the stage
he would have left a great name in the annals
of the select upper circle of the drama. He
preferred, however, to save and to instruct
men rather than to amuse them, and he de
voted his life to the temperance movement
and the lyceum.
“It is strange, but it is a fact, that al
though Gough never broke down in his life
as an orator, and never failed to capture his
audience he always had a mild sort of stage-
fright which never vanished until he began
to speak. To get time to master this fright
was his reason for insisting upon being
‘introdeed’ to his audiences before he spoke
and he so insisted, even in New England,
where the absurd customhad been aban
doned for years. While the chairman was
introducing him Gough was ‘bracing up’
to overcome his stage-fright.
“For forty years Gough held the reputa
tion as first in the land as an orator and a
champion of temperance. He probably de
livered more lectures than any man who has
lived in the present age. From a carefully-
kept record we find that from 1842 to 1852
he lectured on an average three hundred
times a year, making three thousand lectures
in all. From 1852 to i860 he average two
hundred and sixty times a year or 2080 lect
ures on temperance. Of these 1160 were de
livered in Great Britain. Since i860 Mr.
Gough lectured on miscellaneous subjects.
Each year he prepared a new lecture with a
new subject. Among the most taking were:
‘Eloquence and Orators,’ ‘Peculiar People,’
‘Fact and Fiction,’ ‘Habit,’ ‘Curiosity,’ ‘Cir
cumstances,’ ‘Will it Pay?’ ‘Now and Then,’
‘Night Scenes,’ ‘Blunders,’ (his last). From
1861 until the time of his death Feb. 1,1886,
he delivered 3»526 lectures. In all according
to Gough’s record 9,600 addresses before
900,000, hearers.”
- '
New Bohemia:
realm of Bohemia?
The V agabOL
H. S. Keller, asks in the
“Where is the famed
Deep in the heart of the humblest singer
who essays in faltering verse to strike your
fancy—there is the realm of Bohemia. When
the magic witchery of the master muse in
spired the brain of Poe and gave wings to
his flight of fancy that created “The Raven,”
the realm of Bohemia was the foster in
spiration. The early songs of the beloved
Longfellow, and the pure Bryant, sprung
from the realms of the soul-deep realm of
Bohemia.
“Not among the gilded halls of the famous
men and women of their times have the
songs been sung that live and breathe in the
souls and hearts of men and women of to-day.
From divers channels, nooks and corners
they came, those matchless messages that
glow with an everlasting fire no time can
ever quench. From humblest nests the
mightiest eagles take their winged way, and,
though the mountain crest have beckoned
their virgin flights, fairest fields have lent
more strength to their wings than tallest
palaces of white marble reared by man. And
the vagabond poet, whose puny efforts grace
the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of many newspapers all
over the land, do their best to show to - the
world that every heart and soul are not be
yond the reach and pale of the beautiful
realm—Bohemia.
“From whence sprung Field? from the
vagabond poets. From whence came Riley ?
from the front rank and file of the vagabonds
—where he stays yet, a glowing light and a
prince whose rags and tatters grace him far
more than the cheap glitter of a prince’s
crown. The vagabond pet is a fixture, not a
star perhaps to tickle fancy and always please
the taste of the elect—but a star, none the
less, whose rays help the lowest among us to
look up and beyond.
“Among the great lights much is found
that is not lovable and sweet; among the
wares of the common singer there is always
some good. A drop of pitch among a heap of
pearls annoys the taste and a diamond among
lumps of dirt delights the eye and pleases the
fancy. The vagabond poet has made a home
of his own in the hearts of the world’s
people;—and to touch the heart is better than
to sway the world with the mystery of ques
tion.”
Mrs. Maggie Norvell has charge of the
lighthouse at the head of the passes, Port
Eads, La. The bell, which sounds on foggj
nights over the black waters of the passes, is
always rung by Mrs. Norvell herself. There
are about twenty women lighthouse keepers
in the United States alone.