The Montgomery monitor. (Mt. Vernon, Montgomery County, Ga.) 1886-current, October 14, 1886, Image 1

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• V - She MantaorntTi) Monitor* D C SUTTON, Editor and Prop’r. “Written In Water.” •In niemoi.v of a noted journalist who said, e< iktming her life-work: • Written in wa ter.” A tortuous river through a weary space Han troubled deep and wide with earthy tinges. The dismal eatafa’que of venturous fringes, Diffusing miasm iu the sun's red face. Advanced one fair and stiong, who on that strand A litt . while stqed wistfully exploring For human wt al's great sake. An eagle soannir Dropt one white plume within her ready hand. Then on tin; liquid page, like dimpling rain. Inspired she wrote, above the waters stoop ing; But each bright line, e’en with the final looping. Resolved itst If to nothing back again. Vet. lo! the turbid scream transparent flowed. And through that land redeemed ull living creatures Had happier life. Lo! too, her mirrored features. Who this had wrought, in those fair waves abode. Writing iu water for the truth, the right. The bt iiettce of cleansed and healing wa ters Transferred 1 to earth and to earth s sons and daughters. Shall be her guerdon fixed in peace and might. Lavinia F. Goodwin, in the Current. \VOOI» ENGHAVING & WOOD CAKVIXG. The rage for newspaper illustrations which has sprung up in a night like Jonah's gourd (Go slow here; was it Jonah or some other fishermen who raised that prize gourd?)—threatens to undermine the foundations of journal ism ami relegate the press back to the fourth estate, the position it occupied in lien Franklin’s time, and the Sun feels justified in speaking out in clar ionette, viva voce tones against the evil before it is everlastingly too late. As long as illustrations were confined to books, magazines, Bibles, and a few special weeklies, we were a happy and contented nation; there was a place for cuts, and cuts were in their place; but now, the little blaze which some one kindled has become a raging contla grUtion, marring the fair pages of a great proportion of the newspapers in the land. (If you like “wet goods” better than the fire simile, start it off as a little rivulet, increasing until it becomes a roaring torrent. They are both the same price.) There are several reasons why this wood-cut craze is bad. First, a largo per cent, of the cuts are execrable m an artistic point of view, especially the 60-called portraits. Occasionally there are some that are natural and life-like, but the larger part no more resemble the individual they are said to portray thafl chalk is like cheese. Again, newspapers that are in the habit of beating their readers out of large quantities of good reading matter to which they arc justly entitled by the payment of “two dollars a year in ad vance,” (or less, as the caso may be) by filling space with these alleged por traits are liable to file the cuts away for future reference, on window ledges, in the “bank,” and various other handy places, and spring them again on a suffering public later. Thus, a cut purporting to bo Henry Ward Beecher this season will perhaps appear next year as Gladstone or Henry Irving; Lieutenant Grecly will be shown some time ifi the hence as Prince Albert’s son, and so on. Another evil growing out of this syn dicate cut business is the cheap notori ety furnished to Thomas, Richard and Henry. Let a man or woman once get his or her name in the daily papers, from whatever cause—be it running for governor, running away with another man's wife (or woman’s husband) rob bing a bank, or inventing a self-acting wheelbarrow —and forthwith their os tensible lineaments are gouged out on boxwood or maple, stereotypes or elec trotypes are made, and appear by the hundreds in papers which are in the “pool” for weeks thereafter. Some papers squeeze two-column cuts into one-column width, necessitating slicing the party’s shoulders oft', and giving him a sort of pinched up appearance. This is bad. Many papers make it a point to pub lish portraits of local celebrities, the hero of the sketch “standing in" with the publishers on the cost of he en graving. “An old resident” listens to the seductive tongue of the interviewer and is lost. Adivorcesuit is instituted, the details are “racy,” and the unhap py pair are presented to the public, either separate and apart or linked to gether in a wreath like a Blaine and Logan cut. A new pastor is “called” from somewhere, at a raise over his previous salary of §67.50 and his stu dious countenance, "furrowed o'er with the sickly cast of thought,” is printed on seven-cent “print" paper, with ten-cent news ink, the inevitable sketch accompanying it, with appro priate head lines, and the dominie is disheartened and disappointed. It looks more like a disciple of Jack Shepard than a disseminator of the gospel. And so it goes. Papers in Arizona and Wyoming, which ought to devote only a modicum (out with your pencils and jot this word down—it is of a choice variety) of their space to politic al and general affairs, are enabled by the duplicate process to fill several hundred square inches with cuts of par ties that their readers don’t care a con tinental for, to the exclusion of imjmr tant happenings in Poker Flat, Shirt tail Gulch, Red-Dog Valiev, Dead-Shot Bar and various other localities. Nor is the injury confined alone to the reading public. There being an apparent demand for illustrations, there must be a supply; and hence manv misguided youths and men in the back" counties who are handy at tinker- iug around home witn , and know all about the internal econo my of sewing machines and clocks get the idea that they are natural horn en gravers, and proceed at once to sharp en up suudry brad-awls, broken tiles, a small chisel or two, and their jack knives, and announce themselves as “designers and engravers.” The local paper, not to be outdone by the metro politan daily, prints the abnormal pro ductions of these wood-butchers, and refers to them as the work of "our special artist,” Mr. Soandso, and he has the big head worse than ever. Many boys are thus ruined for life. While they would have succeeded well with a scroll saw and simple carving tools, and produced many handsome brackets, paper-racks, whatnots, etc., which would have sold readily and real ly been a credit to them, they have lost valuable time spoiling box-wood and maple and produced nothing but a lot of unearthly-looking pictures, every one of which requires a key to be un derstood. No, boys and gentleman, the art of engraving is not at the finger-ends of every ordinary whittler and ingenious "Jack-of-all-trades;” it requires months of patient toil to even master the rudi ments necessary to become a lit l-ciass artist, and years of practice under com petent masters to rank with them. These remarks are called out gener ally by the specimens of poor engrav ings so prevalent in the daily and weekly papers, and especially by some samples sent from lowa for our inspec tion. As they are about the worst lot ever printed since Columbus landed in this country, a brief description may i e in order, but words—mere words will absolutely fail to do them justice. They should be framed and sent to the New Orleans Exposition. First a local “cartoon” entitled “An other Mulligan Letter." It consists of two animals of heroic size, (double col umn) which may he meant for lions, buffaloes or Holstein cuttle, witn an at tempted likeness to human features. That they are Holstein cattle is proba ble, as they are covered with large black spots on which are branded var ious words like “cheek,” “baby act,” etc. They seem to stand on posts s*t into a foundation of fine scroll saws, edge upwards. One animal is step ping squarely on the word “Lucky,” which means probably that it was lucky that it was not resting on the saws. Next are three specimens of civil en gineering relating to a certain bridge across a certain river. The most prom inent features about these are tin threo little islands built up in the raging stream to accommodate the name of Hie artist, “Hawkcye, sc.” The river in ea< one seems to be running down hill a an angle of about 45 degrees, and a man and horse are represented as fording the dangerous stream, tho alleged water only reaching to the sup posed horse’s knees. Then we have a realistic picture en titled “Duck Hunting.” The same river, made by gouging straight lines across the wood from right to left, tho banks marie by gouging lines at an an gle, a something intended to represent a log, anotiier something purporting to be a man, half submerged in the rush ing flood, and grasping the log and his gun, and a black spot supposed to he duck close by. These are the leading features. The artist, for some reason, omitted the island with his name on, and simply put his initial in a circle Heating away down stream. But it is in portraits our lowa artist excels. He has one entitled “The Dude and What He Nose.” The dude is smoking a cigar which looks like a railroad spike driven into his face. Lit tle pigs’ tails, or maybe they are pretz els, are suspended above the end of the cigar, to represent smoke, probably. The eye (it is a side or profile view) is set back midway between the top of the nose and the ear, and looks like an italic burnt hole in a blanket. The hair stands seven ways for Sunday, in stead of being “sleek,” as the hair of a dude should be represented, and the shading is put on the face hit-and-miss, being mainly on the nose and cheek, und resembling pieces of mosquito-bar stuck on. It is too “utterly utter.” There are other sketches, but we for bear. Each one is worse than the rest. And yet the paper in which they ap peared says: “By combined efforts of the pen and the artist’s skill, the ——- will flourish, and don’t you forget it.” In various other places “our artists” is referred to with pride, and now lie is unhappy because he cannot get a posi tion as engraver on Harper's Weekly, or some other illustrated paper. This is an extreme case, of course. He had the disease bad, and was total ly unfitted for an engraver, while, very likely, he could have done well carving bric-a-brac and tobacco signs some thing that does not require line lines and is not printed from. There are plenty of printers who can do a little coarse-hand engraving occa sionally, to burlesque a subject, and do it well; but they do not overdo the thing by building little islands to carve their imprint on, and never flatter themselves that they are engravers. There is a vast difference between put ting an outlandish engraving iu a pa per occasionally, as a burlesque to il lustrate afimny occurrence,and publish ing them in every issue, believing them to Le genuine anti valuable for their art istic merit. Therefore, young fellow, don’t fool in an amateur way with jack-knives and maple; but if you real ly desire to be an engraver, go to some city and learn the art in the regular way.— Peek's Sun. In years they have reigned Queen Victoria stands ninth among the sov ereigns of the world- MT VERNON. MONTGOMERY, CO., 0 A., TIIIUISDAY, OCTOBER 14 1886, The AnthropopliaKi. William Churchill, in an interesting lecture on his personal experiences among the Cannibals of Southern Po lynesia, reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, said: As regards color, the inhabitants of the Fiji Islands are copper-colored; the women are tall, willowy, amt well formed. The son of one of the kings of those regions w r as six feet two inches tall and weighed 240 pounds, and was the finest specimen of physical man hood the speaker ever saw. Farther north the color of the natives was black, and in New Guinea a charcoal mark was lighter than the tint of the native skin. There are no cannibals iu the Fiji group, as is commonly supposed, no man having been eaten there for six years. South of the Fiji, toward Aus tralia, is a group of 180 islands known as tho Solomon group. Iu these is lands cannibalism is daily practiced. The speaker related an incident that happened to him on the island of Mal licollo. Having landed from his schooner ho approached the town, which is always built a few rods from the shore, and found a number of women sealed iu the largest house. He addressed them in their dialect, but they would not speak, though it is as hard fora woman to keep silence in those regions as it is in a more civilized community. The women left the house, and he followed them to the shore, where a native had just landed from his canoe. This man was followed by about two hundred others in their canoes, who carried among them a dead native. This man they had killed in a war on a neighbor ing tribe. The man was tied with grass ropes and' carried to a public square by the women, all taking care not to touch the body. Three men then extracted the entrails from the body, while others dug a large hole in tho earth. The cavities of tho body were filled with heated stones; then the body was placed in the hole, and heated stones heaped on it. After a two-hours’ dance and incantation the body was thought to be done to a turn, and was taken from its roasting-place and car ried around on sticks and introduced to each warrior. It was then placed iu a sitting position and was approached by the ciiief, who inquired if it had been satisfactorily treated, and as ti c laxly did not avail itself of the opportunity of expressing its gratification the priest of the town answered for it. After this ceremony the body was eul with knives of stone used only for sacrificial pur poses. The choicest morsels of the roasted flesh, according to the native taste, were the upper arms and the thighs, and these human delicacies were re served to tickle the palate of the chief. The rest of the body was divided among tins warriors, with the exception of the head, which was given to the priest, and tile hands und feet, which were contemptuously handed to the women. The pieces of human llesh were all placed on banana leaves and each man waited until all had been allotted their share. Then the toasted portions were poised simultaneously on wooden forks and deposited down the cavernous throats of the assembled cannibals, ex ceeding relish being shown in the feast of human flesh, though the next day most of them had the colic. The great est care was taken not to touch the flesh with the lingers. The leaves of banana were thrown in a large fire, the wooden forks were p aced in a running stream and were allowed to remain there for three days. The only men who touched the body were those who prepared it for cooking, and these were driven into tho woods witli stones, where they were compelled to stay for three days without eating. After this probationary period they were allowed to return, having Ween thought to liavo expiated the fault of touching the hu man remains. Celebrated Women. Sarah Althea Hill, of the famous law suit against Senator Sharon, is of me dium height, well developed, with a lithe, trim figure. She gives at first sight the impression of a woman who is abundantly able to take care of her self, and yet the expression of her face and her attitudes are very womanly, as though she lacked confidence and were appealing for support. Her features are regular, her face oval. She is neither blonde or brunette, with dark brown hair, which is allowed to fall in graceful waves over her full, round forehead. Her most attractive feature are her full, brown eyes. Her nose is clear cut, and her mouth is resolute iu the habitual compression of her lips: but this is somewhat belied by a slight droop at the corners, as though an ori ginally fine will had beeu overlaid by a strain of voluptuousness which weaken ed and coarsened it. Her whole man ner shows nervousness and vitality. Lucy Stone congratulates her sex on the past year's gains for their cause. Full suffrage for women has been estab lished In Washington territory, and municipal suffrage has been granted to unmarried women and widows of Ontario and Nova Scotia. Municipal suffrage has worked so well in England that the British parliament has extend ed it to Scotland. a liverv staoie Keeper in Raltlmors has a strange animal, which is said to have been caught by the Indians in Da kota three or four years ago. The head, body and hair are like a cow’s, the legs and tail like a horse’s. It eats like a cow and chews the cud. Its hair, which is dark brown, like a buffalo’s, is closely matted and about five inches long. It has been brokeu to harness aud drive* well. “SUB DEO FACIO FORTITER." Durability <>t" Leather. A correspondent to The Uritish Jour nal oj Photography speaks of leather from a photographic stamlpoiutof view in tho following manner: Generally speaking, leather is a per ishable substance, especially when it is a question of preservation for thousands of years. Supposing it to bo carefully kept iu a normal atmosphere, it may be expected to last a little over 700 or 800 years. Leather is injured by damp, by excessive dryness, by sulphurous va pors from burning coal gas and by salts sometimes present iu tho soil. Peat sometimes preserves and .some times destroys animal remains, accor ding to tho salts it holds in suspension. Leather sandals have sometimes been preserved for ages deep in peat bogs. The grave-digger iu “Hamlet" states that corpses will lie eight or nine years in the grave before they rot, and that of a tanner lasts nine years, because his hide is so tanned with his trade. Perhaps the oldest specimens of leath er in tho world have been found in Egypt ill tombs or mummy cases, in which they were inclosed once for all, beyond tho roach of disturbance. The oldest piece of Egyptian leather in tho British museum is the Bremner (Rhoitl) scroll containing a portion of the ritual of the dead. Its date is about 1800 B. C., and the scroll is now perfectly pre served in a tin case; the leather is so powdery that its custodians are almost afraid to touch it; the color is about that of bright and light new oak sole leather, and perfectly clean. There are many leather sandals in ilm noise um dating about 1,.'100 B. generally rotten, torn and distorted--Homo of them are pretty tough, however. Ihe leather roll of Cheops, regarding tho dedication of the temple, may lie of the date of about 2,00011. and is per haps the oldest piece of leather in tho world. The British museum possesses au elaborate Egyptian leather sword belt of about 500 or 600 B. C. ; it is green and discolored; a casual observer might take it for bronze. Such durability as leather possesses is unlikely to lie found in the majority of gelatine films, which may be a little hardened during tlm iiianipulations. but not much, except when treated with alum. In no case is it likely that a gelatine film is properly tanned in the ordinary manipulations, notwithstanding the use of alum. To avoid the tedious process of ordinary tanning, skins have been sometimes treated with alum and salt, more especially in Hungary, but an in ferior leather was tho result. AH at tempts ■ » shorten tlm pmcciu i>i tun ning have failed; the slow molecular changes must be allowed to go on for mouths, or an inferior leather is the re sult. The quality of the leather is in fluenced by the vegetable astringents used in the process; some give soft and spongy, others hard and heavy leather; •slow tanning with oak bark gives about the best result. HiNinarck in Ciiglaiut. It is very seldom that the chancellor has a good word to say about the Eng lish. When he has, it is to point out some Teutonic virtue which they pos sess to a less degree than tho Ger mans. In drawing tho hackneyed con trast containing less than half the truth between the superficial polite ness of the French and the genuine po liteness of heart which he claims for his own people, he finds occasion to throw in a little, diluted commendation of the English character. Perhaps Ids experience on landing one Sunday at Hull gave him a twist the wrong way. “The keeping of the Sunday,” said the prince, who is himself, for a German, a strict observer of the day, to his com pany “what a horrible tyrrany! 1 remember the first time that I came to England, landing at Hull, and whist ling on the street. An Englishman, whose acquaintance I had made on board, said to me: ‘l’ray, sir, don’t whistle.’ ‘Why not?’ said I; ‘is it against the laws?’ ‘No, sir,’ said he, ‘but it is the Sabbath.’ This vexed mo so that I went at once and took a ticket for another steamer which was going to Edinburgh, as it did not suit me to be hindered from whistling when I pleased. But before this happened we iiad been iu an inn. and there I got hold for the first time of something good toasted cheese Welsh rabbit.' — J/Ouiseille Courier■ Journal. Show the liifldreii K<>,|eot. It will surpri-e many parent - to have it suggested that they -In, old treat their children court.am -1 va ni respectfully. Yet it is the lx- t cdiic Son that can be Imparted to them. Parents are apt to think that children should he subject to authority and are not to be consulted. But why not? It teaches them to ex ercise judgment and imparls self-re spect. The imitative quality in chil dren leads them to reproduce what is most .Diking in their parents, unless they have a sufficiently positive indi viduality to map out characters for them-elves. Thus, many children re produce the leading characteristics of the parent who commands most their regard. So, to treat them harshly, or even imperatively, is to create an auto cratic disposition in them. It is not a love trait. Self-respect and equipoise of character are very different from a domineering propensity, which arro gates authority everywhere. A California farmer has a hog which is the companion of a flock of geese. When the gee.se go into water his hog ship plunges in after and endeavors to disport himself as gracefully as his white-feathered leaders. Klii|w of flic Pant. In these days of largo ships nnd still larger steamers, it is refreshing to an old sailor, or still older shipowner, to recall tlm grand old ships of thirty-livo and even fifty years ago. Compare the sailing ships of to-day with those of years ago, aud what do wo find? Largo and moderately sharp hulls, with square yards and short niasis, wire standing riggings, patent anchors, windlass pumps, steering gear, iron water-tank, steam engine, and many other conven ient arrangements. Doubtless tho march of improvement and the grow ing necessities of commerce have grad ually led up to the present style of ves sel. But are they an improvement up on the old? Ido not find that tho av erage time of passage from and to tho East Indies, or round the Horn ports, is lessoned. Occasionully there is noticed some rapid passage, but reference to old shipping papers will show the rec ords of passages to or from the identi cal ports equally quick, such passages having been made by vessels that in these times would bo as much a curi osity as tho Chinese junks were when I was a hoy. How regularly these old vessels made their voyages, delivering their cargoes iu line order, after which they wore ready to load for the return voyage at once. No long and expensive jobs at tho end of every passage, iu order to jmt the ship in a seaworthy condition. The good old ship, with her round and easy model, carried a cargo with ease nml comfort. No thrashing aud strain ing in a gale of wind or heavy sea; easy to her rigging, she came out of a galo fresh as a daisy, and without a particle of damage lo herself or cargo. What does the sailor of to-day know of tho beauteous ship of old? The snug little ship of four hundred tons or there abouts, with a white band picked out with ports, or the bright waist, Hush deck fore and aft, broken only by tho caboose, long boat, and companion way; the old-fashioned windlass, with working-room on each side of it good hempen standing rigging, well taken care of; the old-fashioned wheel aud tiller, Mm big, lower studding sail, with the swinging boom; the com fortable and serviceable topmast stud ding sails, and the less useful, but yet graceful and airy, topgallant and royal studding sails, not forgetting tho snowy white main skysail, tho apex of tho whole beautiful creation. Whole topsails had not then given place to double. Close reeling off either of the caps meant warm work for the crew; but tho men knew their duties, were sailors, and could tie up tho muslin and l o nappy. Dear old vessels! i know the ending of many of you, and as from time to time I have read of the final end of some of your number, I have felt as though some old friend had gone before me. Your memories are pleasant to dwell upou, and the remembrance of the glorious men that trod your decks as masters, mates, and sailors recall also the pleas ant days that I have passed on hoard some of you during voyages to India and <lhina. At some time in the future I may re call my experiences of certain voyages iu years long gone. In those days the telegraph was unknown. Old Barker, upon the observatory on < 'cntral wharf, had a telegraphic code of signals for vessels; but Morse had not electrified the world. (Sixty days was the aver age time of the so-called India mail, so that a voyage to India meant from four to four and a half months’ passage out, and an additional two months for the news of your arrival to reach home. Now the ,Suez canal and the electric wire have changed everything. But, us the world must progress, I must accept all the terrible changes, and comfort myself talking with some old fogy, like myself, of the "good old days.” Huston Budget. No Questions Asked. As a means of suicide the hii'all ven omous serpents of oriental countries have always been in vogue tho asp of ((ieopatra recurring to every oue’s mem ory as a prominent example. In cer tain parts of Bengal there is said to bo ,i race of gypsies, one of whom fora fee will furnish a small cobra to any appli cant, "and no questions asked." A man who desires to commit murder pro cures one of these reptiles and places it within a bamboo just long enough to let the head protrude a trifle at tho end, and the tail at tho other. Armed with this deadly weapon the murderer creeps softly to his, enemy’s tent at dead of night, cuts a hole in the wall, and introduces the bamboo. 'The tor tured reptile careless upon whom it wreaks Us animosity, strikes its fangs into the sleeper, then is withlrawn and the assassin steals silently away.— .Je idle man's Magazine. A Child That Was Like a Bird In a A little Newport child of rich parent age,carefully nursed and rieldy clothed und guarded tenderly by its elders, was driving by the orphans’ home the other day, when il caught the sound of tho many ehildi.h voices in the yard where the children were at play. It eagerly asked: “Oh, mamma, what is that?” “'They are poor little orphans, without any parents,” impressively answer tho mother, hugging her darling closer. •■Oh, mamma,” exclaimed the child, crossing his little hands over his velvet gown and drawing a deep sigh, “how I wish I was a poor little orphan!” 'lho mother appreciated the situation, and has since given her child companion ship of its own stature aud a little more freedom from fine clothes and constant nursing.— Poston Transcript. „ V OL; 1 NO. 32- Tlic II 81 a lady. All Lough a very largo majority of he subjects of her most gracious na osty do say 'otol, aud most of them, jvol a much smaller number, do say toyster, to assume that all of them do o would be nil warranted and injurious, hose who say hotel are, it is true, lot many, nor easily found; but those • ho say hoyster, although very numer iis, a vast multitude, forming, indeed, e bulk of the people of England, are inch fewer than those who, on the oint in question, violate, iu degrees arious but less atrocious, the now coopted standard of speech in that ountrv. These two words, thus pro •lounecd. represent the two extremes of in IL Malady. An Eton and Oxford rod peer may (I do not sav always oes; far from it) say ’otol; but hoyster mil the like are hoard only from those vlioso associations in their early years were with people in tho lowest condi tion of life. For it is always to he borne in mind hat 11 in England is a shibboleth dis tinctive of birth and breeding. Not only men of wealth,but highly educated men, scholars and men of scientific ac luirenients, who write capital letters fter their names, “drop their h’s” in England; just as in Amerii'ti' men of ike position have a nasal twang, and say "Mii’ica” for America and the like. Not long ago I heard the president of one of our colleges say "fambly" for family and “chiinbly" for chimney,half a dozen times in half an hour. Habits oi j> ch a quired in youth are almost, ii not quite, ineradicable. They are • ure • ) after twenty years of age. Ti in nh II malady seems, however, to » the most irremediable of all tlm ills of speech. I have had opportunities of observing that it cannot he removed oy long residence in this country, even und r coiiMitions the most favorable for tho acquirement, through contact and example, of a correct enunciation in tnis respect if not in any other. One ma» whom 1 have known well for many years, and whom 1 supposed, or. ny making his acquaintance, to lie American born and bred, startled mo :i tho lirst live minutes of our con* ■orsation, by saying, “Ho caiue into my .Ifice.” I saw at once my mistake; and I dis covered afterwards that he was born in >i remote rural county iu England, that »o had never beeu in London, and had not left his native place until lie set out for Liverpool, to emigrate with his f-.iuily to this country. He was then only four or live years old;lmt although •lc was educated here, and his assoeia */*»>« we*i*i* it livsyu with intelligent and dtieated Americans, he hail not at hilly-eight years of ago acquired tho ability to say “ho,” or to utter tho „ pirate before any accented vowel. Another man, of equal intelligence and much greater acquirements for he was a m minor of one of the learned profes •'ous - surprised me by revealing his birth as suddenly and in the same man ner. He was an elderly man: and I earned from him that lie had been in New York no toss than fifty years! But fie speech of his native country and of .■is infancy clung to him through tho attrition of half a century. Richard Uranl While, in Atlantic. Actors Not Pariahs. V When a youth, well brought up, takes to the stage, he should not be immedi ately treated as a pariah. On the con trary, if ever there be a time in a young man’s career when, more than ever, lie stands in need of good home tradi tions, the companionship of his equals, and the encouragement of his superi ors, it is when he has honestly chosen, as a means of earning Ids living, the stage as a profession. That, for evi dent rca-ons, it has been usually select ed by the dissolute, the idle, and those to whom any restraint is distasteful, accounts to a great extent for the dis repute in which the stage has been held. Os course the statute book anil the I'uritanisin of the seventeenth cen tury have much to answer for in the popular estimate of the players. There is a strong leaven of Puritanism among us, and, in some respects, so much the better; but also among very excellent people of various religions opinions there has been, and it exists now, a sort of vague idea that the stajrc lias always been under the positive ban of the church. In the temporary laws and regulations of different countries, enforced by narrow-minded men, civil or ecclesiastical, may be found tho or igin of this mistaken notion. The church has never pronounced on tho stage the anathema. On the contrary, she has patronized tho stage, and tho first mimes who entered I ranee from Italy rather resembled members of a religious order in their pious fervor than actors of a later date in their lax ity. If players were refused Christian burial, it was when they had neither lived nor died as even nominal Christ ians, and in such cases even "maimed rites” would savor of hypocrisy. In France the actors themselves were un der this hallucination. M. Regnier tells us how in 1818 a deputation of comedians went to Mgr. Att'ro to ask him to gel the sentence of excommuni cation removed from the theatrical pro fession. In the time of Louis XIII. tho actors were excellent churchgoers, had their children baptized, frequented tho sacraments, and were on the best terms with the cures of Paris; and it will be a consolation to those actors among us who, like the doll in Hie song, “pine for higher society,” to be reminded that the grand monarch himself did not disdain to stand godfather to the lirst born of Moliure, and to do the like office to the third child 61 Domen ico Biancolelli, the ltaliau harlequin.— Burnand, in the Fortnightly Review, t