Part 2 — EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.

GENERAL GRANT’S ILLNESS.

The pathetic interest surrounding the illness of General Grant recalls the intenser, but not more persistent, emotions of the days when President Garfield lay dying. The strong and sustained popular interest in the illness of General Grant is shown by the constant attention of the press to the theme. No day is allowed to pass without a telegraphic bulletin informing the nation how well or ill the distinguished patient slept the last night, and reporting any change for the better or the worse. We are all gathered about the invalid chair, in which the illustrious sufferer spends his wearisome days; and any word which drops from his lips flies on the wires all over the country. It is not a passion, or a folly, or a nullity. It is a piece of modern Providential education. What distinguished patient, ever before Garfield had so large and so near an audience of sympathy? And who does not see in the strong-flowing tide of sympathy for General Grant another lesson of the same kind? Eminence has been honored before; but these thought-laden wires take us into the very chamber of the patient and set us all upon muffled words of regret, and pity, and sorrow. We are learning, hardly knowing it, how eminence claims our regard and commands our attention, and how rapidly we can forget our criticisms and our antagonisms when Death knocks at the great man’s door. There is nothing political, nothing sensational, in this illness. No public fortunes, or hopes, or fears hang upon the event. General Grant is dying; that is all; but the man who has filled so large a space in his country’s history, and dwelt so long in the world’s eye, can not die without quickening all pulses, and awakening every soul to pitiful attention. Great worlds of mysterious human powers of interest and sympathy seem to open before us, and invite us within the awe and solemnity of their spiritual skies. It is better—we see why, now—to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. No day of triumph in General Grant’s life had such an uplifting and educating power as is borne along in the arms of these days’ sickness and sorrow. Dying so among us, the illustrious patient does indeed die for us—his death lifting us into better life.

There are many smaller lessons. What an education in gunshot wounds we got at the bedside of Garfield! What a window into one of the awfully mysterious diseases we are looking through at the bedside of Grant! Before the end comes, cancer will have parted with much of its mystery. What doctors know the nation will know; and the education will save human lives; perhaps impel men to closer and more effectual search for the causes and remedies of this terrible disease. A human interest, such as we are feeling throughout the nation and the world, has a stimulating power which no man can measure. It may be that out of Grant’s dying of cancer may come discoveries of permanent and universal value to mankind.

THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

Many circumstances have combined to fix attention at the present time upon the Senate of the United States. We have seen a Republican majority confirm the appointments of a Democratic President with the calmness and dignity of a Supreme Court passing upon questions of law. The event is not a new one, but it is still an impressive one, quite as much so as the change of the presidential office on the fourth of March. We then saw a defeated party resign the control of the government with decorum and civic reverence. We waited with bated breath for the first conflicts between the President and the Senate. No conflict came. Appointments were confirmed by the Senate without partisan bickerings or lamentations. The dignity of the Senate was seen to be a splendid and honorable reality. We catch other lights shining upon the Senate by going back a little. Last year, when the English people were “mad to the verge of insanity” because the House of Lords refused to pass a bill extending the franchise, the English magazines and newspapers overflowed with commendations of our Upper House. In the light of their own trouble, the English saw how happily our fathers had founded an Upper House upon enduring foundations, and how deftly they had combined popular representation with conservative privilege in our Senate. No other American institution ever had so much first-rate advertising as this Senate of ours had last year. The praise came from the best foreign sources; from men deeply versed in history, rich in public experience, and renowned for candid and sober judgment. What the historian sees in our Senate is an Upper House which reposes upon the elective principle, and is in fact constituted indirectly by the same vote which fills the Lower House—and therefore as truly from the people—but which has at the same time a distinct and original and impressive office in the government. The result was achieved by the fathers with a few well-aimed strokes of political art. For example, the Senate never dies. There are many Congresses, but there is only one Senate. There is at this time no House of Representatives; there never was an hour of constitutional history when there was not a Senate. This was achieved by a simple provision that one third of the Senators should retire biennially. The Senate must “advise,” that is to say, confirm all the President’s appointments. It is his council for considering and completing treaties with foreign powers—and without the consent of the Senate the President can make no treaty. And if the people through the House of Representatives impeach the President, it is in that august presence that he must appear and plead in his defense. The Senate has exercised all these peculiar functions during the century past, and in all of them it has displayed in the main those special qualities which the framers of the constitution sought to enlist in the service of government. It has even tried a President in the intense heat of controversies begotten in civil war—and acquitted him in the face of the clamorous dominant party to which the majority belonged. Its record is full of striking triumphs over the bitterness of party spirit. It has been judicial in its temper many a time when the air was full of rancorous strifes and malignant personalities. It has sloughed off the partisan sores caused by factional poison; and though it was seriously endangered by such devices as “the courtesy of the Senate,” it has refused to be used for narrow and selfish ends. The wranglers have passed out of sight; the Senate never dies.

The judicial character of the body is apparent in its methods of discussion. There is no “previous question” gag upon debate. A conspicuous unfairness to a member is impossible. A neat way of showing self respect by respecting brother Senators is the custom of confirming, without reference to a committee, any nomination of a Senator to an office. All other names must go to the committees; the names of Senators are honored by immediate action. Members of the Lower House are, not without reason, jealous of the power and “arrogance” of the Senate. But the people enjoy the breadth and decorum of their Senate. It can be trusted to judge, to put its candid opinion into all the peculiar functions which it exercises. In the field of politics, senatorial action may be very like any other human behaving in such environments; but in the special judicial tasks of the Senators there is the serenity and probity of a court room. And yet the Senate has its dangers, and it has in recent years been close to the perilous edge of the precipice. A tendency to venal methods of electing Senators came in after the civil war, and a number of rich nobodies have disgraced the high office. It is believed that there are now a few Senators whose purses are far longer than their heads, and in some of the wrangles over recent elections of Senators, the power of money has been very freely talked of and boasted of. But in this matter the worst is over. The election of Mr. Evarts in New York is a proof that legislatures can be lifted above money influence; for if any senatorships would invite special efforts to win them by venal arts, they are those of the Empire State. When that state chose last winter one of its most eminent citizens—a man known rather as a great man than as a politician—it set an example which will have no small influence over other states. The Senate has in both parties men of great ability. There is undoubtedly a growing desire and purpose that only great men be clothed with senatorial honors. We are well past the civil war and reconstruction periods, and as we advance into happier conditions we are likely to take an increasing popular pride in our unique, original and successful Upper House. There is nothing like it in the world. It is the most conspicuous work of American political genius. The more the people realize it, the more pains will they take in filling it with great men.

SUMMER AMUSEMENTS.

We are, as a people, growing in taste for amusements. Some of the manifestations of this taste are not of an entirely satisfactory character; but there are other aspects of a very agreeable nature. Our summer amusements are in the open air. We have not yet learned to play outdoors in the winter; but we are slowly learning of the Canadians, and it is not improbable that Southern people will by and by come north in the season of short days to play in the frost of our most Arctic states. We have commented in a former number of The Chautauquan upon the advantages of the Canadian winter sports. Our summer sports are in a more advanced state of development. Base ball, Lacrosse, lawn tennis and croquet are established institutions, while we are only experimenting with tobogganing. It needs no argument here to satisfy people who think at all that amusements should be in the open air and require exercise enough to increase the strength and expand the lungs. Exercise is a farce unless the heart is put into it; and play is unwise if it is not healthful. Play is primarily a demand of the physique; its value to the mind begins with the refreshment of the body by wholesome use of the muscles. The summer amusements in which women take part are above all just criticism. Croquet and lawn tennis have no doubtful elements. The exercise they afford will not content an athlete, but they are adequate to the wants of sedentary people in warm weather. There is no doubt that many persons would be greatly benefited by such games. They are too sedentary; they live too much indoors; they are too closely tied to a routine of thought or feeling. The open air, the mild exercise, the social chat, would give them a change of feeling and an agreeable exercise. Nor is there any conceivable avenue of approach for moral dangers. It is not wise for any one to make a business of croquet or of any other amusement; but the danger of excess is not worth considering. It will occur so seldom and have such limited consequences that the moralist need not post sentinels upon croquet grounds.

The “manly sports” are less satisfactory. Cricket, base ball and Lacrosse have the disadvantages following: First, they are exhibitions and public rather than social; second, they require violent exertion in hot weather; third, they are accompanied by gambling and other unmanly vices. Cricket and Lacrosse are not open to the last objection to any considerable extent. Those who engage in them are for the most part gentlemen; they are, so to say, the aristocratic games, while base ball is the great popular athletic game. It is not very old. When men now fifty were boys they did not know the modern game, though they did know a much simpler and far less strenuous practice with a soft ball—a game also called base ball. There is some reason to fear that this form of athletics is being ruined by immoral attachments and environments. Of boating we make special mention because it requires no overstrain—since boating need not mean boat-racing—and, indeed, is open to none of the objections urged against the exhibitory public games. On Chautauqua Lake, in the Assembly season, boating is one of the most healthful and enjoyable recreations. The exercise can be adjusted to strength, arrested at any time or prolonged at pleasure, and the boatload is enough for pleasant society—which may, of course, be selected to suit one’s tastes. Of this amusement we have only one regrettable feature to mention—it can be enjoyed only where there is convenient water.

Of the vigorous sports, we are compelled to speak with some reserve. We doubt the wholesomeness of athletics; they involve excess of exertion, and the gambler is the curse of base ball games. The other games may escape the influence of the demoralization, and cricket, polo and Lacrosse become great American exhibitory games of strength and skill. But the quiet social amusements ought to flourish among us, and indefinitely increase. The pleasure row-boat, the croquet and lawn tennis grounds, deserve our special attention. Let us play a little more. We can spare the time, for we shall live longer; we can well afford the hours, because the other hours will be worth more to us. In these quiet games we get refreshment of body and of spirit.

THE MODERN TREATMENT OF THE SOLDIER.

Decoration Day has many happy outlooks upon the humanities. Philanthropy may use it as a finger-board indicating the direction of our modern progress. The soldier’s grave is its special theme; it as clearly suggests the happier fate of the modern soldier as compared with his ancient brother. Great nations have always honored their dead soldiers; it is only in modern times that nations have given their whole hearts to the living soldiers. In the long wars between France and England from the twelfth century onward, the armies had no surgeons, and medical supplies were unknown. The medical equipment of a modern army is costly and ample; and that no man may die unnecessarily, woman hangs on the verge of battle to nurse the wounded, sheltered and safe under a red cross or a red crescent. In the old navies of England and France, the men were slaves who had been captured in their own lands and sent to suffer in crowded bulkheads of ships, or in the galleys, steaming with the most abominable odors. A French duchess in the sixteenth century wrote of that “living hell,” the many-oared galley war ship of the Mediterranean. One can not recall the horrors of any battle on sea or land with composure, but the whole life of soldier and sailor in public service was in the old days full of the horrors of battle fields.

It is often said that war will eventually be stopped by the increased and perfected effectiveness of engines of war. It may well be doubted on general grounds; but it is specially true that humanity has robbed war of many of its terrible aspects; it may well be that those who open again the gates of mercy are competing successfully against those who “shut the gates of mercy” on mankind.

The modern treatment of the soldier is conspicuous in providing for his comfort. Why should England buy canned meats for her soldiers? Some crusts would have sufficed the providing spirit of an ancient general. The British army in the field must be well fed or there will be a great noise about the ears of the government. Let it be written home that the biscuits were stale, or the army went without its supper, and the newspapers will roar out the indignation of the nation. It is an immense task; but it must be accomplished; the modern soldier must have his regular meals with certainty, and the food must be good. The Mahdi has no such cares or duties. His soldiers must forage and browse as best they can. The superior power of the civilized soldier lies as much in his regular feeding as in his discipline—the feeding is an element of his discipline. The soldiers must also be comfortably clothed and sheltered. Woe to the commander who exposes his men to needless hardships. The country will not allow its loyal and brave defenders to suffer a needless deprivation or hardship. If commissaries are careless or venal, the nation will pillory them in eternal infamy. The soldier must have, even in the far off desert, many of the comforts of home or the country will know the reason why. And when the battered veterans come home, how the air rings with huzzas, how tender the pity for the wounded, how liberal the pensions for the widows and orphans of those who did not come home! Neither Cyrus nor Alexander had any such pension rolls. Rome idolized her armies, but she let them starve abroad, and forgot their families at home. This whole line of treatment means more than we can express in words. It is a very real and royal worship of the nobility which we see in the soldier. Often he is a sorry human creature, but it is almost a profanation to say so. We idolize him and his office. He is our defender, our chivalric knight, our personation of the flag over us, and of the civilization in us. But—but—what chance does this treatment of the soldier afford for the Day of Universal Peace? Will a sword ever become a pruning hook so long as it is glorified by such a symbolism and illumined by these soft lights of pity and reverence? Let us not take too gloomy a view of the effects of our philanthropy toward the soldier. The causes of war probably lie out of the range of these influences. Wars would still be, if they were still as diabolically merciless as they were in the mediæval days when a war galley was “a living hell.” Peace is a question of universal civilization; and the pity we yield to the soldier is one of the undying agencies of universal civilization.

THE LIGHTING OF TOWNS.

Street lighting is a modern invention. The history is imperfect, but Alexander Dumas gives credit to the tradition that Naples was first lighted in the seventeenth century by the cunning of a popular and sagacious priest, who induced the people to burn votive lamps before the numerous images of St. Joseph, the patron saint of the city. In the ancient towns people went about at night with lamps; and in mediæval times crimes of vengeance and greed found shelter and safety in the gloom of unlighted thoroughfares and bridges. When lighting began with oil lamps, the situation was not much improved; the feeble glimmer of the lamp-wicks only made certain corners less gloomy. When gas lights began to be used the millennium seemed to have come, and gas was expected to abolish midnight crimes. Until about a score of years ago, there was general satisfaction with gas light. Very satisfactory results were obtained in small towns by the use of petroleum, and the only formidable difficulties were those arising from the high cost of gas in towns of moderate wealth. It almost doubled the tax-levy, and when this bill did not materially decrease the cost of a police force the tax-payers murmured. Still, the work of lighting went on, and as soon as a town became ambitious, its citizens demanded street lights of some kind. The general result has been an immense increase of the aggregate outlays for this purpose. If we take into account the growth of towns and the extension of public lighting, it is safe to estimate that the public lighting bill of the world is twenty times as large as it was fifty years ago.

The invention of electric lights has, by the superior efficiency of this method, rendered oil and gas unsatisfactory; and the electric lamp furnishes three or four times as much light as gas at the same cost. But there are a dozen or more methods of using the electric lamp, and it may be doubted that we have yet reached the end of our inventive wits in this field. It is quite probable that the electric lamp of the next century will cost far less than any now in use. We are yet in the infancy of electrical invention, and it may be wise for communities to suffer a little longer the evils of darkness in order to obtain the best appliances for public lighting. The time is at hand when all towns will have street lamps; the inventors are busy and hopeful, and a little cautious patience in the public will probably stimulate rather than discourage invention. It is a good trait in our people that they want the newest device, at whatever cost; but on the other hand the ability of A to stock the market with an inferior article discourages the efforts of B to devise a superior one. The plant for lighting a town is expensive, and can not easily be thrown aside for a better one. Besides, we are in some danger of hatching a new brood of monopolies to plague us with unreasonable exactions.

We need street lights much more than our fathers did. In large towns—and in many small ones—the din of toil does not cease when darkness comes on. There is a steady increase of night occupations. Some of these occupations are of high convenience, such as the pharmacies, the printing offices, and the depots of travel. Others are means to profitable ends for individuals. In a great city a multitude of people use the streets at night. The market gardener must be in his stall before day dawn. The daily bread is baked or distributed to depots of sale in the night time; a thousand small trades are plied in the darkness to provide the tables of the families with the necessaries and luxuries of life. The result is a growing demand for artificial sunshine, and this demand will be amply met in a near future. The bright lights will do what the feeble lights partially failed to do. The night will cease to be the hour of crime. If one will but think of it, a marvelous change has come over the world since petroleum was discovered in Western Pennsylvania—which was, as it were, but yesterday. Then we had tallow dips in all but the largest towns for all lighting purposes, except when extravagant people burned on rare occasions the costly illuminating oils. To make noonday in a whole town at midnight would have seemed a foolish dream thirty years ago. The world moves—into the light.