"7?
ltfE COURIER.
i
if
1!
i li
1
:
j '
L" 'I
1
I
!l 1
l" 1
age of MuDJiall that they have nut.
All the riff-raff of the town, the brute
force that turns the wheels of the
great steel mills, are hidden away
from the citizen and visitor alike, and
the heart of the boldest missionary
fails him when he looks through the
knot holes in the fence.
Like most unsightly things, Home
stead has its picturesque side, or rath
er its picturesque phase. On Satur
day night, when the mills are run
ning, there is.not a noisier spot on
earth, nor a more interesting study
for the sociologist.
Athough the mill tires usually begin
to go down about dusk on Saturday
night, they are still bright enough to
terrify the mountaineer, and a cloud
of red tiame hangs over the hundreds
of giant smokestacks. The river is a
red lake with green lanterns here and
there on the coal barges. The roll
ing mills give out their periodic
crashes of deafening sound, and the
streets are full of men of every race
and tongue who are getting rid of
their money.
The whiskey drank in Homestead
every Saturday night would float an
ocean steamer. Every nationality ex
hales its own peculiar odor of drunk
enness, and men stand in long box-office
lines before the bar-room doors.
Dances and acrobatic feats are execu
ted on the sidewalks to the music of a
street piano. The click of the poker
chips sound from the windows of the
card rooms, and there are drunken
women in the streets reeling toward
the hovels of Pottersville. Brutal
izing toil is followed by brutalizing
pleasures.
Rodin's Victor Hugo.
Auguste Rodin's contribution to
the salon this year is an unfinished
statue of Victor Hugo. The statue is
of heroic proportions and full length,
representing the poet lying nude on
the rocks, his leonine bead supported
on his hand.
The enemies of the scu'ptor, and
they are many and scurrilous, declare
that the effect produced by taking a
modern man of letters and a politician
out of his frock-coat and trousers and
stretching him. Greek fashion, on the
rocks is ludicrously shocking and ab
surd. Photographs of the work, how
ever, lead one to believe that it is
quite the most remarkable of all the
many noble things Rodin has done.
Seemingly he has achieved the impos
sible by treating a modern subject in
the antique heroic manner with per
fect success.
The figure is one of superb dignity,
and might be mistaken for a resting
Hercules. The idea in itself seems
ridiculous enough; for who could im
agine Wagner or Daudet treated in
this unclothed manner by anyone save
a malicious cartoonist? That Rodin
has been able to do it with sublime
seriousness in Hugo's case is a pure
triumph of his genius. No other
treatment could have been so noble,
yet it is to be hoped that Rodin's imi
tators will not repeat this new note
in portrait statuary and give us
George Sand as a wood nymph or Al
fred de Musset as a weeping Orpheus.
Train News Boys.
It often happens that an order of
things devised for public convenience
becomes a public annoyance and must
be dispensed with. The Burlington
road realized that train newsboys bad
ceased- to accommodate its patrons in
sufficient measure to warrant their
existence, and consequently has made
other arrangements to supply its pa
trons with news.
' News vending indeed had become
one of the least of the train-boy's
lines of business. He sold pocket
combs and cheap jewelry and celluloid
trinkets and blue glasses like those
Moses Primrose bought at the fair.
He exercised all his arts "of blandish
ment on the rustic traveler and per
suaded the farmer girls into reckless
purchases. His fruit set all the babies
in the day coach crying, and he al
lowed no elderly woman to escape
until she had bought a volume of Tal
mage's sermons. His manner was
sometimes respectful, but more often
impertinent, and the passing of this
traditional figure from the train ser
vice will not be regretted.
Forms of Food Adulteration.
Dr. H. W. Wiley, chief of the divis
ion of chemistry at Washington, con
tributed a valuable article on food
adulteration to a recent number of
Leslie's Weekly. He takes up the sub
ject apropos of the wholesale poison
ing which occurred in the middle dis
tricts of England last fall from the
presence of arsenic in beer. The
fermentation of cheap beer had been
produced by grape sugar, and this
grape sugar had been converted from
the starch of the potato by the use of
sulphuric acid. Iron pyrites had
been used in the manufacture of the
acid and this pyrites had contained
arsenic.
Dr. Wiley states that some of the
most dangerous adulterations are
made to preserve the color of canned
foods and preparations for long dis
tance alimentation. The color of
canned peas and beans is often pre
served by copper, and coloring matter
is commonly used to preserve the col
or of canned meats and sausages.
While this is not always of a harmful
nature, he urges that manufacturers
be compelled to state on the cover of
the can just what chemicals and in
what quantity have been used in the
preparation of the article. He calls
attention not so much to those violent
forms of poisoning which produce im
mediate sickness or death, as to the
slower and more insidious, harmful
elements in food which are added to
preserve color or cheapen the cost of
packing and preserving the article,
and which slowly impair the organs
of the body and unfit them for their
natural functions.
J. Pierpont Morgan.
An ideal democracy, that is, a com
plete and consistent democracy, would
completely disprove all of Herbert
Spencer's system of philosophy. The
warfare of the world can never be
eliminated and these pretty theories
of friendly strivings are paradoxical
on their very face. No man can strive
at all and be willing to see the other
fellow win under any consideration.
The struggle for power is essentially
the same whether it is fought with
railroad shares or the flint hatchets
of the stone man.
Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan seems to
have acquired control of more men
and money than any other man the
United States has produced. His
army of workmen far outnumber the
United States military, and he con
trols capital enough to buy any of the
smaller kingdoms of Europe at auc
tion. Speculations upon his actual wealth
are quite superfluous, for after money
reaches a certain figure it ceases to be
money at all and becomes power. It
is not reckoned by its purchasing pow
er any longer, but by its initiative and
resistive power.
Mr. Morgan's real wealth is in his
brain and not in his coffers. Sur
rounded as be is by the most compli
cated business machinery, a week of
false estimates and bad judgment
would wreck as many lives as a gen
eral sacrifices by a bad strategic move
ment. His life is given not to the
enjoyment of wealth, but to the solv
ing of problems and the amassing of
power. He can eat but one dinner a
day and wear but one coat at a time,
like the rest of us.
Whatever civilization has done, it
has not been able to expand by one
inch the individual's capacity for en
joyment. Mr. Morgan could gratify
the tastes of,a thousand men, but it is
onlv an infinitesimal part of his for
tune that he can use upon himself.
The only men who have the least ex
cuse for envying him are men of am
bitions: and, though every man imag
ines he is ambitious, the number of
ambitious men is scarcely larger than
the number of great men.
A Fore-Runner.
It is rather strange, when one comes
to think of it, now that the eyes of all
the world are turned upon Asia and
the nations of the Orient, that the
man who most nearly speaks the voice
of the people and the spirit of the
times first called our attention to the
old East ten or twelve years ago. Rud
yard Kipling set the song of the east
humming In a million brains, and
long before he knew that bungalows
and punkahs would ever figure in
government expense bills, we began
to use the names of them. Before
Kipling's day we knew as little about
the mixed religions and mixed nations
of the Orient as we knew about the
etiquette of Thibet, and cared as lit
tle. There once lived a very subtle critic
in England who declared that life im
itates art to a much greater extent
than art imitates life. At any rate, I
should like to know bow many of the
men who boarded the transport for
the Filiplnes were repeating "On the
Road to Mandalay" under their breath.
Whatever indifferent work Mr.
Kipling may have done in the last
five years, and whether he is a liter
ary artist or no, he is certainly the
genius of the times, the man who
speaks and prophetically foretold the
spirit of the hour; the passing of old
orders, the expansion of the white
races, the pa6sion for machinery and
perfected system, the stroke for con
quest and the renaissance of the spirit
of war. He preceded by about ten
years everything we are doing and
thinking today. That is what the
tribe singer, the original poet, did in
the days before literary art or any
wearisome theories about it bad come
into being, when the poet sang to his
people of the things he knew that
they would do, and told them where
the fishing was good and where the
bucks were fat, and of treasures that
might be easily wrested from men on
the other side of the mountain.
Warm Praise for Dawes.
A recent issue of Harper's Weekly
comments appreciatively upon Charles
Dawes' faithful and efficient service
to the public as comptroller of tbe
currency, and his frank and above
board manner of announcing his can
didacy for the United States senate.
Mr. Dawes had at least one able
predecessor in the comptrollership, but
no one has ever occupied his office
who has used such fearless and effect
ive measures for the protection of
banking interests.
While his regime may have seemed
severe in individual cases no one has
ever alleged that his action in closing
the doors of certain banks which still
had the public confidence was not for
the best interests of the majority.
Even in Washington, where the repu
tation of every government official is
daily butchered to make a Kenan,
holiday, the tongue of slander i sin.
gularly silent about Mr. Dawes. The
retiring comptroller has demonstrated
a high order of ability in nearly eury
kind of business; and, as the editon.il
referred to intimates, since he u
made up bis mind that he wants the
senatorship from Illinois, he ha- , ,t
to follow his own precedent of succt-
Duse and "II Fuoco."
Ddse's delayed tour of the United
States is now announced for the earh
winter of 1902-1903, and her manager
state that among the number of pl.n
by L'Annunzin she will produce ,i
dramatization of his novel "11 Fuoc" "
of which she herself was a heroine.
Whether this is a managerial tic
tion, or whether the persecuted at'
ress actually intends to resort to tlu
extreme measure of self defense, re
mains to be seen. If she actually pro
duces the play, her action will surnas
anything in the history of feminine
psychology, or the most morbid per.
version of D'Annunzio's pen.
How she can do it is a question
which need perplex no astonished
American; for how he could have writ
ten the novel at all, or how she could
have permitted herself to live after
he bad done so, are questions quite a
unanswerable to people on this side of
the Atlantic.
The book is a study of two people;
the author's rosy and highly flattering
view of himself, his own power and
gifts, and his brutal and shameless
analysis of the emotions of the no
man whom he claims gave up her en
tire life to him until be was weary of
accepting her devotion.
For any man to sit down and set
about computing on paper bow great
ly and in what manner a woman had
cared for him, givingeven the number
of her house in Venice, lest the public
should make any mistake, is a bad
enough proposition; but "II Fuoco"
goes a great deal further than that.
It is a shameless sale of confidence of
the most sacred kind for money, a sav
age and shameless attack upon a wo
man who is still living and who is ill
and unhappy.
Her age and physical infirmities arc
mentioned by the gentleman in com
parison with his own splendid youth
and resplendent beauty. The reptil
ian nature of the man as disclosed by
his book has set up a bitter revolt
against him in Italy where Signora
Duse is deeply beloved, and many of
his countrymen have sent him threat
ening letters. If he should ever be
rash enough to visit England it is
doubtful whether he would ever get
out without a horsewhipping, for as
likely as not some country squire who
had never heard Duse at all would
take pleasure in paying up humanity's
score against D'Annunzio with his
fiets. There have been men without
any sense of honor before in the world,
but surely no man has ever been able
to make such a masterly presentation
of his destitution.
"II Fuoco," considered merely a
literature, takes a high rank anions
modern novels. Even from a French
translation of it one is able to gather
that the man, always gifted with a
superb power of language, has never
fitted phrases together more melodi
ously, and in the Italian tongue the
novel must approach as near to poetry
as prose safely can.
The plot is concerned with a love
affair between an actress and a nov
elist, in which the woman is consid
erably more than half the wooer. Tlu
scene is laid in Venice, and the citj
with its dark and stirring past, it
present decrepitude and decay, an
used to cleverly emphasize the picture
of the aged and ailing actress.
7
V