Entries Tagged 'Same Today' ↓

Elias B. Dunn, the weather observer at New York, has been studying atmospheric electricity for two years, says the Boston Transcript. The sergeant, as they used to call him; the farmer, as they call him now, said the other day that he will live to see the day when electricity collected from the atmosphere and stored by some means which an Edison or a Tesla will have to devise, will revolutionize the world. The prophet expects that cities will be lighted and heated by atmospheric electricity; that every train and car will be run lighted and heated by it; that coal will become a curiosity, that steam heating will be a granny talk to the children of the next generation; that the telegraph and telephone companies will lose their monopolies; that war will become a farce because a touch of electricity will make the British Grenadiers or the German Uhlans or the Scotch Highlanders sit down on the cold ground powerless. Even the dreams of communication with the inhabitants of Mars will become realities, and a man will be able to strike up electricity as he does a parlor match. There will be no more trolley strikes, because there will be no more trolleys. Mankind will tap the atmosphere for almost any convenience except food and clothing, and even the clothing will be woven and the food cooked by atmospheric electricity; street cleaning will be as easy as the magician’s “Presto! change!” and everybody will live comparatively happier ever after. Mr. Dunn is sure that his ideas are practical and probable. The atmosphere is his constant study, and, having introduced general humidity to the public as the principal element in uncomfortable days, he has determined that the potent element for good in the air we breathe shall no longer be wasted. Why, he said, the whole atmosphere is soaked with electricity.

To judge at least by the treatment of such men as Henry Clay, and others of his stamp, it would appear as if real merit were a hindrance rather than a help to the attainment of the highest offices in America.((It is not meant here to obtrude special views of politics, or to maintain that democratic principles have naturally this tendency; but it may help to explain why so little is heard or known in England of the better class of Americans. Their unobtrusive mode of life entirely accounts for this, and it is to be regretted that it is the noisy demagogue who forms the type of the American as known to the generality of the European public.))

A curious case of swindling has just been tried before the Correctional Tribunal of Paris, with the result that an adventuress, who passed herself off as the Princess of Reuss, has, in spite of the able advocacy of M. Lachaud, been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. A few weeks ago, a “lady of distinguished appearance, very elegantly attired,” fell down, apparently in a fainting fit, at the St. Lazare Railway Terminus, and among the persons who hurried to her assistance was a retired servant, who had already been struck by the grace of her demeanor. When she came to, he asked permission to assist her to a hotel in the neighborhood, and sent for a doctor, being assured, in return, that he would have no reason to regret his kindness; “for,” added the lady, “I am the Princess of Reuss and shall not forget your goodness.” The Princess went on to explain that she had immense possessions in Germany, which, unfortunately, had been seized by Prince Bismarck, and that the worry to which she was subjected by the suit going on for their recovery, had so affected her that she was often overtaken by fainting-fits. “But,” she added, with touching condescension, “can I regret all this, since it has procured me the opportunity of meeting with such disinterested attention?” The retired servant was so completely won by this last phrase, that he begged the Princess to accept the loan of any money which she might require for temporary purposes; and it was not very long before the £400 which he had saved during long years of service, had been borrowed from him. After these had gone, and when the Princess still failed to receive the remittances she was expecting, he awoke to the possibility of his having been defrauded; and the inquiries which were instituted by the Police showed that the Princess of Reuss and a well-known swindler by the name of Perin were one and the same person. Justice has been satisfied by the sentence of two years’ imprisonment; but the retired servant will not, it is to be apprehended, recover his £400.–Pall Mall Gazette.

[“The descendants of man will nourish themselves by immersion in nutritive fluid. They will have enormous brains, liquid, soulful eyes, and large hands, on which they will hop. No craggy nose will they have, no vestigial ears; their mouths will be a small, perfectly round aperture, unanimal, like the evening star. Their whole muscular system will be shrivelled to nothing, a dangling pendant to their minds.”—Pall Mall Gazette, abridged.]

What, a million years hence, will become of the Genus

Humanum, is truly a question vexed;

At that epoch, however, one prophet has seen us

Resemble the sketch annexed.

For as Man undergoes Evolution ruthless,

His skull will grow “dome-like, bald, terete”;

And his mouth will be jawless, gumless, toothless—

No more will he drink or eat!

He will soak in a crystalline bath of pepsine,

(no Robert will then have survived, to wait,)

And he’ll hop on his hands as his food he steps in—

A quasi-cherubic gait!

No longer the land or the sea he’ll furrow;

The world will be withered, ice-cold, dead

As the chill of eternity grows, he’ll burrow

Far down underground instead.

If the Pall Mall Gazette has thus been giving

A forecast correct of this change immense,

Our stars we may thank, then, that we shan’t be living

A million years from hence!

These golfers are strange creatures, rabbit-coloured, except that many are bright red about the middle, and they repel and yet are ever attracted by a devil in the shape of a little white ball, which leads them on through toothed briars, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns; cursing the thing, weeping even, and anon laughing at their own foolish rambling; muttering, heeding no one to the right or left of their career,–demented creatures, as though these balls were their souls, that they ever sought to lose, and ever repented losing. And silent, ever at the heel of each, is a familiar spirit, an eerie human hedgehog, all set about with walking-sticks, a thing like a cylindrical umbrella-stand with a hat and boots and a certain suggestion of leg.

My Lords, I have submitted to you, with the freedom and truth which I think my duty, my sentiments on your present awful situation. I have laid before you the ruin of your power, the disgrace of your reputation, the pollution of your discipline, the contamination of your morals, the complication of calamities, foreign and domestic, that overwhelm your sinking country. Your dearest interests, your own liberties, the Constitution itself totters to the foundation. All this disgraceful danger, this multitude of misery, is the monstrous offspring of this unnatural war. We have been deceived and deluded too long. Let us now stop short. This is the crisis–the only crisis of time and situation, to give us a possibility of escape from the fatal effects of our delusions. But if, in an obstinate and infatuated perseverance in folly, we slavishly echo the peremptory words this day presented to us, nothing can save this devoted country from complete and final ruin. We madly rush into multiplied miseries, and “confusion worse confounded.”

“Business is business,” says the man vowed to that life, and so it is unquestionably, but equally, personality is personality. Leaving the latter out of consideration will throw business calculations about as far astray as those of the astronomer who does not allow for personal equations. This the successful man of affairs fully understands.

When it can be recognized there is nothing more interesting than watching the actual consultation of a business man with the promptings of his won mind’s equations. Such power of consultation is not possessed by all and is invisible with many of those who have it.

I remember hearing a young business man describe such a rare revelation in an interview with an older business friend known as the keenest financier. The proposition which the young man had to present was reasonable, seemingly sure of success, and he himself believed in it enthusiastically.

“I laid it before the old fellow,” he said, “one by one meeting and explaining the vexed points he raised. He ceased questioning me finally because the patent value of the proposition seemed proved so far as words go. He nodded affirmation as each heading was checked off. I felt emboldened to ask: ‘What do you think of it, sir?’ And then I saw a curious sight. The old fellow sat motionless, looking away into space, his blue eyes growing innocent and far away as a child’s who is listening to a distant and familiar voice. I could have sworn that he heard something which I did not. Finally he turned to me with a smile and shook his head. ‘I can’t exactly believe in your plan,’ he said. I sat staring at him. I knew, and he knew, that his reason was convinced; it was an instinct alone that held the old man back–an instinct in which he superstitiously trusted and on which he obstinately acted. It was the most extraordinary thing I ever saw. The more so that events have proved the warning voice gave him a private information which was more than correct. The plan failed dismally, as I too well know.”

Extraordinary or not, those who come in contact with successful business men will see the same phenomenon repeated over and over in greater or less degree. Call it a genius for affairs or what you will, this curious power of divination remains still as unexplained a mystery as any other kind of second sight.

A systematic analysis of the titles of works of fiction, if undertaken in a scientific spirit, might lead to some interesting, if not positively valuable, re-suits. A collection, classification, and comparison of the products of the mental energy—we had almost said agony—expended in thinking up appropriate names for stories might possibly come within the scope of the work of the Society for Psychical Research. So serious an undertaking as a matter of scientific or philosophical speculation, however, is out of place here. But, nevertheless, it may interest the readers of this department to have called to their attention a few curiosities in the titles of recent novels which, possibly, have escaped them. To be sure, nothing of any very profound significance is disclosed, nothing more, perhaps, than a series of coincidences. The title of Mrs. Wharton’s book, “The House of Mirth,” was a striking one, though if it had not been the name of the most successful book of the winter, it might have attracted little notice of itself. But the very popularity of the book, the talk it created, put its name into the mouth of everybody, and so the reiteration of the title began to attract attention; it was even used, we believe, to describe a house in Albany dedicated to the entertainment of members of the legislature. Next appeared another popular book, “The House of a Thousand Candles,” and it is easy to see how curiosity was stimulated to discover other titles of novels with similar names. No great effort or research was required to make up this list:

• “The House of Cards,”
• “The House of Hawley,”
• “The House of Dreams,”
• “The House of Sin,”
• “The House of Fulfilment,”
• “The House of Merrilees,”
• “The House of Mystery,”
• “The House of the Black Ring,”
• “The House of Mirth,”
• “The House of a Thousand Candles,”
• “The House of a Hundred Lights,”
• “The House in the Mist.”

In the same way other names with a key word, so to speak, were suggested, hearts, for instance, being as popular as houses. Here are some of them:

• “Heart’s Haven,”
• “Heart’s Desire,”
• “Hearts and Masks,”
• “Hearts in Exile,”
• “Brave Hearts,”
• “Contrite Hearts,”
• “The Heart of Lady Anne,”
• “The Heart of a Girl,”
• “The Heart of Hope,”
• “The Heart of the World,”
• “The Heart of Happy Hollow,”
• “The Heart of Rome,”
• “Jules of the Great Heart.”

More curious than these, however, is the attraction that colors seem to have for title-makers, and in this list the degree of popularity of each color is noticeable:

• “The Black Motor-Car,”
• “The Black Barque,”
• “The House of the Black Ring,”
• “Black Friday,”
• “Black Beauty,”
• “The Black Arrow,”
• “The Black Spaniel,”
• “The Red Cravat,”
• “The Red Triangle,”
• “The Red Book of Romance.”
• “The Red Window,”
• “The White Terror and the Red,”
• “For the White Christ,”
• “White Aprons,”
• “The White Cat,”
• “The Yellow Cat,”
• “The Yellow Journalist,”
• “The Yellow Holly,”
• “Purple Peaks Remote,”
• “The Purple Parasol,”
• “Purple and Fine Linen,”
• “Green Mansions,”
• “The Green Shay,”
• “The Gray World,”
• “The Blue Cockade,”
• “The Scarlet Pimpernel,”
• “The Scarlet Empire.”

It may be considered doubtful whether “Freckles” should be included in this list, but our readers can take their choice according to their tastes.

If space permitted, this sort of thing could be carried on almost indefinitely. Flowers, fruits, and precious stones, man, woman, girl, are made to do duty, as well as all the family relatives, except “father.” Mother, daughter, and brother are to be found.

The selection of a name for a story has a good deal to do with its success, as authors and publishers know, sometimes to their cost. Just how much careful forethought is given to the problem in individual cases is indicated to some extent by the showing that these titles make.