AMOS K. WARREN.
On the evening of the 9th of June, the well-known Secretary of the Chautauqua Assembly, Mr. A. K. Warren, died at his home in Mayville, N. Y., after an illness of several weeks. Mr. Warren was in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and, since the close of the third Assembly, in 1876, he has had charge of the business at Chautauqua, under the leadership and direction of Mr. Lewis Miller and the Board of Trustees. He grew in favor with the Chautauqua management and the general public from the time he first assumed the duties of his office. It was Mr. Warren that effected the purchase of the one hundred acres of land to add to the original Chautauqua grounds, and with taste and untiring zeal laid out pleasant walks and public parks, continually increasing the convenience and the beauty of the grounds.
Several of the most valued public buildings were erected during these years of his connection with the Assembly—the Children’s Temple and Hall of Philosophy, the Amphitheater and the commodious Hotel Athenæum. He has shown himself to be wise and skillful in executing the plans of President Miller and the Board. His loss will be keenly felt and the position he occupied difficult to fill. In addition to the office he occupied at Chautauqua Mr. Warren has served as sheriff of Chautauqua County, and at one time was manager of the Buffalo, Pittsburgh & Western Railroad. In every position he proved himself to be a man of superior executive ability, born to be a leader of men and a manager of great movements. He leaves a widow and one daughter, well provided for by certain property which he owned and by an insurance of seven thousand dollars.
The funeral services were held in Mayville, June 13, at his late residence, being conducted by the Rev. Milton Smith, of Mayville. The Scriptures were read by the Rev. Dr. Flood, and the prayer offered and remarks made by the Rev. Dr. Vincent. Although not a member of the Church, Mr. Warren was a believer in the Christian religion. Were we permitted to break the confidence of the private correspondence which passed between Dr. Vincent and Mr. Warren just before his death, much would be revealed that would be comforting to the friends of the deceased and inspiring to all believers in Christianity.
His death brought together a large number of people, among them many of the Executive Board, who were obliged to call a meeting at once at Mayville in order to reorganize the working forces of the Assembly and supply the place left vacant by Mr. Warren’s death.
Notwithstanding the great loss sustained, it is expected that under the direction of President Miller and the Board, the work of improvement and building will be carried on as usual. The management is so complete that no work will be neglected nor any department be slighted. The grounds are in excellent condition as are also the streets, walks and public buildings, and improvement will constantly go on.
[EDITOR’S NOTE-BOOK.]
The Chautauqua Assembly Daily Herald will contain full reports of the July and August meetings. The first number will be issued on Saturday, August 4. There will be nineteen numbers in the volume. Price, $1.00; in clubs of five or more, 90 cents. See our combination offer on another page of this magazine.
Some railroad managers are employing the machinery of the Young Men’s Christian Association among their men with good results. Mr. Vanderbilt employs a religious worker on a regular salary to keep open a room and conduct religious services for the benefit of his men in New York. The N. Y., P. & O. R. R., a trunk line to the west, running past Chautauqua, has adopted the same plan in Meadville, Cleveland, and other cities. Railroad men are absent from home a good portion of their time when on duty, and, as strangers in strange places, they are greatly benefited by the religious homes provided by the corporations.
The Rev. Dr. J. H. Vincent will deliver the Fourth of July oration at Ocean Grove, and lecture before the Ohio State Teachers’ Association the fifth of July at Chautauqua.
The Hon. James G. Blaine seems to have retired from political life. A Washington correspondent, who evidently has studied his habits, says in a New York paper: “It is with his venture into literature that Mr. Blaine has mostly occupied his mind this spring. He seems suddenly to have discovered the charms of the library and the study, and as he has a literary workshop that is as suggestive and delightful as money can make it, he is drinking the newly-discovered cup to the dregs. His library is on the second floor. Here, after he has breakfasted, he repairs and plunges into his work. Occasional visits to the Congressional Library furnish him with much of the data that he requires for his work, and this is supplemented by correspondence, by his own letters and private records, and, more than all, by a memory that seems to be able to recall all the events of his twenty years of public life as though they were all crowded into yesterday. It is not Mr. Blaine’s intention to make the work in any sense a series of personal reminiscences, but briefly to describe, as a historian, the important public events of the past twenty years. There is a good deal of curiosity already to get hints of how he is doing it; but he keeps his own counsel, and asks advice and hints of no one. He spends five or six hours daily on this work, only quitting his desk in time to take his afternoon drive. He expects to finish the work early in the winter.”
A beautiful satin program of the exercises of Shakspere’s Day, has been sent us by the “Greek Letter Circle,” of Milwaukee. Evidently the artistic as well as the “Literary and Scientific” is being cultivated there.
The dean of the Chautauqua School of Theology, the Rev. A. A. Wright, of Boston, Mass., is noticed by Dr. Daniel S. Steele, in Zion’s Herald, thus: “It was the boast of Tyndale, before he translated the New Testament into English, that he would enable the very plow-boys to know more about the New Testament than the bishops themselves. The attempt of Bro. Wright is more audacious. He has undertaken to make the plow-boys and kitchen-maids know more of the original New Testament Greek than the professionals themselves, who acquired their knowledge in the slipshod and unscientific methods in vogue only forty years ago. In carrying out his scheme he is constructing a serial lexicon on a novel principle. He selects the most important word and groups under it all its derivatives and compounds in Greek and English, requiring a memorizing of these seed-words. Thus the student’s mind becomes a nursery in which a whole forest of Greek is sprouting.”
In the political arena, young men are coming into position. Governor Pattison, of Pennsylvania, is thirty-three years old, and the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, Mr. Foraker, is thirty-seven.
On Thursday, August 30, the C. L. S. C. alumni in New England will hold a reunion at South Framingham, Mass. This will be during the session of the Framingham Assembly. Preparations are being made by the officers and committees to insure an interesting and profitable gathering. Mr. A. W. Pike is president and Mrs. M. A. F. Adams is secretary of the alumni association. The C. L. S. C. has more than doubled its numbers in New England during the past year, and the history of New England people is that they don’t give up a good institution when they have once taken it to their hearts.
John B. Gough says: “The lecture business is declining, because the people are inclining to music and theatricals.” We presume this is true where the people have nothing but lectures and lectures; under such circumstances it is not a cause for wonder, but if any person will take the pains to read the reports of “Local Circles” published in The Chautauquan the past ten months they will observe how lectures on a wide range of subjects, scientific and historical, philosophical and practical, have been made popular, intermingled as they have been with concerts, reunions, banquets, social life and a variety of entertainments by enterprising organizations.
Chautauqua’s waters, clear and bright!
Listen, thence there comes to-night
Songs so sweet my heart they win.
Charmèd Circle, take me in.
—E. O. P.
The symposium on the “Moral Influence of the Drama,” in the June number of the North American Review, is an able discussion of the subject. Dr. Buckley wields a keen lance, but there is a time for all things. The editorial management that brings on this discussion in the summer time, when the theaters are mostly closed, is not likely to do so much toward correcting existing evils as if it had brought on the debate when the theaters are opened in the fall time. The adaptation of truth to an end is wisdom, but the adaptation in this case is to the end of the season, when the evil is done, vapor and effervescence.
We have some sympathy with the idea expressed by a correspondent in a western State, that we should have degrees conferred on the graduates of the C. L. S. C., under certain limitations, and in recognition of certain attainments in literature, history, etc. The degree of the Ph.D. is now conferred by some universities and colleges after the applicant has passed required examinations, though he has never been within the walls of the institution.
Postmaster General Gresham has introduced practical civil service reform into his department. In a recent order he has issued to postmasters, of the second and third classes, he says that the postmaster must be in his office and attend to the business in person; absence from his post, without permission from the Postoffice Department, will be considered sufficient reason for dismissal from the service. This is a wise and timely order, and General Gresham deserves the thanks of the people of the country for inaugurating this reform.
Alaska is sadly in need of a civil government. The lectures of the Presbyterian missionary, Dr. Sheldon Jackson, on the condition of the people of Alaska, delivered at Chautauqua and published in the Assembly Herald and The Chautauquan, created quite a sensation and attracted the attention of thinking Christian people in all parts of the country. There is great need of interposition by the government at Washington. The Presbyterian General Assembly, at a recent session in Saratoga, appointed a committee, with Dr. Howard Crosby as chairman, to visit President Arthur relative to giving the people of Alaska a civil government. Let missionary societies and Christian assemblies petition the powers that be until Alaska is redeemed from her present state, which is little better in some places than barbarism.
The reasons for divorces are only equalled by the devices which parties adopt to secure them. Major Nickerson, of the United States army, sent his wife and daughter to Europe in 1880. The major promised to follow them soon, providing he could secure leave of absence. His wife waited but he did not come. He continued to write her and send money, until about a year ago he began to send his letters and remittances to his daughter. His wife asked an explanation, but he gave her no satisfaction. At last she learned through her mother that he had obtained a divorce and was married again, and that the ground on which the divorce was obtained was desertion. The bare statement of the facts in such a case teach us that our laws, as to granting divorces, are lax and unscriptural, and should be reconstructed in the interests of justice and the safety of the family as an institution against designing men.
The Argentine Republic is doing a great deal of quiet work in education, which might even be an example to us who look upon that far-away land as out of the world. They have in their national college a greater proportion of students than either England or Germany. To obtain the most advanced methods, the government has just obtained eight young women from the normal schools at Winona, Minn., to take charge of the normal schools in the republic.
We learn that Prof. F. H. Bailey, the inventor of the astral lantern, so highly commended by Bishop Warren and others, is now located at Northville, Mich., and that orders for lanterns, or correspondence, should be addressed to him, or to the Michigan School Furnishing Company, at that place. We heartily wish that scores of our local circles might procure one of these invaluable helps to the study of the stars.
The present number of The Chautauquan closes the third volume. In October will be published the first number of the fourth volume. Its place will be supplied during the summer by the Assembly Herald, published during August as a daily. Price, $1.00.
The article in the present number of The Chautauquan by John Lord, LL.D., is an extract from a lecture delivered at Chautauqua.
The faculty of the Summer Assembly at Pacific Grove, Cal., have determined to make natural history a specialty. The opportunities are unrivaled, for all the wonders of the sea-shore are at their command. In order to obtain specimens of the flora and fauna of the entire coast, they have solicited members to send or bring collections of dried plants, zoölogical specimens, etc.
Curiosity and lack of coolness were the causes of the terrible disaster which marred Decoration Day of 1883, and threw a shadow over the glory of the Brooklyn bridge. To rush to see what is the cause of a crowd, a sudden noise or confusion, is a childish act, and yet there is hardly one in a hundred but will do it. To keep still and cool when the crowd becomes a stampede is almost unknown. How to prevent a panic and how to act in a panic, are questions worthy the study of all intelligent people, and it might not be amiss to teach the principles of coolness and self-restraint to the young.
This month Mrs. Cook brings her party of Chautauquans back to America. They have finished their “Tour Around the World,” and will spend their vacation at home until it is time to start on their “Ideal Summer Trip Beyond the Sea.” We only hope that all those who have enjoyed so much their travels with Mrs. Dickinson and Mrs. Cook, will be able to take the latter trip.
The new cover has been well received by both our subscribers and the press. An exchange says of us: “The Chautauquan, the organ of the Chautauqua Assembly, Chautauqua University, the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, and other Chautauqua institutions, has made its appearance in a very elegant new dress. It is not only handsome but it contains more really solid, instructive, interesting and valuable matter than any periodical known to us.” A lady from Illinois in expressing her thanks for the improvement, writes: “I like the new dress of The Chautauquan. It is artistic, and is a reminder of what Chautauqua has been, and is, and what she still offers to the world.”
Macnabb’s photographic studio of art, at 813 Broadway, N. Y., is sending out some very finely finished work. They offer special inducements to clubs. The studio is certainly worthy the attention of persons visiting the city and wishing pictures.
[EDITOR’S TABLE.]
Q. Where can an edition of the New Testament containing the authorized version and new version in parallel columns, be obtained?
A. From Porter & Coates, Philadelphia.
Q. From what book can a thorough knowledge of the New Testament Apocrypha be obtained?
A. Any work on the canon will contain more or less on the Apocrypha. Probably the best work is in French, Michael Nicolas’ “Etudes sur les Evangiles Apocryphes.”
Q. Is the sentence, “There is no world under our feet, no radiant clouds, no blazing sun, no silver moon, nor twinkling stars,” correct.
A. “Nor” is correlative to “neither” or “not.” Either the sentence should retain “not” before “stars,” or “neither” should be introduced into the first clause as a negative instead of “no,” so as to correspond with “nor.”
Q. Who is the author of the quotation, “Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad?”
A. Euripides.
Q. Is the aërolite illustrated on page 122 of “Warren’s Astronomy,” the one which fell at Santa Rosa, California, a few years ago?
A. It is.
Q. On page 114 of the “Geology,” does the author intend to class snakes with mammals?
A. He does not.
Q. Was Alexander of Macedon, who, before the battle of Platæa, informed the Greeks of the intention of Mardonius to attack them, their ally?
A. He was not, though secretly friendly to their cause. He had been compelled to submit to the Persians and had accompanied Xerxes to Greece in 480 B. C.
Q. What was the reason that the Almæonidæ were considered sacrilegious by the Greeks?
A. In consequence of the way in which Megacles, one of the family, treated the insurgents under Cylon in 612 B. C., they brought upon themselves the guilt of sacrilege and were banished.
Q. What is the pronunciation of “applique,” as used in embroidery?
A. Ap-pli-kā´.
Q. What poet was born the same year as Napoleon Bonaparte?
A. There were three. Ernest Arndt, a German; Charles de Chenedolle, French; John Frere, an English diplomatist and poet.
Q. What authority is there for spelling the name “Shakespeare,” “Shakspere?”
A. Many of the best authorities consider this spelling preferable.
Q. Who is the author of the line, “It flies and swims a flower in liquid air!” referring to the butterfly?
A. P. Commire, a writer of Latin verse.
Q. What is the meaning of the Roman initials S. P. Q. R.?
A. Senatus Populusque Romanus (The Senate and the Roman people).
Q. Who fixed the date of the birth of Christ?
A. About the middle of the sixth century Dionysius Exigius, a Roman abbot, introduced the method of dating from the birth of Christ. It is conceded that he placed the date four years too late, a fact of no importance in chronology, as all that is necessary is to place the Savior’s birth 4 B. C.
Q. What event in English history is connected with the “Royal Oak?”
A. After the battle of Worcester in 1651, in which Charles II. was defeated by Cromwell, the former was obliged to conceal himself in an oak at Boscobel, to avoid capture.
Q. What was the faith of George Henry Lewis?
A. He was a positivist.
Q. What was his nationality?
A. English.
Q. What is the Chautauqua salute?
A. The waving of white handkerchiefs.
Q. Explain the expression, “balance of power.”
A. The division of land and wealth among nations, which prevents any one being sufficiently stronger than the others to interfere with their independence.
Q. What is the difference between the majority and the plurality of votes?
A. When a candidate receives more than any other candidate, he has a plurality of votes. When more than all others, a majority.
Q. Are the Goths, Scandinavians and Norsemen, the same people?
A. They are not. Scandinavians or Norsemen were the names given to the inhabitants of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. The Goths lived south of the Scandinavians. Although probably of the same origin, they are a distinct people.
[TALK ABOUT BOOKS.]
The first essential in a popular work of any kind is clearness. A glance at the contents of Prof. Welsh’s new history of English literature[E] shows that the work is so systematically arranged that one can not fail to understand it. The life of the nation which shaped the literature of each period is graphically and simply described. Each political, national, and social law which helped to form the thoughts and customs of the people, is noticed. The leading writers are discussed under the different heads of biography, writing, style, rank, character, and influence. This tabular method has, by no means, degraded the book into simply a school text-book. It has made it suitable for that and more valuable to the general reader. The style is fresh, never tiresome. The illustrations are so woven into the narrative that an idea of the plan of the book is readily seen, and besides the quotations are admirably chosen. The work has been wrought enthusiastically and conscientiously by a man thoroughly interested in what he was doing. Its reception has been his reward.
The Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle,[F] have completed Mr. Froude’s task of reminiscence editing, and given the curious public ample information about the private life and character of Thomas Carlyle. The task has not been a pleasant one for Mr. Froude, but it has been faithfully and modestly performed. These letters are curiously interesting for many reasons. They are vivacious and sparkling, full of lively character sketches, and reveal the private life of one of the most discussed men of the age. Better than all of these, they introduce us to a woman to whom Arthur Helps once candidly said: “Well, really, you are a model wife,” to whom poor Mazzini could go whenever “in a state of crisis” (as he put it); whom Mills, Jeffrey, Tennyson, and many others, honored for her wit and womanliness. She was a clever woman, and a brave one. None but a clever woman could have written these charming letters, none but a brave one could have endured a husband like Carlyle. She was too loyal to cease loving him, too strong to complain, though many a letter shows her sense of his weakness. Jane Welsh Carlyle will find a permanent place among the famous women of the century for wifely devotion, as well as for being a brilliant letter-writer.
The book is chiefly valuable for its wide range of happily-told anecdotes, and its spicy comments. Here is a picture of Lord Jeffrey and Count D’Orsay, who were calling on her together: “What a difference! The prince of critics and the prince of dandies! How washed out the beautiful dandiacal face looked beside that little clever old man’s! The large blue dandiacal eyes you would say had never contemplated anything more interesting than the reflection of the handsome personage they pertained to in a looking-glass, while the dark penetrating ones of the other had taken notes of most things in God’s universe, even seeing a good way into millstones.” She makes wise and true as well as pointed comments on the wide range of men and society that came under her notice.
Undoubtedly Robert Browning’s “Jocoseria”[G] has been the most read and most thoroughly noticed of any book of poems of the season. It is a simple little volume of but ten poems. The best of them all is the unpretending one beginning:
“Never the time and the place
And the loved one all together!
This path—how soft to pace!
This May—what magic weather!
Where is the loved one’s face?”
The most influential book of the present day is undoubtedly the novel. They constitute four-fifths of all the books read. The philosophy of its development has become not only a question of great literary interest, but one of educational and moral interest. Mr. Sydney Lanier, in 1881, delivered a course of twelve lectures before the students of John Hopkins University, on this subject, and they have recently been published in book form,[H] forming a highly interesting and philosophical discussion. His object is to show that the growth in sentiment since the days of the Greeks has been so great that the old forms of literature and art have been inadequate to express our ideas, hence in the last two centuries three things have been developed—Science, Music, and the Novel. He gives most copious illustrations from modern novels to uphold his principles.
Lovers of American poetry and poets will be glad to welcome the recent “Life of William Cullen Bryant.”[I] Soon after Mr. Bryant’s death in 1878 his papers, containing useful materials for a biography of his life, were sent to Mr. Parke Godwin, a gentleman of long connection with the press, in order that he might prepare a memoir of the poet. Mr. Godwin has collected most of Mr. Bryant’s letters, his editorial writings, and the newspaper articles concerning him, until he has been able to lay before his readers a very complete and exact biography. Necessarily the work contains little of intense interest. Bryant’s life was a quiet, laborious one. Fifty years of it were spent in editorial work in which, as the author well says, “the labors consist of a series of incessant blows, of the real influence of which it is hard to judge.” But his career as editor and poet are well treated in a simple, pleasant narrative, which leave one with a profound respect for the upright, just and noble father of American poetry.
In September, 1881, the Presbyterian Church lost one of its most honored ministers by the death of the Rev. Cyrus Dickson, D.D., the Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions. The Presbytery of Baltimore at once arranged to prepare a memorial. The work was committed to the Rev. S. J. M. Eaton, D.D.[J] The biography which Dr. Eaton has produced is a simple story of a devout, self-sacrificing Christian. Such books never fail in their purpose. The story of a life is, after all, the most influential of stories.
One of the best of the many sets of school readers, is the “Globe Readings.”[K] Beginning with the simple primers of two grades there are six readers in which the selections are very carefully graded, followed by a “Book of Golden Deeds,” by Charlotte Yonge; Lamb’s “Tales from Shakspere;” Scott’s “Marmion;” “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and “Lady of the Lake;” Cowper’s “Task,” and Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield.” The series has been carefully edited, and the notes give just the amount of help necessary to young readers.
The “Home College Series”[L] has reached the number of thirty-two. They cover a great range of subjects. History, science, biography, art, house-keeping, penmanship, wise-sayings, political economy and religion, and will be valuable reading for spare moments.
The last issues of the charming “Riverside Literature Series,”[M] are “Biographical Stories” and “True Stories from New England History.”
This powder never varies. A marvel of purity, strength, and wholesomeness. More economical than the ordinary kinds, and can not be sold in competition with the multitude of low test, short weight, alum or phosphate powders. Sold only in cans. Royal Baking Powder Co., 106 Wall Street, New York.