LECTURE BY BISHOP WARREN ON ASTRONOMY.
What pleasures you have in astronomy, what a constant delight! You are reading the poems of the old Greeks written in the skies. They had thoughts about manhood so broad, so heroic, so full of glorious sympathies, that there were no books on earth fit to record them in, no marbles enduring enough to celebrate the remarkable and interesting deeds. So they took the page of the clear heavens, and put one hero there, and some suffering one near by, and the hero marching on to the deliverance of the suffering. The poetry, the pathos, the great deeds, the special sacrifices, all that they could think of, was written in the skies, and they read it nightly and taught it to their children in the open air. They read it as they sailed on the round sea. They kept in their minds the glory and heroism of the race, as it was there portrayed before them.
But the thoughts of the Greeks were mean and poor and small, compared with the thoughts that come to the astronomer of to-day. Then the stars were only little points in the heavens, and now they are greater worlds than we can think. We use them as the machinery of the gymnasium upon which to stretch our minds and invigorate our thought, not only in regard to material distance and greatness and glory, and years without count, but after a little they will become significant of the infinite power and godhead of our father who made all these things. Paul puts it just right, that these things that are seen tell of the eternal power and Godhead, so that people that see these things, and do not believe in him, are even without excuse. Then comes the teachings of the Elder Brother and the infinite Savior teaching something more than his power and Godhead, even of his Fatherhood and loving care for his children.
Do you know the pleasure of reading these heavens, of all the bright eyes signify, perchance, to you, in their nightly gaze upon you? Whenever I look into the heavens above there are friendly faces, there are bright eyes, there are, I may almost say, individuals that I well know, that I can not only call their names, but tell the very substances of which they are made, and rejoice that they look down upon me with a friendly eye. Under the oak at Hebron I hear God’s voice saying to me, as it did to Abraham, “Lift up thine eyes now unto the heavens.” When God wants to make a man great enough to found a nation, to have a special influence on the earth, he takes him out under the open heavens. By the infinite stars Abraham got his faith in an infinite God enlarged enough to trust him in all things.
I think any one who has not known the heavens might complain like Carlyle in his old age, “Why didn’t somebody teach me when I was young the names of the stars and the groupings of the constellations, which I do not half know now, and thereby have lost pleasure for a lifetime?” You can easily teach these things to those about you, to younger brothers and sisters, to children committed to your care as teachers. They will receive such teaching with delight. First teach them the North Star and the Pointers as always directing the gaze toward it. Tell them some stories about the Greek mythology of Theseus. Then tell them a little about finding some of the constellations. Teach them to know where to look for them at various seasons of the year. Then come to the planets. The planet that happens to be plainest in your sky at present is Venus. Tell them how far east it will come among the stars. You can get, in any ordinary almanac, her greatest elongation, the date, the time, and the star to which it goes. Tell one of these children that this star in the sky will journey so far toward the east, and then begin to go back among the stars toward the west. What a thing it will be for you to have a reputation for having the gift of prophecy, and what a thing it will be for you and your reputation when it comes true. Then tell them it will go west and come so close to the sun that by and by you can scarcely see it for the glory and brightness of the setting sun. Meanwhile, perhaps, Mercury will come in sight, and on some favorable night, on rare occasions, you can tell them, “There, you see that star; perhaps you will never see it again in your lives.” Thus you will give them acquaintance with a few stars and get them in the habit of looking up, a blessed thing for individuals in this world to do. They will interest father and mother about it, and that will interest all the rest of them, and it will be an exceeding great delight. Tell them of the few stars in the east just before sunrise, of Jupiter in the east at present. Tell them of the great changes that are going forward in that planet at present. You saw an account of that in the newspapers. But tell them that Jupiter has been so hot and covered with clouds so long that probably we have never seen its surface at all until a few months since, and now that a great floating island of scoria has come up to the surface, and it has been seen there now for nearly two years, and when it came near the sun men were anxious to know if the spot would be seen when it came up on the other side of the sun. They looked for it eagerly, and when they discovered that spot again, it had floated a long way in longitude.
These stars seem to be almost alive, and the thought that great activities are going on in them will exceedingly interest those with whom you have to do.
Then, how easily you can teach your circles the idea of distance. Just draw them in your school rooms where you “schoolma’ams”—the most honorable name in the world except that of mother—are permitted to teach. Draw them, and by this means you will be able to teach these little ones a few fundamental facts, and enlarge yourselves as you strive to grasp these distances. Bring the idea to them how long it would take a locomotive to go from the earth to the sun, three hundred and twenty years, running all the time; how long it would take to go elsewhere. Just stretch these little ones, for minds never give way, however much they may stretch or enlarge, stretch them up to understand these things that God has put before us.
I will represent the size of the sun by this table, and then represent Mercury and Venus with the head of a pin; represent the earth by a small-sized pea, very small, the smallest that grows at the end of the pod; represent Mars with another, and Jupiter with an orange. In an astronomy which I first taught, and the first one I ever studied, too, and it was studied and taught at the same time, there used to be an illustration that I have often used with great profit. Go out on your croquet ground, put down a two-bushel basket, for instance, to represent the sun, then draw at suitable distances the orbits of the different bodies. If you have some little children about the school house, put the liveliest little fellow you have to represent Mercury; then the liveliest girl to represent Venus; you know who will represent the earth; put some little fiery fighter to represent Mars, and explain it; then you can get some least sized brothers to represent the asteroids; some big old grandfather that will go slowly to represent Jupiter, etc. Try to start them. Let Mercury go his round swiftly as possible; let Venus go with queenly dignity, and the earth more slowly. You will get into confusion at first, and you will have a good laugh, but you will give to those young minds some illustration of how the earth revolves around the sun.
Don’t try to teach too much. Begin slowly with a single idea. You know how these lectures were represented with an apple swinging around the sun, sometimes with an elastic string to represent how near the moon came down to it. There are a thousand ways of making this interesting, plain and profitable. As you begin to study these, you find your own mind develops and unfolds in this direction.
I just looked into a book of poetry before coming up here, and almost to my surprise on a single page I found more than a dozen allusions to the stars. Astronomy is making itself felt in literature, is coming to be one of the largest means of expression. We are always lacking means of expressing our thoughts; for our words you philologists know have been mostly taken from material things, and then raised up one degree to represent mental ideas. For instance, we say “hard” of a table, then complain that it is a “hard” thing to bear, bringing it up into the region of mind; and we give words one more uplift for spiritual significance. So that our language is all the time one, two or three degrees below the full significance of that which is in our spiritual perception. Now, astronomy with its vastness, with its might and glory, is coming more and more into literature, so that you want an idea of it, and want to know what is to be understood by the words used. And especially when you come to that highest thought, when the Infinitely Wise condescends to speak in the language of men, and men’s words tremble and break down and can not bear his great thought, then you want to say, “High as the heavens are above the earth, so high are his thoughts and ways above ours.”
How much shall we grasp of his thoughts? As much as we grasp of his symbols. He has filled the Bible all full of his symbols, with the Divine Word full of the things of heaven, that we may know of the greatness and glory and power expressed in some of his great thoughts for the children of men. And we want to rise, grasping them, more and more of them, until “a primrose by the river’s brim, a yellow primrose, is to” us, and something more, and the meanest flower that blows brings thoughts that lie too deep for tears. What shall the heavens mean when we are used to utter God’s thought?
By reason of this I want you to spread the knowledge of the heavens above you just as freely as you possibly can. In Pennsylvania, in a quiet inland town that was supposed to be almost dead, some one with a little enthusiasm proposed to form a star club. It was a club for the study of the stars, and no man was to be admitted thereto except on certain conditions. He could be put on the course of study, he could have his preparatory course, he could gradually come along up, but the excellence of the real membership could not be obtained until he passed this test, until he could go out under the open heavens and call a hundred stars by name. How many here are eligible? A little pains would make it, a little pains along in the early evenings of a month, and then along in the later evenings of a month or two; a few minutes only would give you the ability of calling a hundred stars by name. It makes you feel a little like God, for “He calls all the stars by their names,” in the greatness of his power. And it is good for me to know some of the names that have trembled into the air from divine power and out of divine wisdom; it is good to call over the works of God.
Now, with a little enthusiasm here and there and elsewhere, you can get individuals to know the names of the stars very easily. I see here before me what I do not hesitate to advertise, simply because I have not been requested to do it, the outgrowth of one of our ideas in the “Recreations in Astronomy.” You will remember that there are some dark plates with bright spots, with directions to cut them out, stick them in a box, and put them before a candle. It is a little crude, but that thought has been taken up by Prof. Bailey, and a lantern constructed that is the most perfect invention in this department ever made. [Shows the lantern.]
This round disk is a representation of the northern heavens. It is an exact representation of all the stars in the northern sky. It gives their names, makes them revolve around the heavens, sets them to any hour or minute of the night of any month, in the exact position that they are at that very minute or month in the sky. Here on these other sides are the other portions of the heavens, north and south. It is beyond question the greatest invention in this line that has ever been made. It has the approval of such astronomers as Proctor, Asaph Hall, the men of distinction in the United States, and of such names as carry weight and authority anywhere. This is a Chautauqua invention. (Applause.) It has done more for the study of the heavens and the understanding of uranography than any other invention that has been made.[D]
[PACIFIC COAST C. L. S. C. ASSEMBLY.]
Members on the Pacific Coast who expect to attend the Monterey Assembly should at once notify J. O. Johnson, Pacific Grove, of the time of their coming and the length of their intended stay, also the kind of accommodations wished by them, whether tents or cottages.
The additional books which have been spoken of in The Chautauquan as reading for the class of ’83, “The Hall in the Grove, etc.,” are not required reading for the Pacific Coast students.
The Monterey Assembly opens July 5, and not June 27, as stated in the circular of last fall.
We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much; a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows, but which all the world does not practice.—La Bruyère.
[RAMBLES IN DAKOTA AND MONTANA.]
By W. A. DUNCAN.
But few people in the East have a correct idea of the Red River Valley. For hundreds of miles the land is as level as a floor; for thirty miles on either side of the river there is not even the roll of the prairie, and scarcely a tree or shrub in sight. The railroads shoot from village to village as straight as the flight of an arrow. You would see neither grade nor cut during forty-eight hours of travel.
The choice lands of the valley seem to be on the west side of the river, north from Grafton to the Dominion, and west to the Pembina Mountains, the land growing richer as you approach the mountains. There is but little government land to be obtained near the railroad. Although it has been in the market less than a year, nearly every section is taken, and prices range, according to the locality, from $200 to $4,500 for 160 acres of entirely unimproved land. In some counties many sections are apparently in the hands of speculators and railroad companies, who do nothing toward improving either roads or farms. The surpassing fertility of the soil has given Dakota its reputation. Its richness has never been exaggerated; it is as productive as the valley of the Nile, and it owes its fertility to the same cause. The annual overflow of the Red River, for centuries, has left a deposit that is unrivaled in wheat-producing qualities.
In discussing the future prosperity of the Red River Valley all admit that the control of these floods, by some system of levees, and drainage, is a vital question. The excess of water not only delays seeding but sometimes the harvesting, and it must seriously affect the healthfulness of that section. Water can not stand till it becomes stagnant without producing malaria. Nearly every one will tell you how healthy the people are; yet a prominent physician admitted that there was a great deal of fever, and that he feared there would be more as the country became more populous.
These low lands moreover send out during the hot summer days great swarms of immense mosquitos.
There is no gravel with which to make roads, hence in the spring they are something wonderful to behold; at certain seasons they are impassable. “I have just driven five miles,” said a gentleman, “and every foot of the way the wagon wheels sank to the hubs. There have been no drays in the streets of this city for three weeks. All carting has been done with hand-carts.”
And yet there is no doubt that this is a country with grand possibilities, able to support an immense population, rich in its soil, and worth all it is costing to make it habitable. Pioneer life is not one-half as hard here as it was in the days when New York State was reclaimed from a wilderness; but let no one come here thinking there is nothing to be done but to select a quarter section of land, and in a few months become rich. There is wealth here for those who seek it, but they must seek it with all their hearts.
The most prosperous section of the country, as it appears to a stranger, is on the line of the North Pacific road between Fargo and Bismarck. The foot hills begin at the James River and the grade ascends steadily until a point is reached at least five hundred feet above the valley. From Huron, in the south, to the Turtle Mountains, in the north, and west to the Missouri River, are what may be called the high-lands of Dakota, embracing as fine a rolling prairie land as can be found in the West. There are, however, poor sections; the soil is not so rich and deep as lower down in the valley; yet here 14,000 bushels of oats are said to have been raised from 180 acres, and 400 bushels of potatoes per acre. In the north, at Fort Totten, on Devil’s Lake, small fruits are grown in abundance, all kinds of vegetables and an inferior kind of corn. Yet in Russia apples and cherries are raised in abundance, three hundred miles farther north than Winnipeg. Toward the south, between Huron and the North Pacific Railroad, it is much warmer, and a larger variety of crops can be raised. This whole section has good air, is not flooded every spring, has a fair amount of rain, and produces well under proper cultivation. As a rule the water is poor, alkaline and brackish. At Steele, a bright and thriving county seat, on the Northern Pacific, half-way between Jamestown and Bismarck, soft water has been found.
There are some things about the Devil’s Lake country that seem very odd. As far as the eye can reach there is scarcely a tree or shrub. You may ride across the prairie for a hundred miles and not cross a stream, large or small; the surface is a rolling prairie, and in almost every hollow there is a pond of water; some of these ponds are half a mile across and remain throughout the year; probably the ground is frozen so deep that it can not absorb the water from the melting snow. The same cause prevents the forming of streams as the frozen hollows hold the water. A proper system of drainage, connecting all the ponds, would fill the country with brooks.
It is almost the country of the “midnight sun.” One can see to read without lamp-light till nearly ten o’clock, and again as early as three in the morning. It is said that in summer the evening and morning twilight can be seen at the same time.
The “shacks,” or houses, are strange dwellings for human beings to live in; being merely a board shanty, one story high, often only ten by twelve, with perhaps one small window and a door, the whole cabin covered with black tar-paper, and batten strips nailed over the cracks. Sometimes the home is nothing but a hole dug into the side of a hill, with a door and no window. Some of the houses, and many of the barns, are made of sod cut and laid one upon another, just as we lay brick; occasionally the walls are thicker at the base than at the top, and curve in at the center with graceful lines; in fact some of the sod houses are very pretty, and must be quite warm. We fancied them covered with green grass in summer, and sprinkled with violets and blue forget-me-nots.
Fort Totten and the Indian Reservation are here, and the government is experimenting with an industrial school, trying to Christianize and educate the Indians. It is a success. In answer to questions Major Crampton said, “You can educate and civilize them as well as you can the whites, but you must have patience, and begin with the children. We have a school for girls, and the Sisters of Charity teach them how to sew, cook, and do housework, and we teach the boys how to farm and do general work; then when they want to marry we give them their own home and land in severalty, and you have no idea how happy and prosperous they are. You couldn’t get a civilized girl to go back to the old life, and even the heathen want civilized wives. I make and unmake chiefs. The best men are appointed to all the offices. Old men with two wives are permitted to live with them, but young men are put in prison if they attempt polygamy. We forbid immoral dances.”
Devil’s Lake is sixty miles long and six miles wide; there is no outlet or inlet, and the water is brackish; it abounds with fish. The name of the lake seems to be a misnomer, as there are no evidences of heat in any part of the country, not even enough for comfort. In May it was covered with ice four feet thick. A little warmth would have done no harm. The owners of property in that section are anxious to make it a summer resort, and propose to give hearty assistance to any Chautauqua workers who will open a Sunday-school assembly there.
There is beauty here for the artist. Over there is the white line of the beach, with a forest background, a green slope between. To the left are dim wreaths of smoke, curling cloudward: they come from the “council fires” of the Sioux braves, as they camp on the reservation; they seem to ascend from fires lighted by invisible hands, and around them seem to be gathered the spirits of departed warriors, shadows, hidden from unanointed eyes. To the west the sun is a ball of fire dropping into a sea of ice: sapphire, flame and pearl are mixed with the blue and golden light, and arch toward heaven, tinging forest and hill with celestial splendor. As the orb of day sinks behind the hills, it seems like the path to glory, and but a step—
“Over the sunset bar
Right into heaven.”
Montana is entered at the Little Missouri, one hundred miles west of Bismarck. The road to this point runs through an upland prairie, or valley. From Bismarck to Livingston, the gateway to the Park, a distance of six hundred miles, the rain-fall is light, insufficient for general farming. In the summer the grasses dry or cure, and it is claimed they are very nutritious, and much relished by herds. At Miles City, and Billings, canals twenty and thirty miles long are being dug which, when completed, will be used to irrigate the valley. This can never be a great agricultural country without irrigation. Large crops are not raised except on farms that have a natural overflow from some stream or in some exceptionally wet season. But with a water supply under control, there is no reason why this wide, rich valley, may not supply the land with its productions. Let none come here to engage in farming unless they are prepared to supply their crops with abundance of water; there are plenty of streams, or an artesian well can be sunk, which, with an engine or wind-mill, and force-pump, would enable any one to make a fortune. But none need fear to come and engage in herding. Fabulous stories are told of the fortunes made from flocks and herds. The ranches are in the valleys, being used in the winter for the herds, and for the horses in the summer. They are located on the streams, and join the mountain lands in the rear, where the herds and flocks range at large, and fatten without even being fed or cared for.
Sunday is not observed as a holy day. Trains run; building and all kinds of labor continue, and if there is any difference, there is more bustle on the Sabbath than on any other day. At Billings, saloons are open, hurdy-gurdies playing, negroes singing, and drunken dances going on in rooms on the main street of the village.
We visited here the Crow Reservation, and saw among the Indians one of the finest specimens of physical manhood in the world. A Crow warrior, with a physique that Hercules might have envied—straight as an arrow, colored nut-brown; with an eye like that of an eagle, and with the bearing of a Cæsar; one could easily fancy that a second King Philip stood before him. The Crows have a singular burial custom: they wind, with sheets, the bodies of the dead, practising a primitive kind of embalming, and then place them on elevated platforms, or fasten them to the limbs of a tree. At one of their burial places we saw the body of their old chieftain, Blackbow. The table upon which it lay was falling into decay, but the body remained undisturbed. For many a year it had kept a silent watch over the happy hunting-ground of his people.
Here, also, the experiment of industrial schools is being tried. Said the Crow agent, “We are teaching them how to work. I believe one plow is as good as two spelling-books, with these people. We must teach them how to labor, and the dignity of it.” It was through this valley that Custer marched to his death, and many places are named for him.
The whole surface of the country, for hundreds of miles, is covered with petrified trees, snakes, and shells. We saw hundreds of petrified stumps, some of them six feet across.
Citadel Rocks and Pyramid Park, are on the line of the Pacific road, and are wonderful freaks of nature. The latter seems to have been produced by the burning of the coal that underlies the whole country; in fact, in some places, the fires still burning can be seen from the car windows—one fire being near enough to be felt inside the cars.
All along the line antelope are feeding on the hillsides, and in many places those natural communists, the hawk and prairie-dog, can be seen sitting together beside their common home.
The Upper Yellowstone is as lovely a valley as the eye of man ever saw. For one hundred miles east of Livingston the scenery is of wondrous beauty. The slopes of the hills and the mountains turn in graceful curves, mountain against mountain, peak above peak, valley beyond valley, flooding the air and sky with lines of beauty. Some of the mountains are ribbed horizontally, others from base to peak, and all are covered with green verdure, mixed with the brown of last year’s grasses; the fir tree dots the whole with patches of brilliant green, and the beautiful Yellowstone dashes through the valley. Nestled in secluded places are the cabins; grazing on the hillsides are herds of cattle, and here and there the reckless “cow-boy” can be seen dashing across the plains.
At Billings we passed through a heavy snow storm, but as we journeyed westward we felt the warm touch of the Chennock, as it swept down the valley, bringing life and beauty in its gentle touch. Every hilltop is rounded and covered with grasses, and it does not seem possible that on all this round globe there is another valley with such a wealth of graceful curves and delicate colors.
Enthroned at the head of the valley, Livingston sits a very queen; in her right hand the Yellowstone Park, in her left the Bozeman Pass over the Rockies, Emigrant, Crazy, and Baldhead mountains, seemingly but a mile away, though in reality more than fifty, lift their hoary heads fourteen thousand feet toward the heavens, and sparkle in the sunlight like jewels in her crown.
Northern Dakota and Manitoba are very cold countries. In the rural districts the inhabitants do not pretend to have schools in the winter, it is so cold they would not dare to let the children attend. Sometimes during storms men fear to leave their stores at night, and remain in them rather than risk their lives in going home; farmers tie a rope around their bodies, fastening one end to their cabins, when they go out to feed their cattle, and no one leaves home that can avoid it.
But with proper preparation colonies will make no mistake in locating in Dakota or Montana, and the same may be said of individuals. For lack of correct information parties are sometimes deceived. A story is told of a party of German emigrants, who came this spring from across the sea. They had been induced to come by some foreign agent, who had given them a picture of Gladstone, a beautiful little village, and had agreed to locate them there on government lands. Instead of fulfilling his promise he located them several miles away, where there was not a cabin in sight. Said an eye-witness: “It was laughable and sad to see them. Each man had a cut of Gladstone in his hand, and they were all looking for the houses.”
There are rare opportunities to make fortunes; the soil is exceedingly fertile, especially so in Dakota; the cereals grow abundantly, even with the poor farming practiced. Farms and city lots, properly located in thriving towns, are steadily increasing in value, and there are plenty of government lands yet unoccupied, in excellent localities. The Northern Pacific Railroad has any quantity of its very best lands, between Jamestown and Bismarck, yet unsold. One can scarcely make a mistake in settling there, because the land is high and not subject to inundation. There are splendid opportunities in all the country around Bismarck and north, even to the far-famed Turtle Mountains. In all the above-mentioned section success is assured to the patient, hard-working settler. He will have to endure privations; the severe cold of an almost arctic winter; a rude cabin for a dwelling-place; loss of opportunities for education; few churches or Sunday-schools, and a promiscuous population. There are many men and women of culture among the people, but there are also a great many adventurers, as in every new country. But in time all this will change, roads will be worked, schools and churches will be built, cabins will be changed into elegant farm-houses, and society will crystallize as it has done in eastern centers. All this will come after the struggle for existence, which is now going on, is over.
[COMING CHAUTAUQUA DAYS.]
Quite a scientific season will this of ’83 be, recalling the distinguished programs when Prof. Doremus illuminated them. Now, in addition to the graphic Prof. Edwards, who reappears, there is to be the brilliant course of Prof. W. C. Richards, the bare reading of which is like a menu to a famished intellect. Dr. Newell, of Chicago, and Prof. Young, of Princeton College, also lecture on scientific topics. It is to be a revival in physics.
The lessons in cookery, by Miss Ewing, are a recognition of the growing interest in higher culinary art, an accomplishment considered by some to be the highest of all arts, as it certainly is the most important to mankind. Chautauqua proposes to contribute its share to make this art universal, until it can no longer be said that the chef of a hotel can command a higher salary than the president of a college.
And there will be Prince Bolly presiding either at hotel or spelling-match with equal grace. General Lewis offers the prizes for the best spellers; would it not be a fair return for the best spellers to offer a prize for the best hotel keeper, with the secret certainty, of course, that Mr. Lewis would win it, and so get his reward for services in behalf of correct orthography and good living at Chautauqua?
People at Chautauqua always live high—1,400 feet above the sea. The place is pure atmospherically, aquatically, morally, and intellectually they live in a rarified and quickening medium. The whole effect is elevating, though we never saw a person on the grounds who had “got high.”
Wallace Bruce, the man of Scotch name and lineage, but of all-world culture, will be there and personify the literati of all times and nations. To know Bruce is a liberal education in belles-lettres.
A wit of his time proposed as an epitaph on Congreve, the projector of the rocket (in a double sense) this wicked sentence. “He has gone to the only place where his fireworks can be excelled.” That place might be Chautauqua instead of a worse place, if Congreve had lived till now. The world of Chautauqua will be delighted with pyrotechnics both by day and by night this year. The famous Japanese day fireworks, which have proved such an attraction at Manhattan Beach, Long Branch, and other resorts, will be the sensation at Chautauqua beach. We imagine we can hear the “ohs!” from the “windy suspirations of forced breath” of tens of thousands of spectators.
The program this year fairly glitters with great names, as, Joseph Cook, Talmage, Judge Tourgée, Hon. Will Cumback, and the long list of D.D.’s, collegians and specialists.
The Teachers’ Retreat advances, not retrogrades. Read the program; wonder and admire. The experimental classes of Miss Read should be worth the price of the course to any teacher.
Music is to have another rise in the scale this year. Such a list of soloists and instructors was never before offered at any summer institute of music, and then the grand organ and other accessories!
Froebel is again to be commemorated. It is hoped that some one will be prepared to give a succinct résumé of Froebelism. The question, “What is kindergarten?” is one of the unanswered conundrums of the day.
Prepare to smile—Frank Beard is coming again.
Some one once said he preferred to go sleigh-riding in the summer, when he could enjoy the excursion without freezing to death. Now one can go on a sea voyage without being sea sick, and see the sights of a trip abroad without the cost, expense, and fatigue of foreign travel. It was a brilliant conception, that “Ideal Summer Trip Beyond the Sea.” If it does not prove one of the hits of this season of hits by the Hittites, we do not hit the mark in our guess.
The Museum has proved one of the great attractions at Chautauqua ever since its inception, and the public will be glad to read of the remarkable attractions now to be added to it. Miller fecit, as usual.
“The morning hour” of metaphysics is to be abolished and something more understandable taken up—Hebrew.
But the great day of all, the day of intellectual and spiritual uplifting, is to be the “Commencement Day” of the C. L. S. C. The joy and glory of the last one has not yet ceased to echo “in the chambers of the soul.” It will be a red, white and blue event—a red letter day, at a white heat of fervor, and the blue sky over all. “Oh, who that feels them ever will forget the emotions of those spirit-stirring times!”
Chautauqua has sent its special reporter through all the nations of the world and he will render this year his account. Our voyager and explorer, Cook, was not eaten by the savages like the earlier one; rather, he comes to spread a civilized and civilizing symposium.
Returning Chautauquans will find the grounds much improved. Besides the beautification and edification by private enterprise and taste, visitors will find great changes for the better wrought by the association. The most notable of the many features of this work is to be seen on the lake-front of the Athenæum Hotel. The avenue has been moved down to the lake shore and made a most romantic drive on the beach, and all the additional space is devoted to a sloping lawn. All the disfiguring relics have been removed from the vicinage, and this part of the grounds is as prim and proper as a miss in her new summer gown.
Chautauqua continues to be the cheapest summer resort and summer school in the world. For four dollars the resort is open forty-three days—about nine cents a day. A dollar a week secures the privilege of the lectures, concerts, and all the “pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious” Chautauqua after the Assembly proper begins. Is there anything anywhere like that for cheapness? The highest-priced thing at Chautauqua gives much more and better than can be gotten elsewhere for the same sum. But after all, there is here, what can not be gotten elsewhere for any price, that is the most priceless of all, “The Chautauqua Idea,” its inspiration, uplift, expansion, liberalizing.
Phonography is one of the most remunerative and surest avocations now open to women, and a good opportunity to acquire a knowledge of it from a master is open at Chautauqua under Prof. Bridge.
The fruit derived from labor is the sweetest of all pleasures.—Vauvenargues.
[THE CIRCLE OF THE SCIENCES.]
Prof. J. T. Edwards, of Chamberlain Institute, N. Y., is to deliver a course of eight lectures before the C. T. R. at Chautauqua this summer. “Physical Science” is to be the subject of these lectures, the design being to show how all the sciences, botany, zoölogy, etc., are but sectors of one great circle, that one plan underlies all natural phenomena. The lectures will be brilliantly illustrated and will be of peculiar value to teachers. Prof. Edwards has sent us the following outline of his work, which shows that though his theme is extended, yet it is so systematized as to be very simple:
Nature is a unit. E pluribus unum might be taken for its motto; the circle is its emblem; ten thousand radii touch its circumference; every atom bears a relation to its center; everything is connected with everything. It was not a mere fancy that when the Creator made even the little snow-drop, he adjusted it to the gravities of all worlds. Humboldt chose “Cosmos” as the title of his immortal work, and he defined it, “The doctrine of the universe, the system of law, harmony and truth combined within the universe.”
Glance at the copious index. What diversity in the subjects discussed. We wonder how he will be able to fit into beautiful mosaic all these fragments.
A large look at nature sees it one. The spectroscope now tells us that all worlds are but “parts of one stupendous whole.” Matter is ever changing, but never lost. Force is indestructible; a thousand floods ten thousand years ago prepared the earth for habitation. Feeble insects laid the foundations of Paris and London perhaps millions of years before the Romans drove piles into the Thames. Our stove and coal bins are ninety millions of miles away. Nature is full of beautiful dependencies. The animal feeds upon the vegetable, and the latter lives upon the mineral kingdom. The mere physical forces of light, heat and electricity are doubtless directly connected with the noblest activities of organized beings.
Now, one object of this course of lectures is to show things in their connections. Bird’s-eye views are very essential in the study of large landscapes. The poet is not the only “maker.” Most minds prefer the concrete to the abstract—synthesis to analysis. The gem is never so beautiful as in its appropriate setting. The springing bow alone shows us the splendor of each color.
Astronomy, “Mother of the Sciences,” will “teach us our place” among the worlds; will tell of the time when the “morning stars were singing.” Some of the greatest and some of the most devout minds of every age have delighted in this study. Its votaries now, however, are no longer alone on the watch-towers. Observers stand with them, eager to gaze upon the stars, although with less trained vision. Bishop Warren’s delightful book shows us the possibility of being both accurate and interesting. He just supplements “the look” that was given at “The Point” in the days “lang syne,” with a longer and steadier gaze into the heavens.
As Astronomy will show us the infinitely large, Chemistry will bring to us the infinitely small. Here we are in Nature’s laboratory. Listen! We can almost hear the myriad atoms, like unseen battalions in the night, quietly falling into line. It is as if we had penetrated the arcana of Nature. See! Here she mingles her dyes. Hence come the odors, the flavors, the forms of all substances. No wonder the old alchemist hung over his crucible (crux, across—the mark upon the vessel to guard against the geests, ghosts—our gas—which threatened him) until the divining rod fell from his palsied hand. There is a rare fascination in the study. It so closely concerns human welfare. The useful as well as the fine arts, agriculture, manufacturing, and all our domestic life are intimately concerned in its discoveries and progress, and when we have learned how wonderful a thing is a molecule we are prepared to learn of masses of minerals. Mineralogy is less understood than some other of the natural sciences; for a few years past, however, it has pushed forward rapidly. The impetus given to mining, the formation of cabinets, of great mineralogical displays, such as that at Denver the past year, and the mineral treasures of Australia, California, and Colorado have awakened much popular interest. Gold was mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis, and the enumeration of precious stones in various parts of the Old Testament, and in Revelation, shows that the ancients were not unacquainted with the more beautiful forms of minerals. It remained, however for our time to show that even the clod beneath our feet, the rock of the mountain, and the ice of the glacier are built with the precision of a marble palace. There is a beautiful simplicity in these combinations. They can all be reduced to six primary forms. This science and the closely allied branch of Crystalography fortunately can be made very pleasing to the eye by means of the helps which we can summon. Thus we are led by gradual steps to consider Geology, or the study of the earth, as to its great features. And what a theme it is! Ocean making! continent building! mountain raising! making of worlds! The story is written in strata by fossils, or in the markings left by some great force in the earth’s crust.
No science has more interest for the artist, the architect, the civil engineer. But perhaps a deeper and more solemn interest attaches to it because of its relations to the all-important truths of Revelation. Fortunately this branch of human knowledge has not been forced to depend upon individual enterprise or love of truth. It has knocked at the halls of legislation; it has been welcomed to the palaces of kings. For lo! it came promising greater riches than were ever dreamed of by Spanish free-booters, and many a State has found through it an El Dorado within its own limits.
Physics, or Natural Philosophy, will next explain to us more fully by illustration and apparatus, the characteristics of those forces which join together the molecules, not less than hold the worlds in harmony. It is an old science, but has clothed itself in new garments. In some directions, as in acoustics and light, it has made very wonderful progress within the memory of the school-boy of to-day. The “Arabian Nights” has few things to tell us so startling as that a man can sit in his office in New York and hold converse with a friend in Chicago.
Never before did man give such good promise of really entering upon his heritage as master in this world, in the spirit of the high destiny that was promised him at his creation.
Botany comes next. It has been quite the fashion to look upon this study as unworthy the attention of the vigorous masculine mind—“a girl’s study, about posy-beds, the language of flowers, and, at best, fit only for the decoration of a poet’s verse!” And yet it concerns one whole wide realm of nature. It has received little attention in our colleges, scarcely finding a place in the curriculum of study.
It really embraces a number of separate sciences—economic, agricultural, horticultural, medical and fossil botany. Of late a new interest has been awakened in some of these. The climatic relations of forests have become matter of legislative inquiry. Great forestry conventions have been held, and an able report upon the subject has been made by the Commissioner of Agriculture. A gentleman in New York has just made an appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars for the best collection of woods in the world. Aside from these utilitarian views of the matter it is enough for us to know that the Great Teacher said: “Consider the lilies,” and often upon Olivet or “by cool Siloam’s shady rill,” seemed to take pleasure in the trees and flowers which his own hand had made.
Zoölogy will show us a comparative view of the animal creation. A whole literature upon this subject has sprung up within a few years. Darwin and Huxley have added many close and admirable observations upon the habits of animals. Numerous books have appeared upon “Mind in Animals,” “Higher Life in Animals,” and kindred topics, until one almost trembles for his rank in the scale of being. Indeed, when royalty weeps over the departure of Jumbo, and lap-dogs and canaries win the first place in the hearts of fair ladies, we may well review our claims as “lords of creation.”
The study of the Creator’s last great work—man, Physiology, comes next in the order of our series. “Fearfully and wonderfully made,” said the sacred writer, and every discovery of the microscope, every analysis of the scalpel, every astute and learned study of eye, ear, heart or brain, but repeats the declaration, “Know thyself,” urged by one of old as a duty, but it is also a high privilege. A knowledge of physiology and hygiene lies at the very foundation of the science of human welfare. We are now claiming it as a mighty missionary agency in the conversion of the heathen. Ah! it is a rare power to know one’s own make-up and limitations, to the end that the free spirit may do its best. Then again, every one must some day stand where this knowledge will be useful to others; and what higher aim have we than to enrich others with our own knowledge? One can be miserly with his ideas as with his money. Helping with useful knowledge is of that giving which does not impoverish.
Doubtless to cover so wide a field we shall have to study carefully the fine “art of leaving out.” Some other things we must surely remember. For example:
1. To pursue the Golconda miner’s method—save the diamonds.
2. Adopt the motto of the great dailies, “condense.”
3. Popularize—if possible strip off the technicalities, and present truth in such a way that busy men and women may readily secure it.
4. Be accurate as far as we go, and help minds to go farther.
5. Encourage to self-help, to observe nature, to study, to experiment. Why be thirsty with the Amazon flowing around us?
6. To use all helps appropriate to each subject, by which ideas may be borne to the mind through that sense best calculated to convey them.
It is a profound mistake to think everything has been discovered; it is the same as to consider the horizon to be the boundary of the world.—Lemierre.