“We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light-sifted snow-flakes fall.”
The London (England) Chronicle speaks the following sensible words concerning the new honor conferred on Tennyson: “It will seem very strange for us to have to think of Alfred Tennyson as Lord Tennyson, and he is too aged, and his life-impression too decidedly fixed, for the changed name to get established. Just as we speak of Shakspere, and Wordsworth, and Bulwer Lytton, and Browning, so we shall think and speak of Tennyson. A poet’s proper crown is not a peerage, but a nation’s admiration and love, and the world’s uplifting by his words of trust and hope, his visions of the perfect, the beautiful, and the true, his subtle readings of human hearts and motives. England, and the English speaking races of the world, crowned Tennyson long ago, and the peerage crown seems but a little thing, only needing a passing word.”
Among the many “happy ideas” hit upon in connection with the C. L. S. C., that of Memorial Days deserves prominent place and mention. Several of these days are named for men whose genius and literary greatness have received the world’s recognition. These days are not memorials to the cold letters that spell the names of Milton, Addison, and Shakspere, but to genius and greatness in literature as represented by them. And the design is not to keep in memory a mere literal sign, a name, but to pay our homage to the literary or other merit with which the name is associated. And this with the ulterior view of kindling aspirations and inspirations in our own minds and hearts.
Seventy-five million dollars are invested in the rubber business of this country, of which $30,000,000 are in the boot and shoe manufacture. The annual products are $250,000,000, made by 15,000 persons at 120 factories. Thirty thousand tons of raw rubber are used each year. The forests along the equator, which Humboldt declared inexhaustible, are dwindling, and the rapid increase of cost of rubber (from 50 cents to $1.25 per lb. in six years) is leading to search for cheaper substitutes.