They have one hundred and fifty miles of electric railway in operation in Europe. Active preparations are making by rival inventors and corporations in New York City to introduce electricity on a large scale as a safe, rapid, and cheap motor. As in lighting houses, towns, and cities we have passed from the tallow candle to kerosene, and then to gas, and on to the electric light, so by many steps and advances we are almost ready to accept electricity as the moving power of railway trains.
The pardoning power of the general government is liable to work pernicious results in the regular army. Cases of embezzlement and fraud among army officers have been growing in number since our civil war, and laxity in the enforcement of the laws against these offenders is a growing evil. General J. B. Fry, an officer of repute, and a graduate of West Point, thus points out the evil: “The interposition of higher authority in favor of offenders has been so frequent since the war, especially from 1876 to 1880, as to be a great injury to the service. Many of the evils which have been exposed recently are fairly chargeable to executive and legislative reversal of army action. * * * When the strong current of military justice is dammed by the authorities set over the army, stagnant pools are formed which breed scandal, fraud, disobedience, dissipation, and disgrace, sometimes even among those educated for the service.”
Cable intelligence, received September 3, shows that the Baron Nordenskjöld, as a Greenland explorer, has accomplished a large part of his original purpose. The expedition entered West Greenland in latitude 68°, and proceeded 220 miles inland, attained an altitude of seven thousand feet above the sea level. In 1878 Lieutenant Jansen, of the Danish navy, penetrated fifty miles from the coast, and reached an “icy mountain, in lat. 62° 40′, five thousand feet high.” But no explorer has since done anything worth mention toward solving the mystery of Greenland’s interior physical geography. The expedition with Professor Nordenskjöld has gone farther and seen more of the “immense desert of ice;” and the latest telegrams claim that some important scientific data have been obtained.
The prohibition amendment, submitted to the voters of Ohio, is defeated, and our cherished hopes of its success, for the present, sadly disappointed. The non-partisan temperance people, everywhere, felt deeply interested in the issue, and will hear the result with profound sorrow. Multitudes of Ohio’s best men and women, who had prayed, worked, and hoped that deliverance might come in that way, and that from the 9th of October we would see the unspeakable curse of the liquor traffic placed where it ought to be, under the ban of the constitution, from which corrupt tinkering politicians would be unable to protect it, will confess their disappointment, but neither suppress their prayers nor cease their efforts. They are clearly in the majority, and when united will succeed.
Telegraphic report says the Vicar of Stratford has authorized the exhumation of the remains of Shakspere that they may compare the skull with the bust that stands over the grave. Dr. Ingleby, of London, who is a trustee of the Shakspere Museum at Stratford, wishes, it seems, to photograph the face and take a cast of the skull. The absurdity of the proposal makes it almost incredible, and should itself prevent the desecration. We are not surprised that the bishop and local authorities have protested, and the intended outrage will hardly be perpetrated. By the terms of the deed of interment the consent of the Mayor of Stratford-on-Avon must first be given before the body can be moved. To this proposal, that official has given a decided refusal, and the dust of the poet will not be disturbed. Shakspere has been dead two hundred and sixty-seven years. The type of face and head, universally accepted as his, is sufficiently accurate. If it were not the correction of any fault in that likeness is now impossible.