On Sunday, the ninth day of September, the steamship “Nevada” landed 682 Mormons at New York, being the fourth company that has been brought over this year. H. H. Evans, the secretary, said that there were in the company 269 British, 106 Swiss and Germans, 284 Scandinavians, and 23 returning missionaries. “Every emigrant,” he added, “paid his or her passage over. No aid is afforded them by the Mormon Church. The majority have a little money with them, enough to establish themselves in America. They will locate in sixteen towns in Utah. All we do is to protect them while traveling from Liverpool to Utah. Some of these immigrants have been years laying up money to pay their passage to this country.” One of the Mormon immigrants did not go through to Utah. Her name is Regina Andersen. She is a Swedish woman, spinster, thirty-five years of age, and is afflicted with blindness. Her brother Leander and her sister Anna, who live in Philadelphia, had heard of her intention to go to Utah and were at Castle Garden to intercept her before the “Nevada” arrived. They insisted upon talking with their blind sister, and soon succeeded in persuading her to abandon the Mormon proselytes and prepare to go with her relatives to Philadelphia. The Mormon missionaries were strongly opposed to the woman leaving the party, but the matter was brought before Superintendent Jackson, and the woman was permitted to go to Philadelphia with her brother. She had prepaid her passage to Salt Lake and did not receive her money back. In conversation with a reporter the woman appeared not to know anything about the peculiar institution of the Mormon Church—polygamy. Congress could quite as consistently, and with better results to the country, enact a law to prevent this kind of emigration, than the one they have leveled against the Chinese. Why not meet Mormonism at New York harbor and prevent this infamous traffic in human lives?
The Rev. Henry A. Powell, in his Congregational church in Williamsburg, on a Sunday in September discussed “The sorrows of the Free Thinkers as revealed at their recent convention,” from this suggestive text: “The show of their countenances doth witness against them.” He stated that over their platform were hung the pictures of Thomas Paine, R. G. Ingersoll, and D. M. Bennett—Paine author of a book against the Bible—Ingersoll, dispenser of blasphemy—Bennett, who not long since served a term in the penitentiary for sending foul literature through the mails. “How much better than such visionary wanderings is the old story of a living Father in heaven, of a Savior who suffered on the cross, and angel visitants to lead us from the life mortal to the life immortal.”
We call the attention of our readers to the notice elsewhere in this number of the “Chautauqua School of Languages,” the different departments of which are to be organized into schools of correspondence, so that students may, at their homes, study Hebrew, German, French, etc., by corresponding with competent teachers. This is a rare opportunity for members of the C. L. S. C., or any others who desire, to study the languages, but are denied the privileges of the schools. Next month we shall introduce the “Normal Work” into The Chautauquan, in a few initial chapters, from the pens of Rev. Dr. Hurlbut and Prof. R. S. Holmes, and thus extend to our readers through the year the privilege of pursuing this course, which is a main feature of the summer assemblies.
The telegraph operators have by their strike provoked a general discussion in the press of the telegraph system of the country, besides exciting the attention of Postmaster-General Gresham, who promises to discuss in his annual report to Congress the practicability of the general government assuming control of all telegraph lines as it does of the postal service. It ought to work as well in the United States as it does in England. Mr. Fawcett, Postmaster-General of Great Britain, reports that “the number of telegraph messages sent in the United Kingdom during the last year was 32,092,026.” Mr. Fawcett says that it has been decided that as soon as the necessary increase of plant can be made, the minimum charge for inland telegrams will be reduced from 24 to 12 cents.
A correspondent says, under date of September 9: “The last spike on the Northern Pacific Road was driven this afternoon on the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains, 2,500 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, and 800 miles from the Pacific, and 91 years after the idea of a highway from the Lakes to the Pacific was first suggested by Thomas Jefferson.”