The Boston Traveler of November 6th contains, in its editorial department, the following noble compliment to the C. L. S. C.: “This society that teaches the use of leisure hours and inspires the men and women of America with an intelligent aspiration to learn something of all that it is practicable to learn in home study by imparting the enthusiasm of companionship in work, has this year almost twice as many ardent, self-sacrificing students of its curriculum as the combined membership of all the American colleges from Maine to Washington Territory. When we consider the influence of a single collegiate institution, many of whose students attend from parental rather than personal aspirations, and think how much money is annually raised through benevolence for them, exceptional praise is due him who has by his own wit and wisdom, without financial appeal or charitable pretence, called into line for the study of history, philosophy, science and literature nearly double the constituency of all our colleges.”
A story comes from one of the Southern states that a man recently committed suicide rather than pay his taxes. Of the two inevitable things, death and taxes, he seems to have preferred, contrary to the common choice, to suffer death. The story furnishes a text for a sermon on the modification of general feeling relative to taxation. The suicide of the story was a survival; taxes are no longer regarded with aversion; they are paid, as grocers’ bills are, with equanimity.
The desire to fly “springs eternal in the human breast,” and the balloon is a very fascinating field of experiment. A Frenchman seems to have gained a point, and a good one. By using stored electricity he has succeeded in going where he wanted to go, moving for four hours against the wind. An Englishman has invented a means of keeping a balloon at the same level, he thinks. Perhaps ballooning may yet become a practical science.
Eccentric opinions sometimes have a fine and ancient flavor combined with a modern taste. Such is the statement recently made in a public meeting that insanity is increasing among the colored people, and that education is the cause of it. The reader can pick out the two tastes. We fear that the colored people are not yet educated enough to cause insanity, and we do not seem to know that education ever caused anybody to become insane.
Among the “fashions” is the rage for old furniture. Grandmother’s spinning wheel adorns the parlor, and worm-eaten old bureaus flank it on either side. But a dealer in this kind of goods, speaking of course against his rivals in trade, says that most of this old furniture is made at modern factories. Even the old spinning wheels are imitated to perfection. A story—wicked, perhaps—says that a Connecticut man is getting rich making “Mayflower heirlooms.” Persistent rumors of this kind will kill the fashion.