One of the notable events of October was the celebration throughout the world of the hundredth birthday of Sir Joseph Montefiore, the wealthy Jew whose philanthropy has shed luster on his race. In this celebration the Hebrews have the sympathy and congratulations of Christians everywhere. The venerable philanthropist has shown what wealth is good for, and set an example of faithful stewardship which ought not to be lost on other millionaires.
Some one has figured out that “just now, in the United States,” twenty-one deaths in a hundred are caused by violence. It is safe to avoid this kind of statistics. There is no means of knowing what the rate of death by violence really is “just at present,” and it is perfectly certain it is not twenty-one. It is only seven in England, where statistics are kept. We keep none except in large cities, but we certainly are not three times as bloody-handed as Englishmen.
New York had pending in the late election an amendment to the constitution limiting the debts of towns and cities in the ratio of population. In Illinois, in 1870, the new constitution put in force a similar rule. The effect, in many towns, was a series of “improvements,” carrying the debt up to the constitutional limit. The towns were ashamed of themselves when they found that they did not owe as much as the law allowed them to owe.
The horror of being buried alive is the most blood-curdling one known to civilized life, and yet cases of people being buried alive continue to be reported. The death of a woman at Hornellsville, N. Y., was certified by a physician. She was removed from the grave, and report says that, though in all other respects apparently dead, the body perspired freely. It looks like a case of trance. At all events she was buried too soon, and it is probable that in other cases bodies are frozen to death a few hours after apparent death. The whole subject of trance invites study of a more thorough sort than it has hitherto had.
Unpunctuality is a seductive vice in social matters. When a party or a dinner is announced for a given hour, it should begin at that hour, and not an hour or two later. The French custom is to allow half an hour for dilatory guests at dinners; but in other matters the French way is for each of the parties who have made a rendezvous—unless as duelists—to give the other half an hour’s margin, which being taken on both sides makes in all an hour. This system of addition is analogous to what a Californian said of a big tree—it grew so high that it took two men and a boy to see to the top.