The position that Mr. Phelps will take at the Court of St. James has been agitating the English correspondent of one of our great dailies. He finds that being a minister merely, Mr. Phelps must come in among the ministers, after all the seven ambassadors; and that, alas! he will be literally at the foot of this class of twenty-three. Ministers take social rank according to the length of time they have held their positions, so Mr. Phelps and the stars and stripes trot along after Guatemala and Columbia and Siam and Hayti.
The teachers who tried Chautauqua last summer for their vacations, found the spot so suitable for their uses, so delightful for recreation, that they have spread abroad the rumor of her beauty, and in July of the coming summer two State Teachers’ Associations—that of Ohio and that of New York—will meet there.
There are very few people unfamiliar with law and its phrases, who have not been bewildered over the complicated expressions and seemingly useless repetitions found in almost all documents. This “iteration in law” has lately been made the subject of some interesting computations by David Dudley Field. By his counting every deed contains 860 superfluous words, and every mortgage 1,240. The people of New York State, he calculates, pay every year $100,000 for the recording of useless words. The next reform in law should be rhetorical.
Mr. John Ruskin, of Oxford, and Prof. J. Rendel Harris, of Johns Hopkins, have resigned their professorships in their respective universities because, it is stated, vivisection is practiced in the institutions. There is no reason in such hyper-sympathy. The abuse of vivisection is quite probable, but that does not lessen the force of the fact that vivisection has done much to alleviate human misery, and will in the future undoubtedly do more. The question is, if man or beast must suffer, which life is the more precious.
Houghton Farm, the headquarters of the Chautauqua Town and Country Club, has an interesting history. Several years ago 1,000 acres of land lying about nine miles from Newburgh, N. Y., were purchased by a Mr. Valentine as an experimental farm. About thirty buildings, adapted to every kind of farm work, were erected; the best of stock, the most skillful laborers were secured. The farm soon became a kind of educational institution. Farmers were invited to inspect its work, and to listen to lectures from the learned managers; children had days set apart for their enjoyment. Orange county has been educated by the Houghton Farm. Now its generous hearted proprietor has extended the work by opening its advantages to all those who will join the Chautauqua Town and Country Club.