The strange fascination lurking in dangerous feats which so powerfully affects some minds, was never more forcibly manifested than in the case of Robert E. Odlum, who jumped from the Brooklyn bridge not long ago. For some time the thought had been a passion with him, and although the police were watching to prevent the attempt, he escaped their vigilance and took the fatal leap. His body was three and one-fourth seconds in making the descent of 140 feet, thus corroborating almost exactly the law of falling bodies. He breathed only a few times after he was picked up, being inwardly literally “mangled to death.” His is only one more name added to the list of those who, by their folly, may teach others lessons of wisdom, and so, perhaps, have not died utterly in vain.
Although war-like preparations have ceased in the Soudan, and no more troops are to be transported thither to help “smash the Mahdi,” the railroad across the desert is progressing slowly but surely. The correspondent of the Times telegraphs the following: “The construction of the railway is a curious and interesting sight. In advance is a picket of cavalry, while far off on either side the videttes scout in the bush. At the immediate head of the line is a battalion of infantry echeloned, and advancing as the rails are laid. Streams of coolies carry the sleepers from the trucks, and teams of four artillery horses drag up the rails, two at a time, to the navvies, who lay them in a twinkling, and drive the spikes. In the rear are gangs who complete the line, and further back the ballasting parties.”
Visitors to Niagara Falls this summer will enjoy their trip as never before. Everything that tends to mar the beauty of the natural scenery is to be removed, and after July 15th, access to all points of interest is to be free of charge. To bring about this happy consummation which during so many long years past has been devoutly wished by all right-thinking men, required a long and hard-fought battle against willful ignorance and greed of gain.
General Gordon’s “Life and Letters,” recently published, prove him to have one accomplishment of rare beauty and usefulness, but too often nowadays neglected. He was a good letter writer, and that under circumstances the most trying. Here is the picture his biographer draws of the surroundings under which many of his letters were written: “The temperature is over 100°; the ink dries on the pen before three words are written; books curl, as to their backs; mosquitoes are busy at the ankles under the table, and the hands and wrists above; prickly heat comes and goes. How one realizes, for instance, the whole scene in the over-wakeful traveller’s night: ‘I am writing in the open air by a candle-lamp, in a savage gorge; not a sound to be heard. The baboons are in bed in the rocks.’” The letters which the most of us write under the most favorable circumstances are limited to the narrowest space possible. What we would do in Gordon’s place it is difficult to say.
The most beautiful celebration of the month of June is Children’s day. With every season Protestant churches give more time and money to their preparations for it, and it bids fair to take rank in importance with Christmas and Easter. Certainly no day comes at a season when it is more easy to decorate, it being the very heyday of the flower season, and no cause is more worthy our efforts than the children’s.