A highly successful “Chautauqua Day” has been carried out at the New Orleans Exposition, under the leadership of Prof. E. A. Spring, Prof. W. F. Sherwin and the Rev. A. H. Gillet. An audience of over 5,000 people met in Music Hall to hear Bishop Mallalieu on “The Relation of Chautauqua to the Home and Society,” Prof. Sherwin on “The Story of Chautauqua,” talks from Wallace Bruce and the Rev. Mr. Gillet, and music from the Mexican Band. The great crowd was given Chautauqua badges and C. L. S. C. circulars, and taught the Chautauqua salute—the latter in compliment to Señor Payen, the leader of the Mexican Band, and the pet of the Exposition. One of the audience remarked on leaving the hall: “I have been at every day entertainment here since the beginning, and this has been the most successful, the best managed, the most interesting occasion there has been.”
There has been an almost breathless attention given throughout the world during the past month to the attitude of England and Russia. Words have been weighed and steps measured with the nicest exactness. Affairs which in other times would take up columns are given corners. The prevalent opinion has been that war must come, though peace negotiations are being vigorously pushed. Could war be held off twenty years it might be that we should be so much wiser that arbitration might be made to prevail.
The most active business which the United States Navy has had for years was caused by the Isthmus troubles. Our treaty with New Granada guarantees free and uninterrupted passage across the Isthmus. To secure this a force of 500 men and four ships was placed at Aspinwall after the insurgents had burned the city. They thence proceeded to Panama, which they succeeded in restoring to order. Not an easy thing to do, with the natives sympathizing generally with the rebels, and very suspicious of the “Gringoes,” as they call us, and with the French determined to have the credit of whatever restoration could be made.
M. de Lesseps is firmly convinced of the advantages to America of the Panama Canal, prophesying in a recent letter that it will reanimate our merchant marine, will greatly enlarge our internal business, and make us, in short, commercial kings. It can hardly be doubted that were any one of the great schemes for interoceanic communication in operation, our whole system of exchange would be modified and our business multiplied. The chief question seems to be now, is the Panama Canal, Mr. Eads’s Tehuantepec Ship Railway, or the Nicaragua Canal likely to be the best for the United States?
The recent conviction of two “saints” charged with polygamy is having a wholesome effect. The law which makes such a decision possible in Utah is the Edmunds bill, by which a man believing it right to have more than one living or undivorced wife at a time maybe challenged as a juryman. Under this law it is extremely difficult for a Mormon brought to trial to escape sentence, and the sentence is such that the fear of it will more than probably take a great deal of charm out of the doctrine of “spiritual wives.”