NOTES.
Between the careers of Cavour and Thiers no sound parallel can easily be traced, but in their characters—or rather in their diplomatic methods and arts—there would seem to be some curious and almost ludicrous points of resemblance, if we may accept as true a sketch of the great Italian statesman made by M. Plattel, the author of "Causeries Franco-Italiennes," fifteen years ago. M. Plattel, who wrote from close personal observation, at that time described Count Cavour as being physically "M. Thiers magnified;" or, if you prefer, M. Thiers is the count viewed through the big end of an opera-glass. The count, says M. Plattel, "has the spectacles, and even a similar expression of finesse. When things take a serious turn, the count puts both hands in his pockets; and if you see him do that, expect to hear this threat: 'If you do not pass this bill, signori deputati, I consider you incapable of longer managing the affairs of the country: I have the honor of bidding you good-evening.' For (and this is a strange peculiarity) this first minister is never steadier than when in danger of falling; and his grand oratorical, or rather ministerial, figure of speech is to seize his hat and his cane, whereupon the chamber rises and begs M. de Cavour to sit down. M. de Cavour lets them plead a while, and then—he sits down again! Reading his speeches now in Paris, I can fancy the count with his hat by his side and his hand on the door-knob. Heaven knows how many times that comedy-proverb of Musset called 'A door must either be open or shut,' has been gravely played by the Sardinian Parliament and the prime minister!" It is with a very droll effect that a French paper has revived this curious description, à propos of the perpetual repetition of the drama played by the French Assembly and the French president, in which the constant threats of resignation on the one hand are invariably followed by passionate and despairing entreaties to "stay" on the other. It is the old story of Cavour and the door-knob over again; and even the great Bismarck, by the way, does not disdain a resort occasionally to the same terrible pantomime. "The only coup d'état to be feared from M. Thiers," said M. Dufaure in the Assembly, "is his withdrawal." It is, the quarreling and reconciliation of Horace and Lydia: "What if the door of the repudiated Lydia again open to me?" "Though you are stormier than blustering Adriatic, I should love to live with you," etc. Such is the billing and cooing, after quarrel, between the president and the Assembly. Still, it is clear that the puissant hat-and-cane argument must date back to Cavour.
The recent proposition of some English writers to elevate a certain class of suicides to the rank of a legalized "institution," under the pleasant name of "euthanasia," suggests the inquiry whether, without any scientific vindication of the practice, there will not always be suicides enough in ordinary society. At any rate, however it may be in England, just across the Channel, in France, thousands of people every year break the "canon 'gainst self-slaughter," leaving the ills they have to "fly to others that they know not of." The official figures show that in a period of twenty-two years no less than 71,207 persons committed suicide in France. The causes were various—business embarrassments, domestic chagrins, the brutishness produced by liquor, poverty, insanity, the desire to put an end to physical suffering by "euthanasia," and so on; but they are pretty nearly all included in the "fardels" which Hamlet mentions, from the physical troubles of the "heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," up to the mental distress wrought by the "whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love," and so on in the well-remembered catalogue. Perhaps the most interesting point in these statistics concerns the means employed for suicide. These are thus tabulated: Hanging, 24,536; drowning, 23,221; shooting, 10,197; asphyxia by charcoal fumes (a true Paris appliance), 5587; various cutting instruments, 2871; plunging or jumping from an elevated place (an astonishing number), 2841; poison, 1500; sundry other methods, 454. Hanging and drowning are thus accountable for more than half the French suicides. The little stove of charcoal suggests itself as a remedy at hand to many a wretch without the means to buy a pistol or the nerve to use a knife. The cases of voluntary resort to poison are astonishingly few, but it must be remembered that the foregoing figures only embrace successful suicides, and antidotes to poison often come in season where the rope or the river would have made quick and fatal work. La France notes, regarding these statistics, that their details show that men oftenest use pistols, and women oftenest try poison, in their attempts at suicide. What is more curious, each man is likely to employ an instrument familiar to him: thus, hunters and soldiers resort to the pistol, barbers trust the razor, shoemakers use the knife, engravers the graving-tool, washerwomen poison themselves with potash or Prussian blue; though, of course, these are only general rules, with a great many exceptions. And in Paris it is said that among all ranks and professions, and in both sexes, at least half of the suicides are by asphyxiation with charcoal. Surely in France one hardly needs to preach any doctrine of not patiently suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. A healthier and more inspiring morality would be that of the story of the baron of Grogzwig and his adventure with the "Genius of Despair and Suicide," as narrated in an episode of Nicholas Nickleby; for the stout baron, after thinking over his purpose of making a voluntary departure from this world, and finding he had no security of being any the better for going out of it, abandoned the plan, and adopted as a rule in all cases of melancholy to look at both sides of the question, and to apply a magnifying-glass to the better one.
In Philadelphia, at least, where there is still a respect for age, the tidings will be received with respectful regret of the death of Nono, a noted pensionary of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, at the ripe age of more than a hundred years. To have achieved the celebrity of being the oldest inmate of that institution was no despicable distinction, but the venerable centenarian had other claims to honor. A native of the Marquesas Islands, he was brought by Bougainville in 1776 to the Royal Museum, afterward known as the Jardin des Plantes. It has frequently been alleged that parrots may live a hundred years: Nono has established the fact by living still longer. As he thus contributes an illustration to science, so surely he might point a general moral and adorn a historic tale. If Thackeray could discourse so wisely on "Some Carp at Sans Souci," the vicissitudes which this veteran Parisian witnessed in the French capital from 1776 to 1873, under two empires, two royal dynasties and three republics, might be worth a rhapsody. Nono seems to have been a well-preserved old parrot. Magnificent in youth, he attained literally a green old age, for his plumage was still fresh and thick. Very naturally, he had lost his houppe, and was almost totally bald. However, his eye was clear and bright enough to have read the finest print or followed the finest needlework; and it had the narquois, lightly skeptical look of those who have seen a great deal of life. In short, Nono was a stylish and eminently respectable old bird. That worthy person, Monsieur Chavreul, who treats the animals of the Jardin like a father, has stuffed and mounted the illustrious Nono as a testimonial of affection and respect.
The connection between war and botany is, at first, not specially obvious, and yet a very clear bit of testimony to their relation was disclosed by the siege of Paris. Two naturalists have published a Florula Obsidionalis, which, as its name partly indicates, is a catalogue of the accidental flora of the late investment of Paris. They reckon in their list not less than one hundred and ninety species before unknown to the neighborhood of the French capital, whereof fifty-eight are leguminous (such as peas, beans, etc.), thirty-four are composite, thirty-two are plantes grasses, and sixty-six belong to other families. Almost all are to be found chiefly on the left bank of the Seine, though also discoverable at Neuilly and in the Bois de Boulogne. Of course, these new-comers are all accounted for as the produce of seeds brought by the German army. They will gradually die out; and yet some few may remain as permanent conquerors of the soil, since among the flora of Paris is still reckoned one plant whose seed was brought into France by some Russian forage-train in 1815.
As the impudence, dishonesty, laziness and rapacity of servants at watering-places have long been familiar subjects of satire, it is just to say a word on the other side in favor of some extreme Northern resorts. At the White Mountains, for example, the waiters and waitresses are of a better class than is generally met. Some of the young girls are farmers' daughters, who go to the hotels to see the fashions and earn a little pocket-money. The colored cook at one of the great houses teaches dancing during the winters. Not a few are school-teachers, others students at country academies, who pass their vacation in this way in order to earn enough to buy text-books or pay the winter's tuition. Many of them are more intelligent and well educated than some of the shoddies they wait upon. They are usually quicker in movement and of more retentive memory than the average American waiter; and though each has a great deal to do at times, yet even during the tremendous moment of dinner they contrive to find a few little intervals for harmless flirtations in the dining-room. They are for the most part well-mannered too, and if they talk to you of each other as "this lady" or "that gentleman," what is it more than some waiters do with far less reason? The New Hampshire villages become versed every summer in the latest imported fashions, thanks to the quick eyes of the hotel waitresses.