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THE EDITOR'S OPERA-GLASS.

MANY are the Congressmen and Senators who sighed that the thermometer might reach 100°, in order that those bodies should be compelled to adjourn. For the great councils of the nation grew very draggy, and tired were the men who had to sit in that glass house, the Senate Chamber, where they had not even the privilege of throwing stones.

Still the American politician had the pleasure of thinking that he was not as badly off as the Khédive, nor was he to be as much abused as is Mr. Gladstone.

It is something upon which Americans can all congratulate themselves, that in the humiliating position of England, face to face with that pestilent rebel Arabi Bey, her own politicians advise Mr. Gladstone to take copy of "American decision." "Letting things drilt" has brought about the Egyptian crisis. "Letting things drift" brought about the terrible state of things in Ireland. "Letting things drift" has brought about that unpleasant state of things in our own court-houses and public

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It will be a sad lookout for the Opera-glass if this policy should permanently affect American statesmanship. That and the business of making appropriations which simply please individual Congressmen, and which do no good to the nation, such seem to be our great national sins.

But the Opera-glass may have staid too long in town; may have grown bilious; may have heard much of the stagnation of Wall Street, and may have need of the reviving breezes of Narragansett.

Certainly, since the Summer of 1879, no such dreary echoes have come from the marts of the money-makers as of late. The experienced brokers have prophesied stag nation for a long time, but a cold Spring, an agitated Europe, the season of assassinations along the Nile, trouble in Ireland, strikes at home, that foolish fight between Labor and Capital (two people who should be firm friends), and we have a set of gloomy faces in Wall Street, and consequently no end of talk of retrenchment and reform;

A SHADOW ON A PHOSPHORESCENT GROUND.

lively instead of depressed. It takes a great deal of ruin to crush the American woman.

new.

To her the races are a perpetual "Grand Prix," which she must win, and her progress is from Jerome Park to the Coney Island course, from Long Branch to Saratoga. Her toilet, will it be a success? Her appearance on top of a coach, will it tell? Shall she wear for color amorous frog, lilas défleuri, rose amour naissant, neige rosée, peneuche mouillée, cuisse de nymphe émue, vert mourant, vin de Tokay, Céladin, chromatelle, comète flamme de Bengale or mandarine? All these colors are fashionable and Or shall she drive en postillion, or on a mail coach, with pigueras in pink? Shall she wear diamonds in her ears, or are they vulgar? Shall she carry a walking-stick at Newport, one like Mr. Whistler's, as large as her forefinger, gilded and headed with a silver crane? Yes, she Ishall, and it must be taller than she. She must hold it by the middle, stiffly, arms akimbo. Her eventail must be of feathers, and large, and then she may take her place in front of the Casino, where harness chains are clinking, amidst the rumbling and grating of innumerable wheels, horses curveting, women smiling, men complimenting. Danmonts are prancing by, village carts are totooing, pretty women are driving pony carriages, tilburys tool away. Barouches drive by, a coach and four passes on its way to the picnic at the Glen, and all pause to look at the pretty

C

REVERSAL OF THE SHADOW.

woman in fluffy white foulard, immense Gainsborough hat, fan and walking-stick, who is just going in at the Casino door.

Such is fame and such is happiness. It would be in vain to record all the splendors of Newport in the Summer of 1882, or the great concourse of fashion and dress at Saratoga, where diamonds glitter, and the whole world stands aside to see the new fashions, the paniers of

growing opulence, the staffs covered with immense bouquets. The days of Regency have returned, and the pensive Opera-glass sees again the hats of those dangerous moments of history-Regence, Directoire, Marie Antoinette. It is said that the female petticoat never will stay still; from the "pantaloon tightness" it now expands to the hoop, from the hoop to the "divided skirt," from that to the flowing and the elegant train. It is a revolution, an émeute, a coup d'état in itself, is the female petticoat.

And yet, in all our luxury we pause and turn pale as we read of the marriage of Zoe Lucy Betsey de Rothschild, daughter of Baron Gustave, of Paris, to her cousin, Leon Lambert, of Brussels. Her dot was only three thousand millions of francs. Her presents were exhibited in the Hotel of the Avenue de Marigny, on the occasion of the signature of the contract. There were rivières of diamonds, pearl necklaces, sapphires, emeralds and rubies, silver, gold and objets d'art enough to stock Tiffany's. The young bride, who is eighteen years old, tall, dark, handsome, brings also a diploma, a brevet d'institutrice, which she obtained at the Hotel de Ville, that she can earn her own living. This all the Rothschilds insist upon. It is a bequest from the old madame, of Frankfort.

Art-lovers have had some watering of the mouth in reading of the dispersion of the art-treasures of the great gallery at Hamilton Palace, where Vandykes, Holbeins, Rubenses and Rembrandts have been offered to the Rothschilds, Roseberrys and Vanderbilts of the present day. The great library of Beckford, author of "Vathek," has been also sold-a fact which a London correspondent says has destroyed sleep for all book-collectors. It is amazing that even a profligate Duke of Hamilton, ruined on the turf, could dare to disperse such a collection as that at Hamilton Palace, a spot shown to Americans ten years ago with almost reverential awe. The presents given to Princess Marie, of Baden, by her royal relative, Louis Napoleon and his Empress, were always pointed out. She was the mother of the present graceless duke, and also of that pretty Mary Hamilton, who was divorced from the Prince of Monaco a few years ago. The family bad luck seems to follow this distinguished blood, and they will be remembered for their extravagant vices and their eccentric disdain of appearances, so long as titles and palaces endure.

But to turn to Puritan New England for a moment from all this "guilty splendor" (as Gilbert says in the "Bab Ballads"), we find Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. entertaining all friends of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and all the contributors to the Atlantic Monthly, at a garden-party given at the splendid country seat of Governor Claflin, at Newtonville, Mass., on Mrs. Stowe's seventieth birthday.

It is a good thing to celebrate the birthdays of distinguished people. It makes one willing to be seventy, and it also has this beneficial effect: the world pauses to examine the account and to acknowledge its indebtedness to genius. A garden-party such as this was also is a tribute to the guild of literature. It brings authors together. There was Mrs. F. Hodgson Bennett, a bright-eyed, pretty woman with a shock of red hair, dressed in a real aesthetic costume of flounced chintz and a broad hat; there was Miss Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, dark-eyed, mysterious, silent and spirituelle, 1.ke one who tends the "gates ajar"; there was Mrs. Adaline Train Whitney, pale, refined, as Priscilla Mullins; there was Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, robust and handsome; Judge Tourgée, dark and distinguished; Dr. Holmes, playful, brilliant; Mr. Alcott, silent and old, looking like Emerson; and Henry Ward Beecher, rosy, well-fed, cheerful, like the Abbot of Mel

rose, full of fun and of pathos; there, above all, was the little Puritan lady of seventy, Harriet Beecher Stowe, receiving compliments from the whole world which would have turned a less steady head, and which will never turn hers. That she was helped by time and circumstance no one doubts. But that Mrs. Stowe produced a living work of great merit in "Uncle Tom's Cabin no one can doubt. She excited much animosity; she was unpopular for years. Now the world, looking dispassionately, sees that she brought the message for which the time was waiting, and she also had laid the world under great contribution for her purely local New England novels, which keep the tradition of a time, fast pissing away; also for those charming works, "Agnes of Sorrento," and the "Pearl of Orr's Island," works which, as do all her works, give us the idea that Mrs. Stowe's mind had a strong affinity with the French genius. She has the realism, the dramatic power, the love of contrast, and the strong coloring of a Dumas, a Sue, a George Sand and a Balzac added to her strongly critical and religious nature, which forbids her opening doors and drawing aside vails, which they delighted in doing. Mrs. Stowe is a Puritan and a Presbyterian through everything.

The seventy years which this remarkable life has bridged has seen all that is most individual in American literature. We shall not have another Harriet Beecher Stowe, or Bret Harte, or Mark Twain, or Joaquin Miller, or Walt Whitman, or Artemus Ward. We shall not have another Ann S. Stephens, who, in her earlier novels, started all humane reform which has blossomed into the Charities' Aid Association. These original and strong minds were born of the soil, like the Catawba grape; but they also had the great good fortune to be amongst the pioneers. The conditions which have followed them are not favorable to the development of originality.

We congratulate Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. on the invention of a literary festivity. Their breakfast to Dr. Holmes, and their garden-party to Mrs. Stowe were alike successes. But must one wait to be seventy? Why do they not celebrate the forties and the fifties? Why not a dinner to Mr. Howells, and a garden-party to Mrs. Julia C. R. Dorr?

Mr. Francis Marion Crawford, a son of the eminent sculptor and a nephew of Uncle Sam Ward, writes a very indignant protest against the false taste in art which is now prevailing in our redundant internal decoration. That inconsistent and superfluous taste, he thinks, is detrimental to the painter and the sculptor. "Honses are now built," he says, "which out Saracen the Alhambra, whose gargoyles and flying buttresses seem to belong no more to them than the great statue of Memnon belongs to the Cathedral of Cologne. These ideas seem to point to a practical misconception of what art is." Mr. Crawford must remember, however, that there was a day in Venice, in Genoa, and in Nuremberg when men built fine houses, and that every community blessed with a sudden efflorescence of wealth builds a fine house first and foremost. He should have heard some rather uneducated but opulent art-students talk in a railway carriage of their new houses, thus-this is verbatim.

"Ah," said one lady, "I've got a tile fireplace."

"Oh," said the other, "tiles is gone out! I've got a carved wood one, with a motter, and flowers, and fruits." "Well," said the other, "I've got porters at all my doors, and one's embroidered with a whole litter of little pigs. Perfectly lovely !"

THERE is more fatigue in laziness than in a life of labor.

RECENT PROGRESS IN SCIENCE.

GUM FROM ALGE. -A new method of utilizing marine plants has been devised in France. The plants used are various forms of Atlantic and Pacific algae, and the product obtained is a gum said to be variously useful in the arts, particularly in the manufacture of leather substitute. The plants are first washed with warm or cold water, or both, the water either being pure or containing ten per cent. of alcohol, or any of the following substances: Lime-water, carbonate of soda, potash, carbonate of magnesia, or baryta, according to their smaller or larger quantity of cellulose, or salts contained in the algae, which has to be precipitated. Before the extraction of the gum the plants may be dried, ground, broken, etc., according to their nature and according to the requirements. For the extraction of the gum hot water 13 preferred to cold, and steam to hot water. The extraction takes place in a conical vessel, the plants being placed on a false bottom, through which steam or water is made to pass through the mass. The quantity of water or steam used varies with the quality of the plants- fifteen to twenty times the weight of the plants will be the best proportion. To facilitate the action of the water for the extraction the plants are subjected to maceration. In order to obtain pure and transparent alga gum this must be diluted with much water, then it is left to settle, the temperature bing kept at 50° to 60° C. The gum gelatinizes by cooling.

PHOSPHORESCENT ROCK.-Some time since D. B. Huntley, of the Geographical Corps of the Tenth Census of the United States, brought to the State Mining Bureau a mineral, with the statement that it had shown certain peculiarities, which led the miners to call it by the rather startling name of "Hellfire Rock." The property known to mineralogists as phosphorescence is not contined to any mineral species, nor is it very uncommon. But in th s specimen it is so strongly marked that there is some excuse for the refusal on the part of some of the miners to work in the mine. When striking their picks into this formation flashes of light were seen, which they regarded with superstitious alarm. The locality in detail is Shenandoah mine, Snake Creek District, Wasatch County, Utah. A chemical examination shows this mineral to be an impure dolomite. It is interesting not only from its remarknble phosphorescence when rubbed with any hard substance in the dark, but from its beautiful crystalline appearance under the microscope. and the ease with which it can be reduced to a crystalline powder, even by crushing between the fingers. In Cleveland's Mineralogy we find it stated that some varieties of dolomite are phosphorescent in the dark, either by friction or when thrown on a shovel which has been allowed to cool just below the point of redness.

HEATING BY SUNSHINE.-Professor E. S. Morse, of the Essex Institute, has devised an ingenious arrangement for utilizing the heat in the sun's rays in warming our houses. His invention consists of a surface of blackened slate under glass fixed to the sunny side or sides of a house, with vents in the walls so arranged that the cold air of a room is let out at the bottom of the slate, and forced in again at the top by the ascending heated column between the slate and the glass. The douair can be admitted, also, if desirable. The thing is so simple and apparently self-evident, that one only wonders that it has not always been in use. Its entire practicalness is demonstrated in the heating of the professor's study in his cottage at Salem. The value of the improvement for daily warming buildings like churches and schoolhouses, which, when allowed to get cold between using, consume immense quantities of heat before they are fairly warmed again, is evident. Of course some other means of heating must be available when the sun does not shine. But in the colder regions, say in the far Northwest, the sun shines a greater part of the time, and hence the saving of artificial heat would be very large if the sun heat could be "turned on" for eight or ten hours out of the twenty-four.

THE Impression entertained by many, during the inquiry into the great explosion at Seaham colleries, England, in September, 1880, that coal-dust might have had much to do with the accident, and that the explosion was possibly even entirely due to the igni tion of coal-dust by a blown-out shot, in the absence of any firedamp, led to Mr. Abel's being requested by the Home Secretary to make experiments with samples of dust collected in the mine, and to an extension of these experiments to dust collected from collieries in different parts of the kingdom where the explosions had occurred. The results of experiments conducted with great care and on an extensive scale at a colliery in Lancashire, where a constant supply of fire-damp was brought to the pit's mouth from a so-called blower, confirmed the fact demonstrated by M. Vital and Mr Galloway, that the propagation of fire by coal-dust, when thickly suspended in air, is established or greatly promoted by the existence, in the air, of a proportion of fire-damp, which may be so smail as to escape detection by the means ordinarily emploved (such, for example, as exists in the return-air of a well ventilated mine).

BRONZE STATUES.-The objectional dark coating which most bronze statues soon acquire, with the look of cast-iron, does not. consist, according to Herr Bruhl, of sulphuride of copper, as commonly supposed, but of a mixture of coal-dust, sand, etc., with oxides of the bronze-metals. It is not removable, either mechanically or by treatment with dilute sulphuric acid; but, on the other hand, it may be very quickly and completely washed off by means of a concentrated solution of carbonate of ammonia, applied with brushes. Thereupon a layer of patina is formed, which guards the statue against fresh formation of the dark coat. The work Another should, of course, be intrusted only to skilled men.

method is to paint the statue, at intervals of a few weeks, repeatedly with a solution of twenty parts of anhydrous vinegar in one hundred parts of bone oil. The acetate and oleate of copier salts thus produced form first a thin green layer, which hinders the attachment of dirt and dust, and occasions further patina-formation.

By means of a specially devised arrangement for the purpose, the elasticity of wire has been definitely determined. In the case of very soft iron-wire, prepared expressly for the experiment, it was found that with a weight of forty-one pounds gradually applied in 64 minutes, the wire stretched by 21-4 per cent. of its original length, and broke 18 minutes after the weight was put on; with the same weight applied in 634 minutes the wire stretched 22.1 per cent., and broke in 24 minutes; with this weight, however, applied in 74 minutes, the wire stretched 18 per cent., and did not break. The latter result, therefore, with that weight, was applied to a great number of wires for different lengths of time for the purpose of hardening them. The wires seemed permanently set in about forty minutes from the time of applying the hardening stres; they did not alter in length until just before they broke, when they generally stretched 01 to 05 inch on a length of about 7.8 inches.

ENTERTAINING COLUMN.

GOOD REASON.-"Ah," he exclaimed, as he pressed her tenderly to him at parting, "shall I hold you in those arms again to-morrow, and paint our future with the bright pigments of the imagination?" "No," she said, calmly, "not to-morrow; to-mor row's washing-day."

“TRAY, sir,” said a judge, angrily, to a blunt old Quaker, from whom no direct answer could be obtained, "do you know what we sit here for?" "Yes, verily I do," said the Quaker: "three of you for four dollars each a day, and the fat one in the middle for four thousand a year."

A SHARPER Who had pawned his hat, going out of church in the midst of a crowd, snatched a man's hat from under his arm. The poor fellow, feeling his hat gone, cried: "They have stolen my hat!" The sharper, immediately putting the hat on his head, and covering it with both his hands, exclaimed, "Have they? İ defy them to take mine!"

ANECPOTES OF SYDNEY SMITH.-Speaking of a well-known character, he said that he was so fond of contradicting that he would throw up the window in the middle of the night and contradict the wat hman who was calling the hour. When his phy sician advised him to "take a walk upon an empty stomach," Smith asked, "Upon whose ?"

A RATHER Verdant young man, conceited and censorious, while talking to a young lady at a party, pointed toward a couple that he supposed to be in an adjoining room, and said. "Just look at that conceited young sprig! Isn't it perfectly absurd for such boys to go into society?" "Why," exclaimed his companion, "that isn't a door; it's a mirror!"

A YANKEE, whose observations have been lately recorded, was evidently an indifferent judge of cause and effect. As he walked along the road one day he noticed a negro smoking a new meerschaum-pipe of the purest hue, and it at once occurred to him that there was something wrong. At last he hit on a solution of the mystery. "By thunder," he exclaimed, "the pipe's coloring the man!"

SOAPSUDS REFORM.-Little boy has been swearing, and mamma, to punish him, washed thoroughly the inside of his mouth with soapsuds, "to," as she explains to him. "clean away the naughty words." A few days later, while passing the bathroom, she sees the youngster with his face one mass of suds, and his mouth so full that she barely understands his spluttering exclamations: Getting them all out, mamma! Swore five times yesterday !"

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A PACKMAN, having paid some fruitless visits to one of his customers, called a few days ago for an installment of his debt. But the customer, expecting him, told her son, a lad of five years, to say that she was "in the toon." Accordingly, when the packman called and asked, "Where is your mother to-day ?" the boy promptly replied, "In the toon." "What toon?" asked the peddler. The boy, having no further instructions from his mother, went to the next room and shouted, "Mither, what toon are ye at? He wants to ken!"

THE following obituary notics appeared in a late number of the Bungalore Advertiser: "With this issue the Bangalore Advertiser will cease to exist. The paper does not pay-in fact, it never did: and the fabulous number of subscribers it was said to have shows how easy it is to be the reverse of George Washington, who never told a lie. The present publisher had no idea that it was such an unprofitable speculation until after looking into matters, and as there was no possible chance of making a small fortune out of it, could not just now afford to lose one."

"WHAT is a cold?" asks Chambers's Journal Well, sir. suppose you begin by sneezing so hard that you nearly break your neck, and bite your tongue terribly. Then your nose gets stuffed up, and you need about fourteen handkerchiefs a day, and the end of your nose gets too watery, and you begin to cough so the folks across the way can't sleep, and you feel lame all over, as though you'd been under a fire-engine, and you're ugly, and kick the dog and chase the cat with a bootjack, tell your wife she can't cook, and make the household a gehenna for ten days. Then you've got a cold.

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THE FEDERAL CITIES AND CAPITOLS OF THE UNITED STATES. BY J. BARNITZ BACON.

TO MOST of the present generation Washington is the only seat of government our country ever had. No other city or place is associated with the idea of the Government of the United States. And yet there was a period, in the days of struggle for nationhood, and even after it, when the Congress that governed the Union and the Chief Magistrate had no fixed city or residence. The United States had a succession of seats of governments, and many different buildings were in turn the temporary Capitols of the nation.

Local tradition has treasured these memories of the past, and the visitor to some quiet town is rather astonished to find some time-worn structure pointed out as the spot where laws

were once made that found hearty obedience through the length and the breadth of

the land.

The earliest

attempt at a union of the British-American colonies was made at Albany, in 1754. Albany is the oldest settlement in the original thirteen colonies, except Jamestown, Va. Henry Hudson, in the yacht Half Moon, moored, in September, 1609, at a point which is now Broadway, Albany. Several Dutch navigators ascended the river to the

same place

Vol. XIV., No. 3-17.

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during the next three or four years, and in 1614 the Dutch built the first fort on an island below the present city, which is hence called Castle Island.

The place was called by the Dutch New Orange, and retained that name until the whole province passed into the hands of the English, in 1664, when New Orange was changed to Albany, in honor of the Duke of York and Albany, afterward James II. In 1686 Albany City was incorporated by patent. Peter Schuyler was its first mayor. The Schuyler family possessed the good-will of the Indians to such a degree, that while other settlements were desolated by Indian forays, Albany was never attacked by them. In addition to its ancient importance as a centre

STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA, THE FIRST NATIONAL CAPITOL.

of the Indian trade, Albany afterward became the point where the great military expeditions against Canada were fitted out. It was fortified at an early period, and, although often threatened with invasion, no hostile

army ever reached the

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city.

Here assembled the first convention for

the union of the colonies. It was held in 1754, and Benjamin Franklin was its presiding officer. The ostensible object of the convention was the defense of the colonies

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