The Independent 1889-03-07: Vol 41 Iss 2101

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tes oowrne eitencse 8 6 aYre*Trarl The independ . Entered at the Post-office at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter. ‘“« EVEN AS WE HAVE BEEN APPROVED OF GOD TO BE INTRUSTED WITH THE GOSPEL, SO WE SPEAK; NOT AS PLEASING MEN BUT GOD WHICH PROVETH OUR HEARTS.” VOLUME XII. _ NEW YORK, THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 1889. _ ~ NUMBER 2101. The Fudependent For Table of Oontents see Page 10. TO POETS. BY RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. POETs gone before, And therefore dead no more, From your stately palaces Builded on some Northern shore, Or under Arctic seas, Listen, [ implore, While on bended knees, Looking up your shining ranks, 1 return you thanks For the light you have conferred On my every thought and word, With a thousand prayers for more! New YORK CIty. in LIFE’S SILENT THIRD. BY CHARLES WASHINGTON COLEMAN. SOMETIMES, when weary with an overstrain, There comes a sick’ning sense of fleeting breath, And all endeavor seemeth worse than vain, A sweet, reproachful voice low whispereth: ‘“* Why is thy heart unstrung? A third of those spent years that thou dost weep Thou hast not lived—they passed thee by in sleep ; So thou art young.” And then again, when wantoning and glad, The heart holds revel, while its tense strings thrill Beneath life’s joyous fingers. speaks a sad And solemn voice that strikes the music still: “Thy years to thee are tuld; A part thou knowest, but a third of all Are locked away in sleep’s oblivious tbrall; And thou art old.” WILLIAMSBURG, VA. THE TRANSLATION OF ENOCH. (Gen. v, 18-24; Heb. xi, 5; Jude 14, 15.) BY ROBERT MacCARTRE, In the still morning of the unpeopled world, The good man walked with God. The chant of stars, The murmur of the brook, the awful voice Of storms and seas, the waking smile of morn, The backward zlance of pensive eve, al) spoke **God is!’? A whisper in the soul replied: “God is, and ever answers him who prays!”’ In the dim cloister of his inmost breast He lived—primeval anchorite—with Heaven; While more and more unto the perfect day His path a shining light to men appeared. He saw afar the coming day of doom, And pealed bis stern alarum clear and loud; And then with patient feet the steep ascent Of life he climbed, and left the narrow vale, Till the strained ese took in wood, field and flood, And on the utmost verge the gleaming main; Far off the homes and haunts of men grew dim, And on his ear their discords died away. The quickening air breathed fra. rant on his brow; He knew the peace, the tranquil jov, that come To him who lays life’s weary burden down. There where yon rugged cliff stands next to Heaven, And like a prophet tells of coming day While all below is night, a folding cloud Enowrapt him. Through its mystery he passed To God. God loved him and he was not! Was Translated! Never saw the face of him, Inexorably sweet and sweetly sad— God’s angel, whom we dread and whom we bless! We joy to tread the path that Christ has trod, And in His blessed footprints set our feet; Where He has slept to lay us down to sleep; And fearless ‘‘ through the grave and gate of death Press to our joyful immortality.” No glowing car nor soft infolding cloud Stoops torough the air to hft us to the skies. ’Tis death that is translated, and vot we. The awful scroll he bears to darkened eyes Seems fateful, writ in hieroglyphs unknown And harsp, that chili the soul with shapeless fears; To him that knows the speech of Heaven it reads: “Come. home, my child, nor weep nor wander more; Tis [ that call, thy Father and thy God.” MANCHESTER, V.A. THE FEAR OF THE DEAD LEVEL. BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. It is noticeable that foreign observers, who were always a little anxious about the possible monotony of our society, have grown a little more so since they have ventured west of the Alleghanies and crossed the long plain to be traversed before reaching the Rocky Moun- tains. In the days when an American trip culminated at Niagara, and even Trenton Falls was considered a sight so remarkable that Charles Sumner wrote from England to caution a traveler by no means to quit the country without seeing it, there was no complaint that our scenery was monotonous. The continent was sup- posed to have done all, in that line, which could fairly be asked of it. Since then, the criticism has grown with the railway journey and people fear that the horizontal line of the prairies must more than counterbalance the vertical line of Niagara, in affecting the American mind, Then these very travelers are justly anxious about the sameness of our cities; the streets numbered one way, the avenues theother. ‘‘ Can the young heart,” they ask, ‘‘attach defivite associations or tender emotions with an Arabic figure? Is there romance in numeration?” Probably they carry the criticism too far. As Nature, according to Emerson, loves the number five, so doesthe well-bred New Yorker. Surely ‘‘Fifth Avenue” has as definite and distinctive a meaning for him as if there were no other number in the universe; and I am sure that in every city there is some youth who can- not look up at the street-sign denoting some Twenty- third Street or Thirty-fifth Street without a slight spasm of the heart. Such associations last a great while, even if the street be disagreeable; the philosopher Des- cartes was enamored in his youth witha young lady who squinted a little, and it is said that he never through life could behold without the tenderest emotion a woman having a castin hereye. If he was perma- nently sentimental about orbs that were crooked, can- not others be so about streets that are straight ? Still, in the long run, monotony is not satisfying; and the kind traveler hastens to conciliate local pride by granting some individuality to a few cities, such as New York, Washington, New Orleans, Boston, Cleve land. It is very possible that a closer student of this particular point might find less monotony, even among towns, than he does. In Mr. Warner's late studies o1 American cities, for instance, we are struck, not with the sameness, but with the variety. Much depends upon the trained eye. A long railway trip across a level plain is monotonous to one who is looking for bold scen- ery; but it may not be monotonous to the agriculturist who is studying the crops, or to the botanist who is looking out for trees and wild flowers, or to the student of human nature who is watching for new types of char- acter. So an exhibition of machinery is monotonous to the ignorant, but full of knowledge to the expert; and there was a cap‘tal illustration in Punch at the time of the first International Exposition in London, showing the difference between a group of bored fishionables, passing languidly through the hall devoted to new in- ventions, and a party of intelligent mechanics eagerly examining a machine. So of human beings: to araw offi- cer of culored troops, for instance, in the Civil War, nis men looked hopelessly alike as they stood uniformed in line; but he soon found that every face had its individu- ality. I have even heard teachers say the same of a new class, black or white, on itsentering school. Living ina college town, I find the young men looking so much the same, so long as I do not know them, as to suggest the wich expressed by Humpty Dumpty to Alice, that some human beings could be constructed with their features differently combined—the noses, for instance, being sometimes put above the cyebrows—in order to distin- guish them more conspicuously. Yet each one becomes on acquaintance a perfectly defined personality; and it is complained by their professors that there is sometimes rather an excess of individuality, when it comes to dis- cipline. ; ' It turns out, then, that individuality depends largelr on the observer, Thoreau pots out that no two oak- leaves are precisely alike; and Scudder says the same of the markings on_ butterflies’ wings. Alexander von Humboldt remarked that individuality develops with civilization; a hundred wild dogs are more alike than their domesticated kindred, and so of a hundred wild. men. If the step we have taken in America, away from courts and hereditary institutions, be a step in civiliza- tion, then it is certainly to lead to more individuality, not less. Even in England, where is marked individu- ality to be found? Surely, among the men who have made the name of England great; her artists, authors, inventors, scientific teachers. Yet Mr. Besant haslately pointed out, in a very impressive passage, that scarcely one of these men ever went near the court of England. The marked individuality of that nation, therefore, is distinctly outside of the court circle; and, if so, individ- uality would gain and not lose by dropping those circles altogether. The difficulty is that the court circle sub- stitutes for individuality a mere variation of costume— a robe, a decoration. But in reality these things sub- due individuality, instead of developing it; as every re- cruiting officer found, during our Civil War, that re- cruits became more docile the moment they put on the uniform ; and a lady at Newport once vindicated the de- sirableness of liveries to me on the ground that they were “‘very repressive.” In persons of higher grade in England there is developed the official—the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord of the Hounds; or the typical hereditary lord, in perhaps two different types, ‘the wicked lord,” and ‘“‘the good lord”; but there isno added development of the individual: It all comes to this, then, that for the development of individuality you must have a free career; and the guar- antee of freedom is the first step toward individuality. Nowhere will you find a more racy personality than among New England farmers, whose fathers lived be- fore them, or perhaps six generations of ancestors, on the same soil: and who, among all restrictions of hard soil and severe competition, have yet kept their separate characteristics. I have spent the last three summers in one small hill town in the very heart of Massachusetts, and have never yet encountered two farmers alike—two who would not, even if drawn by an unsympathetic tho acute observer like Howells. stand out on. the canvas with as marked an individuality as Silas Lapham, It is so with our native-born population generally. In the best volume of New England stories ever written—it is perhaps needless to say that I refer to ‘“ Five Hundreg Dollars a Year and Other Stories,” by Mr. H. W. Chap- lin, who mistakenly attempts to veil himself under the initials C. W. H.—there is en irimitable scene in a jury- room where the hero. * Eli,” bolds out for meny hours for the innocence of a wronged man. The jurymen are commonplace personages enough—a sea captain, a butcher, a peddler, and so on—and yet their talk through page after page brings out in each a type of characterso vivid and distinct that you feel sure that you would know each interlocutor afterward, if you met him in a horse-car. He who approaches human nature in such a spirit need have no fear of the dead level. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. = > A STUDY IN SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE IN MODERN JeRUSALEM. BY BISHOP JOHN H VINCENT, D.D, LL,D. MOopDERN tourists in Palestine are sure to encounteracu- rious phase of social and rel:gious life in Jerusalem,which furnishes to earnest persons a problem of unusual inter- est. Altho the movement which suggests this problem is of recent origin, it has through much tribulation and in spite of bitter opposition gone steadily forward. Travelers usually become greatly interested in it; some scoff, many wonder, a few speak approvingly, showing their confidence by financial aid. Best of all, however, is the profound impression the movement has made upon the non-Christian populations of lower Syria—those who are apparently least susceptible to Christian influence— Jews and Mohammedans, Fellahin of Judea and the wild Bedawin of the rough regions beyond the Jordan. Whatever the critics from Cnhristian lands may think and say, publicans and sinners of the neighborhood are greatly stirred up by what they see. The City of Jerusalem is sti'] an. exceedingly interest- ing place. It is *‘ beautiful for situation.” Clothed once again, as it certainly soon must be. wita the verdure of well cultivated terraces and the soft gray tints of the in- digenous olive, the resident may sing in its praise the old songs of tLe Psalmist. , Jerusalem is especially interesting as the depository of rich archeological treasure. The explorer is perpetually