He has presented a brilliant retrospect of the career of his party, and lays a good foundation for the prophecy: "By reason of the causes within itself, it must be the great party of the future."

one.

Hon. L. E. Payson, of Illinois, says that "The Republican Party is entitled to the entire credit for the adoption of the Homestead Law," and proceeds to fortify this very important claim. The writer is unable to point out any weak place in his defensive lines. The subject of Pensions is a very delicate There should be no grounds for making it a party question. The public officer who may deal with the soldier with a generosity, extreme, even beyond what might seem to him prndent for the public interest, would yet have it said of him in the present and for generations to come, "his failing leaned to virtue's side." The Republic can do no wrong in lavishing its benefactions upon the men who saved it; it commits no folly in extravagantly spending its surplus treasures upon the soldiers' orphans and widows. To condemn it for this would be like finding fault with a man for emptying his purse into the hands of one who had saved him from drowning. We are not sure but Mr. Morrill is too careful and considerate in the discussion of this subject. And yet he does warm with the subject:

"The widow who gave her husband in the prime of life, full of bright hopes for the future, received $8 a month for her sacrifice, and this great nation generously gave her $2 per month for the support of the child made an

66

The other great questions here discussed with reasonable fullness and the thoroughness belonging to experts are: Our Fisheries,” by Senator Frye; "The American Navy," Ex-Secretary Chandler; "Our Coast Defenses," Gen. Hawley; "The American Merchant Marine," Representative Dingley; "Our Foreign Trade," Representative Burrows; "Internal Revenue," Hon. Green B. Raum; "A Protective Tariff," Representative McKinley; "Internal Development," by Representative Butterworth and F. D. Massey; “The Civil Service," Henry Cabot Lodge; and The New South," by John S. Wise.

To all of which we turn with interest, and all of which are calculated to deeply impress the public mind.

The book closes with the "Platform of the Party," biographical sketches of Gen. Harrison and Hon. Levi P. Morton, and the "Rise of the Republican League of the United States," by its President, J. P. Foster.

The book is well printed in clear type and on good paper, and is illustrated with excellent portraits of party leaders and others.

It possesses much literary merit, and is characterized by a soundness of thought that entitles it to a permanent place in the library of every student of politics.

Jottings for September.

SCHOOLS, both public and private, commence their work this month, and by the time the present number of the AMERICAN MAGAZINE reaches its readers, they will have returned from summer vacations and be preparing for the sterner duties of winter time. I wish that the Calendar could say a few words of undiluted praise for American schools from a sanitary point of view; but many years experience on school boards compels me to believe and say that there are few better, more effective and rapid means of injuring a child's system, physical and mental, than steady adherence to our hours of school within doors, and of lessons without. Every successive generation finds less and less practical knowledge among our young people, with a steadily decreasing rate of increase of species, until it is but a question of a few years when there will be no more fullblood American women to keep up the race. Brains and central nerves are overtaxed sys

tematically, and the few moments per diem allowed for relaxation are employed in reading novels or otherwise weakening physical powers that are already below par.

Few school-rooms are constructed or furnished with regard to the health of little ones who spend so many of their best hours therein, and attempts to better such a condition fail because there is no money to be made out of the contract.

What, then, are we to do? Take the chances, I presume, and send our children to do the best they can, where our neighbors send theirs. There seems absolutely no remedy short of educating the public, a slow and tedious task. Meanwhile, see to it that children do not study out of school. Any lesson that needs to be learned at home is worse than useless; it is positively hurtful. Keep them out o doors in all weathers as much as possible, and see that their food is plain and nutritious.

Among my patients returning from the country there are always several who come

to me to be rid of freckles, and seem to regard these harmless discolorations as blemishes to be gotten rid of at any cost of time or trouble. For the most part they are temporary, and a month's seclusion from the sunbeams that have caused them will effect their removal.

Scientific works divide them into two classes, and say that they are simply irregular deposits of skin pigment, capable of being removed by proper treatment. The first, ephelis, is only an aggravated sunburn, and the brownish-yellow spots are located in the outer skin; while the other, lentigo, is the true freckle, lying deeper and more difficult of cure. So long as these spots are regarded as blemishes by our lady friends, they will have recourse to all means to displace them; and I give here two or three receipts that are harmless, at least, and as effective as any patent wash sold at a great price. For sunburn or light freckles on face or hands, take of Hydrochinon, one drachm by weight; Glacial Phosphoric Acid, one-half drachm; Glycerine, two drachms; and distilled water, six ounces. This lotion may be prepared by any apothecary at a small cost, and is reliable. It is to be applied morning and night, after thoroughly cleansing the skin.

For permanent freckles, a dermatologist recommends the following as invariably successful: Bichloride of Mercury, ten grains; Hydrochloric Acid, three drachms; Bitter Almonds, an ounce and a half; Pure Glycerine, one ounce; Tincture of Benzoin, two drachms; and Orange-flower Water sufficient to make a pint. The almonds must be blanched and crushed to a paste with the glycerine, and half of the orange-flower water added to make a smooth emulsion, to which is slowly added, beating into it like oil into mayonnaise, the benzoin tincture. To this is to be added the remainder of the orange-flower water, in which has been previously dissolved the mercury and acid; and the whole carefully filtered. Be careful not to apply this wash to any broken skin, and keep it out of children's reach, as it is a violent poison if taken internally. I am indebted to "Medical Classics" for these two receipts. When they fail, and there are cases where pigment staining resists all external applications, I find nothing equal to an electric needle for their removal. this successfully, however, demands great expertness, or a scar will remain that is worse than the original blemish, and a specialist should be consulted in such a case. An agent has just left my rooms after wasting a half hour of time in vain attempts to persuade me into purchasing a faucet-filter -made in some new-fangled way. There is really no such thing as a filter for water that can be used attached to house faucets. At best, they have never been anything else but

To use

strainers, and recent experiments prove them to be worse even than that; for they are shown to be nests for propagation of just such impurities as they are calculated to remove. Far better take chances on Croton or Cochituate direct than to have the already laden water made a breeding place for bacteria by so-called filters. They are not to be trusted.

This water question continues to be of the utmost public importance, and it seems extraordinary that typhoid fever and other filth diseases should not rage to far greater extent than reports show, if our drink is as foul as it is said to be.

I suspect that the truth is this bacteria scare has been very much overworked. There are leaders in the medical profession who say directly that modern practice of medicine has actually nothing to show in the way of better results than ancient, and that no greater percentage of patients recover in palatial hospitals than in the rough shanties where sick were kept a hundred years ago; and certainly the past heated term, with its accompanying immense consumption of water, has not shown any increased deathrate-slightly the reverse. If one's water supply be distinctly and sensibly impure, try some other source; otherwise, it is a question if it be not unwise to disturb one's mind about microscopical bacilli, that have been swimming about ever since Adam.

What is distinctly true, however, is that the art of caring for the sick-nursing-is a fair tree of modern growth. Not many years ago, within the memory of many among us, the only nurses of any value were Catholic Sisters of Charity, whose religious vows not only devoted them to this noble work, but exacted proper training for its proper execution. I remember how difficult it was in '62 for Miss Dix to find a dozen female nurses for the hospital at Falls Church, and how utterly ignorant of every necessary duty they proved themselves when they came. Since those dark days, the modern school of trained nurses has sprung from a very small beginning, reached a very important magnitude, and bids fair to grow in the hearts of those whose sick need care until all untaught or half-taught carers for suffering humanity are quite extinct.

Nothing appeals so much to sense of fitness as to watch the deft, carefully trained methods of those young women. Quiet of nerve, active and robust of body and thoroughly comprehensive of mind, they put both doctor and patient at ease promptly. The former can rely upon his directions being carried out intelligently and every turn in the malady watched with a skilled ante-perception that keeps him au courant with his case all the absent hours; and the invalid feels a pervasive sense of constant enveloping watch

fulness that steals away anxiety, stimulates faith and is of itself one-half the cure. There can be no more noble occupation for women, there is not one so profitable. The preliminary training school is not hard to enter nor difficult to pass, and the rewards of graduation are immediate and sure.

I have before me a circular from the Boston school which is connected with the Massachusetts General Hospital, wherein are set down the necessary qualifications for a matriculant. She must be of good physical and mental health, single, between 23 and 30 years of age, possess a good moral character certified to by responsible men in her district, and have means sufficient to clothe herself the first year. Upon receiving an appointment, she takes up her residence in the hospital to which her school is attached and is at once placed under tuition, which is bedside as well as oral. Her board and washing is allowed from entrance, and she gives her services in return for six mouths at least. After a sufficient length of time and teaching determined by the surgeons in charge she is put in a ward under supervision, and then has her first actual contact with sickness. Days pass and tiresome nights, until she grows familiar with the many voices of a hospital night, and learns to distinguish by ear alone between, for example, the heavy breathing of natural sleep and the stertorous noises made by a patient who is failing; and an authority is felt to which all willingly submit. This is not the place to say how great the doctor's relief is, to know that all dangers are guarded against so far as human care can do it; but it is certain to be a valuable factor in recovery. No career can be conceived for woman that is nobler than this. To minister to suffering humanity is peculiarly within her province,

Old Books.

and God has fitted her to this end with qualities that men almost completely lack. The art of bearing the fatigue of a sick chamber, of foreseeing wants, of mingling sympathy with rigid adherence to orders and training, of persuasive use of authority, and of that curious sexual influence that men never feel so strongly as when they are ill, this and much more make women the only trained nurses of the future. And the field of action is unlimited. Sickness is certain, and nurses are always in demand far above any possible supply-with fees that are beyond any female earning in any other way. Five dollars a day and all expenses is by no means a rare salary, and three the lowest, beside which grateful friends rarely fail to make the successful nurse a handsome present or two. Refinement, birth and education add to a trained nurse's pecuniary value to a large extent; and, as like gravitates naturally to like, those who possess these advantages soon acquire a circle of clients of their own sort that never allows them to escape its pleasant ring.

There is no longer need to suffer for want of proper care, and yet only a month ago, one of my patients requiring skilled care, was obliged to wait a week before a graduate nurse could be procured-and this in an exceptionally healthy season. Frequently they have opportunities for travel under all the favorable auspices that money can procure, and what is it that it will not buy? In fine, were I a woman, there is no career, no work that could appeal so strongly to my every sense of humanity and womanhood than this skilful care of the sick; none that would be so richly rewarded, both in well-earned pay and in that sweet content that only comes to us when we are conscious of having done right. William F. Hutchinson, M. D.

A NATURAL result of the immense prolificness of the modern press is the neglect of students and readers to peruse old books and learn what has been. We are like the Greeks, who imagined literature began with their ancestors, and asserted that such a one was the first who ever did one thing; and another, the first to do something else, till one might suppose the act of thinking and recording thoughts began with Greeks.

Our school books mislead the youthful mind on a great many subjects. A familiar instance is that concerning the discovery of the magnetic needle. We have many reasons for believing that the needle was in use for ages before the alleged date of its discovery. Knowledge of the magnet seems to have

been quite common nearly two thousand years ago among the people of the Mediterranean. Philo, the Jew, who wrote about A. D. 1, says, in Vol. III., page 470, Bohn's Edition-“Just as they say the needle follows the magnet." And in Vol. I., page 42. he says: Imitations fall short of original models. as being removed from the originals. And the magnetic stone is subject to like deteriorations. For any iron ring which touches it is held as firmly as possible, but another which touches only that ring is held less firmly; and the third ring hangs from the second, and the fourth from the third, the fifth from the fourth, and so on, one from another in a long chain, all held by an attracting power, but still not all in the same degree, etc., etc."

This proves that experiments with magnetism were familiar and varied some two thousand years ago.

A German savant, quite a learned old doctor, declares that many of our brilliant lecturers and essayists, who are at the same time scientists, get great credit for originality, whereas they are dressing themselves in the cast-off robes of Des Cartes and some others. Where did Des Cartes, Newton and others get suggestions for their profoundest speculations? They could have found them in several very ancient tomes, but it would be narrow to assert that they did so, because the minds of innumerable persons run in the same channel, once started. Has any one in modern times ever given higher evidence of profoundest study of the cause of cosmical motion than is found in the following, from an ancient Hindoo philosopher, quoted in Asiatic Researches, Vol. IV., by Sir Wm. Jones, in his article, "Philosophy of the

Asiatics"? Here it is:

"There is a strong propensity which dances through every atom, and attracts the minutest particle to some particular object. Search this universe from its base to its summit, from fire to air, from water to earth, from all below the moon to all above the celestial

spheres, and thou shalt not find one corpuscle destitute of that natural attractability; the very point in the first thread in this seeming tangled skein is no other than such a principle of attraction, and all principles beside are destitute of a real basis. From this propensity arises every motion in heavenly or terrestrial bodies. It is a disposition to be attracted which taught hard steel to rush from itself and rivet itself on the magnet;

it is the same disposition which impels the light straw to attach itself on amber; it is this which gives every substance in nature a tendency toward another and an inclination forcibly directed to a determinate point."

Not only knowledge of the magnet, but of the theory of gravitation, is here indicated by one who wrote ages before Philo.

As to morals, listen to this from an ancient Arabian system, doubtless asserted by the pre-historic Cushite-Shower gifts on him who injures thee."

"Learn from yon orient shell to love thy foe,

And store with pearls the hand that brings thee woe;
For, like yon rock, from base vindictive pride,
Emblaze with gems the wrist that rends thy side;
Mark where yon tree rewards the stony shower
With fruit nectarious, or the balmy flower.
All nature cries aloud; shall man do less
Than heal the smiter, or the railer bless?"

I have often thought what a vast amount of labor and treasure might have been saved to the inventor of the patent for hardening india rubber had he been possessed of an old volume published in 1801-No. 5 of Asiatic Researches, in which the elastic gum vine and the india rubber product are treated of. The process by which the rubber is hardened into a brittle mass is described by use of sulphuric acid. It is known that the patentee fell on this by the mere accident of dropping something removed from a shelf above the stove on which he was frying rubber for the ten thousandth time in the shanty to which he had been reduced. Examination showed it was sulphur, which had suddenly hardened

The great to-day!" we are apt to echo bitterly. Admitting that there are great issues, how in the world can we serve them? To-day is so prosaic. We must eat and sleep and put on our clothes, and most of us must work and some of us must play. What time have we left to think about greatness? The commonplace and the petty and the ridiculous stifle our energies and drain our vitality, and make us lose sight of and faith in the greatness which, perhaps, we ought to fight

for.

"Besides, it makes one so queer, it is such bad form, to be enthusiastic about anything now-a-days. One might be willing to spend sleepless nights and toilsome days for a cause, but to make one's self ridiculous-how can one?"

And we generally wind up with, "If we had only lived at such or such a time. Those were heroic days! It was surely easier to be great then than now."

Coward! can she rule and conquer,

If we thus her glory dim?"

That is all true enough, of course. Who has not felt it? But do you suppose-do you suppose that a sense of the ridiculous, and work, and worry, and bills, and bores, and noise, and laziness, and interruptions, and the toothache, are all modern inventions? Don't you know that the people of any preceding century had all the distractions, or their equivalents, that we have? That the commonplace and the petty and the ridiculous environed them as surely as they do us to-day? In short, that the "demnition grind " was as remorseless before Mantalini christened it as since?

To suppose the contrary is to do the men and women of the past injustice. It is the men and women who make an age great, not some magic in the figures with which it happens to be written. It was because they bravely endured the commonplace, as saints of old wore their hair shirts, and in spite of it discerned the heroic and devoted themselves to it, that they were great. For our past was their present, and would have been ours if we had lived among them. To them it had none of the romance which it bears in retrospect, and which this age, in its turn, may come to bear. Will our several times

great-grandchildren consider us anything but cowards for our excuses? If we cannot serve to-day, in the nineteenth century, we probably shouldn't have done so any better in the seventeenth, for instance. What, indeed, could have been more characteristic of the days of the Stuarts than this same sense of the ridiculous pervading everything: this hair shirt, which is harder almost to wear than that of the commonplace, which only dull, oyster-like people are never pricked

and tormented with; and which, as you cannot explain to them, one can never leave off, because it is one's own ridicule one dreads, even more than that of others. Doubtless. thousands of people stifled their convictions, as thousands do now, because they couldn't make themselves ridiculous.

All honor to any one, in any age, who had the courage of his or her convictions; but don't let petty jealousy underrate them by insisting that they had any easier time than we. M. Helen Lovett.

Revival of Ancient Venetian Arts.

VENETIAN Wood carvings and ornamental glassware, prevalent during the fifteenth century, are being extensively revived. The revival is principally under the direction of an Italian, Chevalier M. Guggenheim, who has an establishment at Venice.

The chevalier made a study of the old wood carvings in the ancient palaces of Italy and in the museums of Europe. The furniture was everywhere found in a state of decay. Many of the specimens, when touched, fell in pieces. Those preserved were usually found to have been patched and held together by various devices. A study of the styles disclosed the names of Sansovino, Dritino and Vittorio as authors, and the motives of each one could be distinctly traced. Each specimen was found to have some motive peculiar to each author. Other motives were found named after towns, such as the Serento, etc. Chevalier Guggenheim came into notice first by his rehabilitation of the palace of King Victor Emanuel, to whom he is indebted for his order of chevalier on account of the great artistic merit displayed in such work. Later on, he rehabilitated the palaces of the King of Bavaria and the Counts of Popodopeli. The industry thus created now employs over one thousand men who do their marvelous work for the trifling sum of from one to one and one-half francs per day. Among the many designs thus recreated are hall seats, eight-day clock cases (from whence arise our old Puritan and fireside clocks of the corner), chairs of all kinds, mantels, fire-places, chests, Romanesques, or wood boxes, vase holders of great varieties, tables, secretaries, side-boards and whatever else comes under the general title of furniture. In this connection, that object known to every traveler, the gondola hook, should not be omitted. The gondolier is the cabman of Venice. His hook is his pride. Its handle is carved wood, inlaid with old coins and medals, surmounted with a statuette, the lower end terminating in a steel hook or gaff. The wood used in all this kind of work is the Italian walnut. The prices of

these articles are nominal, ranging from $17 to $225, according to the size of the object and number of pieces or figures it contains.

The history of Venetian glass-ware dates back over one thousand years-beyond the origin of Venice itself. The secret of its manufacture is still faithfully preserved on the Isle of Murano. Dr. Selveati has been instrumental in resuscitating many of the ancient and beautiful styles. Among the styles he has re-created are those of some very antique vases, finger bowls, wine sets, pitchers, water sets, and various tiny and old shapes peculiar to early Venice.

In this connection it is pertinent to speak of the revivals or imitations of the gobelin tapestries and armors of Italy. The imitations of gobelins, now woven by machine, may easily be discerned. The imitations are all one piece, while all of the real gobelins now in existence are so aged that one can easily see each piece as if the fabric were a crazy quilt, the stitches of which had decayed in many places. In renovating_old palaces quite a few real gobelins have been discovered recently, covered with dust and cobwebs, and at first mistaken for solid walls. The armors, casques, shields, halberts, helmets, etc., of the knights of the fifteenth century are also being discovered and reproduced extensively for household

ornaments.

These imitations of Venetian wood carvings and glass-ware, as well as of gobelin tapestries and armors, are sent to this country, and many of the specimens found in the shops are beautiful objects and desirable for house-furnishing. But dishonest dealers do not hesitate to palm off the imitations as originals, and ask a much enhanced price for them on the ground that they are antiques, with possibly a long and fictitious history. Purchasers, therefore, should be on their guard, and not be deluded into paying several times the value of an article they may desire to purchase, on the ground that it is two or three centuries old and was once in some old palace or monastery.

Wm. Hosea Ballon.