Tfreshness and beauty. HE Peace Summer will be traditional for its An old man, who remembers seventy consecutive summers, says it was the most radiant season he ever knew. August was as rich and vernal as June. The fields that last year in July were parched and dead, met Septem- | ber with ruddy greenness, and the coolness of autumn was breathing over the land before it showed that the hot prime of summer was reached. Yet we are told that we shall find in the orchards this month the penalty we are to pay for the soft and lovely summer. If we will have a tender bloom upon the August hills and fields, we must not expect that October apples will have rosy cheeks. There were painful rumors from the apple-trees all summer which we shall hope may not be verified. From Western New York and from the New England hills came the same story. It was to be a poor apple year. It was like hearing that there was to be no ambrosia at Jove's table. The reason offered for the thin crop, or for the virtual failure, was ingenious. The early and constant rains in May, which set immovably the lovely green upon the landscape, fell pitilessly and ceaselessly upon the blossoming orchards, and washed the pollen away. So the loss was double. We lost the wonderful odor that makes the warm May days smell like a foretaste of all the mingled flowers of summer, and we are-if haply the pollen theory be not exploded by the result-to lose the noblest fruit of the country. Strawberries, raspberries, cherries, mulberries, peaches, plums, pears, high and low blackberries, thimbleberries, blueberries, and huckleberries (if the gentle reader prefers to call them or to spell them whortleberries, let him do so), and grapeseven grapes, the most poetic of fruits-might all better be spared than the honest, sound, ruddy apple. Yes-might altogether be spared rather than the apple. They are the delight of an hour-the evanescent decoration of a week, or a fortnight, or of a month. They play exquisitely into each other's hands, and wreathe the summer with continuous variety and delicate gust. But the apple is a permanent pleasure. It is for all the year. It circles the months. You may eat russets up to the day when the new apples appear. The apple is immortal! As it is the most ancient, so it is the most royal of fruits. The apple never dies. The sturdy fruit, delicious in flavor and of an infinite adaptability, is curiously characteristic of the Yankee, who surrounds his farm with its stiff and unshapely trees, and generally leaves them to wrestle with the weather as they choose; but, despite his neglect, expects that they will pour rosy plenty into his basket in the soft Indian Summer days. Is his seeming neglect only the confidence of experience after all? If it be so, how can he look into his orchard without blushing? What a pathetic sermon is each of those uncomfortable trees! No wonder he hangs his head as he passes by, and scolds his teams, and screams to them that he may not hear the still small voice of the apple-tree! "Hullo!" it whispers to him, as the wind rustles through the leaves, "you are a pretty hard-looking customer, as I am. We are both planted on this poor hill-side, and we must both grow and bear as we best can. You are fairly honest, they say, if you are as rough and angular as I am. Yet the town makes good roads for you, and educates your children, and helps you help yourself. Good for you and the town. Left to yourself alone you might moss over with ignorance and dullness, and slide back into barbarism. Luckily for you, you Yankee, you have sense enough to get scraped and to keep so. You get your roots dug around. You have the caterpillars taken off you-even if you do sometimes cherish a maggot in your brain or catch a bee in your bonnet. Why don't you do to others as you would be done to? Why should I be mossbound? Why should you leave me to choke with caterpillars, and long in vain to have the band of earth loosened around my feet? Why not wash me once in a while, and dry me with a scraper? I should be all the better for it and so would you. Don't scream so noisily to those oxen, but hear what I say, and do what I ask." It is the most generous and unselfish of the fruits, considering how valuable it is. The huckleberry and the blackberry are honest souls too. The firm, hard, black huckleberry, very different from the blueberry, which is a pretty, soft, bastard branch of the family, is as modest and generous in its sphere, perhaps, as the apple. But its time is short; and although the homeliest of berries, it is as capricious as a beauty. The trailing arbutus, the earliest and one of the loveliest of wild flowers, has the same mingling of humility and caprice. It runs under the old moist leaves of last year-the most mouldy and old-fashioned society; but it takes dainty little airs, and will not show its face upon aristocratic and high-bred uplands, even when they are in the immediate neighborhood. So the huckleberry bestows itself profusely upon the most barren pastures; but when you go to find it a few fields off, and apparently upon the same kind of soil, the whim has seized it, and it will not be found. But the noble apple is not whimsical. All through the latitudes where it can live at all it gives itself impartially and profusely. And every where it is a symbol. In the apple latitudes men are of a mingled temperate flavor, neither too sharp nor too sweet. They are of firm consistency, and sound to the core. They are a wholesome, hearty, sturdy, and trusty race. In the grape latitudes, the wine countries, they have rare and exquisite qualities; but the first gush is the best, and they are not sweet to the very seed and in the seed. In the banana and pomegranate latitudes there is little spirit, no flavor, and an insipid mushy consistency. Grapes shrivel into raisins, which may be packed in boxes like slaves in a slave-ship. But apples, even in a barrel, preserve their individuality and elbow-room, and touch but at few points; and they nobly endure. If you choose to slice and dry them-it is not their natural end-but even then they will return you good for evil in pies that might persuade any pagan to be a Christian. Not doughy, clammy, fatty pies, which are a device of Satan, but those triumphs which have no bottom crust, and in which the spoon sinks and sinks-Selah! For pies proper no condemnation can be severe enough. It is one of the alarming signs that we are getting to be a pie-eating nation. (Getting to be?) Pies are the staple food at all the taverns in the land. The rural kitchen is full of pies. The railroad stations are piled with pies. The eatingbooths in Fulton Market are lined with pies. It is the popular form of taking dyspepsia and ruining the health. The smart Sala, who hired himself to the London Telegraph to ridicule this country, sparkled when he wrote of pies; and the worst of his wit was that it was true. It is a prostitution of any fruit, an injury, a crime, to bury it in a pie. But against the venerable and august apple it is a peculiar infamy. Thus nothing is so improper as a pie proper. But there are preparations called pie which are truly delightful; and chief among them that which slices the apple without making a mush of it, and after it slices it, spices it, and then bakes it under a firm, light, thoroughly-browned, and dry crust. Or is there any human food which transcends a pumpkin or Talman sweeting, carefully baked, and eaten with cream and new milk? In other days the Cafe de Paris upon the Boulevard des Italiens had a toothsome carte, or bill of fare. The choicest dishes exquisitely cooked were there. But a certain traveler searched it in vain, and with a sigh, for a plump sweeting apple perfectly baked and submerged in cream. If a Yankee from New England hills had invited Abd-el-Kader, the late guest of Paris, to dine with him in that city, and could have set before him what every Yankee housewife sets before her husband's "hands," the pleased Algerine would have confessed a triumph of the cuisine beyond the reach of his impassioned imagination. We called the apple venerable and august. What else has descended to us from the garden of Eden but that and sin? Had there been any other fruit there in the blooming youth and glory of all fruits which could have persuaded Adam, the primal and perfect man, surely it would have been chosen. Why was not the luscious peach preferred, or the orange, or the Arabian date? For the joy of tasting an apple Adam made us all taste sin. apple he gave the world. For an And in that other heaven of the Greeks it was an apple that sowed discord, from the immortal jealousy of divinities that longed to possess it. Or what garden of the poets, what fabled fruitage, so alluring and fair as the orchard of the Hesperides ? If the apples have truly failed, then, how can we delight in the splendid summer? Or did Nature feel that no bribe less gorgeous held even the hope of reconciling us to the grievous, however temporary, misfortune? Let the sluggards go to the ant. But the rest of us will learn of the apple. Of the most ancient and honorable ancestry, how humble it is!. Under what a plain homespun coat it hides its perennial sweetness and exhaustless virtue! Take diamonds and gold if you will, O Mother Nature, but spare us the kindly apple! IN the preface to one of Prescott's histories the author tells the story of his partial blindness, which has always invested him and his works with a touching interest. That so serious a misfortune not only failed to disincline him to the necessary work of life, but did not deter him from prolonged and profound historical research, was a triumph of character which awakens admiration quite as much as the skill with which the results of the study were wrought out. But the scholarly impulse is irresistible, and the literary instinct surmounts appalling obstacles. Thus, in "France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives" (Little, Brown, and Co., Boston), Mr. Francis Parkman, whose "Conspiracy of Pontiac" and "Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life" had already revealed the tendency of his interests and studies, has just published a volume of the gravest and most romantic historical value, accomplished under difficulties which no one but a student whose heart was wholly in a work for which he is specially competent could have conquered. It has long been known that he was engaged upon the work, and there was natural surprise at the delay in its appearance. "This slowness," now says the author in his preface, "was unavoidable. During the past eighteen years the state of his health has exacted throughout an extreme caution in regard to mental application, reducing it at best within narrow and precarious limits, and often precluding it. Indeed, for two periods, each of several years, any attempt at bookish occupation would have been merely suicidal. A condition of sight arising from kindred sources has also retarded the work, since it has never permitted reading or writing continuously for more than five minutes, and often has not permitted them at all. A previous work-'The Conspiracy of Pontiac'-was written in similar circumstances." A work executed under such circumstances of disabling disease and invincible resolution should be worthy the devotion both in subject and treatment; and it is the praise of this entirely delightful book that it is so. The story of the European settlement of this continent is the history of a conflict between the two spirits that then shook Europe, and which, under various forms, dispute the dominion of the world to this hour; the spirit of Feudalism and Freedom; of privilege and the people; of authority and independence; of the Church and Heresy; of absolutism and Liberty. After various fortunes each of these tendencies obtained a hold upon the continent. The Puritans settled New England, the Roman Catholics New France. To paint the picture of the progress and fate of these two influences, of the growth of New England and of New France, and of the final fall of the latter as a formidable force in our civilization, is an enterprise so fascinating to the historical scholar that the surprise is not that Mr. Parkman has devoted himself to it, but that it had not been already elaborately accomplished. The present volume, which is called "The Pioneers of France in the New World," is one of a series, yet is an entirely complete narration. It contains two distinct stories, that of the Huguenot attempts to plant themselves upon the southern coast, and that of Samuel Champlain and his associates to establish France in Canada. From old manuscripts and obscure and long-forgotten memoirs, from the voyages of Hakluyt and journals and dispatches buried in Spanish archives and French libraries, the historian has drawn the fine and airy threads which he has woven into this rich and luminous tapestry. There is no more romantic reading than those prolix and stately and terrible narratives; but their mass is hopeless, and they are inaccessible except to patience and study. Yet all their fine romantic flavor is preserved in Mr. Parkman's work. With delicate skill he has separated the gold dust from the rubbish. The tale of Early Spanish adventure, of Ponce de Leon, of De Soto; of the French Huguenot voyagers, of Jean Ribaut and Laudonnière; the withering hand of the Inquisition stretched out over the sea in Menendez, the massacres at Port Royal, and the wild EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR. revenge of De Gourgues; the whole blooming and bloody story of Florida, the land of flowers and of cruel men, is told with surpassing interest and skill. The vague traditions and the few shadowy, familiar facts of that portion of our history are set forth in a fully digested, copious, and picturesque narrative Henceforth this which has a continuous charm. volume is an essential chapter in our history. The second part is devoted to Samuel de Champlain, the Father of New France. A brief but sufficient sketch of early French adventure in North America, of the legends and superstitions which hung over the western sea and the shore beyond, of Verrazzano's voyage, of Jacques Cartier's and Roberval's, and La Roche's, brings us to Champlain and the Jesuits. It is a curious contrast which is developed in these pages between the Spanish Catholic Menendez and the French Catholic Champlain. The former is the type of the bloody bigot who makes the name of his church hateful to every humane mind; the latter of that earnest, faithful persistence which has often made the same church "Of the pioneers of the the pioneer of civilization. North American forests," says our author, whose sympathy and memory of his own wanderings in the wilds follow with enthusiasm and intelligence the explorations of the heroic Frenchman, "his It was he who name stands foremost on the list. struck the deepest and boldest strokes into the heart of their pristine barbarism. At Chantilly, at Fontainebleau, at Paris, in the cabinets of Princes and of Royalty itself, mingling with the proud vanities of the Court; then lost from sight in the depths of Canada, the companion of savages, sharer of their toils, privations, and battles, more hardy, patient, and bold than they-such, for successive years, were the alternations of this man's life." It is no wonder that so true a woodman as Henry Thoreau was attracted by the story of Champlain. In his "Cape Cod" the sturdy Protestant pays homage to the equally sturdy Catholic, who gladly relinquished the glitter of European courts for the sombre solitudes of the primeval American forest. The characteristic scenery of that forest was never more picturesquely and graphically painted than by Mr. Parkman. His descriptions are those of a poet. Thus Champlain is following the Ottawa, and we select a passage which is not exceptional but is a fair illustration of the author's felicity. "Day by day brought a renewal of their toils. Hour by hour they moved prosperously up the long winding of the solitary stream; then, in quick succession, rapid followed rapid, till the bed of the Ottawa seemed a slope of foam. Now, like a wall bristling at the top with woody islets, the Falls of the Chats faced them with the sheer plunge of their sixteen cataracts. Now they glided beneath overhanging cliffs, where, seeing but unseen, the crouched wild-cat eyed them from the thicket; now through the maze of water-girded rocks which the white cedar and the spruce clasped with serpent-like roots, or among islands where old hemlocks, dead at the top, darkened the water with deep green shadow. Here, too, the rock maple reared its verdant masses, the beech its glistening leaves and clean, smooth stem, and behind, stiff and solemn, rose the balsam fir. Here in the tortuous channels the musk-rat swam and plunged, and the splashing wild duck dived beneath the alders, or among the red and matted roots of thirsty water-willows. Aloft, the white pine towered 'proudly eminent' above a sea of verdure. Old fir-trees, hoary and grim, shaggy with pendent mosses, leaned above the stream, and "In these ancient wilds, to whose ever verdant antiquity the pyramids are young and Nineveh a mushroom of yesterday; where the sage wanderer of the Odyssey, could he have urged his pilgrimage so far, would have surveyed the same grand and stern monotony, the same dark sweep of melancholy woods; and where, as of yore, the bear and the wolf still lurk in the thicket, and the lynx glares from the leafy bough; here, while New England was a solitude, and the settlers of Virginia scarcely dared venture inland beyond the sound of cannonshot, Champlain was planting on shores and islands the emblems of his faith." We must not linger longer praising this delightful volume, which has a strange charm for the gen. eral reader and a true and permanent interest for the historical student. Mr. Parkman's seclusion and suffering have borne worthy fruit. His patient tenacity is not less, in another way, than that of the heroes he celebrates; and when, like them, he embarks upon a new voyage we shall follow his fertune with the same interest and gratitude. THAT the Atlantic Cable would fail was undoubtIt would certainly be untrue edly the general expectation. It would be hard to say why it was so. to say that there was any desire that it should fail, although there is no question that the feeling of this country toward England has profoundly changed since the former attempt to lay the cable in 1858. The occasion of the present failure was probably the least suspected of all that had been suggested. That a mere carelessness of detail, a chafing that was easily avoidable, should have parted the line and brought the undertaking to an end, was not anticipated. It was thought that a storm might baffle the effort, that the strain might be too severe. that the depth of submersion might injure the insulation, but these more serious accidents did not trouble the enterprise. The line seems to have been cut by a confusion of the paying-out gear, parted, slipped over the side, and was gone. It The news caused no excitement. It was received with an "I thought so" expression. Every thing promised fairly. But whether there be a just public instinct of the myriad perils that threaten the effort or a profound indifference to its success, the undoubted fact is that nobody seemed to care. There is a story floating in the newspapers that an English firm which had failed a few years since to secure the contract for a European line had tampered with it before it was laid, and that the same firm had unsuccessfully applied to furnish the wire to the Atlantic company, The inference was plain. But the insinuation is one not to be heeded upon no other authority than an irresponsible newspaper report. But the report shows how readily mischief may And be done. A sharp piece of wire thrust here and there through the casing destroys the current. this may easily be achieved without betrayal. This was the kind of injury alleged to have been done to the Baltic line; and it is true that the insulation of the Atlantic Cable was found to be checked by such steamboat managers, the astounding frauds of Edan insertion. ward Ketchum, and the furious extravagance of foolish people at the watering-places, have given it an unhandsome eminence. It seems very clear that we have all very little conception of the consequences of the successful laying of a cable in the Atlantic ocean. They will undoubtedly be as astonishing as those of building a railroad between two places formerly connected by coaches. Distance breeds ignorance. From ignorance springs misunderstanding, trouble, war. Whatever, therefore, tends to destroy distance increases mutual knowledge and promotes peace. If the earlier statesmen of this country, who thought the Union most wisely confined to a few States, could have foreseen the telegraph and steam travel, could have known that the good genius Science was about to enable us to converse and fly across the continent, they would have seen that with entirely unprecedented means of communication an entire ly unprecedented extent of the Union became practicable. It is not extent which is embarrassing but distance. When by means of science the citizens at the mouth of the Columbia on the Pacific can communicate with the capital more readily than those at the mouth of the Mississippi did fifty or thirty years ago, the bond of Union is as close. It was the practical distance maintained by the sagacious jealousy of Southern leaders which separated the minds of the mass of the Southern population from the Northern, and, fostering ignorance, cherished jealousy and hate. Had actual intercourse been as free as the means of communication were, the war would have been avoided. If foul gases can be dissipated and absorbed the processes of nature proceed peacefully. If they are forcibly confined, they will rend the globe with convulsions. Free communication equalizes the conditions. Is it too dear a dream that, as State lines fall before it in this country, national lines will gradually yield to it all over the world? The Ketchum fraud is the most startling event of the kind in our annals. A young man of twentyfive, of an apparently sweet and gentle disposition, well-educated, rich, happily married, of pleasing manners, and of unsuspected honesty, disappears simultaneously with the discovery that he has defrauded other persons of more than four millions of dollars. The mild and mannerly banker is found to have been a consummate deceiver. The honorable gentleman turns out to be a liar. He is found a fortnight after the discovery of his crime, loitering hardly concealed in the very heart of the city that hums with amazement at his guilt. All that time he has walked with seeming carelessness in the public streets. He rides unconcerned in the Central Park. When he is arrested he says that it is "all right," and follows the officers to the police magistrate. In prison he calmly receives his friends, and quietly talks with them, saying that at one time he owned property worth six millions of dollars. But his composure gives way when he meets his father, who had wholly trusted him, and whom he has ruined. So far as appears, Ketchum's crimes were made practicable by the loose way in which business is done in Wall Street, and they were facilitated by a certain vague feeling that stock speculations are a game which absolves the player from the ordinary moral restraints; that Wall Street is a kind of gambling hell where all baggage is at the risk of the owner, and every gambler may thank himself if his fingers are burned. But no theories of business gambling can cover forgery, and Ketchum's operations were prosecuted by forged checks. There seems to be no room for doubt of the facts. By a proper rule of human intercourse every man is to be held innocent until he is legally proved to be guilty. But there are criminals necessarily convicted without a trial, or in spite of it. Booth is raigned. Henry Wirz is convicted whether the Commission acquits him or not. And there can be no doubt of the crimes of Edward B. Ketchum. It is clear that if the seclusion of our republic upon this continent enables it without baneful interference to pursue its development, it is no less a disadvantage to civilization because its actual op-known to be guilty although he was never areration is concealed by distance from those who are most interested in its success. If the masses of the people of the slave States had not been separated by imposed ignorance from the rest of the country, they would have rebeled against slavery; and if the people of Europe were not made ignorant by hopeless distance from us, they would much more rapidly reorganize their Governments upon liberty. An ocean telegraph would be a first step toward closer union, and consequently greater knowledge, between Europe and America. It would be an alliance not dangerously entangling, but persuasive of peace and good-will. And now the chosen time has come, for now America has thrown off her chains and stands erect, aiming at her true goal. The aspiration of the poet is fulfilling itself: "Be just at home; then reach beyond And make the great Atlantic pond And henceforth there shall be no chain The wires shall murmur through the main THE radiant Peace Summer will be painfully memorable for a peculiar excitement of the public mind. The wanton carelessness of railroad and Can there be any less doubt of that of railroad and steamboat managers who suffer the most frightful massacres to take place from the want of rules which the most ordinary care should dictate? If a superintendent should allow the locomotive of an express passenger train to be driven by a man who had never seen a locomotive, could he be held guiltless of the slaughter that might follow? If the rules did not make it impossible for two trains or locomotives to be upon the same spot under any circumstances whatever at the same time, could the makers of the rules be absolved of a negligence which is criminal. If the conductor or the engineer disobey rules which provide against every chance of calculable peril, then of course they are guilty, and should be punished in exactly the same way as a man who fired a gun at random from a window. Neither of them mean to kill any body; but if any body be killed they are plainly guilty of homicide. In the case of the shocking collision upon the Housatonic Road, where a locomotive upon a trial trip ran into and through a returning train, the investigation resulted in a verdict of criminal carelessness against the superintendent, conductor, engi Murdered, we say; not, indeed, with malicious intent, but with a recklessness which was simply murderous as its consequences were. Now if a conductor who can deliberately commit such an of neer, and master-mechanic. As we write no fur-out meeting a train then due. "Unluckily" it could ther legal steps have been taken. But if the of- not be done. There was a terrible collision, and four fenders are not indicted and tried, the authorities of passengers were murdered outright and a score or Connecticut decide that human life may be wantonly more injured. sacrificed in the State, and nobody be held to answer. But passengers must reflect upon a certain kind of responsibility which they too frequently assume. There is always great impatience of delays upon a railroad. Some are hastening to make a connec-fense is not ignominiously and memorably punishtion for further travel. Some to fulfill various engagements. This man has a note to pay. That man is to meet an agent. This one is hurrying to a sick child or wife. That one is impatient for his dinner. And so a fever of haste and utter impatience of interruption possesses the whole company. "What a slow coach!" cries one. "Let's get out and walk!" sneers another. "This line makes money by saving wood," says a third. The conductor is assailed on every hand by questions and gibes. He too has his private impatience. He wishes to avoid the bother and further detention of delay. He does not wish to lose the right of the road. He dislikes to forfeit the good opinion of the passengers and to be accounted an unpunctual offiHe may be a weakly good-humored man, willing to run for luck, averse "to borrowing trouble," and inclined to "guess that all will come out right." cer. But every traveler ought to know that when there is the least derangement of time upon a railroad there is constant danger from all these causes. It should be the first thought of every one to confirm the conductor in the strictest fidelity to the rules, and to help him in taking every extraordinary measure of precaution. If an axle heats, if a wheel breaks, if the running gear be disturbed, and the train delayed, every passenger should see that signals are sent out and messages dispatched. Every State should appoint supervisors of railroad bridges as well as inspectors of locomotives, and pay them enough to have their work done and not shirked. For experience has proved that railroad companies can not be trusted to provide necessary guarantees for the safety of travelers, and the action of the State is merely the people protecting themselves. ter. ed, or if the public mind can not perceive the peril of condoning such crimes, we must be content to pay the penalty of our contempt of human life until some company of passengers, stung by the cruel carelessness which has slain and maimed their comrades, take summary vengeance upon those whom they may, and perhaps wrongfully, consider guilty. If the laws fail to arrest the frightful slaughter which has marked this summer, every body of travelers will constitute themselves a Committee of Public Safety. THE striking letter of Mr. W. P. Atkinson upon the Great Schools of England, of which we spoke last month, has excited a great deal of interest among teachers and scholars. It is a "swamp angel" in the attack which is now opened upon the traditions of education. For there is unquestionably a very effective reaction now raging against the supreme importance of the study of the Greek and Latin classics. It is found that the exclusive devotion of the great schools and universities in England to the Latin and Greek results merely in a severe training in philology, which, however important both in itself and for intellectual discipline, is by no means the chief and essential point of a proper modern education. The conditions of life in America may make a certain conservative spirit in the methods of study more necessary than in England. The tendency with us may be, as is claimed by some wise scholars, inevitably toward diffusion and superficiality, and require therefore to be counteracted by the careful and steady discipline of the study of the ancient languages. But those very same conditions peculiarly demand a catholicity of education which is lost in too strict a following of the monkish curriculum. If the public were less pusillanimous railroad companies and their agents would be more respect- The remedy is perhaps in the direction of a more ful and cautious. Passengers submit to be crowded generous choice. It is not that the classics shall beyond reason, to stand up, to be addressed by con- be proscribed, but that science, in the broadest ductors and other officers in the most surly tone, sense, and the modern languages and literature, and they smile at it all as if it were a necessary shall be admitted ad eundem. If the system of depart of the discipline of life. We may learn a les- grees, which has become almost wholly obsolete son from John Bull upon this subject. John does not and unmeaning, must be retained, let them reprepay his fare to be jammed in an uncomfortable rail- sent a certain quality rather than direction of study. way carriage, and to be accosted by the attendants If there must be collateral courses, a classic, a sciof the train as if he were a vagrant of bad charac-entific, and a modern language course, let the deHe thunders in the Times if he does not get his money's worth. The consequence is a wholesome sensitiveness to public censure upon the part of the managers, and infinitely greater security and courtesy upon the road. A few weeks since, when the verdict in the Housatonic case had been just rendered, and while the inquiry into the explosion of the Arrow steamer was still pending, while the public mind was aghast with the horrible catastrophe upon the Tennessee and Alabama Road and with the incessant smashes and collisions elsewhere, a train upon the Long Island Railroad left Hunter's Point fifteen minutes behind time, and a succeeding station forty minutes late, and dashed on at full speed, trusting to luck to reach the next point with grees be of exactly equal honor and represent an equal attainment. For instance, let the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Sciences represent an equally honorable scholarship, the character of which shall be indicated by the degree. And the honor, it must be observed, is very much within the power of the college. If Harvard and Yale and Union and the University of Michigan honorably distinguish the student who has studied Greek from one who has not, whatever the extent and quality of the latter's scholarship may be in other studies, those colleges do all they can, and it is very much, to inculcate the notion that there is an intrinsic superiority in classical study. But if the college by its degree says simply: "My son A is |