Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1891 — Page 4 Advertisements Column 2 [ADVERTISEMENT]

supper ready and be waiting at the front gate when he returns. The two German bankers retiring to their counting-room ?.nd committing suicide because they found themselves and the hank hopelessly involved, furnishes a striking contrast to the two Boston bankers, who have wrecked themselves and hundreds of others, hunting for bail preparatory to defending against a prosecution for their crime. Suicide, of course, must not he commended; but one can hardly help feeling sympathy for the men who saw no other way out. A large company of railroad officials in New Jersey held a meeting to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the running of the first train of cars by a locomotive in the State. Two generations have elapsed since railroading was such a curiosity that the whole New Jersey Legislature turned out to see the little “John Bull,” the putting engine which George Stephenson had sent over to the Camden & Amboy Road. In these two generations what colossal progress has been made! It is only by looking backward that we can appreciate it. We send locomotives to John Bull now, and if the tokens do not fail we will soon send him some which will make his hair rise with awe and wonder.

Sailors are laughing at the impulsive, unconventional young Emperor of Germany because lie proposes to abolish the terms “starboard” and “port” in the German navy, substituting therefor the lubberly words “right” and “left.” “Why not talk so any landlubber will know what you mean?” he is reported to have inquired with some asperity of the horrified naval commander. The Emperor is yet young. A wise choice of parents. brought him a throne, but years alone will bring him that horsesense bred of observation. In time he will learn that every profession has its cant lingo, employed, not to make the utterances of those who use it more intelligible to each other, but to make them wholly unintelligible to outsiders. By this means the dignity of the profession is conserved and the unlearned are discouraged from prying so closely into its mysteries as to discover its general superficiality.

They are discussing in the English papers in a way which must make the sluggish blood of the traditional British matron curdle in her veins whether the keeping of the seventh comraifndment is a mere climatic vagary. It seems that the tales of Rudyard Kipling have brought home to the English mind the idea that the observance of the aforesaid law is so exceptional in India that it is really not to be expected, and there is no end of persons ready to write letters to tho press telling all they know or all they do iK>t know of the matter, witli affirmations and denials ad nauseam. The phrase of Byron is quoted in which he affirms the immorality of ftjlk “where the climate’s sultry,” and there is a certain air of impropriety about the whole matter which seems to lend it a most attractive piquancy. The fact is that the Englishman out of sight of his insular world is always likely to lie immoral and not a little likely to be a beast, and in India it is to be expected that this phase of British character shall come well to the fore, as it does in fact. The question is, What is there to be done about it?