Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1892 — Page 4 Advertisements Column 2 [ADVERTISEMENT]

“thrashing schoolma’ams" with open arm, A far-away —but not very far off —contemporary advises a young man, when writing a love letter, to keep before his mind how the letter would look in print.' But he is much more apt to keep before his vision how the one to whom he is writing looks in print, muslin, calico or silk. And quite right he is, too. There is too much pessimism abroad in the land. Georoe W. Allen, better known as “Land Bill Allen." died in an Ohio poor-house. He spent a handsome fortune in getting his homestead law before the people, and many thousands owe their beautiful homes to his untiring labors. His orignal bill of 1863 has been many times amended. but its principles have been preserved. Now that he is dead there is a movement to raise a monument to his memory. If there has ever been a moment when the utterances which are attributed to the Emperor William in his recent address to the military would be the most ill-advised possible, this is the time. With all Europe full of discontent, with the whole world seething with revolt against kingly authority, the Emperor reasserts the doctrine of absolute dominion such as obtained in the old Roman days. To proclaim boldly that he as Emperor owns his subjects, body and soul, was hardly tolerated in the time of the Cmsars; will it be accepted in Germany to-day? Alas and alas! Between the physicians and the philosophers, even that ethereal and delightful consolation of poor humanity, the kiss, will soon be driven from this world of woe! The doctors, with their terrible tales of diseases of the respiratory organs, communicated when the kiss was throwing off sparks, will cast a gloom over the ecstasies of courtship. Fancy the feelings of the young and happily engaged bachelor when, as he prepares to place the kiss of affection upon the rub}'lips of his future bride, she draws back and with assumed kindness says: “Excuse me, George, dear! but you know diphtheria is so uncommonly prevalent just now!” A woNDERFTL cheapening in the process of steel manufacture is reported from Baltimore. It promises to be as great an improvement upon the Bessemer process as that was upon the previously employed methods of producing steel from the raw iron. The iron is melted, a few chemicals placed on it. and after a few seconds the melted mass is poured off into molds, the work of reduction being as complete as it is simple. The steel is said to Ik* of the best, and obtained at a cost of barely that of the old mode of conversion. It is said to cost $6.50 to convert a ton of pig iron into steel by the Bessemer process, and that by this method at least an equally good result can be obtained for *1.25. If this be true another revolution in the iron and steel class of industries is imminent.

Tiie New York Home Journal rebukes the Grolier Club for giving its authority to what the Journal Is pleased to term the “singular, inexcusable practice” of gilding the tops of books and leaving the edges white. It is to the credit of the Grolier Club if this is true. The top of a volume is cut and gilded because otherwise the dust gathers about it and renders it unsightly, but this is not the case with front and .bottom, which may therefore be left uncut, a fact which adds greatly to the beauty and individuality of the volume. A book that is to be treated simply as an occasion for the display of the art of the bookbinder may have its front cut and gilded, but the effect is the same as in the case of a woman dressed to display the art of her modiste. The individuality of book aud woman is in such a case lost.

Of course it was fated that Gilbert and Sullivan should work together in comic opera once more. Sir Arthur has made his little excursion into the realms of grand opera, and it has cost the manager such a pretty penny that lie is only too glad of a chance to recover some of his losses by enlisting anew the services of the merry pair of “Pinafore” and “The Pirates of Penzance.” The English public is not ripe for national opera of heroic proportions; it likes the tootle-tootle of the ballad or the dry humor of G. & S. better than Waverley novels set to music. And G. & S. are now going to coin money enough with their dry humor so that Sir Arthur may try another excursion to the domain of high art some day.