Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 139, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1910 — BERLIN MANNERS AND MORALS. [ARTICLE]

BERLIN MANNERS AND MORALS.

Who tu It started the rumor tha aprlng was gentle? k~- - - - The three wives of the Grand Vizier Morocco poisoned him. It was unanimous. It Is a pity that the white plague continues to stalk abroad when there la so much fresh air at large. Having led the world In a tout around the globe, our navy is now proposing to lead In development at home. Incendiaries tried to burn down an engine "house In a New York suburb. This was certainly adding Insult to Injury. Acetylene torches for use In densi fog have been supplied to the Parisian police stations. It would seem that the London police would need them ■sore. A six-year-old girl In Brooklyn has two heads. It must be something of a strain on her lungs when she gets Into an animated conversation with herself. An automobile scorcher at Yonkers has been fined SSO and compelled to furnish bonds that he will not drive a car for a year. This is something like punishment. An Ohio authority says that drunkenness is an evidence of insanity. It la quite generally agreed now that it Is a disease, but we still continue to treat It legally as a crime. Bad is the lot of the man who by putting forth extraordinary efforts gets his boy to agree to a safe and sane Fourth of July only to become a victim to the foolishness of football. The new census is expected to show that 5,000,000 people live in New York. Judging from the things that happen at some New York weddings, a large percentage of the 5,000,000 must be fools. B, A Holy Roller prophet somewhere In the east predicted that the end of the world would come recently. We haves watched the news dispatches carefully, and are able, to state In the most positive manner that the end didn’t come. The Carnegie Steel Company has Issued orders to its thirty-five thousand men that henceforth there will be no more Sunday work, except in the case of emergencies. The officers of the company recognize the wisdom of a day of rest. Harry Thaw’s mother says his Income never exceeded $30,000 a year. It should be remembered, however, that living was not as expensive when ha was up and doing as it is now. In those days $30,000 a year was enough to enable one to get along without much skimping. There are signs that that venerable Institution, the roller-towel, is disappearing from common use. The individual towel, like the individual drinking cup, is taking the place of the older and less hygienic device. Eugene Field’s anecdote of the rollertowel In the printing office, which grew so hard with ink and silicates that it gave out a musical note when hit, will be hereafter a matter not so much of humor as of history. So, after all, it isn’t worry, It Isn’t decadent gastric juice. It isn’t the "gobble and git’’ counter, it isn’t wornout stomach linings that force men to give up mince pie and the midnight lunch. It’s the enemy of his youth and his old age, the appendix. One may guess that henceforth there will be no closed season for appendices. The knights of the scalpel will hunt them early and late, for when a man grows too old to contract appendicitis he can always develop a case of “appendlal gastralgla.” Various societies Interested In preventing cruelty to animals are urging merchants who are large owners of work horses not to sell any animal the price of which at auction would be less than fifty dollars, within the last ten years horses have risen enormously in price, and a fifty-dollar animal to-day usually means one that has been worked out and worn out, and ought to be put painlessly to death rather than sold. It is encouraging to learn that many merchants take this view of the matter, and are following tha practice recommended by the societies. One cannot help fishing, however, that homes might be found for some of the old hories, where, in the country, they might pass their last days with only light work -and In comfort. An Improvement In general business conditions, both material and moral, is Indicated by the advance In wages which is announced by leading eastern railroads. The Pennsylvania has increased the pay rool of its lesser employes to the extent of $7,000,000, and the Philadelphia and Reading to the extent of $1,400,0(10. Some $35,000 men benefit by the change. The acJmowledged Increase in the cost of living provides the chief reason for the advance, and the great expansion of the volume of business, due to widespread prosperity, provides the means. ▲ gratifying feature of the advance |g that it is voluntary. Without con-

troversy or coercion, a handsome tribute has been paid to expediency and Justice. We trust tbe day is near when a step of this nature will no longer provoke comment by reason of Its rarity. . Every such example counts, and these examples, as they multiply, will operate with a cumulative force. The example set by the railroads Is likely to be followed, on even a bigger Scale, by the United Sta£es Steel Corporation. An advance at the same rate as that granted by the railroads, 6 per cent. Is anticipated. • It would mean to the corporation an Increased pay roll of more than $9,600,000. But the ensuing advantages, social and economical, will be worth the money. When young Mr. and Mrs. J. Macy Willets started off on their bridal tour their course lay through Sheffield and New Marlboro to Mepal Manor. As they neared their destination something happened: “About one-quarter of a mile from the manor they were, met by all of the employes on that estate and the estate of Mr. Howard Willets. Mr. J. Macy 'Willets* father. The employes unhitched the horses and drew the carriage and couple to the manor, where they will remain for two weeks fishing and riding.” Sometimes we get this sort of thing out of the London Times, and sometimes out of such fiction as "Lady Gwendolyn’s Lover,’* and sometimes out of the lighter part of a Drury Lane melodrama. And when we read carelessly of Sheffield and Marlboro and manor we unconsciously suply a "bold peasantry, their country's pride,” and assume the country under consideration to be old England, where the lowly are still only too happy to display a sympathetic Interest In the affairs of the great. But If we do we are wrong. Mepal Manor Is not In Yorkshire. It Is in Massachusetts. The excerpt Is not from the London Times. It is from the New York Herald. The young people mentioned have the run of a twenty-thou-sand-acre preserve owned by their parents. This sounds like Scotland, but it Is the Berkshire Hills. The same young people are gTeat favorites with the workers on the "estate” and with other "villagers,” and they gave a reception at the "manor” and distributed “largess” among the loyal supernumeraries or “retainers” to the tune of a guinea—or, rather, five dollars—apiece. This sounds like the midlands or the shires, but, we repeat, It took place in the old Bay State—the State of Concord, Lexington and Bunker Hill. We give the charming Incident for what it may be worth. If England, as they tell us, is becoming more like America, America, on the other hand, seems to be growing more like England. So goes the see saw, and thus a general balance is maintained.

Illustration In Homage of Pair Sex to Black Performer*. A curious scene occurred in Berlin when a troupe of Black Senegalese, who had been playing for months at a music hall in Unter den Linden, left the city the other day, a* New York Sun correspondent says. The blacks had apparently conquered wholesale the hearts of feminine Berlin. At midday, as they prepared to drive to the railway station, a crowd of 1,500 persons, mostly women and young girls, gathered opposite the music hall. Eight policemen tried to keep order, but the women and girls broke through the cordon and demanded angrily a last farewell from the blacks. Many of the women were pretty and well dressed, and when the scene was over they departed in taxicabs. The Senegalese, with complacent smiles on their broad -faces, tenderly embraced and kissed their adorers, and to loud cries of “Come back soon!” drove away in droskys. The Berlin newspapers comment bitterly on what they call a “typical picture of Berlin manners and morals.” They recall the fact that a few months ago the government had to issue an appeal warning young girls of good society against carrying on amatory correspondence with half-educated negroes in the German colonies. The negroes’ huts, said the warning, were hung with photographs sent to them by foolish young girls, many of them still at school.