Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1887 — CHARLOTTE CORDAY. [ARTICLE]

CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

Hill Nye Tells Some Things He Knows "•" "About Her—Also Some Things He Don't Know. Charlotte Corday was born on a foreign strand, now known as Normandy, named in honor of the large speckled gray horses with thick, piano legs and gross neck, that come from there to engage in hauling beer wagons in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Here Charlotte was born in the year 1793. Like the record .of Sparficus, who in speaking of his own experiences said that his early life ran quiet as the clear brook by which he sported, the childhood of Charlotte Corday was almost devoid of interest, being monotonous and unanimous, as a self-made man said to me not long since, referring to the climate of the South. She early turned her attention, however, to the matter of patriotism, hoping to obtain a livelihood in the patriot line some day. She investigated the grievances of France, and gave her attention almost exclusively to the invention of some way by which to redress ' these grievances. Some of them had not been redressed for centuries, and they ought to have - been ashamed of themselves. According to all accounts, the grievances of France were, at that time, in full dress and short sleeves, ready for the ball to open. It fell to the lot of Charlotte Corday to open the ball. She was a beautiful girl, with clear blue eyes, placed at equal distances from a tall, light-colored nose, which was pale when in repose, but flushed delicately when she was in tears. Her ripe and ruddy French mouth -opened and closed readily when she was engaged in conversation, and her white and beautiful shoulders, ever and anon, while she talked, humped themselves like a hired man on his way to dinner. Her costume was simple and did not cost a great deal. It consisted of a Normandy cap made of cheese-cloth in shape like the tale of a setting hen, and trimmed in front with real French lace from the 10-cent counter. Her dress was all wool delaine with a pin stripe in it and trimmed with the same. Her other dress was different. Her stockings were tall and slender as seen hanging on the woman clothes-line at Caen, but her heart was gay and happy as the day was long. Charlotte Corday was one of 11 large family whose descendants were called Corduroy. They were the instigators of a style of road that has done more to shorten the spinal Column and jolt the jejunum into chaos than any other line of inventions throughout the United States. Charlotte Corday had a voice which accompanied her in all her rambles, and it is said that it was very musical and sounded first rate. Her parents were poor, so she had very few advantages as will be noticed at once by the careful student who reads her MSS. to-day and notices where she has frequently spelled cabbage with a k. She spoke French fluently, but was familiar with no other foreign tongue whatever. She took a great interest in politics, but did not endorse the administration. She felt more especially bitter toward a gentleman named Marat, who was rather literary in his habits and who also acted as a kind of chairman of , the National Central Committee. To his other work he had also added the tedious and exhausting task of picking out people and indorsing them as suitable persons to be beheaded. Being a journalist he had to write hard all the evening to get the hook full of red-hot political editorial copy, and then when he should have gone to bed and to rest, he had to take the directory and pick out enough people for a mess the following day. In this way Marat was kept very busy, with the foreman on his heels all day and the guillotine on his heels all night, and everyman was afraid to see the deputy Sheriff coming for fear he had a supoena for him. It was no unusual thing in those days for a Frenchman to turn off the gas and go to bed, only to find his shirt collar all bloody where the guillotine had banged his hair just above his Adam’s apple in the morning. Those were indeed Squirming times, as M. de Lamartine, a humorous writer of France, lias so truly said. No man felt perfectly safe when he saw Marat at a sociable or a caucus. It was impossible to tell whether he had come to write the thing up for his paper or pick out some more people to be killed by the administration. They got so that Marat equid induce any of them to subscribe for his paper, and people advertised in his columns for things they did not want in order to show that they felt perfectly friendly toward him. It was at this time that Charlotte Corday called one morning at the apartments of Mr. Marat with a view to assassinating him. She sent in word that a young lady from Caen desired to see Mr. Marat for the purpose of paying her subscription. She was told that the editor was taking a bath. She laughed a cold, incredulous laugh, for she had seen a great mtiny French journalists, and when one Of them sent word to her that he was bathing she could ill repress a low, gurgling laugh. Finally she was admitted to his private apartments, where he was indeed in the bath with an old table-cloth thrown over him, engaged in writing a scathing criticism on the custom of summer-fallowing old buckwheat lands and sowing Swedish turnips on them in July, when the country was so crowded for cemetery room. Charlotte apologized for disturbing the great journalist at such a time, and remarking that we were having rather a backward spring produced a short stabknife with which she cut a large over- - coat Buttonhole in the able journalist’s thorax. She then passed into the‘office and leaving-word to have her paper stopped she went to thti executioner. wheFe she left an order for him to call her for the 7 ;30 execution. But we will not enter into the details of her tragic death. Nothing can be sadder than the sight of a young aud attractive woman called up before breakfast to participate in her own execution and wondering whether it will hurt very much. Let us learn from this brief bit of his-

tory never to assassinate any one unless it be done in self-defence. Bill Nye. Impressions of Pekin. From the walls the city of Pekin looks its best, in fact quite different from what it really is. There you are too far away to see the filthy streets, the many dogs which go about with torn ears, the pools of stagnant water, and all the unpleasant sights which it is impossible to avoid on closer inspection. You only see here the fine trees planted in the courtyards of all the better houses and in the open spaces of the Tartar city, the quaint gate towers, the fine cathedrals, and the dark background of the western hills, behind which the great red sun dips suddenly, leaving the cloudless sky still comparatively clear and bright notwithstanding his absence. /The walls are sixty or seventy feet high, ending in a crenulated parapet, and are as broad as an average carriage-way. They are, however, so overgrown with bramble that in some places it is difficult fcr two people to walk abreast on them. The gates are nutoerous, and beside each a small wicket is placed, through which you pass to get on the top of the walls. Over the gate is the tower shaped like three or four immense pigeon-boxes placed one upon the other, and each smaller than the one below it. These are roofed with the peculiar Chinese tiles such as may be observed in pictures ;'long closed-up pipes alternate with horizontally ribbed tile, and look extremely picturesque. The roads outside Pekin are bad. Inside matters are still worse. In addition to all the miseries usually attendant on crowded thoroughfares, one gets ' jumbled up among innumerable camels, ponies, carts, and like impediments to progress, all of which seem bound for some place in an opposite direction,.to which you are going. A Pekin cart is something to be experienced, and not merely described, if justice be done to if. It is drawn by a most respectable mule, directed by a not very respectable driver. The arched roof is covered with darl? blue cotton, except in rainy weather, when oil-cloth is used. It is doubtless unnecessary to say that springs a-re conspicuous by their absence—a remark which would apply with equal force to most of the remaining resources of civilization in the city. A thin, hard mat is spread on the floor, and on this you squat as best you cau. I tried tailor fashion, but afterward found it better to sit quite across the cart, with my back propped up against one side. The attitude is not very comfortable, and I have not heard that it is considered graceful, but, all things consicW.-ed, it is perhaps the least objectional position. Its drawbacks are experienced when a rut a foot deep is crossed, or when one of the flags with which some of the streets are paved is missing. Two or three feet of a drop is nothing to the mule or its driver, but to the'barbarian inside it is inconvenient. The awning extends forward so far as the mule's head, and protects you from the fierce rays of the sun. When the road is bad the driver walks, and when it is good —that is, when it is not excessively bad—lie hops up in front, and shuts you up in a veritable oven.— Anon. Industrial Education. There is a new kind of school and there are new lessons and new teachers /®mjng., Books we must have. _To _ learn, we must read. But w r e may read all about boats, and yet we can never learn to sail a boat till w r e take the tiller in hand and trim the sail before the breeze. The book will help wonderfully in telling us the names of things in the boat and, if we have read about sailing, we shall more quickly learn to sail; but we certainly never shall learn till we are in a real boat. We can read in a book how to turn a heel in knitting, and may commit to memory whole rules about “throwing off two and purl four,” and all the rest; yet ji’here is the girl who can learn to knit without having the needles in her hands. This then is the idea of the new school—to use the hands as well as the eyes. Boys and girls who go to the ordinary schools, where only books are used, will graduate knowing a great deal; but a boy who goes to one of these new schools, where, besides the books, there are pencils and tools, workbenches as well as writting-books, will know more. The other boys and girls may forget more than half they read, but he will remember everything he learned at the drawing-table or at the work-bench, as long as he lives. • He will remember more of that which he reads becauso his work with his hands helps him to understand what he reads. 1 remember long ago a tear-stained book of weights and measures, and a teacher’s impatience with a stupid child who could not master the “tables.” And I have seen a school where the tables were written on a blackboard— ' thus: “two pints are equal 'to one quart,” and on a stand in 'the schoolroom was a tin pint measure and a tin quart measure and a box of dry sand. Every happy youngster had a chance to fill that pint with sand and pour the sand in the quart measure. Two pints filled it. He knew it Did he not see it, did not every boy try it ? AJi! Now they knew what it* all meant. It was as plain as day that two pints of sand were equal to one quart of sand; and with merry smiles those six-year-old philcsppher:s learned the tables of measures; and they will never forget them. This is, in brief, what is meant by industrial education. To learn by using the hands —to study from things as well as from books. This is the new school, these are the new lessons. The children who can sew, or design, or draw or carve wood, or do joinering work, or cast metals, or work in clay and brass, are the best educated children, because . they use their hands as well as their eyes and their brains. You may say that in such schools all the boys will become mechanics, and all the girls become dressmakers. Some tnay, many wilFmot; —and yet; wESever they do, be it preaching, keeping a store, or singing in concerts, they will do their work better than those who only read in books.— Charles Barnard in St. Nicholas. . .. . . r We fiate some persons because wo do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate thoin.— ColtQn. -