Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1877 — The Great National Evil. [ARTICLE]

The Great National Evil.

“ Wx delight in physics.”— Paine. Paine is light. As a nation we do delight in physics. Not the physics which Webster defines as "the science of nature,” but the patent kind, whose other name is legion. Death stares us in the face, or we think he does, and each one of us stares back at death; and up and down these front and back stairs travels tbe retired physician who is almost out of sand, with his nostrum or somebody else’e, warranted, in deep-blown letters on the bottle—a cure for every ill. And that he finds his reward witness the colossal fortunes that have been constructed upon the slender foundation of “ an accidental discovery while hunting for a lost cow"’or, "a secret communicated by an aged Winnebago squaw.” Meanwhile the professional doctor, scorner of quacks nd quackery and strong in all sorts of "ethics," struggles along in dignified penury, save in the rare instances where he reaches the front rank where he can charge a round fee for a wise nod.

It is not our purpose to complain of this state of things. Wc are a nation of dosees, and attract dosers as naturally as molasses does flies. What we do complain of is that the dosers do not content themselves with simply ministering to the National weakness, but insist on outraging the National taste, and trampling upon that love for the beautiful in nature which is implanted in every true American chest. As the season of summer travel approaches we record with sadness the appalling fact there is no route so wild, no mountain so inaccessible, no ruin so picturesque throughout the whole length and breadth of this fair land that the paint-pot and the stencil-plate of the pat-ent-medicine fiend has not disfigured it. East, West, North, South —take what path you will, the fiend has preceded you. The everlasting hills their voices raise not as of yvne in praise and glorification, but in proclamation of the virtues of somebody’s “ Bitters,” “ Pills” or “ Liniment.” The sweet, sequestered vales no longer echo to the footfall of the nymphs, but sound the praises of a patent tooth-wash. The beetling crag and frowning precipice present in brilliant hues the names and natures of all sort of “mixtures.” Even on the water there is but a temporary escape; for the moment you approach a pier, the wellremembered words in staring capitals salute your vision. The evil is a monstrous one and grows apace. Yet it must cease some time. Increasing as the nostrums do in number and the stencil-plates in size, the time is not far distant when the whole round world will be so thickly covered with the dire defacements that there will be no room for more. Sooner or later, therefore, the evil must be suppressed. Why not sooner ? It is simply terrible that the shattered invalid cannot leave his fireside in search of health but he must be saluted at every step with a more or less categorical list of his ailments and symptoms which the poor dumb rocks and fences have been dragooned into parading before him. And worse almost than this is the injury to the National taste. There was a time in the days of sweet American simplicity when men and women stood in awe with upturned eyes an 1 quivering lips before IS iagara’s torrent and bared their heads before the majesty of Mount Washington. But now the upturning eye, arrested in its flight by some preposterous announcement of a panacea, is turned to earth again, and the lips quiver only with irreveient scoffing at the Falls and the mountain. It would be a sad loss to the land should the National taste and tbe National love of nature be entirely destroyed; and they soon will be if the destructive process is permitted to go on much longer unchecked.

New York, to her honor, has taken a step in the right direction in passing a bill to prevent the defacement of natural scenery; and if the other Blates of the Union would follow in her wake incalculable good might be accomplisned. The evil will not be wholly done away with, however, until by State or National authority an army of effacers shall have tracked the patent-medicine fiend where e’er his stepshave trodden and obliterated his works. Then, and not until then, will travel resume its healthful influence upon the worn-out frame, and the love of the beautiful and picturesque in nature again shed its light upon the people.— Detroit Free Press.