61
STARBEAMS
The Hartford Terea describes a crank as a person with a conscience and a bobby George W. Childs never eats anything at the big dinners he gives. Even level-headed people have some peculiarity Pittsburg is putting all of its electric wires under ground, and is pleased with the disposition she is making of them. Baby shows are always popular if they are properly advertised. A little baby show at Bloomington III, netted alont $1,000. Russell Sage doesn't wear diamonds. He could afford them, but prefers cheap cameos. He always did incline to ways of economs "Black bass caught in the Virginia rivers are noted for the immense size of their mouths. It is the same way with some of her politicians Buffalo Bill has been promoted by the English papers. He is a general among them. The Wild West has paralyzed the old English town of London. Kansas City is not the only place where the water is murky with mud. They complain in New York that Croton water is so thick that it won't boil. Nebraska City, Neb., has cow ordinance which the people hold in contempt and violate an enterprialing citizen arreate the strays and has for sometime made $1 a day. Miss Dora Wheeler, the artist, has been favored with valuable Boston commissions. She is to paint the portraits of T. B. Aldriet, W. D. Howells, and James lianell Lowell. Selling hymns is not a bad business if one can write the kind that is in demand. It is reported that W. H. Doane. of Cincinnati makes $20,000 in the hymn business per year It is said that the emporor of Germany loves the dance so fondly that he would be on the floor atont half the time were it not for the doctor's prohibition. The emperor need to be one of the boys, but age puts on the brakes. Halloway, the pull-man, cared nothing for relatives. Although his cry was purly the blood, yet at his death he willed his immense fortune to strangers and left two sisters penniless. In numbers Harvard and Yale colleges have been outstripped. Columbia college, in all of her departments, has been a larger number of students than any other college in the United States. President Cleveland spoke of William A. Wheeler as "the vice president." This will give Dana of the Sun another chance for war upon president. The Sun should cork up its venom. Russia is cultivating sunflowers for fuel. What is to hinder the "Sunflower State" from doing the same thing? There is no waste. Every particle of the plant can be utilized, from the root to the crown. Oliver Wendell Holmes has written many pretty and thoughtful thingsm but he will travel the immortal Youth in "The Deacon's One Horse Shay," and will safely sail the seas of the time in "The Chambered Nautilus." The man who passes an Englishman and makes no contribution is "a good one." The disposition of the race is well illustrated in the motto adopted by an English feryman which reads "no crown no cross." In England, the Indians in the Buffalo Bill Wild West do not have much of an idea of royalty. They regard the Prince of Wales as a chief without a scalp and without a scalp, and with them that sort of an indian is very ordinary. The state capital building of New York is still unfinished, and yet it has cost the state$17,000.000 and it is estimated that $10,00.000 more will have to be expended upon it before it is completed. New York politicians are nothing unless magnificent and coat. In Norway there is a church I have enough to seat 1,000 people, made entirely of paper mache. Paper is put to all sorte of uses in these days, and yet new and important uses are being found for it every day. Now it performs all parts of services, from a bustle to a steam car wheel. An exchange describes some people as like a rocking horse, full of motion, but having no progress. A good example of this sort of a creature is the blustering man. He would have it appear that he is swinging the world around by the tail, but all the time things are really sitting down on him as fast as possible. Sam Jones is again in the South. When last heard from he was at Chattanooga fighting the saloons of the city. He will make a prohibition canvass of Tennessee and say the pertinent things of the campaign. His manner of thought and style of expression is well adapted to a crusade against rum.
63
A SHOWMAN IN CLOVER
Buffalo Bill Lionized at the Swell Receptions and High Teas of London.
Fashionable London is now dividing its attentions between Buffal Bill and the picture galleries. The long haired wonder of the west takes to big llouizing with a charming ease, which quite delights the "dear duchesses" who have not reveled in what one of the called a "real raw American" since Joaquin Miller made his slouch hat and high boots conspicuos in Rotten Row as well as the swell kettledrums of other days. Joaquin only sung of scalp liftin; Cody has "raised hair" with the actual knife instead of the steel pen. He has a sort of semi-spuradic courtiness and Rocky Mountain dandyishness which make him a picturesque figure anywhere, and his old acquanitances among Englishment of the nobility take him around as they would a kind of Siam. He has been to a great many receptions, high teast, musicals, and sotme dinners at the swell clubs. He calls them all "parties: with a gentle innocence that amazes and dleights. He was shown through the house of commons last Evening by Col. Hughes-Hallet, and rewarded his conductor and friends by many quaint comparisons with that poistion of his career as a western legislator which secured him the great American title of "Hon".
A chat with him this afternoon borugh out a curious bit of his experience, showing how similar human naure is everywhere...
"I thought," he said, "that I had killed a few bear and buffalo and mountain she and antelope and had a few interesting scuffles with man and beast in my time; but the accounts of wholesale slaughter and Indian fights I'm expected to indors as taking place under my eyes are just enough to take the sand out of the bigger har between Omaga an 'Filsco."
"Exaggereated account of your adventures, eh?"
"Not 'xactly mine. Before I got into the show business, as you must have suspected, I condudcted-that's the word now- a great many parties of Englishmen all through the Black Hills, the Yellowstone country, the Little Missouri and Little Big Horn countries-all round that"- and the ex-scourt mado a wester sweep of the arm - "Well, they were mostely quiet, good natured fellows, that kept me shooting to get peltiy and antlers and sich like for them, and I prided myself on keepin' them out of trouble with Injuns and Igrislies and such. Now, jumping Jehosaphat, I find these quiet chapts have come home heroes of every kind of scrimmage, every skin was the nateral focus of a stack of lies and every horn is hung with a dime novel of the bloodiest kind. And I'm expected to back 'em all up and add bloodie particelars. Its rough on an honest frontiers man, but I do it."
"What sustain whole sale liars?"
"Wal, this way," said bill with a faint blush. "It's mostly a young gal with glowin' eyes who's been lied to that asks me and I aint got it in me to take her visions away from her, and then," he added in a dreamy way, "it's all goin' to help the show." - London Cor. New York Journal.
64
Buffalo Bill in London.
Although Mr. Cody has not been in London over a month he is today as wel known to the masses of this great city of 5,000,000 as is the queen. You could not pick up in the most obscure quarter of London any one so ignorant as not to know who and what he is. His name is on every wall. His picture is in nearly every window. The wonder of this is in the fact that the London public is strangely dull and unimaginative. The people of one quarter are oftenas ignorant of a neighborhood within a stone's throw of them as if it were in Central Africa. You find constantly the proof of this in inquiring your way about town. The policemen never know where particular streets or buildings outside of their beats are located.
An Englishman who has lived in London for a quarter of a century tells me that no one but an American would think of asking a London policeman for anything in the way of information. London policemen are often placed on guard in front of English officials' houses where they are absolutely ignorant of the name of the occupant. It is a genuine and not an affected ignorance. I have asked higher police officials about this and they say that the men very often do not know and do not care. I saw some twenty policemen guarding one day the house of the prime minister. I asked several of the men on guard if they knew whose house they were guarding. They all replied in the most courteous negative. Finally, one of them referred me to an older constable who had been on the beat in that neighborhood for some years, and he was able to give me the information. Imagine a set of New York policemen guarding any prominent official's house in New York without their knowing just what the house of the chief officer of our government- T. C. Crawford in New York World.
65
THE HERDS AND THE FLOCKS.
THE TRUST WILL NOT COVER THE CASE
Col. Slaughter on the Trust, the Texas Packery and Other Things - Colorado's Quarantine - American Horses.
Col. C. C. Slaughter, in conversation with a NEWS reporter, remarked that even if the American Cattle Trust should prove answerable to what its partisans and prmoters claim for it, it would still fall short of covering the case of the Southwestern ranchmen, simply because its place of business is too far off. What fhiefly eats up the profts on the cattle of this section is the railroads. One-fourth of what a Texas steer brings at Chicago has to be turned over to the railroad that carried him to market. 'The railroads practically own one-fourth of all the cattle in the state. The Trust, so far as he was informed offered no remedy for this. The only way to beat the railroads out of their interest in this industry is to proceed with the Texas Packery at Houston - a project in which Col. Slaughter sees new beauties every time he things about it. He does not want to be understood as occupying a hostile attitude toward the Trust, because he says, it is only helps a little it will do some good.
In regard to the projected Texas Packery, Col. Slaughter says that the cattlemen have been very slow to come to the front with their subscriptions, but he beleives they will do so in time to get the establishment in operation for next year. A move is now on foot to get a charter and to organize the institiution, so as to give the enterprise a new impetus, in the hope that the cattlemen will more readily take hold of it now, as many of the reasons why they have heretofore held aloof are no longer in existence. When the subscriotion books were first opened cattle were in bad shape and the prospects for a continuation of the drouth were bright, and stockmen were in doubt as to whether they would ever be in need of a market. It has since rained copiously, the range is good and the cattlemen onco more have their thoughts concentrated on the market problem; and he thinks if the Texas packery were sprung on the afresh there would be no trouble in raising the amount of required of the cattlemen.
Col. Slaughter is of opinion that now is the time to invest in cattle, becuase next year steers are going to be steers. It is a pretty well established fact that most all the cattle on the Northern range died last winter, and only a small number have gone up the trail this year. This will put on Texas and Indian territory to supply the market next year, and the limited supply will make prices better. Col. Slaughter has never been very down in the mouth, even as the gloomiest cirsis, but he is more hopeful than ever now.
The American papers which so glibly dilate on matters and things across the Atlantic talk a great deal at random, no doubt, but that they can be as desely ignorant about England as the average English Paper is about American is incredible. A London journal, which has the reputation of an oracle at home, has the following observations in its most solemn vein: "After the recent controversy which has taken place in regard to breeding British hunters from American horses, a look at the Wild West steeds of Buffalo Bill proved very interesting. There are too light, however, most of them, for average English countries, and though clever and up to the cowboy's weight, they would proce deficient in stamina for carrying anybody up to thirteen stone. Put to English thoroughbred stallions something up to even less weight would be procured, so that we cannot really look to America for much in the shape of improved horseflesh, unless heavier types of stallions than our own are used on the mares. It is probable that in America they may have horses of greater strength and substance than those to be seen at Earl's Court, but the latter will not compare with the average of the animals catalogued for one os Messrs. Tattersall's hunter stables."
Colorado has the most sweeping quarantine regulations of any other State and perhaps the most sweeping that were ever proposed except when the Montana cattlement met and petitioned the governor of that Territory to issue a quarantine against the domestic animals of several specified States and against Texas cattle. It would be supposed that such rigid regulation as Colorado has would give the cattle of the State entree to the neighboring States and the freedom of the whole country. But if this was the object of the Colorado solons in passing this small-meshed quarantine law, they have discovered that the result is nowise answerable thereto, for here comes the Live Stock Commission of Nebraska with a petition to Gov. Thayer to prohibit by proclamation the introduction into the State of cattle and horses coming from the Centennial State.