196
STARBEAMS.
The advancing price of coal does not make a very cheerful prospect for the poor.
White mountain resorts are expensive. Only piethoric purses can remain long in their vicinity.
John Bright has become so very fleshy that he is taking dietary treatment to reduce his weight.
Cider is in good luck. The prohibition people always exempted it from their "prohibited" beverages.
George Jones, of the New York Times, is a victim of hay fever Great men are frequently so afflicted.
Not to have gone to Europe in 1887 is something of a social mistake. Nearly all of that sort of people have gone.
Buffalo Bill will hereafter look on the "Wild West" as a tame affair. European success has dazzled his bright eyes.
Collies come high in England but some people must have them. A prize collie in London has been sold for one thousand dollars.
Notoriety for wealth is often a specious thing. Half the people swelling around as millionaires could not have their checks honored for fifty thousand.
The telephone is taking out patents on itself as a modern invention, but its claims run back to the year 1635. Modern people are continually doing over the old tricks.
Hard hearted people who pass the season at the summer hotels wish there was a Herod on the ground. The little folks are an encumbrance and a bar to flirtation.
The greatest attraction in Hillsboro, Md., at this time is a chicken which has four legs. It is well enough for every town to have something to be proud of and to brag about.
Seaside morality is said not to be a very elevated plane this year, but this is probably a slander. No doubt but it is as good and there is as much of it as there ever has been of it in any season.
The local papers published at the fashionable watering places are confidently believed to be the very thinnest ever printed. They will give no headache. Their silliness is so dense as the be sedative.
In this fermenting age the "Society man" begins to be recognized as "Mr." when he is about sixteen. His head at this time is empty but his cheek is large and hard. On this he forges to the front.
Chauncey M. Depew is a true Republican loving American simplicity, but he is now in Europe hobnobbing with the lords of the old world. Such is his urbanity and pilancy of disposition that he can meet anybody anywhere on equal terms.
A man in Alabama claims to have invented a flying machine which will work. He keeps it in the dark yet. That is probably the only place where it will work satisfactorily. Several men have had perpetual motion established--in the dark.
Young men, you are in danger. You cannot be too careful. It is said by that infallible person, the statistician, that the morality among young men this year has been larger than ever before. It is too bad about the young men! They should brace up.
General O.O. Howard, the fighting and praying general, is following up the seaside resorts of California lecturing on "General Grant." The great commander is a fruitful source for the pen and tongue of many who would be without an appropriate topic but for him and his services.
Won't this be "tony" and "swell?" A magazine is to be started in the East that will have contributions from "society people only." What a very perfumed affair it will be! The fear is that is will be edited by an inflated fool. And yet there is no reason that society people should not have a journal that should stand to them for an exponent of their views.
197
THE RAILROADS.
An Immense Bronze.
The largest bronze casting even at tempted in America, says the New York Times of Aug. 10, was made at E. FAry's works, on Forsyth street, yesterday. It is the mammoth buffalo head designed by Kemeys, the sculptor for the east portal of the new Union Pacific bridge across the Missouri at Omaha, the model of which has long attracted attention in one of Tiffany's windows.
The head measures 9 by 5 feet, the box containing the sand and plaster mold was 22 by 22 by 26 feet. Some of the bronze manufacturers had said such a huge casting could not be made at all, so Mr. Favy received many hearty congratulations from the represetatives of various bronze casters who had gathered to witness his experiment.
Three small orncibles of molten metal were first poured into the mold. The clouds of steam rising from white hot pool, the half-nude attendants and the rapidly rising temperature in the little shop made a realistic reproduction of the regions where Orphens went wife hunting. The gas vents in the mold were lighted, the fiery stream from the big crucible was started and in three minutes the casting was a success so far as any one can tell until the molds are removed on Saturday. The little shop the expects to exhibit a bigger buffalo than Buffalo bill ever saw, and when the mammoth creature rises on a great stone arch, guarding the plains that once were his own, it promises to be an imposing and worthy example of American art.
This will not be the only copy of the figure, however. A firm of elctrotypers have undertaken to make a reproduction from the cast, and if they succeed it will be an even more remarkable mechanical acheivement than the bronze casting.
198
TEXAS JACK'S GRAVE.
The Tombstone Above It Would Have Suited Him to a Dot.
LEADVILLE, Col., Aug. 10,-- While Buffalo Bill is raising such a furor in England, and while the Britishers, from the royal prince down the meanest costermonger, are going the Wild West Show with vigor, there are a few here who recall the other great cowboy of the footlights at well as the foothills, and many a visit has been paid to one quaintly-marked grave in the gravelly burying ground of this far-up city. The grave is that of Texas Jack. He had many points in common with his fellow-showman from the plains. They both took seats in the local Legislatures, and both tacked the prefix "Hon." to their common, every-day legal names. They both were known the country over by their cowboy nicknames, and they were the twin deities to the small boy with an Indian-killing weakness. In some respects the Hon. J. B. Omohundrio was a better stage subject than the Hon. William Cody. He could orate, and filled out a border drama in fine style. He came East and met Morlacchi, the famous dancer. It was a love match between the rough-and-ready dashing buck rider and the Italian woman trained in the school of La Scala. She little dreamed that she was to meet her fate when she came as queen of the ballet to fill engagements in this country. The two loved, the gallant border swain and the warm-blooded dark-eyed Italian sylph. They married and could not enjoy each other's society enough. It was while filling an engagement in this pneumonia city that Texas Jack went the way of a majority of the 8800 who lie about him, and he succumbed to the dread lung trouble.
His grave slab would have suited his ideas to a dot. There is the cartridge belt, with bowie-knife and guns: below, his Winchester. Then a portrait of his pony, Yellow Chief, duly labelled, and finally a few words of the famous man who rests so quietly below.
199
THE BRITISH MAIL.
ECHOES FROM THE LAW COURTS.
The "long vacation" commenced on Wednesday last. The High Court of Justice will not sit again until Nov. 2.
One of the best civil lawyers in England has just died, at an advanced age, in the person of Mr. James Flemin, Q.C., chancellor of the Durbam Chancery Court.
The inquirt directed by the government into the now celebrate Cass case has been closed before Sit Charles Warren to Scotland Yard. Sir Charles will submit his report to the home office.
"Buffalo Bill" has been "in chancery." An artist named Garland, whose studio is in close proximity to the Wild West Show, has applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction to restrain "Buffalo Bill" from carrying on his show in such a manner as to be nuisance to the plaintiff by reason' of noise and smell. The case was still under consideration when the mail left.
Another member of the same troupe has also been an involuntary patron of the London law courts, but he aspired to nothing so luxurious at the High Court to Chancery. He, Jack Ross, by name, was content to make his debut among lawyers at the Thames Police Court, where he was charged with being drunk and wilfull smashing a plate-glass window at the public house where contracted his condition of inebrity. The magistrate treating the matter as an accident, discharged the defendant, who gleefully made his way post-hast to assume his onerous duties of entertaining princes, princessed, dukes, and duchesses at Kensington.
A series of serious charges of obtaining charitable subscriptions from her Majesty's War Department on fraudulent pretences against the Rev. John McAllister, is under investigation before one of the metropolitan magistrats. The accused is held in $1,000 bail.
The will of Mr. Charles Paton Henderson, late of Lancaster GAte, London, and Withington Hall, Manchester, metchant, has just been proved, the personality, independ of extensive real estates, amounting to upward of $404,000.
The late L.R. Bailey, formerly M. P. for the Exchange Division of Liverpool, has, by his will, bequeathed $13,000 to Liverpool charities.
200
BUCK TAYLOR.
The public who take an interest in Buffalo Bill's Wil West Show will hear with pleasure that Buck Taylor, the Cowboy King, has so far recovered from the accident he sustained during an entertainment about two months ago as to be able to leave the hosptial. It will be in the recollection of most people that in the course of the performance of one of the equestrian dances, known as the "Virginia Reel," Buck Taylor met with an accident which broke his leg, and caused removal to the West London Hospital. He remained in that institution till this morning, when he left with one or two of his friends, in a cab, and returned to his quarters in the Wild West encampment. He was met on his arrival by Buffalo Bill, who gave a most hearty greeting to his old chum, and expressed himself pleased to see him once more in their midst. The welcome was general all round, and during the hand shaking which went on the Cowboy Band played a pleasant and cheering serenade in honor of the return of their chief. Buck is now thoroughly convalescent, and looks extremely well, and is quite cheery. He con not, of course, as yet expect to resume his old place amongst the Wild West performers, but there is every hope that are long he will be sufficiently recovered to get about with ease and freedom. -London News. July 27.