The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1883-09-22 00:00:00

Our fon* aorrtspodent.

!;;•fe deem it right to state that we do not at all time,
alntifj, ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

if people would only think they would be surprised
at the number of unpremeditated cruelties which are
perpetrated in the course of a year. For those who
deliberately and of malice aforethought beat and M-
use any living thing, the law provides punishment
swift and sharp, but tha class of cruelty now being
referred to, is one which no stattxte can touch, and
no magistrate punish. The main cause of it, rasa-
doxical as at first sight it may appear, is the ever-
growing custom of taking a long autumn holiday. At
the earliest blush the connection between the two
things is as close as and no closer than that which
traditionally exists been Monmouth and Macedon,
between Tenterden Steeple and the Goodwin Sands.
But it is just one of those things which puzzle while
they delight philosophers upon human affairs, that
out of a given cause effects arise which could not
possibly have been oreseen by those taking the
Initiative. And so in this matter of the autumn
holiday. When first it became ccmmon for families
to migrate for two or three weeks from crowded cities
into rural retreats, or to seaside resorts, no one could
have predicted that the result would be such a tor-
ture of dumb animals, who at the same time are faith-
ful friends, that at last public attention would have
to be called to the matter, and some means taken to
reduce these shances of pain.

In London of late years there have been so many
instances in which families have left their homes
without, in the hurry of preparation or the bustle
of departure, thinking of what was to be the fate of
their domestic pets during their absence, that a
scheme has been devised for lessening the evil. Cats
have been the chief sufferers, for many a family when
going away have taken their dogs with them, but the
other living things have been left behind to shift as
beat they may, The condition to which these poor
animals have been reduced by the time of the family's
return is easily to be imagined and would be painful
to describe. It suffices to say that there has now been
established a kind of hospital to provide against such
eases occurring, and to this place can be sent any
domestic animal for the holiday petiod by the pay-
ment of a small sum weekly. This is an idea which
all friends of the humane treatment of our pets should
heartily approve. Its general adoption would do much
to lessen the sum of dumb suffering, and now that it
is fairly before the world, there is no doubt that less
will be heard than in the days gone by of the pains
inflicted upon family pets during the holiday season.
With the coming in of the autumn, the London
parks begin to look very deserted. This can be ac-
counted for not only by the increased variability of
the weather, which prevents many from remaining in
the open longer than they are forced and from taking
several walks they might otherwise desire, but by
the absence from town of the great proportion of those
who fill the parks during the "season." Hyde Park,
for instance, in June is so unlike Hyde Park in Septem.
her that one might almost be excused, who, passing
through it in these separate months, should think it
was a different place which he sees in the autumn to
that which he beheld in the summer. In June the
aspect is one of great gaiety. All the thorough-
area leading to the great West-end park are filled
with vehicles bearing their loads of wealth and
beauty into the open. Rotton Row is thronged with
riders on horseback, the rails which bound it on each
side are crowded with fashionable loungers, and the
whole scene is one which viewed once can never be
forgotten. In September all this is altered ; the
plebian omnibus or worn-out cab is the type of
vehicle most to be studied in fashionable thorough-
fares, the horsemen and horsewomen have ridden away
to country houses, while the loungers have gone to
Homburg or to Baden, to Paris or to Vienna, or the
more enterprising of them, even to the United States.
The falling leaves of the trees add to the sombreness
of the scene. The flowers, BO gay in the summer, have
now lost all their bloom, and those who wish to
moralise can find ample opportunity in all the
autumnal surroundings of Hyde Park.
It is not quite like this in the open spaces more im-
mediately devoted t 3 the general public, particularly
Mote which s'.rrounded by crowded districts
mainly inhabit<l by an artisan population. To go,
for instance, from Hyde Park in the West to Victoria
Park in the East is almost like going from one part of
England to another, instead of from one end of a city
to the opposite one. The grass in the one is as green
as that in the other, the trees betray no striking
difference, while the flowers in the East end are by
common acknowledgment even brighter than in the
west. It is not in the natural aspects that the two
parks so greatly differ; it is in the human appearances.
The landau, the victoria, and the brougham are for
Hyde Park, the perambulator seems the wheeled
vehicle most patronised in the park called after the
Q leeit. Fathers carrying their babies in their arms
ate to be seen at the East-end, but not in the fashion-
able quarters of the West. There is altogether an
cader air about Bethnal Green than there is about
Leigravia ; and although the toilers in the former
district have, ralny of them, a very revere struggle to
make both ends meet, there seems more abandon.
ment with them when they are allowed the luxury of
taking their enj,yment in the open air than could
r_ossibly be expected from those bred in the midst of
fashionable engagements and trained in all the arts of
courtly reserve.

Of all the open•air enjoyments indulged in by the
working portion of the London population, perhaps a
visit to Epping Forest has of late years become the
most popular. "The Forest," as it is fondly and
familiarly called—as if there were no other wooded
expanse in the kingdom worthy the name—was
always to some extent patronised by the people even
when encroachments upon its area were most marked
and the popular resort threatened to soon become a
mere memory of the past. But even the mot free.
hearted could not but feel some restraint in those
eays ; their movements seemed cribbed, cabined, and
confined, and they, to a great extent, bad the suspi.
c:cn that they were being watched, and that if they
treEpassed by a hair's breadth upon some real or
imaginary right, they were lzkely immediately to be
haled before the nearest justice, and by him straight-
way heavily fined, or, perchance, sent into imprison-
nsent. The freeing of the Forest altered all this, and
it is scarcely too much to say that where ten persons
need to visit it a few years since, there are now a
thousand. There is a traditional freedom about a
forest which can be possessed by no park, not even
the largest. Ever since the daye cf RoUn Hood the
shadow of the trees has seenead to breathe cf liberty,
and Shakespeare in his song "Under the greenwocd
tree " has appeared to endorse the theory. Some
critics might suggest difficulties in the way of entirely
adopting it, but visitors to Epping are not likely to be
troubled with doubts when they think of the freedom
they have enjoyed in our last remaining great popular
forest.

Country visitors to the metropolis seldom miss
making a Gall at the British Museum, and a neces-
sary part of their inspection of that gigantic
institution is a glance into the reading-room. It
is only a glance that is allowed, for it is ob-
vious that if the thousands of strangers who annually
stand just inside the doorway were allowed to wander
around the room and among the desks at their own
sweet will, there would not be much chance for the
students to acquire all the learning they come there to
seek. But even a casual look around miset convince
the visitors what a boon it is to lovers of litera-
ture to hate such a store of knowledge at their
full command, open all the year through to the
poorest student as well as the richest. The
benefits of the institution are increasing yearly, and
the latest method of extending them is by the employ-
ment of the electric light on winter evenings. Up to
a very short time since the reading-room was elo:ed
at dusk, and was practically useless on days of fog,
because no artificial light was allowed inside the build-
ing. Gas was too dangerous an agent to be trusted
amidst such treasures, and it was not until electricity
aided illumination that it was possible to keep the
museum open after darkness had set in. Last winter
the experiment was tried with very decided success
and now that September has once more come, the
electric light again enables the student, who finds his
-working hours all too short, however much they may
be extended, to pursue his investigations until a much
later time than was formerly the case.
The mention of the electric light is a reminder that,
in London at least, it has not made as rapid head-
way as a street illuminant as it was at one time
expected. It is now just five years ago that, in-
spired by the example set in the Avenue de l'Opera
during the last Paris Exhibition, the first practicable
electric light seen in London was set up in the Strand.
Some months later it was applied to the Holborn
,Viaduct, but through technical difficulties it there
failed. It was then tried on Waterloo Bridge and the
Thames Embankment, and was there so succassful
that in April, 1881, it was fixed in the main thorough-
fares of the City. In order to give a fair trial to all
the systems three companies were chosen to carry out
this lighting, but after twelve months one.third of the
area reverted to gas. Since then this particular
branch of electric lighting has seemed to languish.
More than one metropolitan theatre has adopted the
incandescent eyetem, and several shopkeepers have
had arc lights placed outside their premises as a means
of advertisement, while nearly every great London
railway station now exhibits the new illtuninant. But
the ;Argots an apparently as far from seeing gas

placed by the electric light as they were before all the
talk about the latter set in.

It is only three years ago that parliamentary de-
bating societies were fairly started in London; but their
popularity is now Bo firmly established that it is not
likely for a very long time to be shaken. Glasgow and
Liverpool had had such institutions years before the
metropolis ; and other great towns in the provinces
have now followed their example ; but London is
always slow to take up an idea not emanating from
itself, and therefore it is little wonder it had to wait so
long for the establishment of its first society of the
kind. Now they are to be met with inmost of the metro-
politan boroughs. Some of them have a membership
of a thousand; while one or two even overtop that
number. Their advantages are many, and not the
least of them is that they force young men, when
about to enter upon political life, to learn that there
are two sides to every question in public affairs. This
is, perhaps, the most valuable lesson of all; and when
once it has been thoroughly imbibed, there will be less
that is bitter and uncharitable in politics than there is
to-day.