Washington sentinel. [volume] (City of Washington [D.C.]) 1853-1856, 1855-05-31

the superiority of the intended Improvement
over all rival propositions The country abounds
with what are termed canyassers, persons en-
ployed to advocate certain improvements and to
get subscribers, This course is pursued in regard
TO internal improvements, patents, books, paint
ings prints, quack medicines, and every species of
saleabie commodity. If d manufacturing estab
lishment, mining operation, or whatever il may
be, has 10 undergo the ordeal of discussion, they
have to be brought to the knowledge of many.
Advertisements cheap, that they are used
TO an extent unknown anywhere. We have been
informed of a drug factory having thirty thou
sand agents through the States. Spendidly
bound books, with very numerous handsome en-
cravings, containing, some of them, the adver-
tisements of many parties; others confined to
list of the wares of single firm, are to be found
in every hotel of any note. Everybody, in every
branch of business, is continually seeking to make
known every improvement by him and the excel
lence of his commodities That our papers are
filled with much idle trash, and perhaps some
thing worse, and while many matters of little
value are made prominent, yet nothing that is
really valuable need be unnoticed and unknown.
remarks by the announcement. by party, of the
halfformed purpose ofpreparing, in proper style,
an Encyclopedias Americana, which should con-
tain, in alphabetical order, an account of all our
manufacturing establishments, including, of
course, ship-building, with all improvements of
machinery, and every characteristic of interest.
A list of all the railroads, hotels all the springs,
watering places, and summer resorts; with such
descriptions of each as would be appropriate;
all lines of packets and steamers.
II should contain some account of our markets.
We have seen bill of fare at northern hotel,
containing fourteen hundred dishes. They were
not all in season at one time. 1t would show
that at New York. the products of the far South
were on their tables, months before they rpened
in that climate, and at the South months after
they had ceased to appear there. The infinite
variety of fish and shell fish, from the great green,
turtle, the terrapin, the hard and softcrabs, and
lobster, &C., the salmon from the North, the
sheep-head from the South; and the venson, the
wild turkey, the prairie buffalo, the prairie hen;
in fact, the endless variety Of edbles were made
accessible to all parts of the Union. Ice is used
in an abundance unknown anywhere else. The
splendor of our first class river steamboats, is
known abroad.
This book, if completed, will be printed in
English, French, and Spanish, and no one going
abroad would venture without one, to enable him
to give that information which every American
should be ashamed not to possess.
lfsuch book, by proper subdivision of labor,
should be properly gotten up, we may with pro-
priety say of the American republic-there she
stands, "with all the life of life throbbing in
every pulse, thrilling through every fibre, beam
ing in every feature, and speaking in every ges-
ture-there is no dead particle in her," The
contrast between the reluctant English to volun-
teer in war begun with universal favor, and the
readiness with which Americans focked to the
national standard in the Mexican war; opposed
by nearly half the nation, is indicative of the
sensibility of the public nerve of the two coun-
tries-the activity of the one, and the sluggish
ness of the other.