The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-07-06

and that no member of Congress can honestly
vote away the money of the people without
understanding why he votes it, and for what
But this apart, the discussion has been both
amusing and instructive. II has given us
some very curious glimpses into the relations
which exist between the Cabinet and the
House, and into the ways and means of the
remarkable parsonage who for some inscruta-
bic reason it pleases Heaven and Mr.. johnson
to retain in Office as Secretary Of State of the
United States. We hear from it, for exam
pie, that Mr.. Seward has really commenced
negotiations for the ptrcha of the Danish
province OF Greenland, and that the excellent
Mr.. Banks thinks it good way OF proving his
fitness to be sent as Minister of the United
States to Russia, to announce that he regards
Europe as on the eve of "being drawn into
the vortex of terrible war;" aud that he
thinks it our duty to buy Alaska for the pur-
pose of keeping the French and English,
when that "terrib'e war" shall begin, from
troubling our friend the Gar by attacking his
walruses and his white bears in Sitka
The stars in their courses fought against
SiseTa. But the canicular barks in behalf OF
Mr.. Seward. With the Thermometer at 80
deg in the shade most deople will be plea
sanity disposed towards Secretary whose
only thought seems to be of glaciers and ice
bergs. There is something exquisitey sea-
soDable in Mr.. Stewards policy. While the
winters SHOWS were heaped high about us
and the sleet drove in our faces he could talk
only of "AfIica and golden Joys" OF St.
Thomas and Santa Cruz. He held up before
us pictures lovely as those of Andrew Mar.
velps beautiful old ballad, and tempted us
with visions of
Summer isles Of Eden lying in dark purple
spheres OF sea-"
It was no fault of his if the globe suddenly
collapsed with a lit of subterrauean collie.
Accidents will happen in the best regulated
audi ha
of State.
But "storms and earthquakes shake not
Stewards design" Against the summer heats
he prepares a sherbet of Greenland ice aud
seeks to serve it up to us with dish of frozen
salmon from Alaska. Is it his fault, again, if
Nashhune5 and ShellabargeT5 suddenly snap
at the purse strings in his liberal hands An
earthquake in the tropics was certainly more
to be apprehended than economy from
WashbuIne or Shellabarger.
The odds, we fear, however, are against our
noble Secretary. Banks has done his "level
best" for him, but tue Alaska business grows
more iishy than the fisheries of that unappre-
ciated and perhaps inappreCiablq Investment.
Nature has given Mr.. N. p. Banks gifts
which would have made his fortune as an
auctioneer, and he has never put those gifts to
such excellent use as in his plea for Secretary
Seward S great land spe1ulatiOns. 1t is hardly
a figure Of speech to say that in urging the
House to come down with the dust for the
rocks of Alaska, the agile member from Mas
sachusetls not only lifted himself to the height
of his argument by his own wastband but
fairly turned sOmersaults in the air at dizzy
altitude from the top of his own head. He
implored the stOlid creatures before him to
remember that the "Pacitic Ocean with the
Indian Ocean which geOgI aphers treat as part of
it, covers 100 COO, 600 miles, and rolls between
100000 people ON one side, and 250, 000,-
! tl,D al l., hoo .,,~IA Al
duly digestng these pathetic statistics, to re-
| fleet furthermore that the "Paciic with the
| Indian, etc.), is the sea which is to be the
| scene Of the American triumphs of the future"
"There," exclaimed the impassoned Banks,
hammer in hand, "there, gentlemnn, we shall
! fight the battles of the hereafter; there on
the Pacific Ocean, we shall control the institu-
tions and destinies of the world. If we are
successful, it is no longer a European destiny
! or a European civilizatiOn-but an American
| destiny and an American civilization"
Of all which, "Aaska is the key ~
Also, it is necessary to the reputation of our
country for common poiteness. 1t is, so to
speak, the card-case of the continent. With
it we can return visits which have too long
been overdue-"visits of Digestion" in fact,
to the gentlemen who in ages long remote,
were good enough to eat, or be eaten, by our
| forefathers, from whom we are not descended
| but who should not, therefore, be less vener-
able in our eyes. "It gives us the control of
the Arctic; it makes, in substance, Behring's
Strait an American sea; it throws out that
marvellous chain Of islands-the Aeutian
Islands-even to the threshold Of the Asiatic
coast, so that we can send in open boats our
citizens from those islands to the Asiatic coast,
never being more than two days at sea, and
never exposed to any peril whatever. And
thus We can return, after the lapse of four
| hundred years, the visits which Asia made to
this country, and by which she left remnants
Of her people in Alaska and the Aleutian
Islands, in California, and New Mexico"
| 1t will no longer do to speak of tea as the
"cup that cheers but not inebriates." Ever
since Mr.. Burlingame and his mandarins with
the crystal balls on their soup-plate hats,
came among us, the soul of the tea-plant has
gone into our blood, where it has set all sorts
| and conditions of men-divines and brokers,
| orators and bank presidents-to behaving like
the JOblillies and the Garyules, on the occa-
| sion of that famous wedding at which the
''great Panjandrum HIMSELF appeared "with
| the little round button ON top" and where
| they all "fell to playing at the game of catch
us catch can till the gunpowder ran out of the
| heels of their boots" Mr.. Banks himself,
| whose sobIiety has been so handsomely at
| tested by the citizens of Portland in times
| past cannot resist the seductive infusion of
| the Chinese herb. All other appeals having
| failed TO disturb the inert mass before him. he
beat the Chinese gong with wonderful fury
and felicity. As thus:-
| "The tale OF the Arabian Knights Is not more
| marvellous than the advent of ihe Chinese
| nation among the nations OF the earth, asking
| To leave her pOliIicel isolation aud participate
| in the great movements of the nations here
| after and 1t will succeed. Our civilization will
rN.gAK 1tVaH