Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1870-05-24
LETTER FROM PORTLAND.

Personal, POLITICAL and PHILOSOPHICAL.
PORTLAND, May 2lst, 1870.
To the Editor Of the Journal
The Alpha Deltas have come and gone.
They addressed, Grated, poetized and patron
lied. Governor Chamberlain's address was
ornate and philosophical. Pomeroy's Grafton
was good, but too much for the occasion
while Tarbox was more musical than would
seem possible from his catarrhal name. 1t
was good thing all round, and for the Fall
mouth hotel in particular.
The Haydn's Association has grown to be
pride with this people, and the concert of
last night was a trimming success, and anot-
err evidence that music can be made popular
With any American community on scale not
heretofore deemed possible.
Among the new delights of the citizens of
the beautiful town that is seated by the sea, is
the jolly enjoyment of Sebago water. 1t is
luxury highly valued by the fortunate ones
who had faith in it early and had their pipes
clear in season. Three dollars year entities
the taker to the privilege of sprinkling his
| lot, washing windows and spelling the good
clothes of any citizen who happens to be
aristocracy put on is amusing and instructive
| The human heart must have something to
love and the mind something to occupy it.
Last year it was velocipedes. This year it is
rubber hose with pretty nozzle. Amy bright
warm day you may see portly gentlemen with
| l,xl a. saI,
phasize individuality, with coats off and eyes
diatcd, playing crystal streams from gilt
tering brass orifce and plying the poor who
draw their aqueous support from the ancient
wells of Nazareth. Pretty soon l fancy this
nozzle business will be made test question
as to admission into society, and fond maid
ems who, in other circumstances may have
pledged endless love to waiting admirers, will
ask with sweetness that BELTS solicitude,
sDearest, dost think we can have Sebago?"
The Portland and Ogdensburg railway is
progressing faster than expectation can well
keep pace. Track-laying has begun at the
rate of three days to the mile, and the cars
will run to the old steamer landing in Stand
ish, early in August, and am just now told
that the contractor on the Fryeburg end
says it is possible to get that section ready for
trains by the last of November. Never was
such enterprise shown, it seems to me, and
the furthest time fixed by anybody now for the
opening of the whole Saco valley to railway
traffic is June next Men who work are bet
ter than those who only talk-which is true if
not original.
The new public buildings are getting on
well-not so fast but that you can keep the
run of their proportions, but still fast enough.
| Wicked and designing men say that labOrers
who seek employment upon them have to
get a custom-house clearance before ac-
copied, but cannot endorse such a SANDER.
/ only speak of it to show the means adopted
10 injure the standing of custom house Of
ficers, and think it a shame to circulate such
stories. But it is not the first time that the
purity Of the servants of the government has
been assailed in this very way-servants who
worship most devotedly in the true church
and give nobly to the heather, and do it with
singular sngleness of heart-men, too, who
never were known to carry their religion into
politics. gV nN 80
There have been some amusing newspaper
controversies here of late. The Press calls
the Advertiser editor sybil, and the Adyer-
tiser calls the Press editor peculiar insect
that can sting but cannot sing, while the Ar
gus man agonizes nobly but sometimes rather
wildly for the good old times before Democ-
racy went Exiting to sweep ideal cobwebs
from the political sky, and ever and anon
signing for the tender grace Of day that's
dead. Is saw 10 laa
by the by, Mr.. Joseph B. Hall, who went
away short time ago to take charge of
newspaper establishment ut Omaha, has re-