The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-29

stated by her economical habits In the future,
and the lady's good looks might thus carry
the day, when in other circumstance her
intending spouse would shrink from matri-
mony altogether. M. Bertrand is perhaps
not SO far wrong as regards the substantial
occurrence of what he depicts, although he
probably commits an error in declaring that
to be a regular trade which only presents it
self as an occasional conspiracy. What is
really odd about his story is, that NJ. Ber-
trapd should impute to London a business
which at least four French dramatists, dur
ing the last few years, have, by implication,
fastened upon Paris; a fact of which it ap-
pears not a little remarkable that a French
Journalist should be ignorant.
MEMORIALS AS MERCHANDISE.
From the N. Y. World.
To honor our dead is one of the deepest,
as certainly it is one of the most nearly uni
v~ersal, of human instincts. To do them
honor by making real sacrifices in their be-
half is a practice SO prevalent-from the
cremation of herself to which ''every woman
as calls herself a lady" feels compelled upon
the death of her lord in aboriginal India, and
the sacrifice of horses and dogs which accom-
panies the funeral of a warrior in aboriginal
America, to 'the splendid sorrows that adorn
the hearse" of civilization, and the monu-
ments in which good-feeling and bad taste
law w uiohSulO Ia DlCoSht u
virtues of the dead in the cemeteries of
civilization, from Montmartre to Greenwood
that we are justified in considering it one
of the few indisputable indications of the
real as well as the nominal kindred of man
kind. Any conspicuous disregard, and,
much more, any conspicuous defiance of this
instinct inficts a shock upon us, though it be
told of a stranger. 1t is a feeling of real
pain that it causes when it is told of such
a Familiar friand to oil Df nc N I, Nbor1oo
Dickens. m r
Precisely what circumstances have neces-
STATED the sale of the novelist's effects we
are not informed, and it is neither necessary
nor decent for us to inquire. 1t is, however,
a perfectly public fact that his death has left
his family in a condition very far removed
from destitution; and it is a perfectly fair
comment upon that fact to say that the sud
den dispersion, by public sale, of the trea-
sured trifes which had been accumulated
during a lifetime by private diligence and
private taste was neither a necessary nor de-
cent thing to do, and that with a proper feel
ing on the part of those who may have per-
mitted or compelled it, it would have been an
impossible thing to do. That this view was
taken of it by those who were concerned in it
we may conclude from the proclamation
which the executors of Mr.. Dickens will have
very properly put forth, that no choice was
left them by those in whose behalf they were
acting, and who might have been expected to
cherish a more tender regard for Mr.. Dickens
memory and a higher appreciation of the
sanctity of whatever objects were closely
associated with that memory than themselves.
1t is not at all consoling to find that what
was thus essentially a shabby transaction was
rendered shabbier still by the vulgarity with
which it was conducted; nor will the shame
which strangers feel, and which members of
his own hOnSahnld Saam NOT fn haua falt
over what may strictly be called a desecra-
ton of the memory of Mr.. Dickens, be at
all allayed by the announcement that the
associations which gave the objects thus dis
posed of the extrinsio value which was their
main value, were so much more pre-.
cious to strangers than to those
to whom they ought to have been most
precious that the collection sold for five OF
six times its intrinsic value. For that an.
nouncement only goes to show that they of a
mans own household may speculate upon the
existence and efficacy in Others of an affec
tiOnate remembrance which prompts them tc
sacrifice money for the possession of memo
rails which they themselves are willing to
sacrifice for money.
This disagreeable topic would hardly be
worth treating were it not that it exhibits a
British phase of a lack of right feeling in 9
direction which the PBritish harisee assumes
to be a peculiarly American direction. 1t is
the custom in the British navy, as it is not the
custom in the American navy, to expose fol
sale the effects of the sailor who has died al
sea. To have his raiment parted among his
survivors, and to have lots cast for his
v~esture, was the supreme p~osthumous indig
nifty which the Hebrew psalmist looked for
ward to at the hands of his enemies. Yet this
is almost literally the ~indignity which the
British novelist has suffered at the hands OF
his friends. When the widow of thu. late Mr..
Lincoln, though with the palliation of pow
erty, and with every precaution for privacy,
hawked her own raiment in the market-place
in spite of her being the widow of a popular
public man, a British critic congratulated his
countrymen that from such a spectacle they
were Undoubtedly preserved. The critic il
requested to ponder the circumstance that
member of the family of the late Mr.. Dickens
is responsible for having hawked in the mar
ket-plaee, without the palliation of poverty
and with every device to secure publicity
whatever connected itself most intimately
with the private life of the most popular O.
British public writers.
THE WEDDING OF THE PERIOD.
FROM The Cleveland Leader.