The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-14

of the Bailey Microscopical Club, an associa-
ton composed of the most slxilful micro
scopists of the country, which is doing much
to advance this department. of science, SO in
teresting and so useful to humanity.
A MEMORIAL TO DICKENS.
From the NJ Y. World.
correspondent favors us with the sugges-
ton that steps be taken at once to organic a
public meeting for the purpose of ''giving
expression to the sorrow felt by the American
people on the death of Charles Dickens" We
desire to speak with all respect of the senti-
ments which doubtless prompted this propo-
sition. But from the proposition itself we
confess that we shrink in unfeigned terror
What need of public meetings to express a
sorrow which has been uttered ere this in
private and in public wherever two or three
have met together in all the English-speaking
world, from London to San Francisco, from
Gibraltar to Quebec, from Bombay to Cal
cutta 1t is the incommunicable privilege
of a great name in letters-a privilege
which neither the prestige of colossal wealth,
nor the splendor of place and power, nor
the pomp of ancestral rank can command
that it makes its possessor a par
taker in the quiet inner life, the
daily hopes and fears, the hidden personal
experiences and emotions, of those whose
verdict gives him fame. This privilege it
was the fortune of Dickens to enjoy in the
fullest measure. 1t was on Thursday night
that he drew his last breath under his own
roof near London, in a spot made immortal
by the genius of Shakespeare. Before the
dawn of day on Saturday, the news, flashed
east and west, and north and south, by wires
upon the land and by cables under the sea,
had been carried round about the globe. 1t
was magnifcently said of the morning drum
beat of the British forces that, following the
II Ill
with one continuous strain of the martial airs
of England" And it may without exagge-
ration be said of this calamity which even
more truly than the death of the 'Iron
Duke"
-"made all England tremble
And groan from shore to Shore"
that passed on from meridian to meridian
and parallel to parallel, the tidings of it have
circled the whole earth with one continuous
lamentation for the noble dead. 1t came to
mems lips with their greetings on the crowded
Exchange of New York and in the halls of
Congress at Washington not less promptly
than in the clubs of London or the factories
of Manchester. 1t crossed the American con-
tinent with the travellers on the iron way
which links the Atlantic with the Pacific. 1t
Climbed the Himalaya and the Cordilleras
What need of public meetings here or there
to formulate grief so universal, so simple,
and so unfeigned? Charles Dickens was
priced not by an order, or caste, or clique.
! He was above all others of his time the
peoples writer; he belonged to the general
family OF his race. 1t is in the households of
the people, not upon the hustings or the plat
form, that his loss is felt, and there shall it be
most fifty mourned.
If anything be wise or we'll to do in the
way of public recognition of this sad event,
it may be, perhaps, to take steps for securing
a monument to the great novelist in some
such place, for example, as our noble Central
| Park. Nowhere could his statue be more
appropriately placed than in this great plea
saunce and paradise of the democratic people
of the worlds one great democratic capital.
| For who in our time has labored more con-
stantly, more sincerely, or more effectively
than this lover of men simply as men, this
! partaker in all sorts of simple human hopes
and fears, and joys and pains, to spread
| abroad throughout the world that true spirit
of democracy, that true law of liberty, which
consists in the practical genial, natural re-
cognition of the common humanity in us all,
underlying alike the aristocracies of nature
and the accidents of fortune?
GEN. GRANTS FISHING EXCURSION.
| From the ". Y. Herald.
One of the most serious drawbacks to an
inland fishing excursion is too much water,
and this is the very drawback which COM
| PEELED General Grant and party on Friday last
to beat retreat from his trout-fshing excur-
sion among the trout streams of the Pennsyl-
vania Alleghenies tributary to the west branch
of the Susquehanna river, in the neighborhood
of Westport. ''The rains descended and the
floods came, as they come in the rainy sea.
son in the Alleghenies-he outpourings
from the lowering clouds, in rapid succession,
night and day. The mountain brooks swollen
into roaring torrents, the larger streams into
rushing rivers, and the Susquehanna itself
expanded into an inland sea, simply flooded
out for the time being all the fishermen in
those regions. So it was that the President
and party did beat a retreat back to Harris
burg; but even in his retreat he was tempo
rarily, at one point, headed off by an ava
lanche of mud and rocks swept down from
the mountains upon the railway track
The excursionists, however, after some deten
tion, got under way again, the rain pouring
down, and towards the sunset of the eventfu
day were safely housed in Harrisburg, unde
the hospitable roof of General Cameron. Ant
thus ended the trout-fshing excursion of the
President and party to the lovely Alleghen.
regions of Central Pennsylvania, for tn
President and party returned yesterday t.
Washington.