The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-13

If we we're any less wicked we would not
be half 80 dear to the Bostonian reformatory
mind as we are in our present unregenerate
condition. For the vocation of the Boston
reformers would be gone if there were no
carnal capital to which they might point and
express gratitude that they were not as other
towns, or even as this New York.
OF course, Boston is not to be criticised by
the standards of New York, nor are the con-
ventioDs of human society in general of any
weight whatever in that capital. Otherwise
we should be moved TO deprecate that truly
Bostonian courtesy which takes up its para
BILE of the wickedness of New York to New
York audience, and tells us, to the faces of
such of us as are verdant enough to put our
faces in the way of being talked to, what o
generation of vipers we are.
The indictment which Boston has drawn
up in New York against New York. we regret
to say, lacks specification. The speakers were
all very sure that New York was dreadful
place, but they did not seem to be so sure
what were the prodigies of vice which we
performed. Mrs Julia Ward Howe was
kind enough to say that, though ''the ma
terial distance between New York and New
England was but eight hours by railroad;
the moral distance has the whole breadth
of the Atlantic in it," The metonymy of
Boston, which is indeed eight hours from
New York, for New England, of which region
New Workers can reach the happy confines in
an hour and a quarter or SO "by railroad"
is as truly and touchingly Bostonian as is the
assumption that between us and Boston
there is an impossible moral gulf. But when
Mrs. Howe came to give reasons for the faith
that was thus in her she could only say that
she had read about it in the North american
RcrSeu. "Mr. Parton's record of the City
Hail. and ''Mr. Adams article on the Erie
Road, it seems, decided Mrs. Howe. But
we fear il must be owned that Mr.. Parton is
himself New Yorker, as Mr.. Fisk, Jr., is
certainly q Bostonian; so that Mrs. Howe
ought in justice to have conceded us the anti
dote in one case and assumed for Boston the
bane in the other. And if Mrs. Howe had
read her Tribune (Which is understood to be
good authority in Boston, for the past few
weeks with the attentiveness it demanded,
she might have inferred that the ''ring" and
the ''City Hall were not nearly SO black as
MIR. Parton had painted them.
But though Mrs. Howe's diagnosis is thus
vague, her expression is explicit. 81 think
you ought to have more Unitarian churches
in New York. The want of centrality makes
itself felt in this" Deeply as we regret to
differ with Boston when Boston is good
enough to advise us, we are compelled to
reject with soorn the project of precipitating
upon a helpless population additional Bel
lowses, and Frothinghams, and Osgoods.
The same nebulosity characterized the re-
marks of our other Bostonian critics. The
single grievous and crying sin that seemed
to afflict them was the existence of Mr..
Stewards new house. sis not that marble
palace on Fifth avenue" fiercely inquired the
Rev. Mr.. Charming, "a fruit and result of
the business ambition of this great Vanity
Fair ?" And Mr.. Wendell Phillips ''thought
that the marble palace on Fifth avenue ex-
pressed the orthodox type of Christianity. "
politan critics about MIR. Stewards house.
But, if Boston can find nothing worse in New
York than the architectural monstrosity which
so excites its horror, its reformers may &c
home and look at their own glass-house or
Beacon street, and let him that then appears
without sin among them cast the first stone al
| ours in Fifth avenue.