New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-11-14


wov, or that the balls of the fire companies
begin this week. What would we hayei To
the gods, nectar to the dog, bone. But as
the time TO all of us is in social sense
beginning n Monday morning for years
week. we are tempted TO suggest that there
are two or three odd changes apparent in our
tastes and manners since last November. The
American. in cities first, shows symptoms OF a
disposition to amuse himself, to stop for
breath, TO take his holiday as he goes along,
"to loafe, in q word, and invite his soul' here,
and not postpone the invitation until no Is
in his coffin. The warnings limited by
physicians and newspapers against his
mad haste and overwOrk of brain
and body are having their effect in healthier,
looser, more moderate routine of daily life.
He begins to develop, too, sensuous traits
belonging to people of warmer climates, which
are most wholesome symptoms in his bilious,
morbid, anxious constitution. knowledge and
love of music has increased among us within
a year or two to an almost incredible degree !;
science, with its broad, live, prolific basis for
thought is pushing sectarian dogmatlsm aside
even in the land where the chilly ghosts OF
Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather yet ire
quent the air the women in their dress begin
to study and comprehend artistic effect;
growing love of rich ornamentation and glow
ing color hints itself from year to year more
strongly in our architecture, our furniture, our
clothes; treasures of pottery, bric-a-brac, ana
paintings, which few years ago could not
have been sold in the country, crowd the
shelves of dealers; even the staid Philadelphia
Quakers insert cOlOred tiles in front OF their
houses as outward and visible sign OF their
inward and spiritual change of heart.
Outside of the cities, however, the season
has a different and broader meaning. What
ale one or two Opera-hOuses or blazing ball
looms to the legions of quiet homes which
warm and make human the country from sea
to seat The stubble-felds changing from
bronze to yellow, the burning sumach lighting
its torch in the hedges, the cold blue mist
lining out the water-cOurses in the landscape
are the signs just now of the beginning OF the
universal season" the closing in Of domestic
life about the home center. For the next four
months politics and business do in fact play u
secondary part in actual life to family and so
cial interests with almost every man. with
the kindling of November fires upon the
hearth in the choicest assemblage in the best
salon as in the appe-paring frolic in the
farmers kitchen, lOvemaking and marriage,
the matters of birth and life and death
thrust themselves into notice and the
foremost place We repeat here what we have
said until it is hackneyed, that it is to the in
nate purity and wholesome soundness of that
American family life that orr salvation as
nation depends. II is from honest fathers and
chastc mothers that the men come and are
to come that will make our laws just. our
religion Christ-like, our manners gentle and
humane. We who live in cities, in the midst
of the chatter of free-loye and daily foul tam
pering with foul things, are apt to mderrate
the integrity Of domestic life in the silent back
ground of the nation. We forget that every
Messalina who becomes public nuisance, every
single case of adultery or divorce. signifies un-
numbered happy, modest homes of which NO
never hear. We urge the Importance to-day
in every one of these homes to which we nave
access, of keeping straight and clean through
this season and evnry Other thoiI realty 10 INC
ola notions of marriage and a Christian family
government. There lies their strength now
and that of the whole people hereafter