Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1872-09-13

A narrow gauge is now suggested for street
railways A two and a half or three feet gauge
would be as wide in proportion to the whole
width of the cars as the ordinary gauge of four
feet and eight inches is to the width Of the pas
senger cars on steam railroads. The advantages
claimed for the narrower gauge are that it would
allow the horses 10 travel outside the track,
which would be a relief TO them, Tor within the
present tracks they are crowded; it would make
the cars run easier and turn corners with much
less friction or strain, and would make the cars
lighter by shortening the axles. 1t would also
make the tracks less dangerous or annoying to
the drivers of other vehicles, because they could
not get both wheels in the track. The cost Of
laying and maintaining the track would also be
less in proportion to the decrease in width.
A London editor, who ought to have known
better has been made the victim of curious
hoax, all the more amusing because Its author
had no thought of deceiving anybody. 1t is
about Stanley and Livingstone, of course, the
topic which has given rise to most of the per-
plexides and misunderstanding OF late. The
Spectator says:
Mr.. Stanley is very angry because some in
credulous people decline to believe in the literal
accuracy Of his stories about Dr. Livingstone.
He has some right TO be angry, for he
has done a great deed, and all his more i'm
portant statements have been corroborated
by DR.. Livingstone's letters ana other evil
dence, but he should remember that it is very
difficult 10 apprehend all at once change 50
considerable as appears to have passed over the
great traveller. For example, Mr.. Stanley
writes to the Herald-we quote the paragraph
from the New York Nation-that when he told
DR.. Livingstone of Mr.. Greeley's candidature for
the presidency, the doctor said :--'Hold on!
You have told me stupendous things,
and with confding simplicity l was
swallowing them peacefully down; but
there is a limit to all things am a SIM
pie, guileless, Christian man, and unacquanted
with Incorporate language; but when you tell
me that Horace Greeley is become democratic
candidate, cast the traditions of my education
to the winds, and say, I'll be - to all eternity
If / believe it. (After a pause) My trunk is
packed TO go home, but shall remain in Afri
ca,-ior these things may be true, after all; if
they are, desire to stay here and unlearn my
civilization The DR.. Livingstone of 1866 would
not, we think, have uttered those sentences, and
II is by their recOlections of the doctor as he
was that the skeptics-Yery unfairy-judge Mr..
Stanley's accounts of him as he is"
The joke of all this is, that the language here
attributed to Livingstone on Stanley's authori-
ty, was never in the Herald at all, but appeared
first in the Hartford Courant as grotesque
illustration of the absurdity of Greeley's nomi-
nation by the democrats. The Nation quoted it
as a joke, but the English paper, with the usual
insular incapacity to appreciate an American
jest, accepted il in all seriousness as genuine
letter of Sinaley to the Herald, over
looking the manifest absurdity of STAN
leys announcing 10 Livingstone in Africa in
December, 1871, an event which occurred in the
United States in July, 1872. We are inclined to
think that the Courant owes an apology, GER
tainly to the Spectator, aud perhaps TO Stanley
and Livingstone. 1t is true that it would be
gross insult to any reasonable being to suppose
him capable Of being deceived by so perspicuous
trayesty; but that fact makes it all the
worse for the editor Of the Spectator, who was
deceived by it, and perhaps for the editor of a
Boston paper who, apparently "a much per-
picked as the Spectator itself, remarks:
at does seem excessively odd that an En-.
glishman, and especially one so long absent
himself from any interference in the politics of
the world, should be so wonderfully taken
aback by Mr. SANKEY'S startling piece of news