The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-09-01

Tho Butternies or Fashion ana che
Reopening or tho Churches.
Now the thermometer has ceased its cratic
flights towards the upper ball, and sweltering
humanity can at last breathe without encoun-
tering Sahara atmosphere everybody thinks
of home, and the sitting rooms of the water
ing place hotels are deserted. The first to feel
the sudden change from the nineties to the
sixties are the Summer butterflies of fashion,
who naturally feel at once the chilling effect
on their plumage. Consequently the hum of
packing up in hot haste affects every Summer
resort, and rueful and joyful countenances
may be seen at the Branch, Newport and Sara
toga; the rueful ones, those who have to foot
exorbitant bills. and the joyful ones those who
have made q small fortune during the season
at those uncomfortable caravansaries called
Summer resorts. But the duant- coureurs of the
homeward hegira are the parsons. They have
been also amid the haunts of fashion, and
have fought the good fight even in the strong
holds OF the enemy While the devotees of
fashion were bathing, dancing. picnicking and
flirting the stern soldiers of the conventicles
inaugurated camp meetings and religious
feasts and exchanged many experiences in the
spiritual contest on the green sward. Now
they have come back and have girded on their
armor to give battle with the common enemy.
Their sermons are carefully prepared, and it
is hoped that in their future discourses they
will remember the axiom of turning from ''na-
ture to natures God" The clergymen of our
fashionable churches have had glorious op-
portunity of getting ideas of sermons in run
ming brooks, and we sincerely expect from
their experience in trout fishing that they may
conceive ideas in the way Of being fishers Of
men. But, per contra, it is most devoutly to
be expected that their sojourn among their
country brethren may not contaminate that
vigor of rhetoric and logic of ideas which so
distinctly mark the country clergyman from
his metropolitan confrere. In fact, we should
regret that our clerical light would sink into
the moribund condition of the country clergy
man, with-as Oliver Wendell Holmes so
humorously says-''a one-story intellect and
one-horse vocabulary" Yet it is astonishing
that clergymen fresh from rural Arcadias dive
SO deeply into the mere matter of fact as if ma
ture had no influence whatever. But there
are hopes entertained. even in the best circles,
that our fashionable churches will take les
son and endeavor from the poor provender
provided at watering places to turn their at
tention to spiritual food The birds of fashion,
finding the brief Summer day is over, will re-
turn to the metropolis. But oh! how differ
ent will be the expectations of the multitude.
Here is the belle, who has no embarrassment Of
choice. She can afford to be as gay as she
pleases; but the quiet, domesticated damsel goes
away with fear and doubt. Does she know
the antecedents of the gay cavalier? All, it is
the same old, old story, and let Us drop it
for the present, as the future is pregnant with
more important events. Fashion, the impe-
rious goddess that allows no rival near her
throne, says that the coming Winter is to be
one of the gayest that New York has yet
known. All the great emporiums are prepar
ing to display their wares before an admiring
public, and this city, the greatest in resources
and the most extravagant of any metropolis in
ancient and modern cities, has an exhibition of
fabrics that would cause q distraction among
the public that would much disturb the
peace Of the female mind. We forget, how
ever, that the theatrical season is opening, and,
with the churches, we hope to find true
school of rhetoric different from the ridicu-
lous sensational that we have been accustomed
to under the ancien regime of Tammany
Hall and its illegitimate successor, Apollo, in
which the comic orator says of the present
campaign, ''The air is redolent with blond"
The prospects are that we shall have, in the
blessings Of subdued clergy, more respect
able political campaign, and a class of citizens
who can feel that there are some rights which
the city and also oil corporations are bound to
understand