New-York tribune., 1873-05-06

Dcr-o- "'o~~+;-~" fr'-+ro- h-o'- ~ ttN ~o'icn
grew yigilant. Our Credit Moblier friends
then would have been registering Norman bar
OBS taking their toll out of the hide Of some
jew usurer, or Scotch raiders "lifting" droves
Of cattle from honest but unpicturesque Low
landers. The long-ago dancers about the May
pole doubtless let their airy souls slip at
crossing the last chilly food back to the warm
earth again. and we find them to-day their
heads weighted with artificial blossoms and
their pretty bodies jauntily perched in car
riage or phaeton, glancing at each others
dresses under the green branches In Central
Park. We who carry kitchen range or waste
pipe in our heavy brains had our counter
parts no doubt in that old time, who stayed
by the freside grumbling at the chilly morn
ing, eating fat bacon OF drinking ale. The ro-
nance of one age weighs about "a much in
the long run as the romance OF anOthcr'
Young blood will have its vagaries its fevers,
its absurd but sacred gospels. We need no
more laugh at them than at their farthingales
and colts, which we Outyie with more ridicu-
lOus fashions.
For one OF two Purtanic centuries we Amer
leans have fouted the old religious whim Of
giving to certain times of the year sacred
significance. But lately it has begun to seem
wiser to most thinking people to attach
higher meaning TO the days than the fact that
they are wash-day for the housewife or the
time when bill falls due TO her husband. If
by the naming and observance Of certain
morning and evening historical OF religious
facts can be brought homo to the people, why
IL
res increase with every year we keep Christ
mas, New Years, Good Friday, and Easter as
legal holidays. Esthetically minded Protest
ants even look with an indulgent eye upon
the setting apart by their Catholic brethren of
this whole month Of flowers as dedicated TO
tho Virgin. They do not want any
worship of Mary, of course. No setting up of
shrines in churches or highways to the Queen
of Heaven; but they protest that the constant
idea of q woman so pure that the angels
bowed before her. q mother so tender that her
love was dear to God himself, was in great
measure the healing influence most powerful
through those ages of unbridled rapine and
murder which we are wont to call chivalrc.
Our Catholic friends, we perceive by these
open churches, think the idea az wholesome
now as then. Fenian and German, young
girls and tobacco-chewing carriers, go day by
day to sing hymns to the half divine, half
human Mother and hang her affairs with Spring
blossoms Of course they have no hope of
converting practical Brother Jonathan into
what seems to him Pagan worship. He
declines to pay even respectful atten-
ton to the character of this highest type of
the Domestic Woman, calls the old crusading
reverence Mariolatry, or at best sentimental
folly. Why should we hang flowers upon the
picture of woman who was only pure vir-
gin, faithful wife, and q true mother,
into whose soul the sword entered when her
son sufferedl God might hail her as blessed
among women for these things, but we have
set up a different ideal of the sex before our
selves now. Our daughters characters and
lives are keyed by their mothers to another
strain than that of Mary. But men have an
obstinate habit of hanging the likeness Of the
Madonna on their walls, and taking some far
OFF likeness of her into their hearts f; and the
question is, after ali, shall we ever go back to
the old model again