The New York herald., 1876-12-18

HAS us nhtuIal advantages, ltS pIestiBe anu
equal rates of transportation. II our mer-
chants are duly alive to the advantages Sc
cured for them by our New York roads the
city will enter upon new era Of activity
and prosperity.
some Approved Methods OF Disposing
of Children.
In spite of the progressiveness of our age,
as indicated by the success of the Centen-
nial Exhibition and the popularity of the
HERALD, there are some people who are con-
tinually mourning for the good old times.
Such of these depressed souls as dislike chill
dren wag doleful heads and sigh forth COM
activity in the demand for small coffins as
existed during the spirited reign of that
Pharaoh who knew not Joseph, or under the
Herod that Hebrew mothers never mention
except when they want to frighten their chill
dren. For such dependency as this there
is no excuse. True there is no American
autocrat who devotes special attention to
this feature of rulership. but it should
be remembered that we live in Republic
in which every man is sovereign, and in
which every woman, in spite of trifing con-
stitutional disabilities, is a ruler. Compre-
hensive acts Of nominal rulers are not fire.
quent, but on the other hand the cumu-
lative results of the efforts of individuals
are great enough to make Oriental despots
turn green with envy. AS neither DR..
Schliemann nor General Cesnola has yet
begun to excavate in Egypt and Palestine.
the official reports of Pharaohs and Herod's
saviours Of society are not where we can
conveniently refer to them, but We defy the
most dissatisfied undertaken in the land to
declare that he would rather have been in
business in the olden times than now.
When the world was from two thousand to
four thousand years older nothing short of
o royal edict could bring about Wholesale
slaughter of children; but now, thanks to
higher civilization, millions of people are
silently attaining the same end without COM
pulsion or even special request.
There is the custom of exhausting chill
dren by exposure, for instance. Pharaoh
could not avail himself of it, for the mercury
in Egypt always stood nearly ms high as the
Pyramids; but in our own favored land of
cold snaps and storm signals this practice is
within the ability of the simplest nurse girl,
and it is followed with that energy which
Justly distinguishes the American mind from
that Of decaying Europe. Not one in twenty
of the children Of affectionate parents wears
as much clothing in winter as is sufficient to
the parents themselves in mild weather, and
though the bodily warmth which escapes on
this account does not sensibly modify the
winter temperature, it leaves the children
themselves in condition to enlarge the
bank accounts of physicians and un-
dertakers. To allow q small child
to appear in the street without an inch or
two Of bare skin just above and below the
knee is extremely questionable, and this
exposure every year removes SO many
children to better land that reason comes
to the support of Holy Writ and doubly as
sures us that .'of such is the kingdom of
heaven" Then there is the child's shoe;
its sole is generally as light as that of
fairy, and the cold feet which it induces
cause so many Juvenile departures that,
compared with these thin slips Of leather
the great Pharaoh seems pretentious old
potterer. The child's glove is another po-
tent first cause Of tiny tombstones.
Tyndall says that if q man holds
his finger in glass Of water long
enough to raise the temperature of the
fluid one degree he expends force which
would be sufficient to throw the same water
hundreds of feet upward. 1t makes us
dreadfully thirsty to think what dry world
this would be if all the force dissipated
through the insuficiently covered hands of
children were applied to the raising of
water from the earth's surface. Such nm
event would give us a chance for direct rail-
way travel to Europe, and if foreign built
ships were imported at all they would come
in the homely guise of kindling wood.
These methods-to which may be added
that of keeping babies with bare feet and
of covering children at night with bedding
as thin as it is dainty-are not all produc-
tive of immediate results; but children that
escape suffer complication of disorders
which make them wish they were dead, and
this is as near to the fact itself as can be
hoped for in an imperfect world. There
are plenty of other ways equally effective
and popular, but with the HERALps regard
for timeliness we mention only those pecu-
liar to the season. For proof of their efii-
cacy we refer to half the parents and nurses
in the land.
Hint for the New Comptroller.
If Comptroller Kelly will look at the
City Record-a paper in which the transac-
tions of the city government are convent
a..4l.. h;adon AWAY from, thn manila &c 10