The New York herald., 1876-03-14
Centennial.

AS the centennial craze, so far from
waning is daily increasing in force and in the
number of its votaries, it seems probable
that the reckless abuse of that unfortunate
word will not abate until the end of this an
niversary year, when, let us fervently hope
it may be allowed to return to its own
modest uses, congratulating ourselves mean
while if some uncouth verb is not violently
compounded from it to enrich the large
vocabulary of modern colloquial slang.
But there is another horror now hanging
over the whole country, like the sword of
Damocles, which is more entirely connected
with the coming Exposition in Philndel-
phia, and which can only be averted by the
most vigorous measures; this is growing
tendency, especially in the rural districts,
to look upon the whole thing in the light of
what is usually called in this country a
museum"
1t is undoubtedly very proper that de-
partment for patriotic relics should be
formed for the exhibition of genuine and
historical remembrancers of the great events
now being commemorated; but even that
department can be sadly overdone if the in
PRODUCTION be permitted Of numberless only
original ''little hatchets," small furniture
made of the wood of the sacred cherry tree,
skulls of horses once bestridden by the Father
of his Country, or bands of toothless and in
firm colored people claiming to have be-
longed to his household.
This will be sad enough, although it will
perhaps give an amusing variety to the de-
partment; but it is more dreadful still to OBJ
serve how completely the bucolic mind is
overcast with the vague idea of ''big show"
in prospect and then to contemplate the
avalanche of calves with two heads, front
with two tails, in short, all the usual and un-
usual rural and aquatic curiosities that will
shortly roll down upon the devoted Centen-
NAL Building. The soft, half-effaced men,
ories of the woolly horse, the Fiji mer-
maid, or of that protean parsonage Joyce
Heth, that still gild the past, will be
effectually extinguished by the similar won
ders in store for us, if we are to believe the
crisp little paragraphs that are beginning
to crop ont in the various country news
papers.
If this additional attraction to the Fair
mount Park Building is to be allowed then we
must suggest that it should be rendered COM
plete. Let us have vast baby show which
shall cast into the shade all previous ex-
hibitions of that nature, and astound envious
foreigners by the beauty of our coming
generation; and, above all, let the Com
missioners provide space for a circus and the
inevitable menagerie.
In the burst of patriotic enthusiasm now
blazing up on all sides it seems more than
probable, too, that every boy who has the luck
to be born in 1876 will have to bear the
illustrious initials of c. w. before his
patronymic, and one shudders to think of
the hopeless confusion of the future census
taker. especially in a neighborhood enjoying
n wealth of Smiths or Browns, and rendering
that individual, if not idiotic, at any rate
very sorry that there ever was celebration
of n centennial year.
WALT WHITMAN has found friend in
England in the person of his brother poet,
Robert Buchanan. The latters indignation
at the ''impoverishment' of the bard of
Leaves of Grass" leads him to have fling
at 1.-The literary coterios which emasculate
America The harmful work of such CO.
teries We admit; but Homer we are told,
f,r tl.tt. 4 20