Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1877-10-12
OUR NEW YORK LETTER.

With rustling sandals shOd.
SerT5ner for October.
OUR NEW YORK LETTER.
Thanks where Due-The state Com
ventIop-ROok SaIes-KiSer Acei"
deD,.-Tbe CIairmOnt Bank-LOw
prfees-SupPIIes-F Fashions.
THANKS WHERE DUE.
1t is Justly held stupid to open conyersa-
ton with speaking Of the weather, but the
rule doesn't apply to such weather as we
have now. To-day completes a week Of
perfect, sunny, cool, delicious days that are
the charm of the Hudson river country IN
September. Farmers begin to talk Of
drouth, but the country needs few weeks
of such dry days to dry out healthily after
the soaking rains of summer.
THE STATE CONVENTION.
The New York State Convention opened
yesterday with what sanguine Republicans
are pleased to term slap at the admins
ton. The adoption of most moderate
and Just platform, advising resumption,
denouncing subsidies, insisting on the
rights of labor and capital to an equal
hearing, and expressingn no opinion on the
administration policy, while hoping 1t viii
result in peace at the South, and promis-
ing that no act of the Republicans OF New
York shall be withheld for its success. 1t
can hardly fail of approval from all men
not pledged to the support of measures
and men rather than of principles. Elk
Congressman Ward made the strongest
possible answer to all finding in the pithy
declaration that if the announcement Of Re
publican principles be the condemnation
of the administration, let that condemna-
ton fall. The good Republicans Of the
State do not derive great encouragement
from the sight of President escorted and
fattered by ex-rebels, who have never
shown any convincing proofs of a change
Of heart. They do not relish the modest
demand to appoint Herschel V. Johnson to
the vacancy of the supreme bench. The
late news from Mississippi which reads as
|
of ''reconciled" Democrats surrounding
Republican speakers with shot-guns in
good'old southern fashion is not the exact
style of harmony preferred here, and sound
Republicans who professed their faith be-
fore the battle of Antietam desire to have
it distinctly understood that the harmony
has not got to be entirely on their side.
The administration, say these Republicans,
talk too much in the vein of the man who
believed in unanimity in families, and
complained that he was always unanimous
but his wife wasn't. At least the New
York convention has the courage to ex-'
press its opinions, and nobody has any
difficulty in knowing what its acts and
words mean.
BOOK SALES.
The trade sale of books held last week
and this has exceeded the hopes Of dealers,
and million dollars worth Of books will
be upon the market in the next ten days.
That means that the people have money
once more, and begin to buy books and
surround themselves with comforts and
indulgences again. A bookseller who at
| tended the sale from Illinois said the great
harvest was no sooner gathering in August
than he began to sell more books than he
had done before for year. Books will be
cheaper than they have been since the war,
as auction prices ruled twenty per cent.
below the usual wholesale rates.
RIVER ACCIDENTS.
The sunny afternoons tempt small craft
out on the river, and one of the worst forms
of town savagery is the recklessness with
which larger vessels wreck those that come
in their way. Hardly day passes without
an account OF row-boat run down and
her crew sunk by tug or lighter, out of
pure wantonness. The river pilots are ut
terly careless of human life, and laugh at
it as fine sport to run down pleasure boat
with two or three boys and girls aboard.
Two weeks ago party of boys and girls In
their teens, living in the same tenement
house, went out from the foot of Canal
street about sunset for row, and found
small steamer bearing down on them.
They changed their course, when the boat
changed hers so as to bring them exactly
in her path, ran them down, and kept on
her way, never paying attention to the
screams of the creatures struggling in the
water. A girl of sixteen was drowned;
one of the boys succeeded in swimming
ashore with the other, though his own leg
was broken in two places and his shoulner
crushed. The officers of of the flagship
Minnesota have made complaint to the
pilot commissioner that one Of their boats
going ashore made signal of danger to a
tug coming its way, to which no attention
was paid, and an apprentice boy from the
ship was drowned in the collision. They
said it was no uncommon thing for the
steam-tugs to deliberately run down small
boats. Peoples lives are literally in the
hands of the coarse and demoniac set who
fill the posts of car drivers and river pilots.
THE CLAIRMoNT BANK.
The Clairmont Savings Bank failed for
only 800, 900 but the history of its defal-
cations reads very much like the practice
of many similar institutions outside the
city, where rural virtue is supposed to
flourish. How many country banks are
there which refuse to lend their funds to
friends of the officers, or which do not
have little outside affairs in which the help
of the bank comes handy. How many
presidents there are who consider them
selves mere igureheads, and take the word
OF the people at the bank that everything
is right, when they spare time from their
pressing business to look into It's doors.
How many trustees there are who don't
know much how things are going on in
their bank, but take it for granted that all
is right, just like the trustees of the Clair
mont bank, one of whom did not know
his name was on the list, while another had