The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1881-06-04

OUR NEW YORK LETTER.

The Political Csssltiron Seething in New
York-Lively Times in stocks-News
and Household Aesthetics-A Damaged
Widow-A Preachers Convention and
Moral Reflections, etc etc.
New York, May %, 1881.
EDITOR CHIEF:
Since the bomb of the Nihilists sent
Alexander of blessed memory to the other
side of Jordan, we have had nothing in
New York like the excitement of the
present week, and not one politician i'll
fifty could tell whether he stood upon
his head or his heels. The number of
patriots willing to serve their country in
this tremendous crisis is marvellous; the
tors, and at the present time we have
not the slightest fear that the Admins
tration will not be able to find among
our citizens, native and foreign, enough
of worthy men to fill all the offices in its
gift. Robertson and anti-Robertson,
Garfield and Garfield, Blaine and
ant ti-Blaine, Conkling aud anti-Conkling
were the sole questions that occupied us
in the early portion of the week. 1t was
in vain that the Bulls and the Bears had
another grapple in Wall street; the
shrieks of the anti-telegraph monopolists
al, \ %l,.,
but neither these things, nor half dozen
startling murders, suicides and robberes
diverted tho people from the political
bull ring where a couple of noble Sena-
tors Went down. OF course a contest Of
this kind means a new deal of the offices
all around, and there is nothing to which
the average patriotic American citizen
sacrifices himself SO willingly and cheer
fully as to office. l fear there isn't quite
enough of good places for them all, and
consequently some patriots will have to
be left out in the cold. Mercy knows,
we have had enough to keep our nerves
excited; on Monday a girl, only Ia years
Of age, committed suicide because her
fathcr suspected her Of stealing. Across
the river the body of a woman was dis
covered murdered in the woods, and it is
now settled beyond the shadow of a
doubt that she was murdered by her
husband on the very afternoon of her
marriage. Scarcely anything so shock
ing and romantic is to be found in history
or fiction, and what renders the affair
more marvellous still is, that though the
murder was perpetrated in the darkness
of night, i'll a lonely place, unseen by
mortal eye, and though the murderer
escaped for the time, yet the faint clues
which he left behind We're SO rapidly and
skillfully worked up that every thread
was unraveled, and the criminal was
arrested and will soon be punished for
one of the cruelest murders that ever
stained the criminal calendar
Just now we are suffering from an
aesthetic craze-we are nothing if not
aesthetic. 1t used to be the fashion in
the days of our great grandmothers,
when they had their portraits painted,
to be taken as goddesses or nymphs; a
iavorte figure was a shepcrdess with
two or three woolly looking sheep
thrown in, but we beat that all to moth
ing now, for the ordinary attire Of Il very
modest girl is the costume of a Fatinitza
or Billcc Taylor, while sweet little
Buttercups are plenty as huckleberries,
and Olivettes are by no means uncommon.
Oh, what heads . the great object seems
to be, with one-h half of our female popu-
lation, to conceal whatever little intellect
they ever possessed, and make them
selves as ridiculous us possible. The new
costumes this summer are, some of them,
simply monstrous; we have seen and
done many foolish and absurd things in
our time, but neither at home nor abroad
have we seen anything so ridiculous and
absurd as the fashions of the present
summer. Respectable young women cx-
hibit themselves on Broadway of an
afternoon in costumes that their grand
mothers would have been ashamed to
wear at a fancy ball on tue Bowery. 1t
is not alone in costume that our aesthetic
taste is displaying itself; it has invaded
our homes. In the suburbs of New York
and Brooklyn many new houses are being
put up, and there are many of them as
atrociously ugly and as miserably incon-
venient us it is possible for architecture
to make them. In and out Of town our
taste is exhibited by architectural mon
strostes which would horrify a Manchou
Tartar. | don't mean to say that there
are not many magnificent buildings
being put up in New York, for there are
hundreds of them, of which any city
might justly be proud, but in several
places, right in the middle Of blocks of
brick and stone buildings, l have seen
attempts at Swiss cottages and English
cottages which were only intended to be
perched on a hillside or set out ia the
fields among the trees. Many Of these
amiable maniacs appear to be wild on
color, and the result is the vi!est combi-
nation of browns, greens, yellows and
blues that mortal eyes ever gazed on
The aesthetic craze is spreading, our
young men have canyht the fever, and it
is evident that they are not going to let
the girls have it all their own way. l
was sitting at my window on Sunday
last, rejecting on the fallen condition of