Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1882-04-05


All, the things that his touch had taught her
Like StrawS Whirled by in the churning stream!
She was only the rniIlers daughter
The noise of the mill-Nheel drowned her dream.
She stood minute, and sighed, and ponder
The butterfly stirred, and futtered onward
Inc leaves OF a jasmine star were shed.
"Shall you never come back-?" she said.
A Modern Witch.
In this age of intelligence, and beneath the
shadow Of half dozen schoohOuses and
churches, one would hardly suppose that there
Is superstition enough to lead people to regard
the sham mummery and clumsy antics of an old
woman as being those of a witch. But such is the
fact. There is now living in an alley running
into Liberty street woman who processes to be
endowed with supernatural power, and whose
conduct is as gross as it is grotesque. She
never enters her own house without leapng
backward and forward over the sill of her door
and when she goes into neighbor' g house she
does the same thing. Sheis constantly engaged
IN incarnation, when not employed at her Ordi-
nary work, and whispers CONTINUOUSLY of her
power to spread or stay disease. Absurd as
these things are, they have produced singular
effects on some of the neighbors. A woman
living next door to the witch actually believes
that her children are more or less affected by her
influence, as they have had all the diseases
common to children, while other children in the
unframed. These ridiculous beliefs and fears
are producing considerable excitement, and the
witch enjoys her reputation. She mathematics
and blesses such as incur her disfavor or favor.
and revels in the fact that she is feared by the
Ignorant Harrisburg Telegraph.
American F1umor.
In some respects, though in some only, Chas.
Lambs humor anticipates the type of humor
which we now call, in the main, American
When, for instance, he gravely narrated the orr
gin of the Chinese invention of roast pig in the
burning down of a house-when he told q friend
that he had moved just AZ inches nearer to his
beloved LondOn-and again, when he wrote to
Manning in China that the new Persian AM
bassador was called ''Shaw Ali Mirza," but
that the common people called him "Shaw
Nonsense" we might think we were listening
to Artemus Wards or Mark Twans minute
and serious nonsense. But for the most part
Charles Lambs humOr is more frolicsome,
more whimsical, and less subdued in its eX-
travagance, more like the gamboling of
mind which did not care to conceal it's enjoy
ment of paradox. and less like the inward in
visible laughter in which the Yankees m ost
delight. Lamb dearly loved frisk. And when,
for instance, he blandly proposed to some friend
who offered to wrap up for him bit of old
cheese which he had seemed to like at dinner,
to let him have bit of string with which he
could probably lead it home" there was Ger
tainly nothing in him Of the grim impassiveness
OF Yankee extravaganza. II might be asserted
perhaps, that. even if; the prospect of great
future for English hunor is good, there is still
reason to fear that it must dwindle in largeness
of conception so that such massive forms of
humor as we find, for instance in "Gulliyer's
Travels " or the Tale Of a Tub" are not likely
to return. But even this we greatly doubt
not inferior in conception, and certainly more
abundant in creation, than any humorist in
the worlds wholly modern and he certainly
has by no means exhausted the field even
OF that sort Of huInor in which he himself
may call iiealized vusgarities, which includes
sketches of the abstract monthly nurse whose
every thought and action breathe the fawning
brutalities of the Mrs. Camp species-of bea-
dies who incarnate all beadledem-of London
pickpockets who have assimilated all that is
entertaining In the world of professional slang
and nothing that is disgusting-of boarding
house keepers whose whole mind is transformed
into an instrument for providing enough food
and gravy and amusement for their commercial
gentlemen-Of water-rate collectors glorified by
one ideal passion for the ballet-0f rascally
schoolmasters whose every action betrays the
coward and the bully-or of hypocrites who
secrete'airs of pretentious benevOlence as an
oil-gland secretes oil, is by no means exhausted.
hardly more than attacked. And yet it
promises sort Of humOr particularly we'll
adapted to this period Of at once almost
sOrdid realism and ingenious abstraction.
Nor can it be denied that "Alice in Wonder
land" especially such plaintive ballads as
that Of the walrus and the carpenter, pro-
vide us with type Of grotesque fancy almost
cut free from the realities Of life, and yet
quantity reproducing all the old human tend
encies under absurdly new conditions; nor that
this promises well for the infinite fexblity of
the laughing faculty In man. We quite admit
that we never expect to see the greater types of
transatlantic humOr reproduced on this side of
the Atlantic. These for the most part, imply q
rare faculty for turning the mind aside from the
direct way OF saying thing to one that Is 80
indirect as to lead you travelling on totally
opposite track, as, for example. when Bret Harte
declares that one Of his rowdies-
"Took point OF order when
chunk OF old red sandstone hit him in the abdo-
And he smiled kind o. sickly smile, and curled up
on the floor,
And the subsekent proceedings Interested nssn no
more"
or when the American blasphemer retorted that
II his censor had but Jumped out of bed on to
the business end Of q tin-tack, even he would
have cursed some" This wonderful power of
suggesting misleading analogies taken from the
very province which would seem to be least sug-
gested either BY analogy or contrast seems to
be, in some sense. indigenous In the United
States.-The Spectator.
Fast Train Between New York and
Boston.
From the Railroad Gazette.
A New York and Boston fast train is to be
put on by the New York, New Haven and Hart
ford companies about June i. The present in
tention is to limit the train to one baggage car
and four drawing-room cars and to start it from
each end Of the line about s pm. The train is