Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1886-09-03
Ideal Women.
Gentleman's Magaz he

| the most delightful ideal possession of
| the civilized races of the world. Inven-
! ton. based upon imitation. has produced
| true and lovely images OF the fairest and
sweetest creatures that make the earth
! divine. To few men it is given to know
and meet in actual life women who rise
to the attitude of worth and charm of the
women of the poets, and it is pre-emi-
nently the happy task of the poet to EN-
! body for us, in suggestions of deathless
| loneliness, beings who answer to the high
! est conceptions that man can form of
| beauty, of tenderness, of purity and of
nobleness. In the magic mirror of the
| poets imagination are fixed to perma-
nence the images of the fairest and dear
| est of Gods feminine creatures. He who
protesting a high ideal of womanhOod
can yet never find an ideal love, may in
| Imagination be welded to Imogen or Di
| Vernon. The greatest poet who wears
the crown of the world Shakespeare, Is
the greatest creator of ideal women. The
true ideal is always based upon the real;
and ShakSpeare's women are so ideal be
cause his ideal is always based upon living
| types of abstract truth His women are
what they are, because womanhood is, at
its best, what it is. Imogen, DesdemOna,
hOSdlluu. OEill are lOIJlbSj creatures.
and yet a'e all possible women. Another
mighty poet has given us Gretchen and
Clarchen. Impossible, in such limited
space as we can here command, to emu
merate or even allude to all the fair wom-
en- painted by noble poets. The large
and lovely constellation of sweet, good
women shines majestically before our en-
raptured visions, stirs our ceaseless graft
+,1Ha nd rFT,l
ton. They excite the fancy and touch
the heart. They animate us to noble life
and they move US with the high delight of
fair images of honorable love.
Old ConyeyanceS.
The Spectator.
The first mail-coach was started in 1874
and 1874 there was not a single mail run
ming by road out of London. In fact,
the coaching system, like those of clipper
ships and wet-plate photography, was
brought to perfection only to go down al
most Immediately before the introduction
of superior methods. The mails kept
wonderful time; so exact were they that
people used to time their watches by
them. A few of the time-bills of the
mails, with their stoppages, are given.
The Bristol, the Davenport and the
Holyhead were the fastest mails out of
London, the last named doing 259lI
miles in % hours and So minutes, an av-
erage pace of little under 10 miles an
hour, including stoppages. But the wear
and tear of hOrseflesh to keep up this
pace in all weathers and against bad states
of road must have been fearful, and no
wonder that the pOstoffice department
often had great difficulty in getting their
contracts taken up. Mr.. Horne consid-
cred that the pace was too great. as the
mails constantly drove over people and
killed them. Indeed. accident of this
kind were common; the Beaufort Hunt
was upset twice within a fortnight. These
accidents often arose from what Mr.. Har-
ris charitably calls 1.-The iEdiscretions of
the coachman;" but whatever their cause,
they were frequently lamentablo and Sc
uere. One of the Oldest coach propri-
etors made it a maxim never to employ a
coachman who had not had an upset, for
the reason that without such an expert
ence he would not know how to get a
coach mp again.
There can be no doubt but that there
was a great deal of reckless driving and
racing. Catastrophes also happened
through getting off the read in fog and
from collisions, and, in addition to these
causes, a thoroughly fractions or vicious
horse might prove an equal source of
danger. Mr.. Harris enlarges on the sub
jects of coachmen. guards, and accidents
in as many entertaining chapters, ind he
neatly tapers on his subject by disser-
tation on the early days of railways.
Coaching left its mark on the railways in
several res poets. The distance between
the rails on the narrow gauge of rail
ways is the same as the width between
the wheels of the old mail coaches-viz,
feet Sl5 inches. Even to the present
day carriages may be seen on some of
our lines painted to resemble three coach
bodies placed end to end. which seems to
have been the original idea in the con-
struction of railway carriages, though it
has probably never occurred to one trav-
eler IN one thousand. obvious as the imi-
tation is. Many of the old mail-coach
guards passed into the service of the rail-
ways, and not few "down-t he-road' men
did the same thing.