The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1889-09-18
Queer European Ways.

In America we have district messengeA
boys, electric lights in u houses. steam
heaters, gas, patent ice cream freezers'
artificial fires, imitation stained glass,
half a dozen editions for our evening
newspapers, ice, big bath tubs, dime
museums, the thousand and n amuse-
ments and convenienees demanded by
our nervous and luxurious people. In
Europe you sit in your bedroom by a wax
candle, you fasten your letter with a
wafer and seal, you have next to no news
bowl. and if you call for ice at your hotel
the proprietor comes in person to make
sure vou mean what you say, and it is ten
chances to one If he does not formally
warn you you get the ice at your own
risk, and that he washes his hands Of all
responsibility in the matter.
In these European cities you hear no
sounds of building, you see no derricks
nor piles of mortar, you hear no busy
whirr of factory wheels, and as you go
on. on. from town to town, n from city
to city, YOU begin to feel the mellow age
of all this civilization, Of a world in its
aftermath. The soil is titled for food and
| patient human spiders sit IN the sunshine
In their flmy cobwebs of lace, spun as it
has been spun for hundreds of years.
The beautiful and imposing pageantries
and ceremonies of the church keep alive
religion, and man works to live, while
with us he lives to work.
/ am tempted to keep on in this strain
and tell how variously and how curiously
we are regarded as a nation. 1t is more
than true that only a less than saving
remnant of the population of the Old
World know anything in fact of the
| limited States. Schoolboys learn but lit
tie OF our history, and IL ten-year-old
American laddie might put a European
statesman to blush for his superior
knowledge of American affairs.
The Picauune would lose its readers III
it failed to give daily its columns of
minutely detailed events in European
current history. On a lucky day | find in
the great London Telegraph ten lines de-
voted to the United States. When | tell
over here hat | came from the South they
| set me down for either a Brazilian or a
| Gillian. A Woodworking house servant
in England gets $40 a year, many laborers
with families to support earn no more
| than IS a month, and on the Continent a
good carpenter is well pleased if he gets
| sixty cents a day, while his average
wages in many countries are not more
than forty cents.
In Germany things are worse, where q
| period Of military life is compulsory.
Self respect is not taught in any of these
| countries. How can it be, where the
| creed is that one man is better thar
another IL he Is born the richer or the
two. and in a more luxurious social sta
tionY No one, or scarcely no one, is proof
against taking a fee. You can fee, and
| the price is not high. LIDO not think the
individual to blame for this, but the
whole trend of life. 1t is q shame to see
n man erect, wholesome, ine-minded,
capable, noble, defer himself abjectly to
the within OF a fool who simply owns by
his Inheritance a coronet, or is down In
the blue book.
IL wish to travel undisturbed in a
railway carriage l give the guard a tiny
bit of silver, ten or twenty cents. Fancy
bribing a Pullman palace car conductor
with a quarter. In the majority of the
restaurants walters pay for the priv
lege of sewing and expect to make o
living out of their tees. 1t is a system
that encourages the moral deterioration OF
the whole nation, but unfortunately
there seems no remedy for it. Honest
pure women bob and courtesy at then
betters, brave men walk backward before
their ''superiors''-it is all a variation OF
slavery. and as | see it l feel like getting
upon the housetops and telling of tht
freedom of free America.-Ncw Orleans
Picuultle.