The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-05-25
wrinen fev ~ Arkmssnw Trpssw.
AMONG HOME AUTHORS.
a Chapist of Criticism.



upon the native or foreign born jewellers within
their precincts. All tourists visit them, and
the attractions of each of these three widely vary
ing municipal panoramas are continuously dis
played in newspaper or book type.
If old Homer were one Of us, to-day, he might
be blindly cropping amid the conglomerate
architecture and miraculous afauence of New York,
Chicago and Washington.
| Travellers, who keep diaries are more ubiquitous
than Homer was. Musty, dog-eared, mould
stained chronicles report the sightless troubadour
as begging for his bread in seven cities which
afterward noisily contested the honor of his birth
place None of these records however, mention
the great poets hat box grip sack through ticket
or linen duster Richard Watson Glider, of our
Century, seems to be amply provided with all of
these modern Indispensable; but Homer and his
literary reputation have frmer clutch on poster
ity than II. w. G., aforesaid, can ever hope to
obtain.
All railway grand trunk" lines, in this country,
lead to the commercial metropolis, the lake side
wonder, and the national capital.
The city of New York has long initiated Daniel
Webster's statuesque Massachusetts,. II "needs no
encomium." That's probably the reason why
Manhattan's overgrowth gets more than It's share
of descriptive writing.
Chicago, magnifcently recovering from its fire.
swarth and anarchistic bombs, Is now, more than
ever before, its own proud adulator. The census
of 1890 will, doubtless, place 1t second third
to resident population, the swelling list OF
American GASES that claim from the desert of
official figure ten hundred thousand souls.
Washington is our political center of intrigue,
rather than of gravity. A perennial government
surplus is creator of the grand city's miles and
towers of marble ornament; the diplomatic corps
supplied glittering array of ribbon and medallic
decorations to the gold embroidered uniforms of
polyglot ambassadors, while native and imported
feminine graces are during the congressional
sessions) hardly at their best in the worst
mixed throng of intellectual nonentities that
annually convene on this universe.
Lord Byron found considerable society where
nobody came.
| How the city of Washington would have
impressed the author of "Chide Harold" we can
readily imagine.
Alfred Tennyson might tell us that
"There lies vale In Ida, lovelier'
than: amy slopes meadows along the Potomac
river or Rock creek, but we must generously make
allowance for the laureate, even her majesty,
good Victoria, did in 1915, when she gave him 8
civil pension of 200 pounds year.
An editorial writer in the New York Times has
jotted down these Immediately quoted thoughts;
at cannot have escaped notice to what degree
of late the national capital has been coming into
greater prominence and has attracted more and
more interest and attention. The country has
evidently, a greater pride in Washington than
formerly. This change has taken place within the
last ten years. Uutil very recently many people
believed that the national capital would be re-
moved to point nearer the geographical center
of the country.
"The attractiveness of Washington Is, no doubt,
the reason of the increased national pride in it.
1t has q good winter climate. The weather Is,