, 1890-12-28

Union park vas suburban and secluded.
What will have become OF Central park
a hundred years from now. VIII the
politicians have succeeded in stealing
some streets off its borders, and running
an electric road through its pleasant
places, with a beer stand at every half
miles Or viii there be mounted police
men at the gate who will allow no pub
lie or hired vehicles to enter, lest they
disturb the dignifed progressed coronet-
ed and liveried equipages?
Can YOU forecast which extreme will
then be in vogue2 As for me, l am only
certain that the world moves, and that
the things of today are the starting
point for the things Of tomorrow, and
that just because we have so improved
upon the methods of our fathers we
may be very sure that our children will
improve upon us.
But to come back to the City Of Rome,
as she swung along TO her decrepitude
and her oblivion, and / lying in the
steamer chair let my gaze travel a few
feet beyond her deck, a few feet above
her smokestack. and ~saw-Vhatl The
sea and the skyi And how much change
has a century wrought upon them? Or
n score of centuries, or the ten or twelve
millions of years at which / believe they
just now set the age of our little globes
Probably Adam did not go to sea, and
Noah's famous voyage was only on fresh
water, but whichever of the patriarchs
first found himself out of sight Of and
enjoyed precisely the same sea and sky
scope that / contemplated from the deck
of the City Of Rome; and it is fair to
conclude that the mi who Crosses"
in the summer Of 1890, even though she
travel by balloon, will see nothing differ
ent.
And so with all Dame Natures works.
There are a few very old trees in tho
world; the cedArs of Mount Lebanon, the
olives Of Gethsemane, some of the big
trees in California-all date back from a
few hundred to n couple OF thousand
years. and are to be taken as fair speci-
mems of the timber of their day. But are
they old fashioned?
Old certainly, rs we count age, meas
uring it by our puny span, but
their fashion differs in no respect from
thef fashion Of the trees planted last Ar
Dor Day; the roots still tend downward
and draw their n~ourishment from the
same salts and vegetable solutions that
fed their ancestors, and the branches
thrust themselves up md breathe the
air, dividing its gases one from the other
and condensing its dews upon their palm
like leaves, just as the first progenitors
Of those redwood trees did when some
race whose existence we only dimly sus-
pect claimed "these United States ms
their own. by some name, in some Ian
..a-. ..l-. -. - AZ =
The flowers of our gardens die year
by year, and we are fond of mentioning
them as ''ephemeral. ;" and using them as
types Of swift decay. but year by year
they come up again. and n century ago
the blossom was exactly that of today,
and n century hence it will be no differ
ent, so that If tho flowers discuss us as
patronizingly AS we do them they prob
ably remark:
Poor. ephemeral thingsl They live
sixty or seventy years and her die root
and branch, and nothing comes up from
the place where they are planted"
Another class of creation. apparently
as short lived as the flowers, and vet
showing he same gentle persistency in
recurrence, is the fashion of our clothes.
You bring home from Paris the very
last caprice of Worth or Crapsaud in n
gown or bonnet, and after ore season. or
at most two, it is OLD fashioned, com.
mon, out Of style and gone by; but law
II asiae safe from moth and dust, and a
hl.e.sred years from now 1t will very
possibly be found tho height of tho
fashion, the very newest thing out.
Don't You believe this? Well, consider
the lilies of today, and then look at the
statues Of Greece and Rome, OF, if you
don't care 10 go so far, turn TO some pict-
ures of the time of the first Napoleon,
when on his road to empire he halted
for n few years in a consulate and a re-
public and emphasized his ideas by re-
yiving the costume of the Greek repub-
lie.
Why do so many lear creatures, with
Milesian or Saxon or composite features,
dress their hair in n tight little knot on
the back of their heads, with perhaps a
fllet bound thrice round their craniums,
except because such n style was found
becoming TO the low f0rsheads, straight
noses and statuesque lips and chins of
Helen of Troy or Penelope or Phryne
or Aspasia or any other of the beauties
of the world some 1880 years before the
Christian era began?
And here let me suggest that one
trouble about reviving ancient fashions,
however graceful and pretty they may
be, is the impossibihty Of reviving an
cient types of beauty. Before the Chris
tan era and for many years after peo-
pie did not travel as they do now, and
consequently did not intermarry as they
do now.
Each nation as "A whole was born.
lived. married and died within its own
borders, and so a national type. both of
features and costume, was preserved and
became identified with the wearers: but
now that steam and electricity have
brought the ends Of the world together,
and it has practically as well as geo.
graphically become a globe without
ends, types are getting so mixed that n
Grecian profile is ms likely to be born in
Alabama as in Athens, and a Roman
nose may have bumped itself in Califor-
MIA and never seen the Tiber. But this
being the case, my dear friends, when
your dressmaker proposes a Grecian
robe, or your hairdresser a Psyche knCe,
OF your milliner a toque, or your ssncy
little cousin offers you her Tam pause
and consider whether nature has adapt
ed your style TO those styles, and if she
hasn't don't accept them!
This is, perhaps, a depression, but we
return TO the beginning and say once
more that the fashions of today are many
Of them the fashions of a century or more
ago, and there is every reason to believe
will be the fashions of n century or two