The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1891-11-22
RANDOM SHOTS.

permitting the W. G. 7. U. to have a separate
building at the Worlds Fair. A prime object
Of the Fair is to display our industries and
manufactures to the world, or that
part of 1t at least which will visit Chicago in
1898. No part of the population of the
United States is so industrious as the
cranks. They labor In season and out of sea-
son, particularly out OF season. No organiza-
tion doe, more from one years. end to another
to manufacture cranks than the w. G. T. U.
1 am aware of the claims of the Alliance as a
crank mandatory. They are strong; also
loud. But fatal defect of that body in this
regard is the sporadic character of its efforts.
Already it is on the wane, and soon 1t will re-
lapse into a state of innocuous desuetude.
But the w. G. 7. u. is chronic. Like the poor,
1t is with us always. Besides, the cranks 1t
turns out are even more exasperating than
those supplied by the Alliance in that the w.
G. T. U. crank proposes to regulate by statute
the food and drink OF the people. 1t was only
the other day that the High Priestess of the
w. G. L. u, who, like the Roman vestsls, is
spinster, announced the programme Of herself
and her fellow sumptuary cranks TO be, first,
the abolition of alcohol and then the abolition
of nicotine. First wine and then tobacco. l
predicted this programme long ago. The fact
that the Saviour's first miracle was to convert
plain everyday water into tirst-class red wine
feast is not allowed to plead for alcohol any
more than the fact that tobacco solaced the
Father of his Country in the dark days OF the
Revolution is permitted to plead for nicotine.
When wine and tobacco are known no more
the gentle cranks will set about to abolish tea,
coffee, aud the like. That accomplished they
will turn their attention to restriction Of our
diet to vegetables, banishing all meats from
the larder-that is, if there can be o larder
without meats-and from the table What
world bic will ba hon o11
to living on roots and water
big fire occurred in st. Louis the other
day. The dispatches speak of the fire eating
its way through ''thick fireproof walls.n
What will the fire do some day in this CITY
when it attacks the thin, non-frepreof walls
of one of our buildings filled with Govern
ment clerks? In some of them the walls are
so tiimsy that 1t will require no "eating'' on
the part of the fire to penetrate them. 1t can
slick" its way through
Novelists, like liars in general, should have
long memories, long enough at all events to
last from the beginning to the end of their
books. am led to this philosophic obser-
vation by gross slip in Mr.. Bogy's now noted
novel, SIN Office" In the first chapter, in
fact on the first page, the heroine, Tula Fair
leigh, receives an official notice from the Civil
Service Commission of her appointment as
copyist in the Patent Office. The notice is
dated Washington, D. c., November Z,
1SS-." On the next page is note from
Frank Friedringhaus, the Representative of
her district, on the same subject and dated
washington, D. c., November Z, 1902
From other internal evidences L take it that
the latter is the date the author had in mind
Later ON in the story, and some 160 or ITO
pages further on in the book, the fair Tula is
found working in the Office of one Jeremiah
Tarpinkeg, pension and patent attorney, she
having been dismissed, according to the story,
because of her heroic virtue and the general
hellishness Of everybody else in Office Tar
plnkeg is represented as a homely old
bachelor Of fifty. OF course he falls In love with
his pretty typewritist He proposes and is
promptly rejected, because Tula has fallen in
Iove with blase and impecunious young prg
who fills 81 400 place in the Pension Office.
This episode over Mr.. Tarpinkeg is described
as turning once more to his desk, where he
resumed his work, and from that time on he
was what he had been before-the cold, close,
taciturn business man." Mr.. Bogy then dis
poses of the old fellow in this wise: HThere
was no trace in all his after manner of that
mornings scene, so that Tula sometimes
wondered vaguely If she had not dreamed it.
But years afterward, when the grim old fellow
submitted his last claim to a higher court,
there was leather pocketbook that he
clasped in his hand to the last, and it held a
few strands of light brown hair. They were
very few, for he had taken them, one by
one, from the headrest on Tuas chair.n
The time the story begins is November, 1890.
The book has been published and its author
has lost his Government job, and vet
1t is only November, 1891. How then
could old Tarpinkeg have proposed to Tula,
been rejected, and died 'years afterward ?''
l think | have maintained my thesis, that
noVelists should have memories slong enough
to stretch from the first to the last page of
their books.
If not, here is.another instance. In short
story read recently the heroine started out
with black, swapping eyes. About half a
column down her eyes were emitting blue
flashes. AT the end of the column they were
again black and swapping. The only way
these optical changes can be accounted for is
the supposition that the authors memory was
shorter than his story.
A mans board bill is an internal tax.
In telling the story of the life and death of
Celestin Beaulieu, "colored, an exc Confederate
soldier, and one of the best-loved negroes OF
| the South" a newspaper is led to exclaim:
| "Color no bar to nobility.n Yet this one of
| NATURES noblemen would have found his
color an iAsuperable bar to his getting lodging
or food in the leading hotels OF New Orleans,
| In which city he passed most of his life and
| where he died. Nor would ne have Jared any
| better In this city or in any Northern city.
| From all OF which 1t would appear that after
all nobility, like beauty, is only skin deep.