Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1891-02-21

nave money and peace. All the eastern cltles
own this fringe OF elegance, but except in Chi
heavily widened than in Buffalo.
WHY THE AMERICAN WON'T VOTE.
The American will go to a bad place because he
cannot speak English and is proud of it, but he
knows how to make a home for himself and his
mate; knows how to keep the grass green in front
of his veranda and how to fullest use the mechan-
ism Of life-hot water, gas, good bell ropes.
telephones, &c. His shops sell him delightful
household fitments at very moderate rates,
and he is encompassed with all manner of labor
| saving appliances. This does not prevent his
wife and his daughter working themselves to
death over household drudgery, but the inten-
ton Is good.
When YOU have seen the outsides Of a few
hundred thousand of these homes and the in
| sides of few score, you begin to understand
why the American (the respectable one) does
not take deep interest in what they call poll
tics" and why he is SO vaguely and generally
proud of the country that enables him to be so
comfortable. How can the owner of dainty
chalet, with smoked oak furniture, imitation
Venetian tapestry curtains, hot and cold water
laid on, bed of geraniums and hollyhocks, a
baby crawling down the yeranda and self
acting twirly-whirly hose gently kissing over
the grass In the balmy dusk OF an August even
ing-how can such a man despair of the repub-
lie or descend into the streets on voting days
and mix cheerfully with 1.-THE boys''
No, it is the stranger--the homeless jackal Of
a stranger-whose interest in the country is
limited to his hotel bill and railway ticket
that can run from Dan to Beersheba crying
"All is barrenr' Every good American wants
a home-a pretty house and little piece of
land Of his very own, and every other good
American seems to get it.
AMERICAS YOUTHFUL MARRIAdEs.
1t was when my gigantic intellect was Crap
pling with this question that l confirmed o dis
covery half made in the west The natives of
most classes marry young-absurdly young.
One of my informants-not the Twenty-Five
year-old husband met on Lake ChautauQua-
said that from twenty to twenty-four was about
the usual time for this folly. And when asked
whether the practice was confined to the con-
stitutionally improvident classes, he said, mo"
very quickly. He said it was general custom
and nobody saw anything wrong with it.
Il guess, perhaps, very early marriage may
account for good deal Of the divorce" said
he, retectvely. Whereat l was silent. Their
marriages and their divorces only concern these
people, and neither I travelling nor you who
may come after have any right to make rude
remarks about them. Only-only coming from
"a land where a man begins to lightly turn to
thoughts of love not before he is 80, / own that
playing al housekeeping before that age rather
surprised me. Out in the west, though, they
marry boys and girls from sixteen upward
and / have met more than one bride of fifteen
husband aged twenty. when man ard woman
are agreed what can the Kali do?'
From those peaceful homes and the envy
they inspire 1.-TWO trunks and a walking stick
and a bit of pine forest in British Columbia are
not satisfactory any way you look at them l
turned me to the lake front of Buffalo where
the steamers below to the grain elevators and
the locomotives veil to the coal shutes and the
canal barges jostle the lumber raft half mile
long as it snakes across the water in tow Of a
launch, and earth and sky and sea alike are
thick with smoke.
In the old days before the railway ran into
the city all the business quarters fringed the
lake shore. where the traffic was largest. Today
the business quarters have gone up town to
meet the railroad; the lake traffic still exists,
but you shall linda narrow belt Of red brick
desolation, broken windows, gap-toothed doors
and streets where the grass grows between the
crowded wharves and the bustling city. To the
lake front comes wheat from Chicago lumber,
coal and ore and large trade in cheap excur-
sionists.
BUFFALo's WHEAT ELEVATORS.
1t was my felicity to catch a grain steamer
and an elevator emptying that same steamer.
The steamer might have been two thousand
tons burden. She was laden with wheat in
bulk; from stem to stern thirteen feet deep lay
the clean red wheat. There was no twenty five
per cent dirt adnaixture about it at ALL 1t was
wheat tit for the grindstones as 1t Law. They
Unanswered the forehatch of that steamer d.
rectly under an elevator house OF red tin a
hundred and fifty feet high. Then they let
down into that fore hatch a trunk az if it had
been the trunk of an elephant. but stiff because
it was pipe of iron-clamped wood. And the
trunk had a steel shod nose to it and contained
an endless chain of steel buckets
Then the captain swore raising his eyes to
heaven, and a gruff voice answered him from
the place he swore at and certain machinery
also III the ornament, began to clack and the
glittering steel shod nose Of that trunk bur-
rowed into the wheat and the wheat quivered
and sank upon the instant as water sinks when
the siphon sucks, because the steel buckets
within the trunk were flying upon their endless
round carrying away each Its appointed morsei
OF wheat.
The elevator was Persian well wheel-a
wheel squashed out thin and cased in pipe; u
wheel driven not by bullocks, but by much
horse power. licking up the grain at the rate of
thousands of bushels the hour And the wheat
sank into the forehatch while q man looked
sank till the brown timbers of the bulkheads
showed bare and men leaped down through
| clouds of golden dust and shoveled the wheat
fGrious!y around the nose of the trunk and got
a steam shovel Of glittering steel and made
that shove, also till there remained of the grain
not more than horse leaves in the fold OF his
| nose bag.
In this manner do they handle wheat at Buff
/ falo. On one side of the elevator is the steamer
| on the other the railway track, and the wheat
is loaded into the cars in bulk. Wah, wah
God is great and do not think He ever in
| tended Gar Sahai or Luckman Narain to sup
ply England with her wheat. India can cut in
not without profit to herself when her harvest
Is good and the American yield poor, but this
| very big country can upon the average
supply the earth with all the beef and bread
that is required
| FREE TRADE IN SPEECH.
/ A man in train said to me:
I'VE kin feed all the earth jest as easily as we
kin whip all the earth" Now the second state
ment is as false as the first Is true. One OF
these days the respectable republic will find
/ this out.
Unfortunately we, the English, win. never be
| the people to teach her; because she is q char
tered libertine allowed to say and do anything
she likes, from demanding the head Of the EN-.
I press in an editorial waste basket to chewing
Canadian schooners up and down the Alaska
seas. 1t is perfectly impossible to 60 to war
with thes, people whatever they may do. They
are much too nice in the frs. place, and in the
second it would throw out an the passenger
traffic Of the Atlantic and upset the financial
arrangements Of the English syndicates who
have invested their money in breweries, rail-