The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1894-02-11
GOSSIP FROM GENEVA
Hon. j. A. Lemcke Writes Inter-
eStingly Of the Swiss Capital.
Napoleon Thirds Broken Contract and
What it Cost His Son-How the Gen.
evese Celebrate the New Year.

0NNAAh1 ~ NAAlo
rich old community are solid and enjoy the
confidence Of all Switzerland. There are
no opportunities for the Zimri Dwigginses
here. The Bank of Commerce of Geneva.
with a circulation of twenty million francs,
holds. in conformity to law, 40 per cent. of
that amount in gold in it's vaults. There
Is great accumulation of wealth in this city.
and the class in possession of it, rigidly
Calvanistic, is exclusive and conservative.
The students at the university and the
other Institutions of learning, however,
who come from all quarters of the globe,
like their class everywhere, are radical and
socialistic in their leanings; it is not to be
expected otherwise in a republic which, for
centuries, has been an asylum for political
refugees and the oppressed from all Eu-
rope. Here, as at the numerous UNIVERSE
ties Of Germany. the professors SOW the
seeds of knowledge in the virgin soil of
the youthful brain of the students. and the
latter themselves see to it that they wet
down these seeds. night and day, with much
beer to make them sprout and grow.
In one wing Of the university is the
large and valuable library, which was
founded in 1851 by Bonivard, whose incar-
c~eration in the Castle of Chillon. at the end
VI hiC idhc, ny lIc OuhO vi OdNOy, LOlN by
ron commentaries thus:
"Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor and altar-for twas
trOd
Until his weary steps have left q trace,
Worn as If the cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonivard! May none these marks efface,
For they appeal from tyranny to God"
On the ground floor of this library is the
"Salle Ami Lullin," which contains valuable
ancient and modern portraits Of reformers,
statesmen and scholars. Among the first
are Calvin, Knox, Zwingli and Farel; of the
others there are such as Necker, Lafon-
tame, Descartes, D'Aubigne, George Eliot,
Diderot, Admiral Coligny and Rabelais-
There are homilies of st. Augustine on
papyrus. from the sixth century. and an
old richly illuminated French Bible of the
sixteenth century, a present to Henry ~,
before he abjured protestantism; sermons by
Calvin and autographs of Napoleon, Mira
beau, Luther, Voltaire, MonteSquieu, Fred
erick the Great and many others. or Jean
jacques Rousseau there are many manu-
scripts, among others his confessions, beau
tifully written by himself in bound books,
and a scrap of the original manuscript
bearing. the opening sentence of his
Emile" which begins thus: Tout est
bien, Sortant deS mains de PAuteur des
chooses; tout degenere entire les mains de
phommes." All is good as it comes from
IilC dllu vi liz III VI I'll 11AAAo0 oA
things degenerate in the hands OF man,
HISTORIC NECKTIE.
There is also in this collection what might
be called a curiosity. 1t consists in a white
silk cravat, upon which, for the want of
paper, there was written by Louis Bona
parte, afterward Napoleon III, while a
prisoner at the fortress of Ham, a contract
bearing date of June %, 1S45, between
Charles Frederick, ETC., Duke of Bruins
wick and Wolfenbuettel, and himself, in
which the Duke contracts to pay n. a GER
tain sum Of money, and Bonaparte opi-
gates himself, in return, to replace the
shall have arrived at power
in France. In 1870 the Duke,
Geneva. wrote the then Emperor or the
French, reminding him of this contract of
the necktie, until then upfulhlled by one or
the parties thereto, to which the ungrateful
Emperor. on the day after his declaration
of war against Germany, answers from the
Palais des Tuileries, July q. in three snort
small sheet of note paper, that he can do
nothing for his friend of old, "son Altesse
Royal the Duke. This little scrap OF pa
perial. afterward killed by the Zulus in
South Africa, a triie OF twenty million
francs, for, incensed at Such perlidlGus In,
of leaving his fortune, as he had already
determined in his testament, to young Ma
poleon, gave, it all to the city Oh Senexa,
memory of the donor a large and costly
and the opera house on the
Place Neuve, the foyer Oh whlcn Is one Oh
lessor Wuarin, of the University, one of
the most amiable and urbane gentlemen
1 have met here, and a great admirer OF the
United States and its institutions. for the
foregoing facts, and 1t was In MS company
that 1 inspected the documents in question:
which were found amongst the effectS or
Tho Dula at fha time OF his death.
FESTIVAL OF THE YEAR.
New Year here is made more of, and held
in greater esteem as a holiday than is
Christmas, and L have my own theory why
this should be so. New Years is the time
when interest falls due and coupons are
clipped, and although it is written that it
is more blessed to give than to receive, the
average man feels best when things are
coming his way. So the Genevese who have
the commercial instinct, and who are pos
sessed Of fat chunks of good paying stocks
and securities of all sorts, naturally feel
more like painting the town red at the lat
ter time than when stockings are to be
filled. presents to be bought and money
goes out instead of coming IN with Dr;
Julius Stinde, philosopher and humoriSt, 1
think 1t strange that men should make so
much of the new year just born, when real
ly there is nothing yet to be known OF II,
favorable or otherwise, whether the bant-
ling is to be a mascot or grow up into a
deyouring monster. And what of the old
year, which, like the Chicago exposition
palaces, is about to be dismantled and con-
signed to oblivion? Should not the reflection
it, too, once had a childhood just like
humanity, which like all things earthly
into dust, when not cut up by the
doctors and preserved in alcohol or kept
in some museum as a mummy or skeleton,
make no pause? 1t is shameful, l am sorry
to say, the way we treat our old years
when dead. What becomes or them after
the newspaper and magazine poets have
plunged them Into the sea of oblivion"'
THAT the old years do not ever return Is
not to be wondered at. as We have very
little that is good TO say or them. 1t is
the contrary way with men. of whom, on
their demise, only the good Things are re-
hands of the hangman. One canno judge
anything so young until it has had time
to develop itself.
But it is not the advent Of the new year
only which these folks celebrate They also
AS we pant and sweat through
ours in the torrid summer heat,
so they shake and shiver through theirs
in the cold blasts Of the "bise' northeast
wind). When, with the retreat from Mos
COW, Napoleon's star of empire began to
Wane under the combined activity of the
'holy alliance" the French, as elsewhere,
had TO give way in switzerland. and an
Austrian army corps, on the last day of
the wear 1913. forced them TO evacuate the
of the city and canton of Geneva.
For fifteen years the Genevese had borne
the invaders yoke, and these stanch and
followers of Calvin had seen
their churches desecrated during the reign
of terror by the worship of the goddess
reason. and later on given up to Catholi-
cism and its rites. What wonder. then,
when the anniversary OF their delivery
cold and raw the weather may be.
that they merge their Fourth of July and