The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-05-19
street Noises.


FROM the Lancet
The essence of good government has been
defined as the greatest happiness for the
greatest number" and ii is surely time to
reiterate the question whether somethin g
cannot be done to make life less unendur-
able for those who work with their heads
and are compelled to live In great cities.
we believe we are correct in saying that
in no foreign town and in few other Brit
iSh towns Is such license given to any one
to earn living by annoying his fellow
creatures as in London. From an early
hour in the morning the air is thick with
the raucOus yells of men and boys selling
race cards and half-penny news sheets.
Later in the day the torment is aggra-
waited by piano organs, so-called bands,
and streets singers, while at a late hour
of the night ii is quite common to be dis
turbed by hordeS of ruffiars, with voices
like fog horns, roaring out imaginary and
highly spiced details of a murder which
has never happened or some even more I'M
saVory subject.
The police, it appears. are powerless.
News vendors cannot be interfered with
if they move on, and they do move on
in circle Organs, we fancy, can only
be moved from in front of the complain
ants door, and as piano organ is per-
fectly audible 200 yards away, this remedy
is useless. There is only one remedy, and
that is to compel any one who wishes
to make a noise in the street for the pur-
pose of getting money to pay heavy IL
cense for the privilege for so doing No
one would object to the sale of papers If
II We're not accompanied by hoWlS worthy
OF an eighteenth century MAD mouse. Rates
and taxes rise with the utmost regularity,
every year, and it is not too much to ask
that something should be done to obviate
nuisance which gets yearly worse and
worse.
The ringing of church bells, which, ex-
cept those of st. Paufs, are always out
of tune, should on no account be allowed
In London except for five minutes or so
before service. Every one who goes to
church knows perfectly well at what time
to go, and those who do not go probably
do not want to know. In the ages of faith
the ringing of bells drove away devils,
but the latter-day fiend who yells Pal
per- and grindS organs is proof against
their power and to ring bells is but to
add one more unnecessary noise to the
large number of necessary ones which al
ready exist. We have pointed out on sew
eral occasions that there is no legal right
to ring or toll a bell except before morn
ing and evening prayer or on the occasion
of funeral, and that the ringing of a
bell previously to the celebration of the
holy communion, which often now occurs
in the early hours of the morning is
wholly Illegal and unwarrantable. 1t is a
great torture to many sick and weakly
people.
The mountain ash is a species of Sor-
bus, and the berries are found to contain
a saccharine substance wholly peculiar to
this fruit and which has therefore been
named sorbitol. The chemical world has
been astonished to find precisely the same
substance in a species of cherry-Cerasus
-lawn-cerasus. The same chemists, Vim
cent and Delachanal. have found in the
fruit of this species of cherry, mannitol,
a substance hitherto found among trees
chiefly in the mamma ash (Fraxinus Or
nus.( A remarkable circumstance about
the latter is that it. is found to some eX-
tent in some seaweeds and in mushrooms
plants so widely separated generiCally
from the mama ash, from which the sub
stance originally derived its name.