St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1896-01-26
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE PRI-
VATE LIFE.

1t has been for years a complaint of
olo-rashloned people that there is no
longer any such thing as privacy. The
newspapers have made everybody's
personal affairs fit subjects for GEN
eral consideration. and the individual
mas no rights which the public is bound
to respect. They say the decay of the
front fence is typical There are now
no hedges between our dwellings and
the broad highway where the world
walks up and down. There Is much,
justice in these structures. Still it is not
necessary to be sitting always on the
front verandah, fguratively or actually:
and by taking a good deal of pains it
has, up to the present, been possible for
people of retiring disposition to live
in dignified and unobtrusive seclusion.
Whether it continues to be possible in
the future would seem to depend a
good deal upon the turn taken bv the
development of a great scientific dis
covery announced to the world a few
days ago
We refer to Prof. Rontgen's new
method of photography, by which pho
tographs have been made through
wood, copper, aluminium and other
dense substances. The coins inside a.
purse have been photographed by this
process, and the skeleton inside the
flesh and blood Of a human hand. Oh
Vlously II science will not permit a
living human being to remain in undis-
turbed possession of it's own skeleton
the last stronghold has been taken.
Two elderly New England women were
attending a necromancer's exhibition
last winter. where one of the feats
was the stock trick of reading
through a board" One of them
twitched the others arm peremptorilv.
Sister, if that person can read through
board. clothes amt no protection,
an I'm goin' home" 1t is with some
thing of the same offended dignity that
the mind realizes that perhaps when
Prof. Rontgen's process is perfected
we shall be at the mercy of the cam
era or kodak fiend passing in the
street when we are sitting quietly at
our own firesides. Stone walls will not
a refuge make. In fact there will he
no. refuge, for the new process takes
photographs through everything but
glass. Glass houses have never been
regarded as desirable residences, but il
may become necessary to line our
present style of residence with glass
in order to secure the pretense of Sc
clusion
The mind conjectures a thousand
ways of utilizing such a discovery as
this. For one thing, Sherlock Holmes
Will be superseded; for criminals will
have no refuge from the detective
camera. At the will Of the law limo
cent and guilty alike can be held in
surveillance compared to which the
all-seeing eye of Providence sinks into
lnslgn1hcance. In the presence of this
notion the average person finds no
consolation in the reflection that he can
still call his soul his own for the next
step science will take-and indeed il
does not now seem a great stride-wiu
be to make plain the movements of cur
souls and the neditations of our hearts
to the eyes of the multitude Not even
the comfort of having it demonstrated
beyond controversy that we possess
souls will atone for this last sacrilege.
and the only refuge for the affronted
spirit Of man will be in humiliation.