Broadbrim’s New York Letter.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 866, 5 October 1888, Page 9

Broadbrim’s New York Letter.

No event in our social life has caused a more profound sensation than the death of Courtlandt Palmer, whose funeral oration was pronounced by his friend Col. Robert G-. Ingerioll, assisted by the Rev. Heber C. New-, ton of All Souls Protestant Episcopal Church. Mr Newton has long been regarded as one of the most advanced thinkers of his charoh, :and his lectures on the Bible a few years ago gave the good Bishop Potter the gravest anxiety. By many excellent orthodox Episcopalians he was requested to silence the iconoclastic preacher who did not believe, in Adam and Eve, and who even questioned the story of Samson’s hair and David’s sling, and was a good deal more remarkable for what he didn’t believe than for what he did. As I said, the good Bishop was gravely troubled ; but he advised, instead of expulsion and silence, spiritual purgation, low diet and rest; and the result of this treatment proved so effectual that the Rev. Mr Newton, after a few months, returned to All Souls, and we heard no more of his scriptural vagaries till he turned up at the funeral of Mr Palmer on Thursday last. Few men in this community were better or more favourably known than Courtlandt Palmer. The only man in this community who at all compares with him is Channcey M. Depew, late a candidate for the Presidency and at present President of the New York Central Railroad. Mr Palmer was born to wealth, but instead of choosing a life of ignoble ease, he sought and attained distinction at the Bar, and was regarded as one of our ablest lawyers. The Ninetenth Century Club erabraced many of the most eminent thinkeie and litterateurs in the land, and Mr Palmer, by reason of his fitness and position, was chosen President without a dissenting voice. He was a man of great ability, of high social position, of singularly pure life, and all these things combined to make his death one of the moat marked events of the time. Then the manner of his death savoured of the heroic, for he was about to undergo a painful operation, where the chance for life was only one in a hundred. When preparing for the terrible ordeal he gave directions calmly and clearly for the arrangements of his funeral 'and the disposition of his body, and then, submitting himself to the hands of the surgeons, in an hour had solved the great mystery of mysteries. Col. Ingersoll’s magnificent tribute to the memory of his departed friend has been so generally commented on that it is not necessary further to speak of It; bub one little passage, which was a splendid peroration aa tlio Colonel proi ounced it, &ncj one which, transfixed his hearers, was a few lines which would seem to indicate that even the most confirmed agnostic looked for life beyond the grave and found in man the essence of an immortality that could never perish. Here it is : ' c Let us believe that pure thoughts, brave words and generous deeds can never die ; let ns believe that they bear fruit and add forever to the well-being of the human race ; that a self-denying life increases the moral wealth

of men and gives us the assurance that the futuro will be grander than the past.’ It is safe to say that over no other man of the century have the most pronounced agnostic aud the eminent orthodox clergyman stood to do mortuary honours. Almost every grade of Booiety aDd every shade of religious belief assembled to do honour to the dooeaeerl. His cremation on the saiue afternoon returned to thbir original elements all that was mortal of Courtlandt Palmer. All the week wo have boon wrestling with the Italian problem, and we are now confronted with thfa startling fact that there are 72,000 of them in the city of New York alone, and over 400,000 in the United States. It is now clearly demonotrated that the great body of these are assisted immigrants, and that their relation with the bosses who import them is virtually that of master and slave. Tney hive together, fifteen or twenty in a single room—mou, women, and children all packed in, till the hea'th authorities have been compelled to interfore to prevent a pestilence. A band of rascally Italian speculators have been leagued with certain steamship companies from whom they received ten dollars a head for each immigrant ; then when the immigrant arrived here they turned around and robbed him of his wages as soon as he got work, and this infamous traffic has been going on for years. By fraudulent swearing whole gangs of them that could not speak a word of our language have-been made citizens of the United States, and the boss contracted to vote them in gang, and this is the material that decides our elections. There are only 140,000 Chinamen in the United States, and there never has been since 1850 more than 230,000 all told. Yet we were so fearful that John was going to gobble us up that we passed the most -stringent laws to keep him out. John has never given us the- trouble that these Italians have. The great body of them look like brigands, and if they are not, they have evidently mistaken their profession. Even the smallest boy goes with a stiletto in his boot, if he has any, and if not he stuffs it down his baok. Stabbings aud murders appear to be their favourite pastime, and scarcely a week goes by that does not hear of an attempted assasination. Mrs Cignarali, whose death sentence has just been commuted to penal servitude for life, shot down her husband in open day, after taking lessons from her lover how to handle a pistol and kill him. Andre, her lover, persuading har that there was no punishment for killing a husband here in the United States. TVhile there are numbers of Italians here holding high social, mercantile and financial positions, there is iio denying it that the great body of them are disgustingly filthy aud brutally ignorant. Whatever gangs of them work together they usually become a terror to the neighbourhood, and the serious question'is forced upon us now : ‘ What are you going to do about it ?’ A Congressional Committee has been sitting here all the week, and daylight is being let in to the crookedness of the Italian Padrones. Bat here they are. They must be fed and they must be housed, audit may startle those who are opposed to cheap labour to learn that these immigrants can live like Nabobs on twenty-five cents a day. We will have to put up the bars to keep them out as we did to the Chinamen, or if we would add another 72,000 to the 72,000 we now have in New York, the Americans about here will have to seek refuge in Rome, Naples and Palermo, for America will no longer be an abiding-place for them. Already they have possession of all the fruit stands and boot-black stands in New York ; they control the hand-organ business aDd do ninetenths of the street-sweeping.' What IB m store fer us from this Latin deluge we know not, but in the calamity which threatens us we feel like cr?ing out: Save us, oh save us, from Julius Caisar, Marc Antony, Brutus, Cassius, Cignarali, Abrutzzi, and all the rest, for if you don't we’re done" for. Brother Harrison Btill continues his tri umphant march on the citadels of sin ; but I record it with grief that the devil, taking advantage of Brother Harrison’s engagement with the brokers, has made a descent on Zion’s Coloured Church.in Brooklyn, which nearly proved his riain. Last week the chiiroh had a picnic. They took several Jarge barges and a tow-boat and went up the river, and now that the danger is past we consider it a mercy of Providence that one half the congregation was not utterly destroyed. The party got off all right, about six hundred strong, and they had laid themselves out for a big day’s enjoyment; but the hawser was scarcely cast off from the wharf when it beoamo evident that Satan was on board in propria personnm, bent on mischief. A black tough on the lower deck drew a profane pack of cards and challenged any of the lookers-on to a little game of draw-poker with fifty cents ante. Another laid down a sweat-cloth and started in business. A third amused the crowd with three card monte, while the fourth assured the assembled crowd that not one of them could tell where the little joker was. Deacon Baldwin and Trustee Johnson tried to stop them, but one half of a ripe water-melon planted rudely on the top of Brother Baldwin’s head incapacitated him from further expostulation, and a paster under the jaw. made Trustee Johnson think of the earthquake at Charleston. Inlesstime than ittakes to tell it the air was alive with razors and beer glasses flew in every direction. There was only one policeman on the- boat and they chased him into the pilot house. Later on one of the brethren got ashore in a small boat and telegraphed for the police patrol, but when the excursionists arrived home the principal malefactors escaped. This is , the season of excursions, and on the whole a very delightful season it has been. Nowhere in the world is there a spot where at small cost the citizen can have a greater enjoyment than, in New York. Every year in the season of outing it is happiness to know that the poor flotsam and jetsam of the slums are nob forgotten. All the great newspapers have special funds which they collect and devote to excursions for the poor. Certain churches take parties of fifty or a hundred children and give them from'two to four weeks in the oountry. For that time at least their miserable lives are made brighter. They are taken out of the burning streets and from the steaming cellars and fetid garrets, and they roam in the woods and green fields and get lessons in decency, cleanliness aud order which will ; last them all their lives.

States Prison walls, for the next seven years will shut out from social intercourse with Brooklyn’s best coloured society, J. PBronson Howard, who was known far and wide as the Bluok. Prince. Mr Howard’s father was a close-fisted old African who pinched and saved aud twisted through life, wno denied himself every enjoyment and comfort, aud after a long life of miserly saving and misery died worth 350, 000d01s which he left to his son, who had been impatiently wait-in" for years to get a hack at the old man’s shekels. As soon as he got the money he did not let the grass grow under his feet, but started in to amaze the coloured aristocracy of Brooklyn, and it is needless to say that he succeeded. Brooks was his tailor, Knox made his hats, his boots and shoes were imported from Paris, and all of his iin. maculate linen came from the same place. He had as fine a turn-out as you could sea in the City of Churches, and a white driver and footman stood uncovered as he stepped into his carriage. His house was gorgeously furnished and all the servants were white. He early beoame a candidate for political honours, and on account of his open-handed generosity, which seemed to know no bounds, he became an acknowledged leader among his people. Plenty of white men were found to share his lavish hospitality, and some of his dinners and breakfasts were the talk of the town. He loved a quiet little game of draw, and always took a flyer on the racecourse. Years rolled od, and at last the day came when the bills for rich wines, fast horses, &c., &c., &0., could not be met, and notes given to tailors and bootmakers were protested at the back. Shrewd and sharp in everything else, he appeared to have lost all track of money matters. At last he went under bailbond, and being questioned in regard to his financial stauditog deliberately perjured him. self, and swore he was the owner of property which he had parted with years before. He was tried this week, convicted, aud sentenced' to seven years in States PrisoD, though defended by an able array of eminent counsel ; for with his usual magnificence he employed four of the most costly lawyers in New York. And so in prison and in dire disgrace ends a life that might have been ranked with the foremost of his race on this continent. Properly cared for and‘judiciously used, his fortune might have been increased to a million, and his influence •with his people only bounded by the limits of the Republic. But lack of principle and dissolute companions dragged him down to ruin. Ho sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. Truly yours, Broadbrim.