BROADBRIM'S NEW YORK LETTER.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 11282, 1 June 1891, Page 3

BROADBRIM'S NEW YORK LETTER.

(Special to Chboniclk.) April came in like a lion, and a roaring lion at that. There was no April fool about it ; the . storm that raged all through the State the early portion of the week, left a broad 3watb of disaster and ruin which will be remembered with sorrow and erief long after " the flowers shall bloom in the Spring," tra la. It was horr.d yes simply horrid; we could have stood it with Christian patienco in February ; with a little mild profanity we might hare endured it with fortitude m March : but in April— well, it's no use talking, it required all the Sabbath School lessons and Bible reading that I have accumulated in & tolerably long and troublesome life, to keep me from falling into the ways of the wicked. Instead of meeting your friend in the street with tte'.cheerful inquiry, '• How are you, old fellow P the question now was,." How's your grip? Not well, eh I what ? your wife sick^ too, and the girls down, well, well. Tom s all right, t suppdse ; no ! been in bed for a . week you say! I never hPard a word of it, but then I never heard a word of anything, for I haven't been out of the house myself for a week. Cheerful, isn't it? But this has. been the style of conconversation ever since All Fools Day. Whether it was' on account of the weather complications and the unfortunate rosults, I know not ; nobody seemed to bein a very amiable state of mind, and even the sweetness which usually distinguishes me from my neighbours was BwaUowed up in the general fog, and an intimate friend remarked to his estimable wife, that the amiable Broadbrim resembled a. •bear with a sore head. . (Editorwl note) —Not very complimentary, but un- ■ doubtedly true. But aside from the weather there were many other things that conspired to disturb me. I used to ' have a high opinion of Major McKinley. The noble stand which he took on behalf of his friend, Senator. Sherman, at the Chicago Convention, filled me with admiration for the man ; but from information I received last week, no more Major "McKinley in mino. On State occasions, when I entertain President Harrison, Mr ~ Blame, Jay Gould, or" any other of my intimate friends at dinner, it has been my usual custom to send out for a quart of ice cream, and this I procured from an Italian confectionery kept by a lady named McCarty. For several years paßt the standard price of ice cream has been thirty-five cents per quart, but during the ice famine of last year, on account of the high price of ice, cream was raised to fifty cents ; the ice crop of this year, hdwever, has been eminently satisfactory, it is now down to the scale of formeryears, but ice creams where it was last summer. I called on Mrs McCarty and inquired if ice cream was going to come down, and she replied, "indade, sur, it is not." I reminded hei that ice had gone back to * its former rates, and she answered, " yis . that's, throo, but eggs is gone," I inquired the cause, and she pledged me her word as an honest confectioner, that the bins don't be laying as many eggs iver since the McKinley tariff ; that settled me, therefore I repeat, no more Major McKinley in mine. Our Methodist friends have been having quite a lively t ime during the week at the East New York Conference, held at Fatehogu'e, on Long Island. On Thursday the vexed question came up which has troubled so many conferences in the past about admitting women to the Ministry; "The debate raged with partizatt bitterness, almost amounting to personality, the progressive and intellectual portion championing the cause of women, and all the old haid heads who beliove that the earth is_ flat, and supported on a turtle's back, clinging to Peter and Paul. . The condition of woman in Judea, when Paul wrote and Peter lived, was very much like the condition of the Mohammedan woman in Judea today. She was a drudge and a slave, a thing to work for man, to toil in the fields, to spin at the loom, to minister to his pleasure, and when she went abroad, unless of. the commonest sort, she covered her face. She had no education, she could not converse with her husband, and often had to stand while the brute gobbled up the njeal she had prepared, leaving her to gather up the crumbs. No wonder Paul had a poor opinion of her. No wonder Peter did not endorse her. She was not altogether lovely, and so I forgive Paul and Peter. But if they had lived in the latter part of this nineteenth century I should have been delighted to take them to a meeting of the Sorosis, and to have sat thorn down on a tete-a-tete with sweet Jenny June or Mrs Doctor Lozier, or any one of the bright women that make up that magnificent organisation ; or I should like to have had Peter and' Paul together at the late women's congress at Washington, and I would have sent the pair of them back to Jerusalem, there to repent in sackcloth and ashes that they had ever said one word to the . disparagement of women. The Rev.- John S. Breckenridge .led the attack in a fierce and bitter phillipic, which made many of the members doubt if he ever read the papers. He certainly did not look as if he personally knew much of woman's softening influence or sweet companionship. The hard puritanical linea of the face, and the cruel expression of that iron jaw, were not very promising for woman's advancement as long as the reverend doctor was alive. But some of the brightest men in the conference were found on the women's side. President Raymond was their champion from the start, and the Rev, Ichabod Simmon?, of Mount Vernon. Rev. Samuel Beiller, of Brooklyn, the Rev. J. C. North, of South Norwalk, and ProfeEsor .Rice, of the Wesleyan University, Btood nobly up for woman in the fight, but ona final vote the antediluvians carried it. ■ They shook each other's hand and seemed very glad; perhaps they were, but after they they are all dead, women will still be found knocking at the door, and I should not be at all surprised if, by hook or by crook, she managed to 'get in. On Saturday afternoon occurred one of the most memorable events in our dramatic history. It was the retirement of Edwin Booth from the stage, of which he has been the chief ornament for so many years. The farewell was not pronounced . as final, and the hope was held out that at some future time he might be seen again upon the boards, but to those who witnessed his last performance it seemed a forlorn hope, and as he passed behind the curtain after the recall, the audience knew that it had rung down on him for ever. The character choßon f or his final adieu was Hamlet, and no sadder performance has been seen on the American stage. The performance was given in the Academy of Music in Brooklyn, and the hall was packed. His old admirers turned out by hundreds, and the sweet maidens of twenty-five years agoi who went to sleep with his photograph under their pillows, ■now staid matrons with grown up daughters and sons, came to bid farewell to their old to me flame, and to repeat sotto vo :e, Whittier's sweet lines : 11 Of all the sad words from tongne or pen. The aoddoßt ore those, it might have boon." The heavy inroads of disease on a, constitution never strong were painfully manifest, and the dire shock of the death of his bosom friend Lawrence Barrett, all conspired to the painful result. But whether this shall bo or not,' he will long be remembered as one who stood at the head of his protesßion, who enjoyed the friendshipof the best men of his time, and ■who in all these years was regarded as the brightest ornament of the American stage. But though he puts aside the laurel crown and no more listens to the thundering plaudits of the multitude, his lot is not an unhappy one. In the quiet and classic associations of the "Players' Club," which his bounty founded and his wealth enriched, he peacefully drifts towards the unknown shore, bright with hope and mellowed with golden light. He carries with him - to his retirement the respect and love of thousands who have profited by the fruits of his genius, and who will forget withan effort his passing decadence, and remember him only as the brightest star of that noble profeswon where for a quarof a century he stood without a> peer. There is one question that is troubling us now more than theatres, or fine arts, or religions gatherings, and that is the question of emigration. The muddy stream rolls in a mighty flood, to which tfiertf aeenis little abatement or surcease. „sfitf sibling &<St connected with it is, <; V- $# tSaflk^io' the laws enacted by dema*

1 gogues |at Washington, brains and intelligence are barred out, and filth and ignorance are let in. A church -on the Fifth Avenue has to pay the Government of the United States one thousand dollars as the penalty of importing from England a minister to preach the gospel of Christ, but they let in a dirty Italian with a deformed leg.the stump of an arm, a hand organ and a monkey, to sit in our public thoroughfares nil day, stunning our ears with their discordant abominations and shocking our women with the horrid sight of their deformity. How did they pass, the Emigration Commission ? I don't know, but here they are. In addition to this unsavory host is a vast horde of Slavs and Huns more numerous than that which overrun and destroyed the Empire of Rome — Russians, Poles, Hungarians, and Austrians, who bring little of modern civilisation or modern ideas with them, but have all the fierce instincts and bitter prejudices of their progenitors. The evil of this is, that they live here in the large cities, and when reduced to the lowest stage of misery are farmed out by unscrupulous contractors to mines and coke works, railroads and other labour, with: false promises from their treacherous countrymen, which were never acquiesced in by the employers. A few years ago we had a large German i and Irish emigration far exceeding all I others put together. The Irish spoke our language, and no matter what the state of destitution on their arrival, it only took a few years of industry and thrift to place them on a level with our most enterprising citizens. The -Irishman's children worked their way to wealth and position, they won seats in Congress, became Governors of States, and occupied the Mayor's chair in all of our large cities. The German, it he did not under-stand-our language on his arrival, he was not long in [acquiring it. He still loved Faderlahd, sang "Wacht am Rhine," smoked his meerschaum drank Bock Bier, and eat Schwertzer Kase and Bologna, but when you touched his American citizenship he was just as sound an American as the heroes whose blood crimsoned Breed's Hill, or whose bones enrich the flowers that bloom onthe field of Gettysburg. This Italian and Slav emigration is not a healty one'; it is full of future evil and disaster. The Italians are brought here in droves by speculators who have accumulated vast fortunes by sellingthem into virtual slavery. Out of eighty thousand recent arrivals only five thousand could speak our language, and thousands of those who arrived last week will never learri it till they reach their graves. The problem that faces us js a serious one. We try to shut our eyes to it at times, but like the ghost of Banquo it will not go down. Six years ago labour was paralysed at the thought of their being fiftysix thousand Chinamen in the United States. How about Atilla and Huns ? Think of it. Yours etc. Broadbrim.