 |
| Bill Nye. |
Cortland Evening Standard, Monday,
February 20, 1893.
VISION OF
THE FUTURE.
BILL NYE HAS A GLIMPSE OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY.
Politically there will be far less money
expended in electing officials, I fancy, and many of our leading politicians
out of a job will be living on the island, while those now on the island will
have learned that the price of one vote will not maintain them for four years.
All these things will elevate society and throw what is now called society out
of a job.
The government will grow simpler. So will
the men who now overestimate their wisdom.
The government should own both railways and
telegraphs, no doubt, but how the transfer could be made so as to avoid a large
steal while the state is looking out of the window I do not know. It would be a
good time now to buy some roads I know of—roads that are never on time but once
a year, and that is when they put on extra steam in order to pass a dividend.
I believe that in our monetary system the
same change will be maintained, though more of it perhaps.
I think less attention will be paid to
temperance legislation and more to the study of the human stomach. Bad cooking,
especially as we find it in poor hotels on the road, is the parent of many
drunkards. You cannot legislate nice, new iron gray brains or good stomachs
into people who have acquired by descent or purchase weak, inflamed and
diseased ones. If so, the legislature would have very little time to work
outside of the Capitol building.
I do not see any practical way of punishing
prisoners at present, but am liable to think of one at any time.
The laws of divorce are quite well adapted
to this age, and the only improvement I see would be for people who apply for
divorce to pay regular advertising rates instead of displaying free to the
public their private bone works in order to boom a new play or a new star.
I see no reason to hope that money will not
accumulate in the hands of a few in the future even more than in the past.
There will be more generations also between shirt sleeves and shirt sleeves.
Vast corporations and business aggregations may
become top heavy and cumbersome, and with threatened strikes or actual trouble
of that kind capital may fight shy of them inside of 100 years.
The laboring classes will always be
oppressed, and the more their wages are increased the more fatigued they will
feel. I speak from experience.
Our soil, with improved agricultural
methods, should grow enough for an increased population, but I hope that the government
will not depend too much on me. I farmed last year in North Carolina and bought
hay for my horses, canned food for my family and used condensed milk on days
when my valet used to milk our spirited cow by scaring her half way over a barbed
wire fence and then attending to her dividend arrangement while the bawling or
intellectual end hung over the other side.
Law, medicine and theology will continue to
advance as rapidly as they have the past 100 years, especially theology. We
will continue to talk saucily to all three until we meet them, and then we will
retract all that we have said. I see more possibilities for medicine, however,
than for the rest.
American literature, I hope, will be more realistic
in 100 years, and it will be, I trust, as good in the daily press at two cents
as in the more elaborate and expensive publications. I trust there will be less
colic among poets, and less vain regret and gastritis among poetesses.
Music and the drama will grow rapidly. The
great American play has been already written by Mr. Howard, and a new era is
about to be opened. I may open one myself.
Educational methods will go on toward
perfection, and finally the pupil will not have to apply himself at all, but
the teacher's work will grow more laborious.
Dress, I hope, will be simplified for the daytime,
though evening dress could not be made more simple than it is without carrying
the entire train and waistband in the hand and getting a check for it at the door.
Man will dress as usual, paying eight dollars twice each year for a high hat that
has just change enough in it to compel him to buy one every six months. He will
also wear other clothing, but it will be simple and not so close fitting.
The architecture will advance in great cities,
and the architects will go on making pretty drawings of dwelling houses which
will not have any closets, and the hall will contain the woodbox and lavatory, as
they do now.
Women will never want the right of
suffrage—that is, there will not be enough of them want it to even encourage
the men folks to give it to them.
The future of the servant problem is the same
as the future of the ungodly—viz., hell.
I look for the perfection of the flying machine,
but fear it will arrive too late to be of practical use to lecturers.
"Will the race be handsomer, healthier
or happier than it is now?"
I hope so.
Our greatest city will be on the present site
of Chicago.
As to who will be the American most honored
in 1993, I am offering odds that it will not be the son of a wealthy man, but some
poor boy at present with chapped wrists and chilblains on his heels, whose heart
is full of hope and whose terror now is soap.
Of course the people will not have forgotten
Washington, and I am also putting up a delicate little tribute to myself in the
way of a mausoleum which will resist climatic action and keep me as green as ever
in the memory of those from whom I am liable now to be snatched away at any moment.
LATEST NEWS.
WIND AND
STORM.
The Gale
Sweeps From One End of the State to the Other.
BUFFALO, N. Y., Feb. 20.—The snow which
began on Friday night and continued until this morning was the heaviest of the
season, the fall of snow being eight inches on the level. The temperature is
very cold. Railroads are badly blocked in all directions and trains are from
one to seven hours late.
KINGSTON, N. Y., Feb. 20.—It has been
blowing a perfect gale here since last night about 10 o'clock and all the
country roads are blocked with snow drifts. The streets are littered with
branches of trees and so strong was the wind during the night that fully half
of the people were kept awake fearing their dwellings would be blown down. In
the country the roofs of a number of barns were blown off.
NEW YORK, Feb. 20.—The gale which swept over
this city and Brooklyn last night did considerable damage. It was like a hurricane
in force, and continued throughout the night. High board fences were blown down
and some of the principal streets were strewn with sign boards and awnings. Fifteen
two-story and basement frame houses on Troy-ave., Brooklyn, were blown down.
The buildings were not completed, and, consequently, were not occupied. The
loss on them is $15,000.
A
BLIZZARD STRIKES TOWN.
Drifts
Block the Highways and Bother the Railroads.
The March blizzard which has paid its
respects to this section of the country for two years has arrived in town three
weeks ahead of time. It is not as fully developed as its predecessors, but that
is probably due to its haste to get started. But such as it is, it is here.
Snow began to fall at about 8 o'clock yesterday
afternoon, and as the sun went down the wind came up and all of the evening it
howled around the street corners, making all of those people who were safely housed
feel very comfortable as they sat about their fires, and sending a shiver down
the backs of those who were out. It was not until toward midnight that the
temperature began to settle. This morning it was nearly down to zero.
Street Commissioner Davern has been out all
day with a gang of men breaking roads and digging through drifts on the outskirts
of the town.
Superintendent Terry of the Horse Railroad
company had the snow plow and the scraper busy most of the morning. The half
hour cars were not run at all. The regular hour cars run on good time from the
E., C. & N. station to the car barns and a bus carries the
passengers back and forth between the car barns and Homer.
The snow plough on the D., L. & W. has
been kept busy running all day and has kept the road comparatively clear. All
the trains this morning were late. The 6 A. M. north bound train pulled in at
8:50; the south bound train due at 8:52, arrived at 9:25; the 10 o'clock south
pulled in only a half-hour late, while the 9:58 north bound train arrived at 10:40.
The south bound milk train due at 10:55 came in at 11:18. The freight trains
were all an hour or more late and the through freight north which usually
leaves at 10:18 had not gone out at 2 o'clock this afternoon.
The E., C. & N. railroad is embarrassed to-day
because of an accident which has delayed trains, though the road is practically
open so far as snow is concerned. The 5:26 train west bound last night came in
on time. Shortly after its arrival the snow plow propelled by the giant
locomotive No. 16 went east to clear the Camden division of the road upon which
it was then storming furiously. It arrived in Camden all right and left that
place at 5 o'clock this morning on the return trip. At Canastota freight engine
No. 22 was added to No. 16 as a pusher. Between Woodstock and DeRuyter a
quantity of water and ice over the track delayed its progress, but was at
length cleared away and the journey was continued. At 7:25 this morning the
local freight started for Canastota drawn by engine No. 20. At Lorings about
three miles up the road, the tire of one of the driving wheels on the engine was
broken and left the wheel to turn on the ends of the spokes. Word was sent back
to Cortland and a wrecking train went out and drew the freight train back to
Cortland and then tackled the engine.
It took until nearly 1 o'clock to clear the
wreck. This delayed the snowplow which finally came in to the station at 1:45.
The plow and engines looked as though they had seen hard weather. All of them
seemed to be buried beneath the banks of snow which covered them. Both the
front windows of the car on No. 10, to which the plow was attached, were banked
in with snow, so that the engineer was compelled to keep his head out of an open
side window to see ahead along the track. The westbound passenger train due
here at 9 A. M. followed the snow plow in and arrived at 1:52.
On the west end of the road a second snow
plow was sent to Ithaca this morning at 7:30 propelled by engine No. 17. A
special train was made up here and sent out instead of the regular at 9 o'clock.
It went as far as Ithaca and then returned, arriving at about 12 o'clock. The
regular train from Elmira due here at 9:46 this morning arrived about
twenty minutes late. It could not leave for Canastota, however, until the road
was cleared and it got away at 1:56, after the wreck had been removed and the
plow and passenger train had arrived. It was drawn by engines 19 and 7. It is
due to get back here at 3:15, but will probably arrive about 8 o'clock.
The west bound train which got in at 1:52 left for Elmira at 2 o'clock drawn by
engines 5 and 4. The freight train from Elmira, due here about 1 o'clock, arrived
nearly on time.
The storm seems to be of wide extent and from
Camden down nearly to Horseheads the weather is to-day very much as it is here
in Cortland. Below Horseheads the storm is not as bad.
PAGE
FOUR—EDITORIALS.
Their
Present Plan.
The Cleveland administration's "plan of
campaign" has been settled. It can be announced positively that there will
not be an early extra session of congress. An extra session will in all
probability be called, but it will not be earlier than September nor later than
October. According to the present plan, Mr. Cleveland and his secretary of the
treasury, Mr. Carlisle, will devote a large share of their attention during the
spring and summer to framing a revenue tariff measure, which it is proposed to
present complete to the Fifty-third congress when it meets.
The forthcoming measure is likely to be
radical enough in its assault on American industries to satisfy the most
pronounced free traders in the Democratic party. At least one definite point
about the measure is known. It will contain a provision for abolishing the
American wool growing industry by admitting foreign wool absolutely free of
duty. The damage to other domestic industries will be widespread, but it is
apparently the purpose of the Democratic leaders to destroy utterly the wool
growing interest and deprive hundreds of thousands of American farmers of an
important source of income.
The Free Trade bill once before congress, a
sharp conflict may be expected in regard to the date of putting it into
operation. July 1,1894, has been fixed upon by the more conservative Democratic
leaders as the date for making the measure operative. The radical free traders
of the Democratic rank and file in congress will assuredly demand that the
party shall live up to its Chicago platform and sweep away the protective system
without delay.
If we are to have free trade the sooner we
have it the better. It will not take many years to ascertain whether or not it
is better than protection.
The
Tesla Electric Light.
If a set of experiments that have been scientifically
successful can be made commercially profitable, then we are on the eve of a new
departure in electric lighting which is dazzling beyond the power of cold,
matter of fact reason to follow all at once. Nikola Tesla is sometimes called
electrical wizard No. 2. on account of his marvelous and fascinating work in a
field similar to that of Edison.
Tesla's greatest achievement—that is, if it
will go—is the production of an electric light without either globes or wires.
We may then hope to be rid of that painful bobbing up and down of the light
which as yet seems inevitably attendant on the steadiest system of electrical
illumination. Under Tesla's system all the apparatus is concealed. A beautiful
incandescent glow is produced between the opposite walls of a room by means of
rapid and powerful alternating currents. All that one sees is just the soft
glow of light, like daylight. If this wonderful discovery is practicable, then we
shall literally be able to turn night into day and have a night light that is
as good as daylight.
Edison has been trying for years to find a
way to produce electricity directly from coal without the intervention of the
steam engine. Tesla says he has found something even more wonderful than that.
It is a method whereby a man can draw electricity directly from earth and air
in any quantity and utilize it for any purpose at any time.
Well, we shall see.
Mr.
Tripp's Bill.
On Friday night Assemblyman Jas. H. Tripp
[Marathon] introduced the following bill in the assembly:
SECTION 1. The trustees of the Factory Brook
Fish and Game association of the town of Homer, in the county of Cortland, are
hereby authorized to file another certificate of said association, required by
section 8 of chapter 368 of the laws of 1865, entitled "An act for the incorporation
of societies and clubs for certain social and recreative [sic] purposes,"
in the office of the clerk of Cortland county, on or before the first day of
March, 1893, and such filing shall have the same force and effect as if made in
the month of December, 1892, and upon the filing of said certificate aforesaid,
the proceedings of said association are hereby declared to be legal and valid.
But this act shall not affect any suit or proceedings heretofore commenced.
A Fine
Entertainment.
There was not a large audience at the Opera
House last Saturday night to listen to the Boston Ideal Comic Opera Co. in
"Galatea," but everyone who was there felt abundantly paid for coming.
The opera is a pleasing one, and its presentation by this company was good.
There are some very excellent voices in the troupe, particularly those of Miss
Mecusker as Galatea which is very sweet and clear, and of Miss Sadie Cushman as
Ganymede. It may be said in addition that there was not a poor voice there.
Miss Mecusker, as the statue Galatea, was of course the particular star, and
her work was very effective. Mr. Eugene Buzzel as Lencippe was a model Greek
soldier. Chrysos, the Jew, and Daphne his wife were excellent. The whole
company in short was worthy of a larger patronage than it received.
BREVITIES.
—Town meeting in Wells' hall to-morrow.
—The Cortland steam laundry has completed
the rebuilding and started up this morning.
—The funeral of Miss Frances A. Merrick will
be held to-morrow afternoon at 2 o'clock, at her late residence, Clinton-ave.
—A resident of Monroe Heights says that at 8
o'clock last night the storm was so fierce that in the full glare of an electric
light it was impossible to see the house across the street.
—The Young Ladies' Sodality of St. Mary's
church wish, through the columns of the STANDARD, to thank Mr. Alex. Mahan for
his kindness in loaning the piano at their entertainment and supper Monday
evening last.
—An Oneonta minister recently married a
couple and the groom, who said he had left his money home, gave the dominie
[sic] the marriage certificate as a security while he went after the fee. "He
never came back" and the minister has a marriage certificate for sale,
cheap.
—Many of the readers of The STANDARD will be
pained to learn of the death of Mr. C. D. Walkut at his home in Brewerton,
Onondaga county. Mr. Walkut was a former resident of Scott, and lived there for
some time. His funeral will be held to-morrow. Mrs. E. E. Greenleaf of Lincoln-ave.
was summoned there last week, and her husband leaves for there to-day.
New
Books at the Library.
The following new books have recently been
purchased and placed in the Franklin Hatch library on Court-st.: Children of
Gibeon, All in a Garden Fair, The West from a Car Window, Under Summer Skies,
Gulf and Glazier, Snare of the Fowler, Aunt Anne, Chatelaine of La Trinite,
Chouans, Don Orsino, Beauties of Nature, Dolly, Leona, In Greek Waters, Red
Skin and Cowboy, In Freedom's Cause, Beric the Briton, Captain January, The
American Claimants, Huckleberry Finn, At the Back of the North Wind, Dear
Daughter Dorothy, The End of a Rainbow, Giovanni and the Others, Life's Fairy
Tales, Kent Hampden, The Story of a Child, Sherburne House, Emily Dickinson's
Poems, Adelaide Proctor's Poems, Delsartian Physical Culture, Americanisms,
Briticisms, Greek Heroes, Under the Water Oaks, Children's Rights, Colonel
Carter of Cartersville, The Adventures of a Fair Rebel, The Rose of an Hundred
Leaves, The Blacksmith of Voe, Flowers de Hundred, The Ides of March, Through the
Wilds, Voyage of Fleetwing, Isle of Palms, Verty of the Basins.
The following gifts to the library
association have also been received: Harper's magazine. Vols. 42, 43 and 44
from Mrs. M. F. Henry; St. Nicholas magazine, five years, from Miss Florence
Henry.
Unbound magazines are very acceptable to the
library association. The library rooms are open from 9 A. M. to 7 P. M. The
leading daily newspapers and magazines may always be found in the reading rooms
and a large and carefully selected line of books on all subjects are on the
library shelves.
No comments:
Post a Comment