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HONOR AT ST LOIJIS:tic " !
urrent Topics
DEATH REVEALS IDENTITY.
I i I ~,,llll I J A cablegram from ~ndon says the
I Countess of Stradbrooke, whose death
has just taken place in that country,
was the peeress who was the cause of
the arrest of Edmund Yates, the An-
glo-American journalist who was the
proprietor and editor of the London
World. It was on her account that
he was convicted of criminal libel
and sentenced to a year's imprison-
ment. Yates would have escaped the
. penalty by giving the name of the
writer of the libelous paragraph. This
r en~!~4 ! boil!d tt ~oR:I ~b~bl~! b !d lalmgl ~i~e ~aO~r
among the forest trees on the Forest
Park world's fair site makes a daz-
zling picture. The working plans for
, these buildings, whlqh will cost about
$8,000,000, are now being prepared, and
contracts for their construction will
be let about Dec. 1. Other building
plans are to follow. About $4,000,000
will be expended on the grounds in
the next six months. Contracts for
this work will be let next month.
Supervising architect J. Knox Tay-
lor of the Unlted States Treasury De-
partment has made plans for the gov-
ernment building and they have been
approved by the government board.
The building will be 600 feet long,
..;about 160 feet wide and contain about
100,000 square feet of floor space,
without interior columns, the roof be-
ing supported on steel trusses. Its
construction, Mr. Taylor says, 'will re-
quire about one year, and therefore
authorizifig the municipal government
to expend before the opening of the
world's fair about $5,000,000 in build-
ing sewers, constructing streets and in
beautifying the city generally for the
reception of its guests during the fair.
]Facsimile Documents Are In,
Chairman Chouteau of the history
committee has received from New Or-
leans facsimile copies of all the prin-
cipal documents relating to the trans-
fer of the Louisiana Purchase to the
United States. The collection is said
to be accurate in every detail and Is
one of only eight sets in existence.
It has been announced that the great
agricultural building, the largest sin-
gle building in the world, covering
about thirty-one acres, will be located
outside the Forest Park site, in order
to leave room therein for the various
other buildings needed, besides those
of the great central exposition plc-
tractive features of the world's fair.
The controlling bodies of the several
denominations have been invited to
send their suggestions as to the plau
of the building and also nominations
of directors to have charge of their
exhibits to the world's fair officials.
The railroad and other transporta-
tion companies are keeping tab on the
progress of world's fair matters. A
belt llne will be built connecting all
tracks with the chief entrance to the
exposition grounds, near which will
be erected a huge station, with abund-
ant trackage. Union station will be
relieved of congestion during the
world's fair by other stations for lo-
cal trains. One of these relieving sta-
tions will be at the west end of Eads
Bridge, provided witl~ elevators to
transfer passengers between cars on
the surface tracks on the bridge tracks
and on the elevated road on the levee.
THE PAN AMERICAN'S DEFICIT.
The Pan-American Exposition, al-
though a great artistic and education-
al success, closed with a deficit now
estimated at not less than $4,000,000.
While this is doubtless a disappoint-
men~ to many of the stockholders who
were led to believe that the balance
would be on the other side of the
ledger, it is not a surprise to those
who are familiar with the history of
exposition enterprises and who know
; something about the cost of the "rain-
bow city" that was built upon the
Niagara frontier by the public-spirited
citizens of Buffalo.
It was an exhibition of fine courage
and business daring when Buffalo un-
dertook to expand what was first in-
tended to be a celebration of the
achievement of harnessing the Niag-
ara Cataract into an all-American ex-
position illustrating the progress of
the nations of the western hemisphere.
Having undertaken it, however, she
carried out the Pan-American idea
upon a scale of artistic beauty that
captivated all who beheld it.
Notwithstanding the financial de-
ficit, the exposition, with its un-
equaled:electrical display, will stand
in memory as a superb reminder of the
public spirit and enterprise of the
City of Buffalo. With the dark shad-
ow of a national tragedy over her at
the time when the exposition had
hoped to enter its period of record-
making attendance, she stilled the
blare of trumpet~ and hushed the noise
of gala days to bow reverently and
anxiously at the bedside of the strick-
en President. Her demeanor under
this trying misfortune commanded the
admiration of the nation.
A shortage of four million is a small
matter compared to the glory of
achievement in a great artistic and ed-
ucational enterprise such as Buffalo
builded in the beautiful "Rainbow
City."
One Hundred Million.
The prediction of the director of
census that the United States with her
new accessions will have a population
of 100,000,000 in 1910 is likely to be
fulfilled.
We began the present decade with
approximately 77,000,000 people in the
states and territories, including Ha-
waii and Alaska. In the states there
was an increase of about 21 per cent
from the figures of 1890, a falling off of
more than 3 per cent from the in-
crease of the preceding decade. The
natural order is for the percentage to
decline as the country becomes more
thickly settled, but imnaigration has
shown new llfe during the last four or
five years, and we still have an im-
mense amount of unoccupied land to
attract newcomers, while the expan-
sion of our manufactures offers new
inducements to many kinds of ~labor
There is no apparent reason, therefore,
why the rate of increase should decline.
Putting it at 20 per cent, the estimate
would give us an addition of 15,000,000
~nd a total of 92,000,000 in the states
and territories if we do not figure upon
the latter separately. Furthermore,
even if we were to make this distinc-
tion, the result would not be seriously
affected.
The Scotch-Irish Tunnel
The project of a Scotch-Irish tunnel
is again under discussion in the
United Kingdom. There is no longer
any question as to the practicability
of the undertaking, as many engineers
of celebrity have pronounced it en-
tirely feasible. In the recent engi-
neering congress the views of such ex-
perts as Barton, Mansergh, and Fox
were given freely on the subject. Mr.
Barton favored a marlne tunnel and
held that one might be constructed
and put in working order between
Wlgtownshire in Scotland and the
County Antrlm coast in Ireland within
a dozen years. Sir Douglas Fox was
confident that less trouble would be
encountered from water than had been
met With in the case of the tunnel
l under the Mersey, or that under the
Severn. Sir James Mansergh was of
the opinion that there would be le,s
trouble from water in a submarine
tunnel than in one nearer the surface
of the earth. All held that the prob-
lem of ventilation could easily be
solved by electric power.
To commend anarchist crime in
public square is a punishable offense
according to French law.
rogs and Turtles.
Among recent lines of study in "the
psychological laboratory at Harvard
have been the memory and perceptive
faculties of the frog and the turtle,
the training of new habits in the cray-
fish, and the symptoms of memory in
the newt. Of these the ones i .volving
the frog and the turtle have been the
most extensive and the most interest-
ing--lf only because of Aesop and his
followers down to Joel Chandler Har-
COUNTESS OF STRADBROOKE.
he declined to do. The libel in ques-
tion was to the effect that Lord ions-
dale, then, as now, a married man,
had eloped from the hunting field with
an unmarried girl, Lady Grace Fane,
now Countess of Londosborough. It
was a paragraph for which there was
not a shadow of foundation and which
originated in the lively imagination
of the countess. The Countess was
Miss Helena Fraser, daughter of Gen-
eral Kelth Fraser of the British army,
and was married to the Earl of Strad-
brooke in July, 1898.
OVER THE FALLS IN A BOAT.
Mrs. Anna Edson Taylor, a dancing
teacher, has demonstrated that a per-
son may dance over the great horse-
shoe fall in Niagara in a barrel and
come out alive. But the proof she has
given has a very limited scope. People
who would not have believed that the
feat she performed was possible still
have reason enough to think that the
chances are overwhelmingly against
the barrel experts and not worth tak-
Ing on the promise of dime museum
profits.
While the success of the woman ~s
not difficult to explain the possibility
of following her course is quite an-
other affair. By sheer good fortune
she escaped a smashing on the rocks
above the falls and was carried clear
over to the very deep water under-
neath. The barrel, which was heavily
w$1ghted, sank where sinking meant
safety and came out but slightly dam-
a~ed, though there had been some
leakage and the carefully protected oc-
cupant was severely hurt..
DEAN FARRAR'S VIEWS.
The Dean of Canterbury says tuat
the working people are leaving the
Episcopal church on account of its
tendency to spectacular ritualism.
I)ean Farrar said that the church in-
fluence over the poorer people, par-
tlcularly in the slums of larger cities,
will soon be lost unless the church
ritual is simplified and many cere-
monies abolished. Taking exactly the
opposite stand, a large number of
!1"a,,°r=',=- j
STAMPS AS MONEY.
The recent theft of stamps in the
Chicago postoffice has led to the sug-
ge.~tion of several plans either for
making such thefts impossible in the
future or for making them unprofit-
able to the thieves. As3istant Post-
master Hubbard believes that If
"stamp certificates" were used in send-
~ng small sums by mail, a great source
~f danger would be removed. The
mail order houses would be required to
refuse stamps and to insist upon
"stamp certificates," and in this way
the use of stamps as currency would
be largely curtailed. As things are at
present, when not only small but fre-
quently large sums are sent from one
place to another in the shape of
stamps, it is comparatively easy for a
man to work off a fairly large block
of stamps within a few years, and if he
has bought those stamps at reduced
• rates he makes a considerable saving.
The new plan would interfere serious-
ly with such practices and would con-
fine postage stamps to their proper
function of appearing on the outside
of envelopes. Another suggestion that
has been made looks more directly to-
ward the "fence" part of the stamp
stealing business. If it were made an
offense for any private dealer in
stamps to sell more than a dollar's
worth at a time, the sale of larger
quantities would be regarded as in
itself a confession of improper meth-
ods of securing the stamps.
A FRIEND OF 1 HE CHURCH.
William Drew Washburn of Minne-
sota, who presided over the Un~versal-
Ist convention at Buffalo a few days
ago, is one of the wealthiest manu-
facturers in America and a well-
known citizen of Minneapolis, where
his large flour mills are located. Mr.
Washburn has participated in political
life since 1861, when he was appointed
United States surveyor general of Min-
nesota. He was subsequently elected
to congress for three terms and in
if(
WILLIAM D. WASHBURN.
,889 was chosen United States senator,
his term expiring in 1895. Like his
late associate in l~usiness, former Gov-
ernor Pillsbury, Mr. Washburn was
.born down east and spent his early
]years tn'a hard struggle for success.
He settled in Minnesota in 1857 and
took a large part in the railway con-
struction of the Northwest. He served
as president of the Minneapolis, St.
Paul and Sault Ste. Marie railway
union until that road was well on the
way to its completion, and then re-
tired from its active managcment. Mr.
Washburn is 60 years old.
BULLER'S SUCCESSOR.
Major General John Denton Pink-
stone French, who has been appointed
to succeed General Sir Redvers BuUer
as commander of the First Army Corps
is one of the comparatively young sol-
diers wllo have risen to high positions
in the British military sere.ice. He
had fought in the Soudan and in the
east previously to his appointment in
1899 to the command of the cavalry
division in Natal. He is one of the
two or three British generals who have
fought the Boers with success; He
was in command at Elandslaagte, at
Relfontein and I~mbard's Kop, and
was the commander also of the oper-
Ltions around Colesburg and in the
~aovements which culminated in the
relief of Kimberley. He directed the
:avalry troops in the campaign which
reded in the capture of Bloemfontein
and Pretoria, and was the officer in
charge of Lord Roberts' left wing in
~he battles east of Pretoria on June 10
"Re.co
DR. GLADDEN'S NEW ROLE.
Roy. Dr. Washington Gladden, Who
has Just been elected president of the
American Missionary Association at
its fifty-fifth annual meeting, is a dis-
tinguished American preacher, writer,
author, lecturer and poet, whose books
and words have entertained thousands
of cultured persons. Dr. Gladden's
merits as a man of thought and of
magnanimity may be gathered from
the fact that the University of Notre
Dame, a Roman Catholic school, has
conferred upon him its honorary de-
v///~/ _
REV. DR. GLADDEN.
gree of doctor of laws. His books all
treat of live subjects and are written
for popular reading. Such works as
"Burning Questions," "Who Wrote the
Bible? .... Things New and Old" and
"Tools and the Man" are addressed to
men and women who think for them-
selves. The new head of the American
missionary movement has served for l
many years as a pastor in Columbus,*~
Ohio, and he is probably the most ac-
tively working socialist in this coun-
try.
SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS.
The address at the opening of the
Pan-American conference in Mexico
City was made by Senor Ignacio Ma-
risal, the Mexican minister of foreign
affairs. He said among other things:
"There ts no doubt whatever of the
sentiment of friendship and sympathy,
cultivated to such a high degree by
our northern neighborhood, among the
representatives of the three Ameri-
cas." This may have been a mere po-
litical phrase. It is more likely that
its object was to let it be known that
Mexico at least discredits entirely
these reports that the Unl~d States
desires to extend its power at the ex-
pense of the Spanish-American repub-
lics. Ever since the Spanish war and
the acquisition of Porto Rico many
European Journals have been assuring
these republicans that the United
States has designs on them. It hal
not. Its only desire is that they may
be well governed and prosperous.
Nevertheless, this flood of advice from
Europe may have made an impression
on some of the small and suspicious
republics of this hemisphere. If-that
be so, tire remarks of Senor Mariscal
may tend to remove that impression.
If Mexico, bordering on this country,
does not apprehend American aggress-
ion, the republics to the south of Mex-
ico need have no fears.
MAY MARRY A GOULD.
The engagement has been announce~
In New York of Miss Helen Kelly to
Frank Jay Gould, the youngest son of
the late Jay Gould. Mr. Gould is 24
