thought that they have for some time a plane removed from the rest of the seen the slow sapping of the founda- world's inhabitants, and the coming tions to which it may be attributed. sorrows that he foretells have no conOn the whole, if they are not too seri- cern with him. He regards himself as ous in their opinions, they play a a mere spectator in the theatre of life, pleasant enough part. The pain which but a spectator with sufficient insight any chance fulfilment of their prophe- into things theatrical to guess that the cies may inflict upon the nation is miti-pleasant farce now upon the boards is gated in their case by a consciousness but the prelude to a tragedy. He is in of superior wisdom. They are like the world, but not of it, and the strange men who have betted a small amount gambols he witnesses merely produce against their own horse; whatever in him a slight pity tempered with turn affairs may take, their money is amusement. This scornful attitude safe. It is a common plan with some has come to be considered the fashionpeople thus to hedge, as it were, against able one for men of any education and a possible disappointment. They school originality. It is not, to our mind, a themselves to believe still that the cheerful one. We prefer still, no worst will happen, and by this means matter how ridiculous it may seem, the discount in anticipation the pain that simple creeds of our forefathers. We such a misfortune will bring to them. confess even to a certain faith in the The process may be pleasing to them- future of the British nation. It is selves, but it is extremely painful to much the fashion now to sneer at our their friends. It is something of a ancient belief in the superiority of our damper to the spirits to have a compan- own race, and call it insular prejudice; ion who persistently expects unhappi- to ridicule patriotic fervor, and term it ness. Such a man cannot be cheerful blustering conceit. There are some himself, neither is he a great incite- men who object strongly even to the ment to cheerfulness in others. It song or ballad that savors of this must seem almost criminal, we think, heresy, and who would school the race in his eyes, that in the face of all that to speak with bated breath of past is hanging over us, we should thus achievements in war, from a fear, affect gaiety and light-heartedness; presumably, lest they should incauand, for fear of offending him, we sub- tiously hurt the feelings of some andue ourselves with difficulty to a dull cient foe. They are never weary of decorum. There is, indeed, more than insisting that it has always been our a suspicion of selfishness in this variety fault, and the source of all our misof sadness, as though a man should fortunes, this proneness to undervalue have all the world walk stiffly because our opponents. They flood the daily he himself is clothed in armor, or insist papers with alarms, and are ever pressupon arousing all his neighbors on ing for more men, more ships, more account of his own sleeplessness. We fortifications, in the event of unforemay be wrong in suspecting such men seen contingencies. We do not deny of a desire for sympathy-frequently that they may be doing a certain they would sooner be without it but amount of good in this. The old carethe knowledge that a fellow-creature is less optimism had its faults, no doubt. a prey to groundless grief, as we con- It is just as well that we should be sider it, acts upon our own feelings prepared for possible combinations and in time produces an irritation which, in spite of ourselves, compels us to share his sorrow. The pessimist is not always, however, a melancholy man. In fact, his humor is often to pose as a cynic, or general critic of the universe, and in that position he feels himself to be on against us in the future. It is not worth while to expose ourselves needlessly, or to imagine that a fortunate audacity will always help us out of a crisis. But there was something heroic in the old creed that any Englishman was worth his half-a-dozen foreigners or so when it came to fighting; and it is vain to build vessels or enroll troops | altogether before the next European if we destroy the spirit that used to struggle. animate our soldiers and sailors in old time, and that has enriched our annals with deeds of reckless daring by land and sea for centuries. With the bombs of anarchists and the groaning of oppressed tax-payers, it is undeniable that there is a fine field for melancholy in our viewing of the world. Little remains for the onlooker but something of a Stoic calm, to be maintained as well as he is able in the face of adverse circumstances. By hard work it is fortunately possible as a rule to be quit of much unnecessary thought, and in diligently employing ourselves on our own business we may escape the sad conviction of our ultimate ruin. It ing that the wheels of progress could be stayed, or even set back for some half century or so in their course. Was not the world the happier without a fair percentage of our modern improvements and discoveries ? Like timid children reading a tragic story we are afraid to think what the end of the If it were not for the jealous alarmist, it is possible that the burdens of the world might be lightened considerably. It is these people who keep urging on their respective countries to vie with each other in expensive preparations for war. We wish a plague on all such pestilent fellows. What do we want with new explosives and fresh varieties of implements for destroying is hard sometimes to refrain from wishlife? There is something ridiculous surely in the present position of affairs in Europe, something ridiculous, and at the same time most mournfully sad. These great nations in a condition of armed suspense, still increasing their preparation for war and still hesitating to begin the battle, remind us of nothing so much as of so many frogs grad-book may bring. To be sure, we have ually inflating themselves in order to our compensations, facilities in railway strike terror into their rivals. And in- travelling, brilliant journalistic and deed it is likely enough that one or two other enterprise, and the penny post. will burst with the effort before they There may be yet lying before us, in come to actual business. War has little the future, fresh triumphs of civilizaenough attraction for any reasonable tion, marvellous and as yet unimagined man now. What with submarine ships developments of science, by which men and torpedoes, with air-balloons and shall open communication with the weapons of precision, there is alto- stars of heaven and learn the secrets of gether getting to be too much risk the spheres. It is quite possible; and about it. Even a hired soldier likes to possible also that we shall be perfecting have a chance, to have fair play given at the same time our various explosive to him, to be able to give stroke for apparatus and arms of precision. So stroke. There is not much excitement that at the last, in the happy invention in receiving one's death-blow from a of some exceptionally powerful agent, battery six miles distant, or in sharing it is likely that some country will cona common fate with some hundreds trive to blow itself from off the face of of comrades through an inglorious this earth, thereby settling once and charge of dynamite dropped from the clouds at night-time. To say nothing of the unconscionable burden a modern army (even on a peace-footing) lays upon the tax-payer, it is becoming evident, even from the soldier's point of view, that some return to simpler methods is advisable. As to the romance of war, it received a shrewd blow at the introduction of gunpowder, and, what with the maxim-gun and smokeless explosives, it is like to perish for all its own claim to precedence. Such a lesson might prove a salutary check upon the ambition of the rest. But the bare possibility of such an occurrence should suggest to us, as the most reasonable course, the propriety of lagging a trifle behind in the matter of new experiments, or, what were still more to be wished, that we should agree to abandon the further prosecution of such inventions for all time. From Les Annales Industrielles. THE HUMAN HAIR INDUSTRY IN PARIS. FROM an industrial and artistic point of view Paris is the centre of the fine manufacture of prepared human hair. Of course the reference here is to woman's hair, for man's hair is worthless for any industrial purpose. Aside from the houses that manufacture exclusively for the export trade, the city numbers about two thousand hairdressers and five thousand workmen, about half of whom are engaged in the manufacture properly so called. The source of supply of the hair may be divided into three categories. The hair of the first category is furnished by foreign countries, India and China being the largest suppliers. This hair is exclusively black and grey, and comes in boxes, carefully packed. In addition to these countries, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Russia supply small quantities. The hair from India and China undergoes quite a lengthy preparation. It is first matched, sorted, and combed, and then immersed in a solution of soft soap and carbonate of soda, in order to scour it. Upon coming from this bath it is united root end to root end and formed into locks that are tied near the roots. It afterwards remains to render the hair thin and flexible. To this effect it is first placed in earthen pans filled with chloruretted water and water mixed with hydrochloric acid, which renders it thin and decolorizes it. Then it is immersed in a solution of soft soap and chlorate of potash, in order to render it less brittle. Finally, a definite color and shade are given it. Thus prepared, nia have been added. the Chinese or Hindoo hair is sold to the hairdressers, who work it to their fancy, and afterward sell it at more or less moderate prices. The finest hair, forming the second category, is that of France, and comprises a variety of shades exceeding a hundred. The most beautiful is furnished by Limousin, Brittany, Normandy, and Beauce. Some lots are derived from young ladies' boarding-schools and from convents. All of this is collected by travelling men called "cutters," who make their circuit along toward spring and visit the villages to gather their crop. In some localities of Brittany and Auvergne, on certain market days, the damsels who desire to sell their head of hair get up on a cask, undo their hair, and allow it to fall over their shoulders. An auction soon begins and every lot, as soon as cut, is delivered to the highest bidder for spot cash. This product does not pass into the bath, but is simply combed and then scoured with buckwheat flour. Finally, the third category comprises hair (which, it must be confessed, is classed among the most esteemed) derived from the sorting of combings collected by ragpickers, who stuff it into bags just as they find it, soiled by dust, felted by water, and adhering to the sweepings of houses, and sell it to small manufacturers, who undertake to utilize it. From Public Opinion. A FIELD FOR THE PROFESSIONAL EXPLORER. A light or blond shade is obtained A WRITER in Chambers' Journal has with oxygenated water or a saturated something to say concerning that wonsolution of cabonate of potash. To dye derful "marine rubbish heap," the it black, it is boiled for a few hours in Sargasso Sea, of which Humboldt spoke a bath prepared with a decoction of as "that great bank of weeds which so nutgalls or Campeachy wood, in which vividly occupied the imagination of Cosulphate of iron is dissolved and into lumbus, and which Oviedo calls the which a little sumac is put, in order to seaweed meadows." The surface of give it a lustre and remove the bluish it seems (says the writer) like a perfect tint peculiar to the hair of the dead. meadow of seaweed. It is supposed Finally, it is bleached by immersing it that this enormous mass of gulf-weed several times in baths of oxygenated may have been partly grown at the botwater, to which a few drops of ammo-tom of the shallower parts of the sea, age, without hope of succor or escape. With regard to a steamer, no prudent skipper is ever likely to make the attempt, for it would certainly not be long before the tangling weed would altogether choke up his screw and render it useless. The most energetic explorer of land or sea will find himself baffled with regard to the Sargasso Sea by the fact that it is neither one nor the other. It is neither solid enough and partly torn from the shores of Flor- | wind would suddenly fail her altoida and the Bahama Islands by the gether, leaving her locked hopelessly force of the Gulf Stream. It is then amid the weed and the drift and wreckswept round by the same agency into the Sargasso Sea, where it lives and propagates, floating freely in mid-ocean. And the store is ever increasing, both by addition and propagation, so that the meadow grows more and more compact, and no doubt, at the inner parts, extends to a considerable depth below the surface. Nor is this all; for at least two-thirds of all the iufiuite flotsam and jetsam which the Gulf Stream carries along with it in its course sooner to walk upon nor liquid enough to afor later finds a resting-place in the Sar- ford a passage to a boat. At the same gasso Sea. Here may be seen huge time any one who fell into it would trunks of trees torn from the forests of certainly be drowned without being Brazil by the waters of the Amazon able to swim for his life. Of course it and floated down far out to sea until is quite conceivable that a very deterthey were caught and swept along by mined party of pioneers might cut a the current; logwood from Honduras; passage for a small boat even to the orange-trees from Florida; canoes and centre. The work would take an imboats from the islands, staved in, mense time, however, and the channel. broken, and bottom upwards; wrecks would certainly close up behind them and remains of all sorts, gathered from as they proceeded. They would have the rich harvest of the Atlantic; whole to take with them provisions for the keels or skeletons of ruined ships, whole voyage, and a journey over a so covered with barnacles, shells, and weed that the original outline is entirely lost to view; and here and there a derelict ship, transformed from a floating terror of the deep into a mystery put out of reach of man in a mu-dition would be worth the making, or seum of unexplained enigmas. It is only natural that ships should carefully avoid this marine rubbish heap, where the Atlantic shoots its refuse. It seems doubtful whether a sailing vessel would be able to cut her way into the thick network of weed even with a strong wind behind her. Besides, if the effort were rewarded with a first delusive success, there would be the almost certain danger that in the calm regions of the Sargasso Sea the space equalling the continent of Europe would probably require larger supplies than could be conveniently stowed. away in a small boat. Besides, there is no reason to suppose that the expe that the inner recesses of the Sargasso For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. |