Mind Over Matter

1895

The Poor Reader of the Astor Library and His Luxurious Feast.

His coat had the olive tint of age and exposure, the edge of the sleeves wore as frayed as a decrepit toothbrush, and the bottoms of his shiny black trousers might have been exhibited as a piece of rare old tapestry. The hat which he laid on the table of the Astor library reading room was a picturesque ruin, and his linen was clean, but starchless, and had evidently been rough laundered at home. The man within these clothes was tall and lank, and the top story of the man was a fine patriarchal head, with a high, narrow forehead, from which the gray hair had long ago fallen out in the march of years, and his eyes were those of a thinker.

As he sat down he was all aglow with the mild excitement of the book man, for there had been handed out to him an uncut magazine, that cheerful and airy periodical, The International Journal of Ethics, and as he slid the broad ivory paper knife between its leaves there was a twinkle of satisfaction in his eyes that would not have come if he had just been bowed to by the richest man in New York. With him the opening of those pages was a work of literary sensuality, and when at last it was finished he laid the knife down with a sigh. But in another moment he was all aglow again, and settling himself back in his chair he propped the magazine against his poor old hat and plunged into a ten page article on "Luxury."

It was a triumph of mind over matter which would have made old Plato pop off his pedestal in the lobby below for very joy could he but have seen it. — New York Sun.

The Weariness of Wealth

1916

Interviewed for the American Magazine, Charles M. Schwab remarks that there is no enjoyment in great wealth — that a reasonable man with $10,000 to $12,000 a year is getting enough to satisfy all his needs, and that to get more is to invite unhappiness.

"One soon wearies," he says, "of riding about for pleasure in private yachts and private cars."

This is the sort of thing which everybody hears at one time or another and which nobody wholly believes. Mr. Schwab happens to prefer power to other things that money can buy. Dominance in big business takes the place with him which the pursuit of pleasure holds with some other man.

Mr. Morgan went in for world power in finance, but did not despise his yacht or his art collections. He did not prate of a lack of enjoyment in the smaller personal satisfactions possible through his great wealth.

To men of ordinary means, the luxuries born of wealth are most conspicuous, most appealing. Private yachts and private trains and motor cars and palatial homes are visible, tangible things. Men fortunately can be content without them, but the conviction that they are altogether a weariness will be difficult to carry. — The New York World.

The Growing Passion for Music

1906

By Rupert Hughes

Whatever the percentage of American musical illiteracy may have been a few years ago, it is beyond denial that there is a tremendous change at work. The whole nation is feeling a musical uplift like a sea that swells above a submarine earthquake.

The trouble hitherto has not been that Americans were of a fibre that was dead to musical thrill. Our hearts are not of flannel, and we are not a nation of soft pedals. We have simply been too busy hacking down trees and making bricks without straw, to go to music school. But now, the sewing machine, the telephone, the typewriter and the trolley car are sufficiently installed to give us leisure to take up music and see what there is in it.

We are beginning to learn that, while The Arkansas Traveler, Money Musk, and Nellie Was a Lady are all very well in their way, there are higher and more interesting things in music. There is an expression which musicians hear every day: "I am passionately fond of music but I don't understand it. I know what I like, but I can't tell why."

This speech has become a byword among trained musicians, but it indicates a widespread condition that is at once full of pathos and of hope. America as a nation is "passionately fond of music." It needs only an education in the means of expression. — Good Housekeeping.



Much Against Being Rich

1906

Bishop Gore was the preacher at the opening of the English Church Congress. "The late master of Balliol," he told the great congregation, "used often to say, in his detached way, that he was afraid there was much more in the New Testament against being rich and in favor of being poor than we liked to recognize."

Cleo de Merode and La Belle Otero — A Great Rivalry

1907

Will She Wed Just To Show Rival She Can?

The Bitter Rivalry Between the Two Famous Dancers, La Belle Otero and Cleo de Merode.

Has Long Been a Source of Amusement to Paris.

La Belle Otero wills to wed. All Paris is betting that Cleo de Merode must follow suit. The rivalry between these two beauties of the Parisian stage is so great that one never permits the other to enjoy an achievement without immediately attempting to eclipse it.

It has long been a favorite joke of the gay French capital that if Merode got a hat worth 500 francs, Otero would immediately spend twice that sum for a hat of similar design, only manifestly finer in quality and mere luxurious.

If Otero got a dress, Merode drew from her enormous profits in the Congo ventures of King Leopold of Belgium enough money to enable her to cast the creation of Otero's modiste into the shade.

Some years ago an admirer of Otero presented her, says a Paris correspondent to an eastern contemporary, with an automobile worth 25,000 francs. Shortly after Merode startled Paris by appearing with two automobiles. The first of these was an exact counterpart of the one Otero had recently acquired. It was the identical make, colored the same and furnished in every detail so as to be a perfect reproduction.

In this rode Merode's maid and dog.

A few yards back, in an infinitely finer machine, in fact in what has been said to be the costliest one Paris had at that time turned out, rode Merode.

Otero was so angered by this incident that she sold her automobile for only half what it cost, and with the proceeds bought a dog of the same breed as Merode's only a much finer specimen.

These instances are fair illustrations of how the two beauties have vied to outdo each other.

It is not difficult to understand how in the first place the contention began. Both made the same bid for popular favor, being dancers and famous beauties. Otero was the first to flash into brilliancy, and she was the adored of the Paris jeunesse doree before Merode had quit the obscurity of a minor ballet place in the Grand Opera house.

But though Merode arrived a little bit late, her activities soon atoned for lost time.

Her curious style of hairdressing — the arrangements of her lovely locks by bands, so that they encircled her face, but kept the ears completely covered, piqued curiosity. Some of her critics whispered that she had been born without ears, and produced photographs to show that even at the age of 10, long before she had dreamed of going on the stage, she dressed her hair in the same bandeaux.

La Belle Otero, then in the zenith of her glory, is given credit for spreading the report that the closely bound tresses of the younger woman concealed a horrible deformity, which, if revealed, would immediately dispel any claim that the new dancer had to beauty.

This bit of criticism, whether true or false, naturally did not have the effect of endearing Otero to Merode, and from that time an unceasing rivalry has existed.

A great artist pictured Otero as the spirit of "Terpsichore." It was a masterpiece of art, and immediately Merode felt a tingling to have her beauties reproduced.

Two famous artists obliged. Alfred Grevin put her in his group, arranged for the waxworks, "Behind the Scenes at the Opera," in company with such celebrities as Gounod, Rose Caron, Felix Faure and other great ones.

The sensation this picture made was nothing to what followed when a few years later, the eminent sculptor, Falguierre, almost raised a riot with his life-sized nude of Merode, in pink marble, which was exhibited at the Paris salon.

This was a notable triumph for Merode, which she enjoyed to the full, and the point of it was in no sense spoiled by the saying of Otero's that she too might be similarly presented, but that her decency was too great for her to consent.

While Merode, though famous, was still struggling along on a comparatively small income, Otero revelled in wealth, and her wonderful toilettes were the despair of the younger woman.

Merode had admirers, but none who could maintain her on the luxurious scale in which Otero lived.

None — until the King of Belgium came along.

The venerable monarch was quickly attracted by the slender dancer of the Grand Opera, and by a still greater marvel continued to show an abiding interest in her, even after his visit to Paris had ended.

Merode revelled to the full in her opportunity to pay back with interest all the slights she had suffered at the hands of Otero.

The king, recognizing her genuine business ability, gave her liberal interests in his infamous rubber ventures in the Congo Free State, and Cleo managed these with such consummate financial skill that they doubled in value, until it is said she is somewhere near being a millionaire in her own right.

Cleo has handled this wealth with excellent prudence, and has refrained from any prodigality.

Only in matters involving her undying dislike of Otero has she cut loose from caution, and with malicious joy she has made it a point to duplicate every purchase of Otero, and add just enough additional to go her rival one better. But then some admiring masculine has usually paid the bill, Cleo's fortune has not suffered. It must be admitted that Cleo, worsted at first, had reached a few weeks ago a point where she had clearly the better of the battle. She is younger than Otero, and her fortune is greater; therefore her chances for future popularity better. Moreover, the prestige of her connection with the King of Belgium has ever been a thorn in the side of Otero.

But now the situation has undergone a sudden change.

Otero has made a new and unexpected play that temporarily puts Merode in the shade.

The older woman is going to have a husband.

Moreover, he is an enormously wealthy husband, one Rene Webb, an Englishman.

Otero was a long while making up her mind to play her last card and give her hand to this British suitor, for, as she frankly admits, the humdrum of being an English matron does not attract her.

But Webb's importunities won the day, and now Otero is scornfully asking what man ever wanted to marry Merode, especially a man who was fitting in every particular, a gentleman and a man of wealth and taste?

Mr. Webb has already spent a fortune on Otero in jewels, help for her family, contributions to charities in which she is interested, and in a magnificent palace which the pair will inhabit.

Otero will not withdraw from the footlights. This might give Merode a chance to say that the charms of the older woman have waned so that the public no longer want to see her. She will continue to dance, but in the future she will be known as Mrs. Webb, her husband having insisted on this deference to his name.

Merode faces the most critical stage of the long rivalry. Otero is giving out all details of the magnificence of the new life into which she will pass, and insinuating that in the future she will only appear in public when she pleases, and that the receipts of her performances she will give to charity. "An act of generosity which other dancers are either too poor or too selfish to perform," as she puts it.

Half a dozen suitors, who have long vainly wooed the beautiful Cleo, are hoping that to get even she will likewise take a life partner. Paris thinks she will.

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, Jan. 6, 1907, page 9, back section.

County Jail Could Be New Country Club

Kingston, New York, 1916

STREET GOSSIP ABOUT TOWN

We see that it is now recommended that the county jail be supplied with hot water. We always labored under the impression that it was only those who "get into hot water" ever went to jail.

Our own report of an inspection of the Ulster county jail made after reading in The Freeman how the jail needed shower baths, hot water and other luxuries:

It was exceedingly gratifying to find all parts of the jail satisfactorily clean. In this connection we would say, however, that it works an unusual hardship on a prisoner confined in the jail as he is not used to such cleanliness, and it is liable to make him homesick. We would therefore recommend that the jail be kept not quite so clean.

We also noticed that the prisoners were forced to sleep in bunks. This inflicts untold privation on a prisoner, especially when he is confined in the jail for any length of time. We would recommend that brass beds be installed in each cell.

Prisoners are also forced to make up their own beds each morning. This should not be allowed to continue. The county should employ a chambermaid as it is not a man's work to make up his own bed.

Another bad feature of our present system in the handling of prisoners is the question of meals and the prisoner has absolutely no choice in the matter. He must eat whatever the jail authorities provide.

This is not right and the system should be abolished and arrangements made with the leading hotels to supply the meals.

We therefore recommend that each cell be equipped with a telephone so that the prisoner may have the privilege of calling up the hotel chef and ordering and selecting his own meals.

The idea that a man who commits crime is sent to jail as a punishment is no longer tolerated in the best society of long haired men and short haired women and is old-fashioned. We should remember that a jail is not intended for the punishment, but the uplift of the prisoner. Spell "uplift" in capital letters.

If you don't believe us we simply refer you to any report of an inspection of the jail made in the past few years.

As everyone knows the average jailbird is madly anxious to bathe himself. Usually when out of jail he bathes once each year, and that in July, but as soon as he is confined in jail the unnatural desire assails him to bathe every day.

"We recommend therefore that a large swimming pool be constructed on the first floor, and a shower bath be installed in each cell.

After our inspection of the jail we have reached the following conclusions which we group under the head of further recommendations:

The jail ceils are altogether too small and each prisoner should be furnished with a room at least 10 by 12 feet with hot and cold water, bath, gas and electricity, telephone. brass bed, and all the most modern improvements. He should also be given an electric fan for warm nights.

Each prisoner should be allowed two boxes of cigars a week, several packages of pipe and chewing tobacco at the expense of the county. He should also be given his favorite beverage in as large quantities as he may desire.

An elevator should be installed in the jail as it is too much to ask a prisoner to walk up to the third tier of cells.

We also recommend that the prisoners be furnished with Fords by the county so that they may enjoy some slight recreation in touring about the city and county when it is fair weather.

Another recommendation is that the rear of the jail yard should be excavated, a large pond built and stocked with fish and several rowboats placed thereon so that prisoners who do not care for automobiling may fish and boat to their heart's content.

In conclusion we rise to say that when our recommendations are carried out, as they should be, we expect to hit a policeman over the head with a club so that Recorder Lang will sentence us to at least sixty days in the new county clubhouse.

—The Kingston Daily Freeman, Kingston, New York, June 30, 1916, page 6.