Harper's Round Table, June 18, 1895 Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PUDDING STICK]

This Department is conducted in the interest of Girls and Young Women, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor.

If I were you I would make up my mind, once for all, never to talk about ailments. A headache or neuralgia or a cough is hard enough to bear in one's own case; there is no need of troubling other people about it.

Among so many girls there are no doubt those who are not always well, and there may be some who have to suffer a great deal of pain, but the pain must be kept in its place, which is in the background, not the forefront of conversation.

Talk always of pleasant things, if you can, and of what is interesting to others rather than of what concerns yourself. The mistake often made by invalids is that their world being narrowed by confinement to their rooms or by the care their illness makes necessary, they fancy that their aches and pains, the medicines they have to take, and the diet they are obliged to be contented with are as important to other people as to themselves. This is a point to guard against. Let nothing about liniments and pills and prescriptions creep into your talk, for though you are an invalid to-day, you expect to be well to-morrow or next week, and illness is only temporary, while health is the rule, and the state to look forward to with eagerness and hope.

It is worth while for us all, even when suffering pain, to refrain from frowning and wrinkling up our faces, and saying impatient words. Every pa.s.sing thought and feeling write themselves upon the countenance, and the young girl is making day by day not only the woman she will be in character later on, but the woman she will be in looks. Handsome or plain, agreeable or the opposite, the woman of forty is dependent for her looks on the girl of fourteen. You owe an amount of thought and consideration to the woman you are going to be, and the friends who will love her, and so you must not let needless lines and furrows come to your pretty brows, but keep your foreheads smooth, and do not draw your lips down at the corners, nor go about looking unhappy. It is possible, even when bearing much pain, to wear a tranquil expression if one will, but remember that the tranquil mind in the end can conquer pain.

Crossing town the other day in haste to catch a train, the horse-car was three times blocked by great vans which stood upon the track. The van-drivers appeared to be unloading their goods in a very leisurely manner; to us in the car, with the precious minutes slipping away like grains of sand in the hour-gla.s.s, they seemed exceedingly slow and unhurried. I looked about on my fellow-pa.s.sengers. Some had flushed and angry faces, some could not sit still, but tapped the floor with their feet, and uttered exclamations, and looked at their watches. One or two stepped out with their bags and walked hastily onward. But a dear old lady in the corner of the car was a pattern of sweetness and amiability, and I heard her observe to her neighbor, "We will probably lose our train, but at this time of the day there are trains every half-hour, and it's never well to be put out by little accidents of this sort." She had the right philosophy.

Through life when little things go wrong it will be wise to accept the situation without fretting, and by maintaining composure, you will often be able to set them right again.

Mina K. asks whether it is proper to allow a friend whom she happens to meet in a public conveyance to pay her car fare and ferriage. As a rule it is not proper. The meeting is an incident, and does not affect the relative positions of either friend. Each should pay for herself, precisely as if she had not met the other. Of course, this rule is equally and perhaps more imperative when a girl happens to meet a man whom she knows, her friend or her brother's chum. He should not offer to pay for her, nor should she accept the offer if he make it. The only exceptions to this rule are such as commonsense indicate. A girl will not make a fuss nor quarrel about a matter of five cents with an elderly acquaintance, who might easily be her father or mother. Generally speaking, however, each person pays her own way, except when in company with others by invitation, and where she is the guest of her entertainer, who does not permit her to be at expense when sight-seeing or jaunting about.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Signature]

GREAT STATE PAPERS.

OUR LAWS AND PROCLAMATIONS.

BY HENRY CLEMENT HOLMES.

"Father," said my fourteen-year-old son, "Ted Nichols declared to-day that he had the Wilson tariff bill in his pocket. He said Mr. Wilson gave it to him to take to Ted's father, who is also from West Virginia, you know, to read, and say what he thought of it."

My son's tone had in it both incredulity and interest, and so I replied:

"I thought you had lived long enough in Was.h.i.+ngton not to be surprised at anything. Did not Senator Maybee read his speech to us the other evening, before he had delivered it in the Senate? And did we not, in the corridor of the State Department, recently meet the original Const.i.tution of the United States coming down the granite staircase three steps at a bound? You and I helped pick up the bits of gla.s.s from the broken frame, which our friend Cochrane had dropped, greatly to his alarm, in carrying it from a closet to the library.

"It would be quite possible for Ted Nichols, or any other lad, to have the Wilson tariff bill in his pocket, provided he took it at the right time. If Mr. Wilson should give it to you to carry to your father for examination, while your father's opinion was wanted regarding a proposed change, you could readily carry it in your empty lunch-basket. But if he waited until his bill became a law, you would need to be pretty big and pretty strong to carry it far.

"The Wilson, McKinley, and all tariff bills, the silver bill, on the authority of which the silver dollar in your pocket was coined, the anti-Chinese, and all similar laws of the United States, have, in their early stages, half a dozen different forms, but when engrossed and signed they have one unchangeable form that has obtained ever since the first law was pa.s.sed by the First Congress.

"I remember having seen in one of your Round Table puzzles a question about the 'Father of the Greenback.' The first draught of the law, which gave Mr. Chase this nickname, was written by Congressman Spalding, of the Buffalo, New York, district, on both sides of four sheets of common legal cap paper. Mr. Chase then made some changes in it, using red ink.

President Lincoln suggested some additional changes, making his notes on a slip of paper, which he pinned to one of the sheets.

"But that was before the day of type-writing machines. Nowadays first draughts of most bills are prepared on type-writers. In this form a bill is introduced into Congress, read by the clerk by t.i.tle, a number is given to it, and it is referred to the committee having in charge the business to which it relates. Once in committee, it is ordered printed, and the first draught, often bearing the compositor's marks, may be returned to the author of the measure as a souvenir. At least the first draught of the legal-tender act, bearing Mr. Chase's and Mr. Lincoln's suggestions about changes, was returned to Mr. Spalding, and by him kindly shown to me.

"Great measures, such as the Wilson, the McKinley, and the seigniorage bills, are changed many times before they are pa.s.sed by Congress, and each change means new printed copies. Some of these copies are printed on paper about the size of a HARPER'S ROUND TABLE leaf. The type is very large, and the lines are very wide apart and numbered. Other printed copies are in the form of a pamphlet, in order that they may be mailed to friends of the member whose measure it is, and to men whose business is likely to be affected.

"Only a very small fraction of the bills that reach the pamphlet stage are ever finally pa.s.sed and become laws. But even this small fraction is large enough to fill many shelves in the State Department, where originals of all laws are kept. The originals are engrossed on parchment that is fourteen by nineteen inches in size, and bound into book form.

The penmans.h.i.+p is coa.r.s.e, but very regular, and all of the signatures are originals, not copies, because this form of the law is the one that all copies must conform to--the one that the President of the United States is sworn to execute."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "SHERMAN" SILVER LAW--t.i.tLE PAGE.]

"But let me tell you just how the Sherman silver-purchase law looks. You remember this law. Or at least you recollect how Congress sat in extra session for several months of 1893 in order to repeal one clause of it.

At the top of the large parchment sheet there is a printed heading:

"'FIFTY-FIRST CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES,

"AT ITS FIRST SESSION,

"Begun and Held in the City of Was.h.i.+ngton,' etc.

"In the middle of the line are these words,

"AN ACT.

"Immediately thereafter follows the writing, which extends in a single line across the entire page. It describes the bill thus, 'Directing the purchase of silver bullion, and the issue of Treasury notes thereon, and for other purposes.' There is a s.p.a.ce, and then follows the enacting clause, 'Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives,' etc.

The text of the law, written in this large hand, fills two and a half pages, the right-hand page containing the text, and the left-hand page being blank. Around the edge of both written and unwritten pages is a pale red line or border rule.

"At the head of the first sheet, and written over the printed t.i.tle, appears the name 'Kennedy,' carelessly written with a blue pencil, and the initials 'C. B. F.' scrawled across the top in red. These are the attests of the Representative and Senator, respectively, who examined this engrossed copy of the law before it had been sent to the President for his signature, to make certain that the engrossing clerk had committed no errors, and that this original was the same as the form that pa.s.sed Congress."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "SHERMAN" SILVER LAW--LAST PAGE WITH SIGNATURES.]

"At about the middle of the third page are the signatures of the presiding officers of the Senate and House. Vice-President Morton did not sign the original Sherman silver-purchase law on behalf of the Senate, but Speaker Reed did on behalf of the House. Senator Ingalls, as President _pro. tem._ of the Senate, signed on behalf of that body, and when he had affixed his name he thoughtfully noted in the margin the hour of the day--'12.37 P.M.' The signature of President Harrison comes last, and is at the lower left-hand side of the paper."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "McKINLEY" TARIFF LAW--t.i.tLE PAGE]

"The original McKinley tariff law is written on parchment similar to that of the Sherman law, and like it, it is bound into a big book that contains the original doc.u.ments of many other laws. It fills sixty-three of these large parchment sheets, and the engrossing of it was done by three different clerks. The t.i.tle of the bill is, 'An Act to Reduce the Revenues and to Equalize Duties.' It is attested in the same manner as the Sherman law, and signed by Speaker Reed, Vice-President Morton, and President Harrison. The Wilson bill, which supplants the McKinley bill, fills about as many pages of the heavy unruled parchment, which, by-the-way, we send to England to buy. The Wilson bill mentions almost every article of commerce that one can think of, grouping similar things into paragraphs, and naming the duties that shall be paid upon each.

There is a long list of articles on which there is no duty."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "McKINLEY" TARIFF LAW--LAST PAGE WITH SIGNATURES.]

"Proclamations by the President of the United States have maintained one form since the foundation of the government. The original Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln is written upon very heavy white unruled paper that is folded once. The fold is at the left, like a sheet of four-paged letter-paper, and each page is ten by fourteen inches in size. It begins, as do all Presidential proclamations, 'By the President of the United States of America--A Proclamation.'

"The first line is written with a pen in a bold hand, and the words, 'A Proclamation,' form a line of themselves--printing characters, although executed with a pen. It proclaims that on a certain date, and under certain conditions, a race is free from bondage, but it nowhere calls itself an 'Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation.' That is a popular name given to this, one of the most famous of state papers. The text is in the hand-writing of Secretary Seward--a hand that was strikingly like that of Mr. Lincoln.

"Thanksgiving proclamations, which you see reprinted in the newspapers, are prepared in the same form. The one issued by President Cleveland last autumn fills only two pages.

"Our reciprocity treaty with the Brazil Republic is similar to other treaties, with original and exchange copies, and is written in English and Spanish. The doc.u.ment proclaiming it begins by quoting from the McKinley law, by which it is authorized, and recites that we, having agreed to let in free of duty sugar, coffee, mola.s.ses, and hides from Brazil, are ent.i.tled to send to Brazil, and have admitted to that country free of duty, a long line of products of the United States.

"At the bottom of the third page--proclamations, unlike laws, are written on both sides of the paper--is the Great Seal of the United States, and near this seal is the signature of President Harrison, preceded by the words, 'By the President.' At the left, and just beneath the great seal, is the signature of the Secretary of State, James G.

Blaine.

"Mr. Blaine's writing, like Mr. Cleveland's, was small, regular, and easily mistaken for a feminine one. His signature to this reciprocity proclamation is so small and effeminate that it does not seem to stand for the stalwart man who wrote it. Even less does President Cleveland's womanlike signature hint the giant in stature that he is."