Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 099, March, 1876Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 099, March, 1876
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
The country and the city themselves were a study to foreigners in
many of the modes of life. The extent to which the utilization, as
stationary and locomotive machines, of pigs, cows, women and dogs
was carried elicited constant remark from the Western tourists, with
sundry moral conclusions perhaps too hastily arrived at. This outside
feature of the exposition may serve as an admonition to put our own
surroundings in order. They are not apt to expose us to such comments
as naturally occur to those who have never seen dogs and damsels in
harness together; but other vulnerable points may peradventure be
descried. We must demonstrate our civilization to be complete at
all points, and not simply a coddled exotic under glass. What if our
Viennese guests, physically a stouter race than we, should pronounce
our women _too_ obviously not hod-carriers, and painfully unaccustomed
to wheeling anything heavier than an arm-chair or a piano-stool?
In that land of music concerts could not fail to be a leading feature.
The Boston improvement of emphasizing the bass with discharges of
distant artillery, or its equivalent, the slamming of cellar-doors
nearer by, was not attained. Noise and harmony were kept at arm's
length apart.
The illustration of homes was made a specialty. As at Paris, the
peoples brought their dwellings, or, more often, the dwellings came
without their occupants. The four-footed and feathered live-stock
were of more indubitable authenticity. The display of all the European
breeds of cattle and horses--English Durhams, Alderneys and racers,
Russian trotters, Holstein cows and Flemish mares, the gray oxen of
Hungary and the buffaloes of the Campagna, the wild red pigs of the
Don and the razor-backs of Southern France--was calculated to amuse,
if but moderately to edify, our breeders of Ohio, Kentucky and New
York. A thousand horses and fifteen hundred horned cattle comprised
this congress, while two hundred and fifty pigs were deemed enough to
represent the grunters of all nations.
Of animals in another form, the preserved meats of Australia, sent
sound across the tropics to the amount of seventeen thousand tons in
1872, against _four_ tons in 1866, had their use of instruction to
our packers. So with the improved display of agricultural produce from
Southern Russia, our chief competitor in the grain-market. Our reapers
and threshers are supplanting, in Eastern Europe, the ridiculous
flails, sickles and straight-handled scythes that figured at New York
in 1853. We have sent the Dacians, Huns and Sarmatians weapons to
cut our own commercial throats. There are more enriching articles of
export than wheat, as we must continue to learn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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