BATTERSON & EISELE
CARRERE & HASTINGS, Architeits
IMPORTERS AND WORKERS OF
Marble,
Onyx and
Granite
Roman and Venetian Mosaics for Floors, Mantels,
Etc.
Ü
Office :
Times Building, New York.
Works :
Edgewater, New Jersey.
many cities in the outer world that are or have been likened to Paris, but a goodly proportion of these have no more right to such a comparison than has Caracas, and some of them less. A few fine shops that surprise the stranger by their presence, at rather remote intervals, in the Venezuelan capital, are sufficient to suggest Paris ; at other times it may be the sight alone of smartly-groomed persons or of stately equipages, with or without a supporting background. The good Père Labat, who visited Barbados in the early part of the eighteenth century, speaks of the jewellers and silversmiths’ shops of Bridgetown as having the brilliancy of those of the Paris boulevards, and many Barbadians of to-day seem to believe in the continued existence of this similarity; bulj a historian so partial to almost everything British (except political conditions) in the West Indies as was Froude, and who, in place of this assumed Parisian splendor, saw “only stores on the American pattern, for the most part American.,goods, bad in quality and extravagantly dear,” could not discover it. The spirit of this characterization might, indeed, almost be applied to the Venezuelan capital. True, the city is not wholly devoid of stately buildings, and the square containing the famous equestrian statue of Bolivar might by some be considered to breathe an air of subdued grandeur ; but there are no avenues to open up receding vistas, nothing to give perspective to the ill-sorted walls of stucco which bound the thoroughfares and give store-fronts of varied degrees of unattractiveness and color. Even the prin
cipal hotels are barely distinguishable by
external characters. Some of the side streets, indeed, recall to mind the streets of Cordova, in Spain, and one hopes among the interior courts to obtain glimpses of the house-gardens of Seville; but the eye searches in vain for the flower-draped balconies, in vain for those bits of grilled scenery which are the sunshine of the
Andalusian home. Dirt-heaps and dirt stare at one plentifully, but some say that this is a newly-acquired characteristic. To have seen Caracas in the days of Blanco ! This city, like most cities nowadays, is illumined by electric light, but it has not yet risen to the dignity of having electric tram cars. The mule-tram does its service as of old, and the type of construction adhered to is, I believe, the most primitive to be found anywhere, with the exception of that of Willemstad, the “spotless town” of the Island of Curaçao.—Angelo Heilprin, in New York Evening Post.
Post-Boxes.—Post-boxes—that is, pillar letter-boxes ; the wall-box, I think, came rather later—were put up first in London in 1852 or 1853, and were from the beginning painted scarlet or scarlet and black, apparently because scarlet was the color distinguishing “his majesty’s mails,” as seen in uniforms, mail-carts, etc., and in the gorgeous mail-coaches of yore, long before the advent here of the street post-box. In France small street letter-boxes attached to a building were first set up in the reign of Louis XIV, and my father, Rowland Hill, when visiting Paris in 1839 to study the working of the French postoffice—then in many ways far ahead of our own—no
ticed how highly they were appreciated by the Parisians, and on his return urged their adoption in our own country. But his postal reform being still considered in the official world highly “revolutionary,” some thirteen years were required to gain acceptance for this obvious boon, although the authorities consented to try the experiment of putting up one pillar letter-box in Westminster Hall. Happily, no harm came of the venture. My father’s reform was indeed adopted mainly on the instalment plan, nearly every improvement being slowly wrung out of the more or less unwilling powers that were, at times some years after being proposed. Several of the large towns in Ger
many had street letter-boxes well before we took them, and in the towns and vil
lages of the Channel Isles they had been long established. The islanders are said to claim that, thanks to the Norman Conquest, we belong to them, not they to us, but apparently they did not think it worth while to introduce their “Saxon” bondsmen to all the benefits of their superior civilization.—Notes and Queries.
Legality of Strikes. — “The right to strike for any cause or no cause is clearly and fully sustained by authority. Even a conspiracy to strike followed by legal damage, is not unlawful if formed to better labor conditions.” This is an extract from the decision of Judge A. L. Sanborn, of the United States District Court, which was handed down December 12 in the case of Allis-Chalmers Company against the Iron Moulders’ Union of Milwaukee. It is probably one of the first opinions wherein a
CARRERE & HASTINGS, Architeits
IMPORTERS AND WORKERS OF
Marble,
Onyx and
Granite
Roman and Venetian Mosaics for Floors, Mantels,
Etc.
Ü
Office :
Times Building, New York.
Works :
Edgewater, New Jersey.
many cities in the outer world that are or have been likened to Paris, but a goodly proportion of these have no more right to such a comparison than has Caracas, and some of them less. A few fine shops that surprise the stranger by their presence, at rather remote intervals, in the Venezuelan capital, are sufficient to suggest Paris ; at other times it may be the sight alone of smartly-groomed persons or of stately equipages, with or without a supporting background. The good Père Labat, who visited Barbados in the early part of the eighteenth century, speaks of the jewellers and silversmiths’ shops of Bridgetown as having the brilliancy of those of the Paris boulevards, and many Barbadians of to-day seem to believe in the continued existence of this similarity; bulj a historian so partial to almost everything British (except political conditions) in the West Indies as was Froude, and who, in place of this assumed Parisian splendor, saw “only stores on the American pattern, for the most part American.,goods, bad in quality and extravagantly dear,” could not discover it. The spirit of this characterization might, indeed, almost be applied to the Venezuelan capital. True, the city is not wholly devoid of stately buildings, and the square containing the famous equestrian statue of Bolivar might by some be considered to breathe an air of subdued grandeur ; but there are no avenues to open up receding vistas, nothing to give perspective to the ill-sorted walls of stucco which bound the thoroughfares and give store-fronts of varied degrees of unattractiveness and color. Even the prin
cipal hotels are barely distinguishable by
external characters. Some of the side streets, indeed, recall to mind the streets of Cordova, in Spain, and one hopes among the interior courts to obtain glimpses of the house-gardens of Seville; but the eye searches in vain for the flower-draped balconies, in vain for those bits of grilled scenery which are the sunshine of the
Andalusian home. Dirt-heaps and dirt stare at one plentifully, but some say that this is a newly-acquired characteristic. To have seen Caracas in the days of Blanco ! This city, like most cities nowadays, is illumined by electric light, but it has not yet risen to the dignity of having electric tram cars. The mule-tram does its service as of old, and the type of construction adhered to is, I believe, the most primitive to be found anywhere, with the exception of that of Willemstad, the “spotless town” of the Island of Curaçao.—Angelo Heilprin, in New York Evening Post.
Post-Boxes.—Post-boxes—that is, pillar letter-boxes ; the wall-box, I think, came rather later—were put up first in London in 1852 or 1853, and were from the beginning painted scarlet or scarlet and black, apparently because scarlet was the color distinguishing “his majesty’s mails,” as seen in uniforms, mail-carts, etc., and in the gorgeous mail-coaches of yore, long before the advent here of the street post-box. In France small street letter-boxes attached to a building were first set up in the reign of Louis XIV, and my father, Rowland Hill, when visiting Paris in 1839 to study the working of the French postoffice—then in many ways far ahead of our own—no
ticed how highly they were appreciated by the Parisians, and on his return urged their adoption in our own country. But his postal reform being still considered in the official world highly “revolutionary,” some thirteen years were required to gain acceptance for this obvious boon, although the authorities consented to try the experiment of putting up one pillar letter-box in Westminster Hall. Happily, no harm came of the venture. My father’s reform was indeed adopted mainly on the instalment plan, nearly every improvement being slowly wrung out of the more or less unwilling powers that were, at times some years after being proposed. Several of the large towns in Ger
many had street letter-boxes well before we took them, and in the towns and vil
lages of the Channel Isles they had been long established. The islanders are said to claim that, thanks to the Norman Conquest, we belong to them, not they to us, but apparently they did not think it worth while to introduce their “Saxon” bondsmen to all the benefits of their superior civilization.—Notes and Queries.
Legality of Strikes. — “The right to strike for any cause or no cause is clearly and fully sustained by authority. Even a conspiracy to strike followed by legal damage, is not unlawful if formed to better labor conditions.” This is an extract from the decision of Judge A. L. Sanborn, of the United States District Court, which was handed down December 12 in the case of Allis-Chalmers Company against the Iron Moulders’ Union of Milwaukee. It is probably one of the first opinions wherein a