54 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



labor leader, who so recently visited this 

 country. He says New York has more 

 poor than lyondon, the lower class are 

 worse than in lyondon and that vice is 

 greater here. Such utterances from a 

 man who is supposed to know, aston- 

 ished me. It is a fact which needs no 

 demonstration that every large city has its 

 poverty and its vice, and no amount of 

 reform movements can eradicate it. And 

 the larger the city the greater the evil. 

 And do you, my friends, imagine for one 

 moment that an old city like London, 

 with its 4,000,000 of people, can be bet- 

 ter than New York? Do you imagine 

 that New York can show places worse 

 than the ones I have just described to 

 3^ou ? And you must remember there is 

 much which I have not spoken about, 

 not being fit subjects for a lecture. 

 When we reflect that our city is de- 

 cidedly cosmopolitan, that we harbor the 

 refuse of other nationalities, we can feel 

 proud that we are what we are. 



But my five minutes about White- 

 chapel are now up, therefore we will go 

 to Holland. I promised to speak of the 

 dykes of this forlorn country, but at the 

 outset I wish you to distinctly under- 

 stand that although the country is below 

 the level of the sea it is not surrounded 

 by huge walls which keep back the 

 waters while the waves roll and roar far 

 above the heads of the inhabitants. 



I remember while at school reading of 

 the brave little boy who heard water 

 trickling through the dykes, and he put 

 his little fingers in the opening and thus 

 stopped the leakage and thereby saved 

 the whole country. And I remember 

 how the teacher told us what a good 

 little lad he was, and how little things 

 will prevent great accidents, and then we 

 would stare with open eyes and open 

 mouths while she told us to be good and 

 observe little things, and I longed for a 



dyke with a leak so that I could put my 

 finger in and become great. But now- 

 a days it is easy to become great. All 

 you need to do is to shout reform and 

 death to Tammany Hall — and there you 

 are ! 



As I was saying, in some places along 

 the shore we find a sea wall similar and 

 a little higher than ours at the Battery. 

 But in the interior we find the country 

 uneven, and at Rotterdam one section of 

 the city is 14 feet higher than the other. 



The city is interspersed with canals like 

 at Venice, and it was very interesting to 

 observe the canal boats being raised from 

 the lower to the upper section. The sys- 

 tem is the same as that employed in the 

 Erie canal of our State. The fields of Hol- 

 land are all surrounded by drains, con- 

 verting them into little islands, hence the 

 country is not adopted to vast agri- 

 cultural pursuits. 



But if we follow the source of the Rhine, 

 whose delta is in Holland, we soon reach 

 Germany, and here we find a different 

 state of things. The Germans are a 

 cultured enlightened people and stand 

 foremost amongst the people of the conti- 

 nent. But the subject which I have 

 selected for this evening is the concert 

 halls and beer gardens. It is said the 

 German is a great beer drinker. I won't 

 deny it, for he is. But if we compare 

 him with the Englander, we find the lat- 

 ter a far greater consumer; and statistics, 

 upon which we always like to rely to 

 prove our point, show that a larger quan- 

 tity of malt beverages are brewed in old 

 England than in the Fatherland. The 

 Briton likes his "alf-and-alf." 



During the course of my progress 

 through the German empire, I was greatly 

 surprised to find a decided absence of 

 intoxication. I wondered if the bever- 

 ages were less alcoholic, or if the German 

 constitution were much stronger than the 



