BOSTON EVENING TRANSCRIPT. MONDAY, MAY 16, 1892. 
ways justified by the event. In fact, it is for 
the interest of most trusts to keep the price 
of the product low, in order to avoid in- 
viting competition, to placate popular .senti- 
ment, and to extend their trade. The aggre- 
gation of capital under one executive man- 
agement which controls a large plant often 
gives a trust the opportunity to lower prices, 
to figures even with, or perhaps below, those 
that obtained in a period of competition, and 
every man concerned knows that the cheaper 
the public can buy the more it will buy. 
Such is the "platform-,”, to adopt political 
parlance, on which the trusts stand to 
justify themselves before the country. 
The argument for the trusts is reflected in 
a communication protesting against Gov- 
ernor Brackett’s denunciation, to he found 
in another column of today’s Transcript, 
which is from the pen of an eminent Boston 
lawyer. We find in the New York Sun that 
“Matthew Marshall’’ has something to say 
very fairly on the general aspect of the trust 
question from the mercantile standpoint. 
“Matthew Marshall,” we understand, is the 
pen name of a well-known financier. His 
summing up is expressed in the following 
paragraph : 
For all this, both combinations of capital 
and unions of Workingmen are as distinct 
an advance over the guerilla warfare of 
competition as it prevailed before they es- 
tablished themselves, as the consolidation 
of modern civilized society into a few great 
nations is an advance beyond the multi- 
tude of petty tribes of savages which it has 
supplanted. Only we must not he too san- 
guine and expect that by any ingenious in- 
vention we can extirpate an essential ele- 
ment of human nature. So long as the 
world is constituted as it is, and men are 
what they are, they will strive to get the 
better of one another, and the most we can 
do is to secure the greatest possible benefit 
from that strife with the least injury. 
By the last words it is evident that from 
the mercantile or commercial standpoint the 
popular standpoint is in sight all the time. 
The popular sentiment is strong against 
trusts, and what is the popular sentiment be- 
comes in a free country the political senti- 
ment. That this is so is made plain by the 
eagerness with which prominent leaders in 
all parties disavow any sympathy with trusts, 
and by the ease with which legislation 
against them is enacted. Much of this legis- 
lation is nothing more than the firing of 
blank cartridges, intended to deceive, but 
intended to deceive only the general public. 
A good deal of the legislation against the 
trusts that is honestly intended is found 
inoperative in the end, and must 
be inoperative, for it is superseded 
by the older law of competition, 
which has its roots in human nature, and 
which impels men to rush in wherever they 
see other men making money, or wherever 
they think men are making money. Thus it 
follows that trusts are likely to he paralleled 
just as railroads have been paralleled. The 
political relations of trusts and combinations 
to government involves, and must involve, 
public agitation, for wherever they are 
against corporation laws of the States as the 
laws were previous to their organization, the 
law must either resist or surrender, and the 
latter is an alternative never contemplated 
without popular indignation. The further 
the development of the trust system pro- 
ceeds, the nearer draws on the question of 
nationalization of our corporation laws, in 
which lurks the possibility of the extension 
of the “national” ideas to national owner- 
ship of railroads and mines and transporta- 
tion interests, from which to manufacturing 
interests would be but a short step. 
The Board of Aldermen of Cambridge has 
coupled as a condition to its grant of authority 
to use the trolley system on Harvard Bridge, 
that the cars shall run up to the Tremont House 
or some equally central point. This is some- 
thing of a poser tor the West End, which would 
have no objection to filling Tremont street with 
cars, if the people of Boston did not protest 
against such an occupancy ef the street. A Cam- 
bridge paper suggests that there should be an 
agitation in favor of widening Court street, in 
order that the Bowdoin square cars might run 
through to Treaaont street. They would un- 
questionably be a great advantage to Cam- 
bridge residents and might attract some trade 
to Boston which would otherwise not cross 
Charles river. But all the agitation possible in 
Cambridge could never widen Court street in 
Boston. The relations of the two cities are 
such at this time as to give no immediate hope 
that Court street will he widened, largely for 
the benefit of citizens of Cambridge. 
It was quite natural that the President of 
! Sorosis should object at Chicago to cheap fun 
i and belittling reports of the meeting of the fed- 
i eration of women. Boys who have few ideas be- 
I yond their pencils are sometimes sent by sensa- 
Ltional journals for the purpose of making “tak- 
ling” reports of large meetings of women. They 
i have done their work well when they havu 
? told the color of the dresses of the women who 
! read the papers, or describe any small peculiar- 
| ities of speech or manner. It is probable that 
' Mrs. Lozier’s indignation was directed not 
I against reporters in general, but against the 
abusos of the reporters. Most of the women en- 
i gaged in these conventions are deeply in earn- 
f est in regard to the objects of their societies. 
! And to be reported superficially or in a guying 
I spirit which takes no note of the underlying 
! earnestness is naturally as trying to women as 
it would he to men. 
The presidential lightning struck in the 
[ longitude of Massachusetts and Virginia for ! 
| many years ; then it struck in the longitude of 
i New York and Tennessee for a while. Ohio 
| drew the nation’s electric choice times 
| enough to make her proud of the phrase “an 
Ohio man.” Indiana took her turn. Now 
[ Illinois and Iowa are preening their heads in 
the direction of the, holt. Iowa is west of 
Illinois; but Illinois remembers that she gave 
} Lincoln and Grant to the nation in an off time, 
| and will not count herself skipped in the line 
1 of the presidential lightning if it should strike 
| across the Mississippi river for the first time in 
the history of the nation. 
The Cambridge water front on Charles River, 
j between West Boston Bridge and Craigie’s 
| Bridge, will certainly be much improved in 
( appearance when the stone wall that is being 
built shall have been completed. It will not 
[ have the ornamental appearance of Charles- 
i bank on the Boston side, but it will give the 
observer an idea that Cambridge is beginning 
to awake to the necessity of making its bank of 
[ Charles River more agreeable to the eye than it 
; has been of late years. 
THE LISTENER. 
If you come with the Listener to a certain 
• lately-cleared but now bush-grown field not 
very far from Boston, on the edge of a large 
| wood— a wild spot, stony ana yet not innocent 
[ of hogs and muddy places here and there— you 
| may hear and see one of the strangest and most 
1 delightful of performances. It is the night-flight 
and lore-song of the woodcock— that queer, 
' uncouth water-bird who has taken to the land; 
! whose ugly bull head, short legs, long bill and 
[ ungraceful ordinary movements are laughable; 
I who is. nevertheless, worshipped by sportsmen; 
j who is divine on the table, and who is capable 
I of the most remarkable union of grace in move- 
f ment and musical utterance, in his one great 
j rapturous performance that so few people have 
i seen or ever will see. 
7"f + 
You may see and hear it, that is, if you come 
l to the place when the bird is disposed to per- 
form, and arrive at the right time, just long 
enough after sunset so that the dusk shall 
have barely begun to gather, without making 
[ it dark as yet. Then you will very likely hear 
[ a sharp, grating bird-scund, which at first you 
[ take to be the shriek of a night hawk. But it 
comes from the level of the ground, and is less 
musical, if anything, than the night-hawk’s 
[ song. You hear it repeated at intervals, 
"Speek, spee-eek> spee-uk” from the ground 
not far away. This is the “bleating” 
of the woodcock. You listen curiously 
while the bird reels off this harsh and 
disagreeable soliloquy; perhaps you have 
heard that it is preliminary to his much more 
interesting performance, and you are impatient 
to see and hear that. The sveek is intermitted 
for a moment; and then you hear, seemingly 
from far away— and yet is it not in your very 
ears?— a steady, musical, whistling crescendo 
sound. There he goes! The woodcock’s ascent 
has begun. Now you see him, rising in a slant- 
ing straight line, coming straight over your 
bead, his body held stiff and taut, his wings 
heating swiftly, his course steadily up and 
away ; you fancy he is going to fly away out of 
sight; but whilo he is still in plain view, he 
veers to the right and begins a long curve or 
circle. still upward; and all the while continues 
that singular, musical whistling crescendo. 
-f- 4~ 
Now he is fairly launched upon his great 
ascending spiral. He rises more and more 
swiftly; the note made by his whistle takes a 
higher and higher pitch, and the throbs are 
closer together. His spiral has at first covered 
so wide a space that you have been compelled 
to twist your body upon the ground where you 
are crouching to keep your eyes upon him ; but 
now, as he mounts higher, the circles which he^ 
is describing become smaller and smaller^ 
the same time his whistle— one can only call it a 
whistle for want of a better word, for the sound 
is indescribable— takes a sort of rhythm ; it is 
like the rhythm which a person falls into who 
is playing scales upon the upper octaves of a 
piano so rapidly that he can no longer ! 
make them sound regular and even. Higher, 
higher mounts the bird until he is a mere speck 
and yet you can still see the swift beat- 
ing of those wings. Now the circles of 
his spiral are very small ; he is mad with 
ecstacy. For an instant he seems to flutter at 
the very apex as if he must die with joy if he 
went any further, and yet were unwilling to 
descend ; and just at that fluttering instant you 
begin to hear a new and still more ecstatic 
sound— a soft murmuring note between a whis- 
per and a cry— zup-zilp— then the old whistle 
begins spasmodically again— the bird flutters 
and falls a little— zwp-zwp-zwp— -that soft, deli- 
cious, intensely musical note is repeated — the 
bird seems to tip downward sidewise slowly, 
reluctantly— the whistle and the other wonder- 
ful note begin to sound simultaneously; and as 
the bird sinks and falls faster and faster from 
his height, he gives himself up in a melancholy 
rapture to this steadily repeated sound ; and now 
he drops, limp and quite silent, and so swiftly 
that you fancy he must be hurt, straight to the 
very spot in the field from which he went up ; 
and in another moment you hear once more the 
harsh call : Spee-eek—speek—spee-uk! 
■4 - -j- -J- 
It is indeed a fall from the sublime to the 
ridiculous. Here he is grating, squeaking away ; 
again on the earth— this bird which but the 
moment before had been rapt in an aerial 
ecstacy. He keeps it up for two or three minutes 
at least— a longer time, probably, than he has 
spent in his musical flight ; for, though you were 
too much excited while the performance lasted 
to take any note of time, it is probably not 
longer than a minute and a half. But he does 
not “bleat” very long. Once more you hear 
that vague whistle, far away and yet so near, 
and you know he is mounting again; once 
more he shoots straight over vour head; and 
again he is mounting his ecstatic spiral— accel- 
erating, climbing the musical scale as well as 
the vault of heaven ; his whistle getting all the 
weird effect of a sound coming from high in the 
air, and yet becoming more clearly to he 
heard as the creature goes up. Once more the 
attainment of the apex, once more that deli- 
cious reluctance to return to earth, once more ! 
that most musical-melancholy whispering, 
once more the drop straight to earth and the re- 
commencement of. the harsh quacking refrain 
there. By and by he goes up again; and 
you listen and watch, enchanted, until, 
with the increasing darkness, and the height of 
his ascent, you lose sight of the bird, and 
his performance is to the ear only— a voice and 
nothing more— and yet the more intensely 
weird because you cannot see whence it comes. 
Very likely the performance is repeated seven 
or eight times. You wonder that the little ] 
bird can find the strength to make such a series 
of tremendous flights; and while you are won- 
dering, and incidentally listening to a whip- | 
poor-will who is singing a loud complain^from 
the edge of the woods close by, you become 
aware that the speek, svee-eek is no longer j 
sounding ; and you listen in vain for any far- 
ther music from vour woodcock. 
4-4 — h 
But unless you are a dull sort of person you 
carry the singular music home with you and { 
hear it again and again, and wonder at it, as i 
you lie in bed. Never, you think, was utter ^ 
rapture so completely expressed at once in ac- 
tion and in sound. You wonder, as everybody j 
has done who has heard the sound and seen the j 
sight, how the whistling is produced— whether j 
it is the swift rushing of the bird’s wings or £ 
song from his throat. You fancy that it must j 
he done with his wings, because it seems im- 
possible that the creature could fly with such \ 
force and sing all the time. But the descend- 
ing zilp zup— that is surely done with the throat, 
for you have heard the whistling, like an ac- 
companiment or obbligato in it, at least apart of 
the time. Its musical quality is as unquestion- j 
able as it is indescribable; and somehow it 
seems to you as much a miracle as it would ? 
seem to hear a swan sing. Rather more, in- j 
deed, for the swan on the water is always beau- 
tiful at least, and the woodcock is never beau- j 
tiful. — 
