Mechanics' Institute, San Francisco.
By Editor
THE twentieth Industrial Exhibition of this Institute is now being held. In past years this Institute has done much to enable the visitor to appreciate the wonderful resources of California. We have not yet found time to visit the present exhibition, but the papers give a favorable report. We shall try to visit it, and note its progress. WHEN we open an honest-looking paper and begin to read an article upon a subject of which we wish to know something more, and the article suddenly runs into a puff of a "patent medicine," we are simply disgusted with the paper, and it then and there in our eyes loses about fifty per cent. of its value for reliability. But when we read a made-up story of some man, "poor but honest," who has suddenly become rich by investing in a ticket in the celebrated lottery swindle, we do not say much, as we do not wish to use language which would express our feelings. We are strong in our conviction that it is not right for parents to allow their children to read such papers. The mania for gambling is strong enough now to ruin thousands every year; and nothing fires up the imagination and stimulates the gambling propensities of the young so readily as these lottery swindling stories. We would just as soon recommend the young to resort to faro and kindred games, and picture to their fancies the fabulous sums gained by gamblers in a single night, as to publish these stories.