Editorial Notes and Notices
By Editor
WE have a variety of questions on hand awaiting answers. Our friends will please exercise some patience; we will try to attend to them before long. WE have received a letter from the "far East" thanking us for our "Short Musical Notes." But we are not sanguine in regard to any great and good result. No doubt they will be appreciated by those who do not need them! CALIFORNIA is like to be a severe sufferer from insect pests. Besides those infesting fruit trees grasshoppers, or rather locusts, are entirely destroying vegetation in some localities. Ranchmen report everything ruined in one day; both vegetables and fruit. A CARD from our old-time friend, Brother Joseph Clarke, informs us that they have been called to take charge of the Mission Reading Rooms in St. Louis, Mo., 2339 Chestnut St. We pray that the blessing of Heaven may rest upon them and their important work. WE have never advised our friends to move to California, and do not advise them to do so now. But if there are several families who wish to settle together in Southern California, on ranches suitable for fruit, stock, and bee culture, with good water, we invite them to correspond with us. THE general meetings have so engrossed our time and attention for the last two weeks that we have not been able to give all the time we wished to work in the office. The annual meetings of the College and Health Retreat compel us to leave again before the paper goes to press. Providence favoring, we hope to settle down to our work in a few days. WE cheerfully publish obituaries, of reasonable length, and request our friends in all cases to send them as soon as possible after the death occurs, giving date and place. But it is contrary to our rule to publish poetry with such notices—a rule from which we have never yet departed. Obituary poetry is not generally of a high cast, and is of interest to only a very few, while our paper goes to many thousands, and to all parts of the world. The circumstances must be peculiar to cause us to make exceptions to this rule. AS WE go to press, the situation in the East remains practically unchanged. From our news columns it will be seen that active preparations for war are being made, yet the latest report is that both England and Russia are willing to submit the matter to arbitration. It is probable that no one outside of the English Cabinet and the Czar and his prime minister, knows anything about the matter. It is barely possible that peace may be patched up for the present, but it will be such a peace as will insure a more desperate war not far in the future. These immense war preparations will erelong be called into requisition.