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About The Loup City northwestern. (Loup City, Neb.) 189?-1917 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 30, 1909)
“Has any queen a greater chance to make her individuality felt than we, each in her home?" Mrs. Edith McCormick, daughter of John D. Rockefeller, in the pride of motherhood, put the question in a recent expression of her opinion as to the dignity of motherhood and the often-quoted sacri fice maternity entails. With it she touched nearly upon another question, and one which has done as much in the swaying of the empires as all the states men and politicians of the past have been able to accomplish with the prestige of monarchs and the force of mighty armies: Who are the real queens of the world? Does it, indeed, lie in any power, except those of birth and pre rogative, to invest a woman with the essential attributes of a queen, omitting only the title and the crown? THERE is much to be said for the contention of the daugh ter of the world’s most famous millionaire, that every worthy mother is a queen among women—every thing, except this: That she isn’t. For to bo a queen, a woman must rule, by whatever means she can com mand. over a whole people, not over a family or a few individuals merely: and over her people her sw ay must en dure undisputed. Such pre-eminence and such rule, while it does eliminate the simple ma triarch. remains far from debarring from admission many a woman who can never wear a crown. And it does shut out not a few who wear crowns to-day. For there are queens who are ob vious nonentities on their august thrones, even as there are untitled women whose sway is as potent, and as broad, as that ever wielded by the most tyrannous of kings over the most subservient of peoples. In the first group appear a number of the reigning majesties of the pres ent, foremost among them the queen of the most stable kingdom and the empress of the most extensive empire the world now knows and in all its history lias contained—Alexandra of Great Britain. In Praise of Alexandra. She is famed for every attribute of beautiful and admirable motherhood; she comes of the most widely en throned royal race; she is all that Is lovely and excellent and gracious. Yet her power, her real power, as a ruler remains practically nil. Her hus band, after a career which British loyalty, reminiscent of his princeship of Wales, finds it impossible to forget, and under a constitutional era that ties such monarchs to the innocuous ness cf automata, has proved himself a king in the full reality of the cun with restrictions ot growing democ racy such as they would have spurned with contempt in their haughty, royal reigns. On Three Great Thrones. And, beside him, a consort succeed ing Victoria and lacking the power to banish from her offended sight a wom an whose relations with Edward would have made that all-powerful old lady almost exile both him and his fair protegee from England itself. It must be often a cruel bitterness that underlies the gracious smile with which a consort like Alexandra hears the flattering title “queen.” Far worse tne case ot the czarina ot Russia, whose whole existence is one series of terrors for the safety of her husband and her children; and no more queenly, although much happier, is the station of the empress of Ger many, relegated practically to the of fice of hausfrau, a basis on which every other German wife and mother is fully her equal. These are the three most mighty thrones in the world to-day, and these the women who are, in reality, least among queens. For the real queens, enthroned in the possession of real power, the quest must turn to the les i ser kingdoms, where the head that wears the crown need but nod to compel obedience. Such a real queen is Wilhelmina of Holland, the only woman living to-day whose maternity earns her the royal rank Mrs. McCormick has so futilely claimed for all her lovely sex. Upon the ability for motherhood in Wil helmina, the Dutch realized, their na tional existence depended; and to her they give, with the acclaim of rejoic ing independence, the stanch loyalty which implies all the power a modern queen can covet. Portugal's Unfortunate Queen. So, too, does little Portugal own a d>UJ£ Tragedy Queen / J , U' cZfinraSt/U jBjaZfOUXpr J&BC ZAtlZI*. WSLBA. jtQ.in’eii ning ami ability iu which Carlyle dis covered the origin and significance ol the title. It is a strange anomaly; a son, suc ceeding a mother whose dominant spirit kept his gray beard almost r mockery of his destiny to power, anc instantly exercising more potent in fliience upon the affairs of the world than any of his predecessors for a hundred years, while he is hampered queen. Amelie, whose courage crowned, amid the tragedy that made her dow ager queen, the force of character with which she long combated the weaknesses of her husband, Carlos. ?ortugal, for all Us ferocious social istic plotters, realizes that it has a genuine queen; amid its sullen growls it whimpers under her remnants of power. And Italy, after a period of distrust, accepted Queen Helena amid the chaos she so devotedly faced in the ruins of Messina. But there ends the brief listing of the real queens whose crowns are more than gewgaws; for the greatest, most genuine of them all, the modern Semiramis of power, who made all plotting China bend before her will and wielded the scepter of her irre sistible might while she gasped in the agonies of death, has vanished, with only a towering place in history to tell how very possible it has been for a poor and pretty slave girl to govern 400,000,000 people by her own unaided brain. What, then is fho reality of the queenly office, as it is enjoyed upon the modern thrones, when compared with the power of the uncrowned queens whose sway is acknowledged in many lands to-day? If it be a question of the actuality of power, exercised over numerous and influential subjects, only that famous dowager empress of China, now dead and done for, could have presumed to rival the silent, imper turbable sway which goes with the millions of Hetty Green as she sits in her decent black dress in her mod est office in the Chemical National bank. The Real Monarchs. Every statesman in Europe, and every monarch confesses that the ac tual kings, with power to make and forbid wars, are the Rothschilds, j slaves—and this by no wiles of beau ty and no ravishment of form. Her Position Won. She won her distinguished position through such mazes of rivalries and cabals as few queens, excepting those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have encountered—deeply laid sche.mes of astute schemers, whose hatreds did not flinch at the most detestable attacks. She has en dured, and is now more prized by her republican compatriots than are the queens of Kurope by their nominally loyal subjects. Italy has its stage queen as well as France, a woman whose whole life has been a romance, her rise to great ness having been marked by as im pressive a discrepancy as that which attended the beggar maid whom King Cophetua loved. Until the titular queen of Italy bold ly conquered the affections of her subjects by braving death and sustain ing injury after the terrible Sicilian earthquake, there was small doubt as to the woman to whom the bulk of Italy's allegiance was passionately given, and that in spite of the equally passionate manner in which the fam ous actress, Duse, had for some years been repelling her compatriots’ devo tion for the sake of her affection for the ingrate d’Annunzio. It is rarely, very rarely, that the stage queen enjoys, like Bernhardt, a life tenure oi office. Usuallv her sub f dteeu Uaeejlc/ Xhonce <Sv»VnWi . whose immense wealth controls the treasuries that are war's vital sin ews. If, by some unbelievable turn of fate—such a one, for instance, as be fell Samson of old—Hetty Green were moved to abandon all her alliances, call all her loans, and try her strength, just once, the whole United States would feel that a giant's strength was shaking the pillars of its finance. No queen, that silent old woman who was once New England's toasted belle; but no queen, except her con temporary in distant China, has, in the century past and present, so made men bend before her in tribute to her rule. While riches are power—and the powmr most sensibly felt abroad as well as here—they do not afford the sole domain that is open to the lead ers of mankind. Both the intellect and the emotions serve as foundations for allegiance often more stanch and more extensive than can be won by the anointed queens. Cisraeh s Course. If, before a jury expert in weighing of evidence, the relative powers, of practical efficiensy, pertaining to Queen Alexandra and Mrs. Humphry Ward could be submitted for trial, nothing but the notorious lip loyalty of the Englishman could give the ver dict in favor of the reigning queen. With Victoria, of course, the dispute would have been too unequal, for she was an imperious young lady and old lady; and all the literary lights of her era—except, perhaps, Thackeray—fail to show so pronounced an impression as she made on the manners and mor als of her times, while India became her empire because Disraeli, as her prime minister, comprehended how much she longed for the title, albeit Great Britain already enjoyed the sub stance. Yet that very title, manufac tured from thin air to add another crown, has in the end served to rivet the chains of ownership upon half a continent in Asia. as things go soberly at present, the odds of power all He with the woman novelist, whose influence all England admits freely. As thing* go, too, in France, the drama gives to the world another queen, whose dominance no one dares deny. Sara Bernhardt can still lay her slender hands upon the inmost souls of men and hale them forth until their owners are her liumbls jects fall away with the decadence of her beauty. But sometimes, among the charming dolls of the theater, there appears the woman of genius, like Bernhardt and Duse, the inspira tion of whose divine flame compels loyalty to the last. That has been the endowment of some few of the en tions. which constitutes on the stage a more potently royal power than all but a few of those who wear the crown can exercise, extends to music. Every age brings its queen of song, some wondrously gifted creature on whose parted lips the thousands hang entranced. Like the actress, no origin is too low, no birthplace too distant, to keep her from destiny. Australia gave to the world the regal Melba; but multitudes the world over have testified to her power over the senses and the emotions of the peoples. With the one exception of Wilhel mina of Holland in which her people's gratitude for their rescued independ ence remains still warm, there lives probably not a queen whose passing from her throne would so move to anxiety or mourning the very subjects who protest allegiance as would the loss of one of the uncrowned queens of this modern day. That is because this modern day ac throned queens, and history has glam oured them with romance in every tint with which it limns their careers. Duse, for the sake of one treacher ous devotee, neglected her audiences and dragged her sublime talents into the oblivion of his dull stagecraft. She survives to-day, a possibility of the future, but, for the present, a queen in abdication who gave her all for love. The Regal Melba. The irresistible sway over the emo cepts its kings very much on toler ance. its queens only as inevitable at tachments, and its real leaders in thought and art as rare possessions it cannot afford to lose. _» An Infant Industry. “What do you consider the most crying need of the day?” “I don’t know; but if you had said the most crying need of the night, I should have said sterilized milk.” Meow! “Another terminal grab!” “Where?” “In the nursery. Little Bobby has just pulled the cat’s tail.” A SALON OF THE ANCIENTS Old Rome and its Life Portrayed for the Lasting Judgment of Moderns. The salon of Clodia on the Palatine and in her villa on the seashore of Baine drew together the foremost pol iticians, poets and orators of the time —men of the older generation, like Cicero and Metellus, young men like her brother, Clodius, the brilliant and erratic tribune, or Caelius, whom Cic ero calls "the best-informed politician In Rome.” “The burning eyes” of Clodia, which Cicero celebrates in his fierce attack upon her, her brilliant wit, her versatile character, her skill as a dancer, her abandon and bohe snianism, her Claudian pride and con tempt for popular opinion are all marks of that fiery southern tempera ment which could find no middle course between love and hate, which would hesitate for no scruple and be thwarted by no obstacle from grati fying her desires or satisfying her thirst for revenge, which would be aa fickle as it would be relentless to ward fickleness in others. It is her glory and her misfortune that her character and exploits have been painted by the most gifted poet, the greatest orator, and one of the most brilliant wits of her time. She tired of Catullus of his wrath and scorn. She failed to ensnare Cicero, and she avenged herself upon him by driving him into exile and taking his prop erty from him. She was jilted and laughed at by the once-devoted Coeli us. and consequently brought a charge of attempted murder against him and almost compassed his ruin. Whether she deserved the abuse which Catul lus heaps upon her in his later poems, whether she merits the epitaph of the “three-cent Clytemnestra” which Cae lius puts upon her, or is “the Pala tine Medea” whom Cicero paints her in his defense of Caelius, we may never know.—Scribner’s Magazine. One Vegetarian Monarch. The king of Italy is the only vege tarian monarch. 13 A VICTORY FOR HUSBAND Official Notification That Wife May Not Grow Thin if Husband is Opposed Thereto. A woman in Silesia has been haled into court by her husband because she persisted in growing thin in opposi tion to his wishes. In his petition for a divorce the Silesian gentleman de clared the lady obtained her husband under false pretenses, for when he married her she was full sized and of ample and generous proportions and he had every reason to believe that she would remain so. When slimness became the fashion, however, she sud denly began fading away in order to wrear the latest style of empire gown. She rode horseback three hours each morning, played tennis two hours, and then took fat-reducing walks. Com plainant further avers that she ate like a bird. How successful was this strenuous pursuit of slenderness may be judged from the fact that in three months’ time she had lost 31 pounds and a portly husband. For the hard-hearted Silesian judge granted the captious husband's plea for a divorce and delivered a fiery at tack upon the prevailing styles in fem inine architecture. He laid down the principle that no lady has a right to fade away without her husband's con sent, and he completely disallowed defendant's plea that half a wife is better than none. The wife is left free to continue her disappearing process as long as she likes. It is hoped that her frugal hab its of living will prove useful to her, row that she is deprived of a hus band's support.—Success Magazine. Triumph for Capt. Cody. The record-breaking performance by Capt. Fred Cody, the American, who has been experimenting wdth an aero plane of his own contrivance for the British war office, is an achievement that will still further lift the United States as the leader of airship enter prise. The incident will doubtless stimulate aeroplane enthusiasm in Great Britain, which ha3 been con , spicuously slow thus far. WOULD ELIMINATE THE ERROR COLUMN Cut out the error column. This is the suggestion of Fred Ten ney, famous first basemau, once man ager of the Boston National league club and now with the New York Giants. By the elimination of this column in the tabulated score, with the exception of wild throws on which base runners advance an extra base, this veteran believes than another step forward would be made. His idea, when care fully considered, presents conditions that are worthy of thought "How many times are batters rob bed of what are almost sure base hits?” says Tenney. “This is especial ly true in line drives to the infielders. No great credit is due the infielder for getting these balls, as a rule, for they are shot straight at him. Of course, there are exceptions, as there are to almost everything, but that is the rule. As a matter of fact the batsman is al most entitled to a hit Surely he hit the pitcher hard enough to get one, but the luck of the game, that cuts t such an important figure in baseball, happens in that instance to be against him. “So I figure that if the error column, so far as fumbled balls or bad throws to a baseman are concerned, was elim inated, making everything a hit, it would only just about even up for those infield line drives that the bat ter loses because the inlielder Lappens to be right in front of a Lard-hit ball driven straight into his hands. “Naturally the scoring of a fielder's choice would remain just as it is to day, for the batsman is not entitled to a hit where the infielder makes the play on some other base-runner when the batsman could have been thrown out at first. Again, there must be some way of scoring extra bases taken by a runner on a bad throw. For that I would leave the error column in the box score, but it would represent wild throws, not fumbled balls, or a bad throw to first on a batted ball. “This would naturally make some difference in the batting ar.d fielding averages of the players, but 1 don't think it would boost any batsman very much, while it would take away that excuse for a fielder shirking a hard chance tor fear he might be penalized for a misplay. There are some such men playing the game, you know, though one of that kind is never a high-class performer. "It wouldn’t take long for those who are watching the batting averages closely to figure out the difference this change would make in the hitting of a player. And, I say. why should a bat ter be penalized by having a hit taken away from him when he manages to hit the ball in such a way that an. in fielder musses it up? Rather, I think, to do justice on all sides, a base hit should be credited. “No one who follows baseball close ly ever thinks of judging a player’s ability in the field by the official field ing averages. We all know well that a good player goes after everything within reach, never fearing a possible error through a fumble or a bad throw to first. He is there to tr- to make the play, to get everything he can get his hands on, and if he shirks because he is afraid of that error, then he isn’t going to get lots of balls that he might have handled cleanly and gone through with for a put-out. The pres ent fielding averages are practically worthless, for it is almost always that the best players have the lowest per centage, while those who don’t or can't cover much ground get away with the fewest errors and, therefore, are at the top in the averages. Hence, in picking young ball players, scouts judge by what they see them do, not by what they read in the fielding av erages. ‘‘I believe that such a change in the scoring rules would make good ball players of some of the poorer ones, and that it would make still better performers of the best of them. To me it looks as though it would be a step in the right direction, keeping pace with the rapid advances now be ing made in baseball. No one would be hurt, while both batsmen and field ers would be benefited. , “I would like to see the Baseball Writers’ Association of America take this question up at its meeting this winter and present it to the joint rules i committee of the National and Amen- ; can leagues for serious consideration." > | CRACK KANSAS CITY PITCHER Pat Flaherty, up to a few months ago a member of the Boston National league twirling staff, has been doing fine work since joining the Kansas City American association team. Flaherty has served in both the big leagues and while pitching good ball, has always been more or less unrortu ate Seven of last year’s Pennsylvania team will be missing this fall. Yale’s call by Capt. Coy has beeD sent out, although the quarterbacks, including Corey, French and Johnson, started work at Greenport, L. I., some time ago. There will be more than seventy men in the full squad. T. A. Butklewicz, former guard and tackle at Princeton and Pennsylvania has been engaged to take charge ol the Princeton squad, his attention be ing particularly directed to the line men. Princeton has lost by graduation Tibbott, Eddie Dillon, Booth and Dowd, but has a wealth of good ma terial to fill these and other places. Havana will enjoy a big boom in football sport this fall. The last game scheduled this year is between Rol lins college and University of Havana on December 25. Heydler Signs New Umpire. William Brannan, who has been umpiring in the Wisconsin-Iilinols league. ,has been added to the Na tional league corps of arbiters by Pesid; nt Heydler. Brannan is a giant, standing six feet three inches. Robins’ Curious Nesting Places. The two robins which have built their nest in the cover of a meter at the Market Drayton Electric Light works have many precedents in the choice of unconventional nesting places A year or two ago a robin’s nest was built on a book shell in a night nursery at Chiselhurst which was occupied without interruption by a nurse and child. Four eggs were laid, and two young birds were hatched out. Two other robins built their nest on the axle of a colliery wagon in daily use at Seghill, in Northumberland. Among other curi ous recent nesting places have been the breast pocket of a scarecrow at Ashbourne, a nail box in a village forge, the skeleton of a crow, and the rifle range butts at Ticehurst, Sussex —Westminster Gazette. Monopoly of Oil Supply. The world’s entire supply of the oit of bergamot comes from a small sec tion of Calabria, fronting on the Straits of Messina. OUR OLDEST FLATS Work of Repairing Famous Cliff Palace Going On. Investigation Shows That Ancients Used Great Apartment Houses for 1,000 Families Before History Was Written. Kansas City.—Centuries before the first apartment house had taken form in the minds of modern architects the cliff dwellers had developed the flat I to an extent that the builders in the great cities are just beginning to ap proximate. The old-time Americans were not content to house a dozen or a score of families under the same roof; they made room for an entire community, sometimes consisting of possibly 1.000 persons, with their places of worship and entertainment, their workshops and all their indus trial activities, excepting, of course, agriculture. This mode of living had its incon veniences as well as its manifest au advantages. If the baby had the colic on a cold and wintry night, pater fa rnilias could go for the medicine man without exposing himself to the ele ments and the back-door gossips could keep the whole community under sur veillance without extreme exertion. But to dodge going to church when the kiva, or place of worship, was only a few hundred feet away, under the same roof that sheltered the home must have taxed the inventive ingenu ity of the first American seriously The weather would never serve as an excuse and a Sunday headache would be only a flimsy one. To visit the "affinity” under the watchful eye of wife and mother-in-law must have been quite a problem and the club must have been tame and common place when conducted within calling distance of the home. Decidedly, the modern way is much better, say the Sybarites. The present summer Dr. J. W. Fewkes of the Smitsonian institution has been engaged in the interesting task of cleaning and renovating the greatest of aboriginal apartment houses. Ordinarily a house cleaning job is of interest only to the persons engaged thereon or inconvenienced thereby. A scientific house cleaning is different; and Dr. Fewkes’ under taking derives national interest and importance from the fact that it con sisted in removing the accumulated dust, debris and rubbish of ages from the famous Cliff palace, the most im Earliest Apartment House in world. posing prehistoric ruin In America and the largest and most spectacular cliff dwelling in the world. Primarily Dr. Fewkes’ labors were intended to aid in the preservation of the Cliff palace—to prevent its fur ther decay and demolition and to place it in condition for the enjoy ment and edification of the increasing number of tourists and sightseers that annually drift that way. Another ob jest in view was research—to gain, if possible, some insight into the state of culture, the manner of life and ways of thought of the flat-dwellers of prehistoric America; to ascertain their relationship, if any, to the ex isting tribes of the southwest and to make possible an intelligent g jess as to their origin and their fate. No attempt was made at restoration I or reconstruction; that would have been destructive of the sentiment to which the relics of the people of the j stone age owe the major part of their interest. The old ruins remain now . as before, the unmarred and unal tered w'ork of the people of the back The excavation of the accumulated debris and dust heaps of the centuries has been carried on with the greatest care to avoid the working of further destruction. Walls that seemed in danger of falling have been patched, buttressed or braced to save them from utter demolition and to preserve them in their present condition for the edification and wonderment of fu ture generations; but the ragged sky line of the great Cliff palace has not been marred with modern stone and mortar and not a trowel hasaitywhe:t been applied excepting as a conserx ing (not as a rebuilding) agent For what he has refrained from doing quite as much as for what he has done, Dr. Fewkes deserves the grati tude of all who are interested *n American antiquities. From a scientific viewpoint the most interesting result of Dr. Fewkes' investigation of the Ciiff palace is the conclusive evidence brought to Ugh', of the close relationship of the Hopi Indians of northern Arizona to the prehistoric cliff dwellers of the .Mesa Verde. Dr. Fewkes’ excavations have re vealed the fact that the Cliff palace is much larger than has ever before been suspected. The lower terraces and apartments were covered, filled and entirely hidden by fallen walls, talus from the cliff and the rubbish of centuries. All this has been cleared away, showing that the Cliff palace contains 175 rooms and 23 kivas. It may have accommodated a population of anywhere from 700 to 1,000 per sons. A Man of Judgment. “She turned her entire fortune over to him as soon as they were married/ “She must have unbounded faith ic his judgment to give him control of so much." “She has, he is the first man that ever told her she was beautiful,’* In the Air. Tom—Just saw Miss Welloph on the street and lifted my hat Dick—And did she respond’ Tom—Yes. She lifted her nose.