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About The independent. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1902-1907 | View Entire Issue (April 11, 1907)
4 THE NEBRASKA INDEPENDENT APRIL 11, W)7. ehip can exist between a man and a woman unless there has been or will be u warmer sentiment at the bottom of it. The sexes are kept bo widely apart in childhood and in youth that they always remain somewhat of a mystery one to the other, and that feeling of absolute comfort, which ex ists between nn American man and woman is something that is unknown in this country. TIkS American woman is Just the op posite to her Kngll.sh sister. From earliest infancy she has an opportunity to know boys and. men as they really are Just plain human beings, some of them good, some of them bad; some of them noble, Burne of them ignoble; some of them fine, some of them rough. And surely the women themselves, on the whole, must be good and pure and noble, or else the American man. with his quick intelligence, his fine brain, and his subtle mind, would never have held so persistently to his ideal. The Americal likes not only the-one woman, but women. He takes the trouble to understand their , point of view, their lives, and their occupation, lie is in terested in them, he finds them com panionable and makes friends of them, and he has studied them appreciatively and helped them in their development. You will hear at a lunch party one American woman say to another, "Isn't Elizabeth radiant today; doesn't she look a love in that mauve hat and that bunch of violets in her. silver belt? Isn't she Just too cunning for any thing?" And Elizabeth will toss her head and flush up with pleasure, and a sort of cordial, comfortable atmos phere goes round the table. Any demonstration of this kind in England or allusions to hats or flowers would be considered personal and ill-bred. The Ideal conversation is about inanimate objects, antiques for preference. Thus: "Are there any Runic crosses in this neighborhood?" "Yes; there is one very fine specimen about nine miles from here. Are you( a good walker?"-. "Oh, yes, with stout boots, begin ning rather eariy in the morning and taking a sandwich. I can manage it." "I befleve the hieroglyphics on this particular Runic cross are marvelous. There is only one man who has ever been able to get their meaning at all He left a pamphlet on the subject, but for the moment the name of it es capes me," and so on. Now, this sort of conversation Runic crosses, what sort of starch Queen Elizabeth used In her ruff, and whether, Bacon wrote Bhakespeare, and - if clay soil induces rheumatism, (although this is verging on" the.'.' personal) commits - you- to nothing; it is better never 'to " talk about anything human unless in , a tete-a-Jjate or with a most intimate friend. The American woman, with her quick perception, her lively Intelligence, her opportunities of knowing and under -Ftanding something of human nature, and the protection and the care that she receives from her men, is the most fortunate woman in existence. Some limes perhaps she asks too much of life, but she also gives a great deal. Khe is capable, "well read, witty; she Is gowned beautifully, an! '"ears her clothes with distinction, and her taste is an instinct.- The taste of a lady in England is a question of three genera tions at least. It is a thing of culti vation. With an American it is simply an instinct. Indeed, the taste of the American woman is one of the most remarkable things about tier. I take for example a woman in Ixu , isville, who has absolutely perfect taste. She always rejects the'false and selects the true in everything. She is a beautiful judge of stuffs and of old china, of old silver, of pottery; she understands pictures, tapestries and fine embroideries, and in her own dress and her own habits, she is as dainty as a flower. Her discrimination of the good is in no way superior to that of very many American women, and, what Is almost as valuable as taste, they have a certain chic, which is not at all like French chle, a little daring and HARNESS 0:! HORSE COLLARS Witb ibis Brand cn m the Best Hade sometimes even a little vulgar, but in an American it is just a pretty co quetry. The thing that the American woman has to be most proud of is that she has a mark upon this old and conserv ative civilization. Englishwomen have looked on in wonder at the comfortable intimacy, the agreeable friendship, and the helpfulness of one American wo man to another, and they are begin ning to copy American manners; they are beginning to be agreeable to each other. Twenty years ago, when'I first came to England, after a large dinner party, while the women were waiting In the drawing room for the men, they positively glared at each other like the Guelphs and Ghibellines, ready to do battle at an instant's notice. Scarcely a wora was spoicen except a lew phrases here and there in a high sus picious voice. Englishwomen are now more or less polite to each other, and more or less informal, and the Ameri can woman has set the example. I said not long ago to an Englishman who told me that he detested the American accent, that he ought to be come accustomed to it as quickly as possible, because the next house of peers would speak with an American accent. And, I added, the accent will be west of the Mississippi, as all of their heiresses east of that mighty riv er have been married by Impecunious foreigners. He begged my pardon and said that he didn't understand the humor of my remark. But there wasn't any humor in 11; it was simply a state ment of cold facts. And if there is ever a genuine understanding and a real entente cordiale between the two countries, it will be due to that won derful, that gracious, that daring prod uct, the American woman. Village Life. Ask Your beater tu Snow Them DKFOllB YOU 11 UY Mnufcturd by HaUPHAM BROS. CO. LINCOLN, NCO. New York Weekly; 'We freely sur render to those who love them all the advantages of town and city life the hum of business and headlong haste, the crowded streets, the fierce excite ment that forever throbs along their mighty arteries! In the city the'pulse is at fever-point and enterprise is white with heat. Give us the country with its healthy hue, the broad, deep impress of quiet and calm, of witching loveliness and winning beauty give us the fall of lofty fountains and the bend of stir ring, branches, and the bud that brings the swiftest thought of beauty give us the country with its woods and waters, its fields and fells, its stretching hills where the first beams of light shoot down. The sun is brighter in the coun try, the sky is bluer, and the wafts of wind tell softer, more melodious tales. There the . purest and best feelings of the heart flourish fairer and freer, and fade not so suddenly nor so soon, for they drink in love from the flowers and the morning dew and the still stars of heaven! Yes! we lore the country, and touch ing now after a lapse of years on this our rural life, we feel we must linger over it a while and "babble of .green fields." We evoke the phantoms of the past and write a pastoral for our read ers; painting for them the landscapes, sunny or snow-clothed,, and glancing at the joys and sorrows, the loves and woes of our village Arcadia! "Our village was romantically situated at the foot of a range of hills, which girdled it round on three sides, and towered up boldly to heaven like chiv alry protecting innocence. The coun try about was of that soft, pleasant description which is the peculiar prop erty of the lowland landscape. Not much of the rugged or sublime was there no craggy rocks, no frowning precipices where the young eagle's spirit is nursed to daring and his eye taught to look unblinkingly on the sun. There were no waterfalls, nor frown ing forests, nor vast praties, with scenes oC sublime and stirring inci dents which nature seems in soma places to have struck out in a moment of angry excitement. All was calm, and quiet, and secluded, tranquil as a sum mer sunset, green with meadows and corn-fields, and swelling slopes, and rivers with the morning dew of youth about them ere their circuit had ex panded and their strength -grown full to sweep .them onward to the sea. There were' silent, shady woods around, ad hills and vales alternating, and mossy seats by brooks which mur mured pleasantly like voices in a dream, while over all a clear, delicious calm appareel to hover, like a vestige of the spirit which hovered over the world when time was young and earth had not the brand of pin upon its brow. It was easy to lose oneself in large plantations or stroll about and muse the livelong - summer day, and watch the birds and butterflies, and listen to the tapping of the woodpecker and the low, lazy rustling of the wind among the trees. We could fish for trout in the stream and delicately flavored were the trout In that stream and If our luck was bad, as some times it happened ho, we could nit down upon the grass and smoke our pipe, and watch with languid pleasure the kingfishers dive and dart away, 'heir blue ba -ks glancing In the kuii. When (ireutiut f'rt, we nave encountered a badger, now and anon a pole-cat. and not unrrenuf ntly we have met a fox at nhjitfall returning with a well-tUbd Monmch and a guilty eoncline from a fiui'vtsi-ful foray on winw ih Igh'ooi lug hen-roost. Then when the moon was up wo have caught bat by the score and listened to the mvU makla mournful inu.'dc ftnd te.ichlmr their lit- I tie owlet how to Vvltoop. We have a weaklier for owls; they look to warm and cozy, feathered to tin very too; and they hiw wii iuui withal, of a grave appearance and do ruiou manners. Thy di iut obtrude th'!iM-lvn upon the public and clamor tor It udmtniMon. Thy do not hop ubout coqut ttthly In the Hunbln wnd till and c liWo fowl of, fewer y.r , ; and less experience. They do not swag ger in the fields in a roystering fash ion and shout for slugs. Nor do they disturb the peaceful country with un seemly bickerings. They sit at home .all day and attend to domestic matters, There philosophizing on the vanity of the pursuits of birds in general. Then, in the eventide, when the earth is calm and the air cool, they take silent and solitary flights, pick up field mice or something light for supper, and, returning to their comfortable roost again with a sound digestion, from the depths of their warm chests they call in measured cadence to their neigh bors, and send up mellow anthems to the moon. We love the owl, and record our admiration of him here( for, mark you, he is not always to be met with. We have watched for - him in seques tered places as astronomers watch for comets. We have followed liim to his dim retreats and waited patiently for his coming out, as some folk wait and watch to see a great man leave his house, ' Our village was a grand place for owls. It was none of the new-fangled watering-places, with villas, semi-detached cottages, and such heathen edi fices. There were1 no patent palings there, no paving-stones, no fashionable promenate. Policemen with helmets and truncheons, plate glass and stuc coed fronts were utterly unknown, and the commissiooers of sewers , were looked upon as myths, or at least at all events as remote from the interests of the villagers as the politics of Tim buctoo. The shrieking rattle of the lied Republican the railway had never disturbed the peace of our village. It was a waif which the march of time had left untouched with all its vener able beauties clustering round it. And in these days when the schoolmaster is abroad with a birch as well as a book; when the ruthless hand of the destroy er is shaking the sands in the hour glass of the relics of the past; when shops and streets spring up like mush rooms from the ruins of the eiuaintold houses of our sires; when the eccentri cities of the age are shaping them selves in the ever-hungering metropolis of trusts, the rascality of political grafters; when young England, clothed in motley, performs a pantonine and shakes his cap and bells at his vener able parent, who stands by dyspeptic and disconsolate; in these days, wc say, it is pleasant to leave the seething so cial caldron bubbling in the distance, to get away from the blinding dust and the roaring din, to find some green oasis by the palm-tree wells a little knot of persons who care not to wres tle in the march of life, who lover to dwell among their flocks and. herds and smoke the pipe of peace at their own tent door, as the patriarchs of old. Our village inns wore long, strag gling buildings, with sin-boards that swung on poles; our houses were roofed with thatch and fitted up with little cabin-looking window, which blinked drowsily on the passer-by. The rooms were constructed of ail shapes, or rather of no shape at all; floors and ceilings were generally 1-clincd pianos. You encountered niyfe-lerious-loolvlng cupboards and closets in the most un likely situations, and as for getting up stairs, he was a bold man who would attempt the feat without a steady foot and a watchful eye. Our architectural structures and beaut leu were not numerous, consisting principally of the parish church a fin old building, flanked by thsve vincr ablo mansion, jut crumbled and weather-beaten enough to look roman tfc. The people In gineral partook of tie; character of the village. They Jogged steadily along the old path-, m their fathers bad done before them, not turning aside to pursue uuir;;h llrcs and wandering meteor. They counted no latter day Kiliit among ih.-'.r number, and It tvs- f !d'", In deed, that any one embraced the ldu of emigration. Homeopathy had tv-ner dawiud upon their minds, und Us won. derful gtobub'M aivri more wondrful theory, and the wHtr-cur und nn-w-liubiu bad not then lwii drowned of. Llothers ! Mothers ! t tVlmhers ! ! f Mrs. Wkislow's Soothing Syrup fcas been used for over SIXTY YEARS by MIt UONS of MOTHERS for their CHILDREN While TEETHING, with PERFECT SUCCESS. It SOOTHES the CHII.D, SOFTENS the GUMS, AIXA.YS all PAIN ; CURES WIND COIJC, and is the best remedy for DIARRHOEA. Sold by Druggists in every part of the world. I5e sure and ask for "Mrs. Winslow's Soothiuq; Syrup," and take uoother kind. Twenty-live c I.;, a bof.tle. There were but two Quakers in the town, and Unitarian the latter, by the way, being a barber, who sold patent medicines, and preached heresy during the intervals of business. High upon the moor, long and- drear in winter time," were beings as eccentric as those we read of in "Shirley" and ''Watering Heights savage as the scenes that surrounded, and primitive as the prim eval spot they inhabited. Of course, as is the lot of all places, we had one or two souls saturated with radicalism, with whom the times were always bad, and the world always wrong men of a bilious habit and a blighted aspect, who slunk about the village like incen diaries, and perpetually prophesied -universal ruin; but, like a dose of quinine, they seemed to give -.us a better appe tite for things as : they were. The great and all-absorbing , w orld, with its endless cares and encroach ments, did not intrude upon our village prerogatives. We were unmolested by the eager and noisy claims of com merce and the zealous champions of "women's rights" and total abstinence. We were allowed to go on in our own way to mind our own business to love our own wives as we thought best, and to love, and suffer, and die just as nature provided. Our village was not paradise, nor was it free from gossip and whisper; but it was not given up to political excitement and religious fanaticism it had a good eleal of very charming indolence of an "I don't care" sort of freedom. Above all, it was a place where the charities and courte sies of the tVul more than those of the body were nutured. Public life and large cities tend to develop an over weening masculinity; all the harder and stronger elements of character corhe to the surface there. It seems to us that the gentler phases of character are born in, and developed, by. a coun try life and residence. It is true in more ways than one that ."God made the country man made the town." It is to memories of the country of. the good times spent there that " many of us ow-e our highest retrospective pleasure. We seem to become over again the happy, careless, lazy, contented crea tures of our youth; the old remem bered landscape, the same rippling stream, the old oak trees skirting our infant home all come back to memory fragrant and sweet, tender and smiling, and we feel .ourselves once more the children of nature and the village home! . f Nerve Sick If weak, worn-out, nervous, cannot sleep; have indigestion, head ache, neuralgia or peri odic pains, it is because your nerves are weak. It is the lack of nerve force that makes the stomach, heart, lungs, etc., work imperfectly become sick. Dr. Miles' Nervine cures the sick when it restores nerve strength, and puts the power behind the or gans to do their work. "Alir.ost three years I Buffered from nervomnrns. Indirection, und pulpita tlon of tlii hPMi't. 1 could not But or bleep with tomfart, or walk or tallc without nufferlrgr. Altogether l whs In n bad condition. My dot tor did not B'ttm to do too any good. I had tried bo many remedlea that I did not huvo much bopo of anv of thm doing inn nny pood. Pr. MIW Nervine was pumteMeil by a fli1. 1 tot relief from tlio first, and iftr a f",v d.Tya 1 Mt like ft nw pron. It t " ly Tfllevrd my heart and iki. but law Invlporuted my whole ntni. I rm very Krat'-ful bTHtitB n'rn' I have itoppid tiHln If, I havi) had absolutely or my oM froiMil. Mf'.H. UO'VA!:!' VitT vo return ft Summit Ave., V orear .M .!. Dr. Miles' NfrvlnB It aold by your flrugql. who will n'rante t'mt tn f.rt bottle will beneilt. If It falls, h will rtfuncf your money. Miles Medical Co., Elkhart, Ind
