The Nebraskan
Vo1" L Lincoln, Nkbraska, Fkhruary, 1893.
T H B NEBRASKAN.
A Monthly Paper, Issued at the University of Nebraska.
SUHKC'HM'TIOX, ONK YKAH, $1.00.
Kntnrari iih houoikUuIiihh mail inuttor.
No. 5.
tvnwesmmf-T
thoritative dictionary. Wake up, good peo
ple, and keep abreast of the times.
lUiii'H 10. Johnson IOdltor-ln-Chicf
II. Oj. W11 itmokk JSuhIiiqss Manager
The Representative College Paper.
(Ebitorial
This is your valentine.
We need a teacher of" elocution in this uni
versity and "need it bad," too. Our contests
show clearly the need of systematic instruc
tion in the fundamental principles of oratory.
Then when anything like a contest comes
along, a little special training by the in
structor will enable any student in school to
make a presentable appearance before an au
dience. In the local contest just held the orators,
almost without exception, spent from ten to
twenty-five dollars apiece for private lessons .
from outside teachers. Two-thirds of this
Charter Day comes but once a year and all instruction was on primary principles such as
should prepare to celebrate. February 15th how to breathe, how to develop sustaining
is the date. power, enunciation, pronunciation ; neces-
sa.rily on these because none of the contest-
A world revers a truly great statesman, ants knew the first principles of elementary
Every civilized nation has recognized the elocution. This is too bad. For seven stu
noble work carried on by Blaine, Gladstone dents to pay one dollar per hour to enunciate
and Bismark. The death of America's fore- their words, how to stand on a platform, and
most leader leaves a vacant chair in the how to make the simplest most fundamental
world's university that will be hard to fill. gestures, seems extravagant when one in-
structor at ten or twelve hundred dollars a
The Hesperian takes exception to our style year might instruct two hundred students
of versification. We wish they would pass as easily as seven. It would, at least, be
a real, honest, unbiased judgment upon their cheaper for the students,
own poetic ''productions" of recent date and We are not complaining of our present
publish the verdict in their next issue. If department of Rhetoric and Oratory. We
they will guarantee a sober, intelligent opin- want a bigger department though, with a
ion we will predict a scathing invective. stronger accent on the Oratory. Of course
,1 there is great difficulty in getting a profes-
We admire the enlightenment of whoever sional elocutionist who has all the desirable
wrote a recent editorial in our "esteemed con- qualities without any of the undesirable ones,
temporary" complaining because Webster's We don't want a cheap ranter who can make
Unabridged is not in the Library. Everyone agony to order. We do want an instructor
who does or knows much of anything in a in elocution and oratory who shall devote his
literary line has discovered that the Century, time exclusively to thtse two things. The
which we havjf n the library, is the only au- regents ought to provide one.