Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 15, 1884)
HESPERIAN STUDENT UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA. Vol. XIII. LINCOLN, NEB., DECEMBER 15, 1884. No. VI. A gentleman wlio has just relumed from West Vir ginia fays Hint a short lime ago n 111 nn came into a small town, from the mountains, with a "nigger" for sale, hav ing never heard of the late war. Take time; don'l be in a hurry. Are you learning a trade? Determine to he a good workman. Never slight j our vol k ; loranj ihii g ll at is w 01 th doing at nil is worth doing well. If you deserve success, it will come. As you prove joursclf worthy, so will your success be. The temperature of the earth increases at the mean rate of one degree Fahrenheit for every forty-five- feet we dc cend. At this rate water is at a boiling pitch at a depth of six miles, while at a depth of sixlv miles the hardest rocks known to geologists arc in a melted state. The Haivard students have petitioned the authorities to abolish (ompuhoiy attendencc on morning prayers. Those t-tudenls who recently d fill d and injured the beau tiful brouzed statue of John Harvard should be com pelled to attend police court. B03S are prone to mis chief, but the pranks of college bos which bring shame to their own college, are characteristic of savages who pre fer pillage to prayers. Snjs the BoMou Transcript: ''The injury done to the fair bronze by its touting of tar last Thursday night 1 xceeds wliat would naturally have fol lowed from climate and weather for half a century. The corn mu u it) will have an anxious and jealous watch over the coiiKequmccs cf this outrage. Vomjmlk Lawyers. So sweet and voluble was Itufus Choale in his discourse that old and young liblcncd to him with wonder at the wealth of his diction. Some of the old practitioners, however, whose cases were delayed by Claude's long speeches to the juiy, used to wish that his vocabulary included ewer wolds. Someone told Chief Justice Shaw that auo'her edition of W orevster's Dictionary, containing two thousand five hundred new words, had just been published. ''For heaven's sake don't let Choale get hold of ill" exclaimed the Chiel Justice. Loid Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh Review, was both a rapid and voluble speaker. He was engaged as counsel iu an action for libel. In the course of his speech to the. jurj, he poured out a long torrent of vituperation 011 a cool Scotchman. The man listened complacently till Jeffreys had finibhtd,and then, loud enough for all in court to hear, "Well, he has spoden the whole English language Uiricc over iu two house I" Selected. WniTTiKii'B Home. The poet's dwelling iu Amesbury is exceedingly simple, and exquisitely neat, the exterior of a pale cream color, with many trees and shrubs about it, whilf, within, one room opens into another till you reach the study that should be haunted by the echoes of all sweet sounds, for here have been written the most of those verses full of the fitlul music, Of winds that oat of dreamland blew. Here, 111 the pioper season, the Humes of a cheerful fire dance upon the brass andiron of the open hearth, in the center of a wall lined with books; water-colors by Hnrry Fenn and Lucy La renin and Celia Thaxtcr, to gether with interesting prints, hang on the other walls, rivaled, it may be, by the window that looks dowu a sunny orchard, and by the glass-lopped door through which you sec the green dome of Pow-wow Hill. The people of Amesbury nnd the adjoining villages and towns, feel a peculiar ownership of their poet ; there is scarcely a legend of all the region round which he has not woven into his song, and the neighborhood feel not only as if Whittier were their poet, but iu some way the guardian spirit, the genius of the place. Perhaps in his stern and sweet life he has been so, even as much as in his song. The Indian Summer days of the poet's life arc spent not all in the places that knew him of old. The greater part of the winter is passed in Boston; a share of the sum mer always goes to the While Hills of which he is pas sionately fond, and the remainder of the time finds him in the house of his cousins at Oak Knoll in Dun vers still in his native county of Essex. It is the home of culture and refinement, too, and as full of beauty within as without. Here many of the later poems have beeu sent forth, and here flcglings have the unwarrantable impertinence to intrude with their callow manuscript, and here those petis of prominence, the autograph-seekers, send iheir resquests by the thousands But in the early fall the poet steals back to Amesbury and their awaits election day, a period in which he relig iously believes that no man has a right to avoid his duty. What a life he has to look back upon, as he sits with his fame about him what storms and what delights, what struggle and what victory ! Iu uppcaraucc Mr. Whittier is as upright in bearing as ever; his eye is as blacK and bums with as keen a fire as when it flashed over the Concord mob, and sees beauty everywhere as freshly as when he cried with the voices of freedom and saug the songs of labor; and hissmile is the same smile that has won the worship of men, and of women too, for sixty years and over. Now it is with a sort of tenderness that people speak and think of him whose walk will perhaps go bu little farther with their own; not that they deem such vitality and power and spirit can ever cease, but they are warned of its apos theosis, as it were, into loftier regions, where his earthly songs shull he tuned to the music of the morning stars as they sing to-gether. Harriet Prescott Bpofford, in Critic. '