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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 15, 1886)
THE HESPERIAN. UNIVERSITY of NEBRASKA. Vol. XIV. LINCOLN, NEB., FEBRUARY 15, 1886. No. IX. CURRENT REMARK. The development of Lincoln's salt marshes will be a great thing for the city, one way or another . If there should fail to be enough to makcjta profitable enterprise, it will be a dis appointment to the city. On the other hand if the salt is found in paying quantities, its manufacture will be a great industry and bring a great deal of capital to Lincoln. The prospects are now that the salt is there: if so, people will not ask what keeps Lincoln up, as there will be one industry in which the Magic City will take the lead in the west. Who says the Chinese can't be civilized? Whoever does makes a great mistake, at least in the eyes of many Lincolnites. The Chinese here have got so far along on the road to Ameri canism that they give banquets. The second series of celes tial feeds wns given Sunday and Monday of last week. The washee-houses were cleared out (fact) and everything done up in improved Anglo-Saxon style. After all our boasted civili. zation is little more than being able to eat, drink and behave ourselves, and the Chinamen can do this nearly as well as we can, and yet people say they can't be civilized! The question of cholera will be jin important one the coming summer. It seems almost inevitable that it will prevail to a greater or less extent in this country and it behooves the health authorities to keep a sharp watch for any harborer of disease. In this connection it might be well to look at home a little. Lincoln is not a dirty city but it might be a great deal cleane than it is. The tax payers may be sorry that the sewerage bonds were not voted before the summer is out. If the Asiatic plague once gets here, it will do more than $100,000 dam age, to say nothing of the loss of life. Of course there is no great probability that it will be here, but it is always well to remember the old adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Lincoln is at present stirred up with a mighty revival. Crowds gather at the M. E. church every night and scores are being converted and the greatest enthusiasm prevails. What is the cause of these conversions? It cannot be the preaching, for they don't preach. Moody don't preach; Sam Jones don't; Harrison don't; Bitler don't. All they do is to talk and urge the people to accept Christianity. What is the secret of their success? It is sometimes urged that it is all e. citement and soon dies out. But this is not so. True, there are those who relapse into their old state as soon as the excite, ment is over. This they would do in anything; but there are great numbers that do not go back, but live changed and bet ter lives, because of revivals. Again, what is the cause of this? Answer, infidels if you can. When Shakespeare said that "The evil men do lives after them; the good is often interred with their bones," he un doubtedly made a mistake. One can hardly pick up a paper that does not have an eulogistic account of some person or other. These same papers probably, in the life of the person, especially if he was a public man, were full of abuse of him. Nothing was too bad to say, as nothing now is too good. Newspapers of each of the political parties are always full of abuse of the prominent men of the other side, while they are living, yet they no sooner die, than they are eulogized and ap plauded for the conventional nine days at least; resolutions are passed, bodies adjourn out of respect, and the world is led to believe that the deceased was the leading man of the country. It is all one scries of exaggeration; the newspapers exaggerate; the resolutions exaggerate; the eulogists axaggerate; the mon ument in the cemetery exaggerates, so that the generations to come will find it difficult to extract the facts from the bun dles of extravagances. Would it not be better if the truth were told and nothing but the truth? Nihilism is not very generally upheld among the cool, level headed people of the western world, and perhaps should not be, with our conception of it. It looks as if the main object of the Nihilists was to destroy everything, especially human life. That is what we generally think and go no farther, either into the truth of this, or the cause if it be true. For this reason the lecture of Col. John Sobieski on "The Down fall of Poland," was well worthy of. being heard by everyone. He painted in such vivid colors the condition of the Russian peasantry, especially the Poles, and the tyrannical exactions of the government, that all who heard were tempted to say that anything was justifiable. Even allowing that he, in his patriotic enthusiasm for his native land, together with his brooding over th. execution of his father and grandfather, enlarged on the real situation, there must be enough truth left to make us think that there is a good deal "rotten in the state of Russia." They have come and gone the Prohibitionists. It was the most noted gathering of great temperance lights ever held in Nebraska, and shows which way the tide of events is flowing. While St. John is politically dead and Finch is on the down ward slope of his influence, the work is growing, and will con tinue to grow. Evidently the old political parties have delayed too long. The Prohibitionists would have amalgamated with either one if their demands had been attended to. But the fight has been so bitter that the day of collusion is past. The succesful party jnay not be the Prohibitionists, probably will not be, but some party is bound to supersede the old ones, and the liquor question will be not an inferior part of it. This is not gathered from the speeches of St. John, Finch, or Sobieski; for the first has run his race, the secind has passed the centre mile-stone, and Sobieski's great card is his "Down fall of Poland." But any person, not blinded by prejudice over the defeat of Blaine, can see that their great conclaves mean something, and that something is the great interest' that the mass of the people are taking ij this-to-be-theTfirst question of the coming period. ''' '