THE COUKJER
S
!(
V
For me marks a different hour.
And when to tho east on the prairies,
Where the evening shades earlier come,
Lies the reason my Elgin so varies
I'm keeping the time of "back home."
Dear girl, though the time may be changing,
I am blind and the change cannot see;
Geographers in their mad ranging
Cannot take you further from me.
In the hour that you live away yonder,
You live in the heart of "your boy;'
There's a standard wherever I wander,
Which longitude cannot destroy.
There's a poem of the Gunnison, and a most characteristic ono of
"The Quakin' Aspen," and many other verses of tho mountains and
plains. But excellent as many of them are, these dcscriptivo verses,
and local and spirited as they all are, they do not compare with tho
poems of childhood. Undoubtedly Mr. Carl Smith's work is best in
the verses of childhood, and from the many relating to boyhood it is
difficult to make a selection. One becomes intimately acquainted
with "UlysBUBMendenhaU" and "The Cunninghams" and "Charley
Mulgridge," who played the fiddle. But undoubtedly the potjms
which are most appealing are the child-verses, some of which are
written for children and others about children. Here is a good ex
ample of the latter class:
Lord Byron looks with a haughty stare
Straight out from the shelf at mo.
With the broadest wave to his smooth bisquo hair
That an artist would care to see.
And the proudest curl to his silent lip,
And the coldest and loftiest smile,
With his head set back at a lordly tip
O'er that collar of flaring style.
And down in the corner of that same shelf
As meek as a goat might be,
A white rubber goat ashamed of himself
Stands wobbling his head at me.
A white rubber goat that I happen to know
Has a wonderful whistle somewhere
Concealed in the region that's hid below
The wealth of his rubber hair.
The white rubber goat is a homely goat,
With eyes that are bloodshot and red,
And lumpy whiskers that hang from his throat
In a bunch like a beard of lead.
And the voice that he shrieks from his stomach is shrill
And his figure is awkward and squat,
But I ween that the white rubber goat can fulfill
An errand which Byron cannot.
Ob, Byron! Look down with your cold bisque eye,
And scorn the white goat if you will;
You never can quiet my baby's cry
With that countenance haughty and chill;
This critic of art with her rosy fist
Will pass you all scornfully by
For tho goat whose red mouth into white has been kissed,
And whose voice is a squeeze whistlo's cry.
There are many piquant and jaunty verses of childnood similiar
to these poems which, once read, will have a trick of staying in tho
memory. Occasionally, the interpolation of something akin to dia
lect something which at least comes under the head of inelegant
colloquialism is placed in a poem which is otherwise dignified, and
mars it. As, for example, the use of the word "like" in place of "as"
in a sentence involving a comparison. While such expressions have
a certain homely charm, it is better, on the whole, that they should
not be indulged in, excepting in verses which are written in dialect.
That part of the public which is not acquainted with the author is
apt to suspect him of a grammatical slip, instead of an intentional in
formality. Some of the poems show a bad selection of subjects. ''Dakota
Divorces," is a clever and amusing thing, but is much more appro
priate in the columns of a daily newspaper, where it may go along
with other current remarks, than in a book of verse which the
author uses as the expression of himself and the best of him.
There are' not many pathetic verses in the book, but such as there
are, thoy aro genuinely pathetic, and in no maudlin sentiment that
brines tho tear to the eye, but involuntary sympathy, with a delicato
and fine sentiment. There aro Bomo delightful poems of nature
mixed as a usual thing with a delineation of tho most engaging part
of nature boy nature.
"Gil Bias," is the only poem on a literary eubject, and it is so good
that one wishes there might have been more of tho same sort. It
has certain resemblances in it to Eugene Field's work. A syllable
of undue length n tho last stanza reminds ono that Mr. Smith might
exercise more caro in his versification. It is not that his ear is lack
ing, or his knowledge, bat merely that ho has not yet attained tho
patience which accompanies the cautious revision of his work.
Yes, it is far and away tho best book ever issued from a Nebraska,
press. No part of the history of a 'state is inoro interesting than its
literary history, and, sinco this is tho first milestnno on the road
which, it is to be hoped, will bo a stately and beautiful ono, it de
serves to bo held in high esteem. Elia W. Pkattik.
THE WICKEDEST WOMAN.
Talking of tortures, we hear a great deal at present
about tho wickedness of modern days and many sighs for tho good
old times. Yet Paris has just been edified by a work treating of tho
life of a lady of the sixteenth century, who carried her caro for her
beauty to tho very utmost limits. This is not a fairy talo but a
sober, historical fact, backed by many official documents of un
doubted authenticity, and tho lady's amiablo weakness is described
with a wealth of detail and forciblo simplicity of description that it
is apt to turn the reader sick.
The lady is question was named Elizabeth Bathory, Comtcsse Na
dasdy, having married at the age of fifteen in 1505 Comte Francois
Nadasdy, who was not of too mild a nature himself, as, when his
wife complained ono day that her maid had been impertinent, he
ordered the erring handmaiJen stripped, smeared with honey and
laid on a wasp's nest from the effects of which gentle admonition
she subsequently died. Tho Countess Elizabeth was left a widow
in 1601 and began simply at first to keep up the rigorous discipline
enforced by her late husband. Unhappily, one day she struck her
waiting maid, and so wounded her that her mistress' hand were cov
ered with blood. When they were washed the Countess remarked
that her hands were whiter and the skin more supple and firm, and
thenceforward her naturally cruel nature was spurred by tho fren
zied desire to rotain her waning beauty at any price. Odd though
it may seem in the present day, sho used as a cosmetic from that
time a bath of human blood, and the tradition goes that any
thing bo superb in its brilliant fairness as her complexion can not be
imagined. She murdered all her waiting-maids, ono by one, aided
by three accomplices, her old nurse being one of them, and when
she could get no woman to enter her service she coolly sent her em
issaries to kidnap the peasant girls of the neighborhood.
At last, howovor, the ghastly scandal rose to such a pitch that
even Hungary in the Middle Ages could not afford to close its ears to
the wail of bereaved families; and the culprit's first cousin. Governor
of the Province, entered the castle on Christmaseve, 1610, to inquire
into the truth of these horrible stories, and discovered his fair and
honored relative, her fair chin propped by her exquisite band, calm
ly watching the death agonies of three girls, while her attendants
wero filling a bath tub with the life blood that was to preserve her
beauty. The Countess herself was too great a personage to incur
capital punishment, but for thirty years she was shut up in solitary
confinement in the castle of Hungary, where she finally starved her
self to death. As for her accomplices, they had their hands cut off,
and were subsequently burned at the stake, as, being common peo
ple; there was no reason for sparing their lives. It is said that this
fair dame sacrificed 600 girls to her radiance of skin, but tho bic
graper states soberly that documentary evidence exists of the mur
der of ocly 250, which was a very respectable number to get rid of
in six year's time; therefore wo will givo her the benefit of the doubt.
Whether in after years she considered thirty years of solitary con
finement too high a prico to pay for six years of unimpaired beauty,
it is hard to say, but the inference is that she did, since she killed
herself at last. Although her idea was not patented, in spite of tho
alleged success of this queer cosmetic, there is no proof that it ever
has been tried since. An account of the lady's proceedings has just
been read before the French Academy of Medicine,and she has been
pronounced to have been undoubtedly insane; but if so, it must be
confessed that her madness was curiously methodical.