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VOL.; 10, NO 41..
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LINCOLN, NEB., SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5 1895.
EXTzBKD IX TBX POST OFFICE AT LINCOLN
AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY
DT
TIE romiER raiNTIIfG AND PUBLISHING GO.
OOIco 217 North Elercntb St.
Telephone 334
W. MORTON SMITH
SARAH B. HARRIS
WILLA GATHER
Editor and Manager
Associate Editor
Associate Editor
Subscription Rates In Advance.
Per annum $2.00
Six mon'hs 1.00
Three months 50
Onemonth 20
Single copies 5
9
OBSERVATIONS
9
I understand that it is 60 quiet in
Omaha since the passing of Ak-Sar-Ben
that most of the people have nothing to
do save to sit and reflect upon the wild
dissipation of that never to be forgotten
carnival week. One young and enter
prising Omahan who derived especial
enjoyment fron the excitement of the
fete makes a practice of consuming a
large quantity of absinthe twice a week
solely for the purpose of living again in
the mad revels of the Feast of Mon
damin. He says he can see all the
goblins and gnomes and gold and
glitter that marked the passing of
Ak-Sar-Ben, and each time that be
places himself under the influence of
the opalesque liquid he enjoys in all its
equisiteness the ecstacy of his brilliant
appearance as a Knight, and is again
in the seventh heaven of delight.
' dancing with beautiful Isadora Rush at
the court ball. From all accounts I
am afraid Ak-Sar-Ben has really turned
the heads of the good people of Omaha,
as I feared it would. I am sincerely
sorry. Omaha used to be such a nice,
quiet, well-conducted place for Lincoln
people to visit when in need of rest. It
has become far too frivolous.
E7ry Monday morning the Rev.
Frank Crane holds down several col
umns of the Omaha Bee with his
"Pulpit Editorials." I have always
doubted the benefits of a minister's con
nection with a newspaper, just as I
doubt the propriety of his connection
with the theatre or the stock exchange
or any other strictly temporal and
worldly enterprise. I know that much
can be said in favor of the church un
bending and coming down to the com
mon needs of common humanity, but I
think that after all the greatest need of
humanity is for a little of that calm
pure spiritu 1 force and strength, such
as the church ought to give but can
not give if it become worldly and mun
dane like everything else. For the mis
sion of the church has never been to
drive men to righteousness, but to offer
it to those who choose it freely, to give
the life of the spirit to those who aro
aweary of the life of the flesh. Through
the glory and fall of paganism, through
the chaos of the dark ayes, through the
turmoil of the Reformation, through the
frivolity of modern civilization, the
church has never lost its first dignity,
its first benediction. Whatever else it
may have been or may not have been,
it has remained industrious, dig
nitied. c nservative, apart, a silent, im
movable witness of the life spiritual in
all tho transient ebb and flow of the
life temporal. 1 should hate to see tho
church lose all this now and becoms
editorial and commercial and political.
It is the only institution left us which
has any calm or quiet assurance, any
claim upon the life of the spirit, and if
the Bait lo60 its savor wherewith shall
the earth be salted?
I am not in sympathy with any of tho
sensational departures of the pulpit.
I do not think that converted gamblers
should be recognized by the clergy nor
that sensational sermons advance the
cause of the church. A minister has
no need to advertise himself in a news
paper. A church has no right to go
into politics or commerce. There is a
species of clergyman, and his name is
legion, who is enchanted with hie own
astuteness and prides himself upon
combining the qualities of a financier,
a politician and a theatrical manager.
He sells at an advantage the corner lots
that his wealthy parishoner donated for
a church site; he works his deacons into
the city council, he builds up the social
side of his church until the theatres
close their doors because they can't
stand the competition with church
socials and concerts. This sort of a
clergyman is the kind much sought
after. His church debt ie paid and his
pews are never empty. Perhaps it is a
foolish scruple and yet there are some
of us who have slight objections to
"whooping up' the church of Christ,
auctioning salvation under the hammer
and netting off the Kingdom cf Heaven
like Wichita town lots upon the
public whether it is willing or not.
John P. Sutton, who was elected
general secretary of the newly formed
Irish national alliance, an organization
that looks directly to Irish national
independence, a cause that the national
league and the land league squinted at,
is, I believe, well qualified for the post.
Mr. Sutton was for many years a resi
dent of Lincoln, and it is no secret that
he was a power in the affairs of the
Irish National league. John Fitzgerald
was the ostensible head of the organ
ization, but Mr. Sutton was the power
that moved Mr. Fitzgerald. All of the
addresses that emanated from tho
league headquarters in this city with
Fitzgerald's name attached were
written by tho man who is now general
secretary of the national alliance. A
few years ago when the Cronin excite
ment was at its height newspaper cor
respondents in this city used to go to
Pret-ident Fitzgerald in tho morning
and ask for some official expression.
They would come back again in the
afternoon and get an 'interview' writ
ten by Mr. Sutton. Tho new general
secretary is one of tho ablest men
interested in the Irih cause. He is a
scholar of no mean ability, and what he
writes and says has in it much of the
true Irish fire. He is intensely loyal to
his native country. I venture to say
there is no more staunch advocate of
Irish independence in the alliance than
Mr. Sutton, and Lis zeal will show
forth in c way that will attract atten
tion. A dentist in this town has set a
dangerous precedent. Ho made a set of
teeth for a woman and then because she
couldn't complete tho payments therefor
he sent for her and took the teeth out
and wouldn't give thsm back until they
wero replevined by legal process. Has
it come to this? Aro the unfeeling
merchants going to come after us and
take our shoes and bats and clothes
etc., just because we can't pay for them?
If a dentist can take back his teeth a
merchant can, with equal propriety, take
back his clothing. It would be a little
awkward to have a haberdasher or a
tailor or a shoe man -come up to us
when we are out in good society and in
sist on having his neckcloth or his
clothes or bis shoes. Debtors have
some rights which creditors are bound
to respect this sounds like Mr. Bryan,
but it's not and the line should be
drawn at teeth and other things that
we carry around with us.
There is a little serpent in India six
inches long, as big around as your finger
and just the color of the dust that it
glides about in. Rudyard Kipling tells
about it in "Rikki tiki-tavi," one of the
"Jungle Book" tales. There is absolute
ly no cure for those who are stung by
it. They must die. It is the most
dangerous serpent known because its
color and size make it practically invis
ible. It has no brave challenge like the
rattle snake, nor the brilliant color, nor
hooded head of other snakes. It is as if
the dust on which we lay our kindred
hand were to roll itself into a cylinder
and strike us without warning. Such a
reptile would have been exterminated
by the frontiersmen if they had found
them here. Some envenomed dust, in
visible and fatal, in form fashioned like
a man, still skulks in Lincoln. It writes
anonymous letters defaming the most
blameless of our neighbors and friends,
and sends them out by the hundreds.
The names read like a roll of honor.
They represent the purest and best in
the city. Caesar's wife would not be
safe from such an attack as this It is
Iiko children who tako a piece of chalk
and write some obscenity on the side.
walk; it offends everyone who passes
until some Samaritan rubs it out. Only
this can not bo rubbed out from the
minds of thoso whom it traduces. Call
a man names and ho forgets it. Call a
woman names and her happy uncon
sciousness of self is forever gone. She
thinks when she looks into another's
face that ho must be thinking of that
insinuation. In an old fairy tale the
wicked stepmother tried to destroy tho
prince, her sor. in law's, faith in her step
daughter. When the stepmother was
asked what punishment was meet for
such a person nho answered: "Ho should
be shut up alive in a cask stuck full of
charp spikes at.d rolled down hill." I
would the anonymous letter writer of
Lincoln might bo put in a similar cask
and rolled down hill.
For nearly eight years I have read
the Bee. Sunday, for the first time, I
came across something clever in it, and
I think moro of Mr. Rosewater's paper
now than I ever did before. Something
good has come out of the Bee, and the
event ought to bo celebrated. A couple
of weeks ago the World-Herald started
the report that Mr. Rosewater was in
the last stages of consumption or heart
disease or something, and that he would
soon retire from the management of the
Bee. Sunday there was an editorial en
titled, "Waiting for Some One to Die.'"
It was related how G.M.Hitchcock after
having expended a patrimony of a half
million dollars in trying to make a suc
cess of tho World-Herald was still far
short of the mark and waiting for some
one to die. The writer went on to say:
"It maybe unbecoming.but it is never
theless a sad, solemn and melancholy
duty for the editor of this paper to con
tinue to live on for a while longer, even
though he would like to accommodate
the man who has been so patiently de
laying his life's work while wating for
some one t die. Were it not indelfcato
on our part to offer advice to a man who
has never been known to act upon any
man's advice, we would gently intimate
that in all probability he is not likely to
inherit the kingdom which he covets.
If tho long-awaited vacancy in the
editorial chair of The Bee should occur,
as it will sooner or later, and no man
is found competent to fill that place, it
is still unlikely that the patronage of
The Bee would drop like baked pigeoca
into the open mouth of any man who
can do nothing and build up nothing
until some one dies. If there shall be
a void created in the Omaha newspaper
field it will have to be filled by a man
of brains, ability and integrity of pur
pose. Such a man will doubtless turn
up at the proper time, but it will not be
a man who is waiting for some one to
die."
Mr. Harwood disclaims any political
significance in his visit to Washington.
He saw Mr. Morton, of course, bullish-