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THE COURIER.
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5 PASSING SHOW
Tlii'iu arc plenty r icople of good
tusto who do not find De Wolf Hopper
oxcruciutingly funny, und it is rather
ditllcult to h.i just whHt there ia about
him that makes one feel bo cheerful. I
am inclined to think (hat it is not so
much anything that ho does, as ho him
self, his big. spuihl personality. I never
can think ho is acting on the stage, but
'just sort of improvising and being jolly.
1 like to watch him when he ia not
doing anything in particular, when ho
is just riditig his elephant and awaiting
the will of providenco to dismount, when
ho is wbltzing with the children, or
getting married and rocking himself to
and fro in helpless decpair. And by the
way, that despair has a decidedly comic
clement of its own. It is so absolute, so
complete, so all embracing, and gener
ally so uncalled for. And what is the
matter with Mrs. Hopper? It would
be treason to say that she was
any better than Delia Fox, but Bho cer
tainly was quite aB audacious without
being so impudent. She uses her smile
and her eyo in the approved light opera
fashion and manages to do it without
being bold or giddy a bit. Like her
husband, she seems to play for the fun
there is in it and to bo blessed with a
good nature that ia boundless and end
less.
Of all the "attractions' that are run
ning in New York just now, it is "The
Prisoner of Zenda" that is turning away
people every night because the Lyceum
theatre cannot hold all the people in
New York at once. We seem to be
drifting back to the older and more
healthful stylo of diama in which men
act instead of talking about the futility
of action, in which men have hearts and
hands instead of nerves and inherited
tendencies. Things look a little black
for the stage now and then when plays
like "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" get
tho upper hand. Tho critics get blue
and say that all tho strength and sin
cerity are ging out of the drama. Just
now, when tho 'end of the century"
feeling has its undoubted influence, both
literature and the drama look discour
aging. But thn critics need not lofe
sleep over it. Such things have been
in the past and will Le in the future,
and humanity will always go back to
tho best. Even if one has not much
faith in men individually one should be
lieve in them collectively Truth has
such a confirmed habit of prevailing
that it is not going to faii us now. Hu
manity has always recovered itself,
after its maddest debauches, after most
austere asceticisms, and whatever a
rniu's faith may be ho can not doubt
the wisdom of that great hand that
shapes the destiny of the nations. We
say, "but if these things go on, if all
women and all men look at morality as
merely a relative thing, and at virtue
or a myth and a fable, what will be
come of the world?" If, but they will
not. Humanity is always rushing to
its own destruction, but it never quite
accomplishes it.
In Rome, at one time, it looKed as
though marriage and the family were
things of the past. Later, in tho
tirst exaggerated zeal of tho church,
when St. Ureela alone had forty
thousand virgins in her convents, it was
Pall
Style
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Celebrated Hata
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J. A.
thought that tho raco would die out
altogether. In tho days of tho robber
barons men said that chaos hadcomo to
stay. But none of these things was
true. Wo are always taking temporary
tendencies of humanity and regarding
them as final. But tho final tendencies
and destiny are in tho keeping of a
greater hand than ours, of that
great intelligence, who, when tho Roman
world had corrupted tho civilization it
had mado, enslaved tho state it had
freed, grown monstrous in its pleasures,
had the barbarian races ready to destroy
and renew, brought down the snows of
tho Danube to cool tho heated blood of
tho south, and the great hammer of
Thor to crush tho delilec utlars of
Aphrodite into dust. Humanity cannot
utterly blast itself, oven when it tries.
Some day, perhaps, when our civiliza
tion has grown too utterly complex,
when our introspection cuts off all ac
tion, whon our forms huvo killed all
ambition, when sincerity and simplicity
havo utterly gone from us and we are
only a bundle of nerves, then tho savage
strength of tho Slav or the Bushmen
will come upon us an will burn our
phsychologies and carry us away into
captivity and make us dress tho vines
and plow the earth and teach us that
after all nature is best. God's scheme
is so big, his resources so many.
Humanity is always so much of a
child, its disgressions and sins aro
always more pitiful than terrible, and it
always, when its small 'boy pranks are
done, someway comes back toits mother,
whose forgiveness seems to bo without
end. Nature is pretty rough on the in
dividual at times, but to the type she is
wonderfully kind, and her mercy is
from everlasting to everlasting. When
she has one nation that is wholly aband
oned and given over to its emotions, and
another that analyzes more thau it
feels, she puts them together and lets
them fight it out and they strike an
equilibrium somewhere. She is a Spar
tan mother, but she has unruly sons to
handle. Wo aro growing too analytical
ourselves, and we need young men liko
Rudyard Kipling and Anthony Hope,
not because of tho greatress of their
talent, but because of the sincerity of
their motive, because the atmosphere of
their work is ono in which men may
love and work and light and die liko
men. Because in their own small way
they are carrying out tho task of their
great master and chief who died down
in tho bluo Pacific last winter when the
winds of December were covering us
with snow. Weowe him much, that great
master of pure romance, even his death
blessed us, for it drew tho world's atten
tion to his work and tho greatness f it.
to his faith and the sublimity of it.
showed us how vast was the future for
work like his. Living he enriched us
by his life; ding, by his death. Ro
mance is the highest form of fiction, and
it will never desert us. If Stevenson
did not accomplish its revival, 6ome
other man will. It will come back to
us in all its radiance and eternal fresh
ness in some one of tho dawning seasons
of Time. Ibsens and Zolas are great,
but they are temporary. Children, the
sea, the sun, God himself are all ro
manticists. Clouds cover tho sun some
times, and there is darkness upon the
face of tho deep, and God hides his
face from us. But they come again, and
with them Romance, as fair and beau
tiful and still as young as when it came
with the troubadours to the springlit
fields outside Verona where the Dukes
SMITH, Sole agt
THERE'S NO USE SWELTERING-
Over a hot stove cooking picnic lunches. Deviled
and other canned ham. Canned almon, German
and American cheese, domestic or imported sardines.
Bottled pickles, a few lemons, some sugar, two or
three loaves of bread, butter, and there you are, all
ready to go. We keep them and put them up for
partfes better than you can put them up your
self. Everything we keep is first class too. No
"cheap" stuff and yet we sell it chenp.
VEITH & RKSS, Grocers.
909 O STREET.
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A Large and Complete
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In all Departments. We invite our
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Wholesale manufacturers of
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DRIVING, RIDING AND RAGING OUTFITS
110-142 N Tenth St.
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HAGNOW'S
Will accept engagements forhigh grade
music for entertainments and dances.
Any number and variety of Instruments
furnished. Terms reasonable. Apply to
Orders may also be left
at Zehrung's drug store.
held their Court of Love. As the old
old French song says,
" Tho swallows that winter scatters.
Will come a Rain in tho spring."
Speaking of Stevenson, if you want to
read some noble and manly literature,
just glance over those letters of his in
the November JcCrc'. There you
will find the modesty, the sad self de
preciation which belongs to the truly
great, whose minds have so much more
power to conceive than their hands ever
have strength to execute, whose work is
6o far below the level of their dreams.
In one of them he remarks, "I do not
think it is possible to have fewer illu
sions than I. I sometimes wish I bad
more. They are amusing. But I can
not take myself seriously as an artist;
the limitations are too obvious." No, its
the people like Sarah Grand and Bea
trice Uarraden, who take themselves
m&
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AXJO"CJSX HAGBNO'W
University Conservatory of Music
11th and R Streets
seriously. Men like Stevenson have
other standards than themselves where
by they measure the world, and they
judge themselves impersonally, along
with the rest of imperfect humanity,
from a perspective above and beyond.
A great craftsman's taste is always so
much more perfect than hia work.
In another letter he says: "I won
der exceedingly if I have done any
thing at all good; and who can
tell me? and why should I wish
to know? In so little a while, I, and
the English language, and the bones of
my descendants, will have ceased to be
a memory? And yet and yet one
would like to leave an image for a few
years upon men's minds for fun."
He wondered if he had done anything
at all good. Well, as Henry James 6ays,
"Our doubt is our passion, and our pas-