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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (April 4, 1896)
rl JCc ? -w- - S? 'TV , Sir ', 'f i thx courier. V vrrj4'" - 'H. war. ;e." V S.i T . t'2-r &;. ?&. TfTr : srf sjKi. krX ; is tiresome 'tt placed between you ''and the horizdn on a pedestal! The pedes tal, the' elevation is 'what' we object to. Who put it up there? Or did it climb up there' in the night' like Mr. Thurs ton? Any way, it belongs down on the ground with the rest of us. Even 'Na poleon got his column in the Place' Vendome pulled down because it was too high to celebrate one man's" deeds. A hero must wear his stainless honor with entire unconsciousness if he does not wish the gallery to tell him to go home to his "ma." Mr. "Russell's pedes tal was a little too high. He might have got down and kicked it over when he had the chance to get drunk but he wished to teach his relatives a great moral lesson and he kept sober more's the pity. The curtain raiser "Mr. Valentine's Christmas", was very pathetic. Mr. Rus sell was the gentle old bachelor. His servant and lie were written by Thomas Nelson Page were they not? The pathos was genuine or so many would not have wept. His servant announces what his master will do when he comes in. "Mas ea Valentine" does it. In "An Every day Man" the scornful cousin tells what Mr. Empy will do when he comes in. He does it. The incident is effective but is it not a little overworked? A play founded on the Yankee.Pedlar of fifty years ago a character compound of shrewdness, honest but cold blooded insight into human nature acquired and inherited, acquisitive, not passionate nor poetical in any way might be written and Sol Smith Russell becunie a favor ite in New York City. A mawkish play, like "An Everyday Man-' is difficult to redeem. Probably no one in the coun try could amuse an audience with it for a whole evening except Mr. Russell. Last wpek was remarkable for three full houses. Three in a week has not happened before this winter. Altho for Richard Mansfield, Saturday night at the Funke the seats were double price all over the house, it was filled by a more than usually good, that is, intel ligent and critical audience. The actors of today are so much better than the plays they play. In Shaks pere's time acting was a servile trade (hat died not out because there was something called the drama which men respected and which was Shakspere and Ben Johnson that held the people's imagination and taught them unutter able things while not seeming to. JJow-a-days Duse, the elder Salvini, John Hare, Bernhardt and Olga Xethersole are occupied with trivialities, in which, in spite of everything they are able to reveal their own geuius. Feulllet's nlay of "A Parisian Ro mance" stops at the end of the fourth act when Baron Chevrial dies. The au dience some of it remains for one act more. It was more than Beatrice Came ron could do to oiako us care whether she lived or died, survived or perished in the last act, She really should have been drowned for leaving so handsome and enamoured a husband as Henri de Targy. Everybody was disappointed to see her back again. The play is made up of five acts not especially related. The second act might as well have been the first, or the third could have suc ceeded the first. The fifth might be suggested in the fourth and saved Henri and the audience needless annoyance. Besides the play has no action. It is all declimation and dialogue. A class in elocution might say it off and noth ing be missed except the scenery. The class aforesaid would have a good deal of trouble with the fourth act: Ba ron Chevrial's petit souper which has action and one moment of supreme in. terest when the Baron rides to give his toast, which Death does not prevent him from giving, reels up the steps, turns round and round and dies to the shrill screams of the premiere danseuse and the ballet. r Richard -Mansfield's makeup was per- THE :A-iSft- An order for SI worth of seeds or feet. His eyes were burnt nut fires set half-way back in his head. His cheeks were hollow and palia under the rouge, his lower lip was a different shape from his own firm feature and drooped more and more as death came on . His hands shook all the time he was on the stage. Mr. Mansfield has a dramatic con science as exacting as Savonarola's. He does not spare himself nor his troupe. Infinite pains be taks3 to present a play correctly though there be only a few who recognize his integrity. He made the old roue so disgusting and so real that a shadow walked be hind the people on the way home and its soft foot-falls frightened them until work drove it away. An artist can have no greater triumph. Richard Mansfield made a terrifying and abiding reality from the dramatist's faint words. In spite of the desire to forget that horrid old man it is impossible. He had some virtues better call them traits which were not eo ,bad. He was not a hypo crite, and although he was not gener ous, neither was he a miser. He did not hoard his money. His wife dressed very well, and he gave petit soupers to un grateful danseuses. His troupe were well enough but some thing made them wooden. It was their inflexible lines which they had not talent enough to bend to their use. Johnstone Bennet looked strange as a countess. She seemed to be conscious that as a star she had shot out of her place but meditated another flight. Miss Eleanor Cary and Mr. Orrin Johnson, mother and son in the play, were the only good-looking family on the stage. Beatrice Cameron was not charmiiig nor pretty. In Beau Brum mel she was light and graceful anyway. Her mouth droops and two acts of droop and whine do not produce pathos. Tne part is especially unfortunate for her. Tne woman who car wear a large hat to the theatre and not take it off when she gets there, annources to all who can see her absolute iudifference to tne rights of others. She shows that in her own person she has balked civilization' that so far as she is concerned there is no such thing as evolution. But she is an angel of mercy compared to the man who can go to the theatre, sit beside ladies and spit on the floor. The thea tre hat is growing smaller and fewer. Spitters have no mercy and no conscious ness of the nausea they create. Surely a woman has some rights. I doubt not ,f she were given the choice of suffrage or being freed from the sickening sight, sound, odor of tobacco spit she would choose the latter as an emancipation. If all men were compelled to go about for one, week in skirts, up and down stairs covered with expectoration they would be even the most brutish, a lit IMfcK- GQVteRvS For $2 we will (five a year's subscription to the Courier and an order on the Griswold Seed Co. N. W. Cor Tenth and N Sts, for $2 worth of seeds and bulbs as may be selected. Forty 5c packages of garden seed and the Courier for $2, or ten 20c packages, or twenty 10c packages or thirteen 15c packages or eight -25c packages or four 50c packs. the: hr:ier bulbs given with every renewal of subscription. tle more considerate. If bloomers are unfeminine, they are the only costume a woman can wear and keep her dress free of foulest stains. The steps of the postoffice which hundreds of victims go up and down every day are covered with a filth unspeakable. So long as men continue to make neatness impossible to everything that wears skirts it is incon sistent to rail at theatre hats or any other feminine usurpation. The times are relieved, there is no doubt of it. From a grocery store to a railroad the tension is relaxed and the earnings increased with every month's summary. "Burlington officials feel elated over the results of the operation of their road for February. Instead of a net decrease in earnings, as has been the rule for the last few months, a net increase of $278,392 is shown by the statement just issued. For the first time in many months all the departments show an incieaEe in earnings. Chicago Tribune after the report. The following is taken from "'J own Topics" before the report appeared: It is estimated that the forthcoming report of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy will make a most distressing showing, and it is on this that the street is invited to go short of Burlington, the promise being tacitly made that with the publication of thr net returns for February, now due. quite an important selling movement will set in in this stock, that will land prices at a lower level t han those reached in more than three months. There are few better ptocka to hold for a long pull than Burlington. It still retains its prestige of being the New York Central of the west, and, un der ordinary circumstances, can be made an uncomfortable property for the bears to be short of. Officials of the company assure their friends that there is no dan ger of the dividend being reduced: on the contrary, they dwell largely upon the prospects of improving business, and they believe most sincerely that in the course of sixty days the earnings will so swell, because of the movement of corn now being held back, that the anxiety that any of the stockholders may have will surely be removed. Eleonora Duse will appear in Chicago in spite of vow and crucifix. "Eleonora Duse's superiority as an emotional actress is not questioned. In playing upon the finer sensibilities of the people she has no superior. Her art grows on one because she appeals to the pure in heart and mind. There is noth ing reversionary in her methods. It is too bad, then, that her managers give her only five performances in Chicago, beginning Monday, May 4, and continu ing as follows:" Monday. May 4 '. "Camille" Tuesday, May 5 : "Magda" 0 217n 11 St. Wednesday, May G, double bill "Cavalleaia Rusticana" and La Locandeira." Friday, May 8 "Magda" Matinee. May 9 ..."Uamille" Robson is playing "Mrs.Ponderbury's Past" in Chicago. The Tribune says: "The humour of the play breaks out in spots, but Mr. Robson manages to throw the burden of laughter upon his man nerisms 'as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, squeak without end.'" S.B. H. "Queen Victoria." Ladies' Favorite Her Majesty's Perfume, is the most lasting and perfect Perfuxce. Ask iggs the Druggist" for a sample. Trilby's "Truthful pills'" is a specific in all cases of kidney and liver toubles. Just one pellet at night does the work At Riggs' pharmacy cor 12 and O. A comfortable California trip can be taken every Thursday at 10-30 a. m. in a through tourist sleeping car, Lincoln to Los Angelos without change via the Burlington. Remember this when ar ranging for your winter trip. Depot ticket office, 7th street between P and Q streets. City office, corner Tenth and O streets. Special prices on stationery at Roy 'a tablets and fine GO TO California In a TourlHt Hleeper It is the RIGHT way. Pay more and you are extravagant. Pay less and you are uncomfort able. The newest, brightest, cleanest and easiest riding Tourist sleepers are used for our Personally conducted excursions to Galifornia which leave Lincoln every Thursday at 10:30 a. m., reaching San Francisco Sunday evening, and Los An geles Monday noon. Ask G.W.Bonnell city ticket agent, cor 10th and O Sts., Lincoln Neb for full information or write to J. Fraxcis, G. P. A. Omaha, Neb. "'' 2 Jlfes!