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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 11, 1897)
THE COURIER. all; There is a lutrse, old and lame, who keeps the family. He is the only one who works. My mother was a dairy-maid like myself. She can scarcely read. 1 grew up like a weed, etc. I tell you that woman impeaches Heaven a she stands there. .Later she puts a written confession and a rose on the window sill for him, telling him if he can marry her after that to come to her without a word. Her mother ttiuls the letter and hum- it. He finds only the rose. The second act opens with the wed ding feast. The strain of the piece is for a time relieved by the comedy of the milkmaids and dairymen in their Sunday clothes. Then Tess enters. carrying her bride roses, and with her those dear little children she means to make so happy. Her farewell to her old companion of the dairy must be seen to be appreciated. As they go out, the sulky milkmaid who is in love with Angel hangs back, and Tess goes up and puts her arms about her with such simple dignity and tender ness as I have never seen before. At last Tess and her husband are left alone, and begin to pace the floor to gether in their restless happiness. Her husband makes his confession, she learns that lie never got.hcr's. She makes it now. 1 cannot tell how. I can only see her again before me. on that sofa, his arms about her, her hand over his shoulder, twisting a handkerchief into a mere pulp. lean feel again that awful silence vhen she came to the things she could not tell. I can see that distraught man go out bare-headed into the night, and that heap of bridal llnery crouched wailing on the lloor. That scene is not one to write of. "When you hare witnessed it you have gazed upon the naked soul of womanhood and stand ashamed and afraid. The next art is in the cottage at Marlott. The old father is dead, there is nothing to eat in the house. Abram is down with the fever. The bailiffs have come to set them out in the street. Tess has come back from another fruitless effort to get work. Her mother flies at her in tantrums and in torrents of abusive language upbraids her for not going back to Alec d'Urberville. She takes it all smilingly, kneeling by her little brother's pallet, holding Ills hot head, crooning an old ballad to him softly, looking into the child's eyes for the only love there is to help her in all the world. Dear me! no one who has ever had a little brother can sit dry eyed through -that. She makes the love for that child so real, that lovt that is religion to some of us who have no creed. Sometimes I think actors are so busy studying the great pas sions that they quite overlook the quieter loves, which, after all, are the most satisfactory in life. 1 never saw this love of one's own kin done per fectly on the stage except in two in stances; one where Crane hugged Bobby" In "Brother John." and this scene of Mrs. Fiskc's with Abram. Marian, the milkmaid, comes in and tells Tess that Alec d'Urberville is still following her. remarkiug. "You kin try a woman beyond her strength." Tess stands there, that pcor, frail little woman with the rag ged shawl about her shoulders and her sick brother at her feet, and her enfuriated motherstillstormingabout the room, and says almost lightly. "Xo, not me." Ah! And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it! .Alecd'Ubrervilie comes in as the bailiffs are tearing up the furniture. When he has exhausted every other persuasion, he tells her that Angel Clair is dead, and Marian confirms it. Tess sinks stupidly into a chair mut tering, "2fo. no, Marian!- Nob dead! Souls can't go out of the world like that, can they?" The bailiffs pull the bed from under her shrieking brother, her mother screams her curses in her earsj then something in that great heart snaps. She tli rows her hands over her ears crying, "Mother. Mother, for God's sake stop a minute! Alccd'Urberviile, where are you? I will go with you!" There was no man to help her. no God. I know of nothing like it, save in the old Greek tragedies where men and fates and gods united to drag the daughters of Hellas to theirdoom. The last act has been written of so often and so well that I will say little of it. I remember most vividly where, i returning from Alec's roomrshe meets Angel Claire. She raises her arm' andstandsagainst the wall like a cru cifix. She simply does not breathe at all. She staggers to a cbair in long, loose strides as though she wore falling to pieces. Then she utteir, a single cry, "Marian!' Could that trumpet note have come from that f rail lady? The maid crouches before her. self convicted. Then, without looking at him. in a high, shrill voice, quite dif ferent from any other tone sbe uses in the play and as unlike her own voice as mine is. Tess says: '-I waited, and waited, and you did not answer; 1 waited until they lied to me and said you were dead. He heljed us. he is here, 1 am with him" That band falls to the table, and Angel Clair goes out. Then follows that murder which is absolutely unique in histrionic art. On9 needs to ect something like this occasionally to remember that the drama is not an amusament or a diversion merely, but a great art, which the great est artists of the world have served. This woman has earned that often misused tit.'e of artiit. She has crossed that treacherous isthmus which lies between the troubled, inconstant tides of com mercial art and those remote, still waters whoEe depths are cot gauged and whoso stars do rot set. Few ever crose it. Ah, th(rj have hojn so m2ny whom we hoprd would bo what this woman is, eo many of thoso lights thas failed. There W28 Anderson, and Morris, and Margaret Mathe-, and there ii Nethor sole, a violent school girl with tho gifts of a goddess. Will she or will she not? Who knoTTh! But of this woman there is no doubt. Leas giftd dramatically than any of them, she has the rare intelligence which, if less direct and compelling, is at least more fixed, mora infallible. Xo, no, she will not fail us, not the! As long as those g cat eyes look at you acrois tho footlights, you can slnko jour faith upon her, that she will bo first, and always and preeminently an artist, that she will feed her art with her iifo. No. we shall not lack our champion, not un til death puts out the light in thof eyee. She will feed her art with her life; ye3. that is it. Olive Schreiner once wrote a story of an artist who painted pictures in a wondoiful red color thatnone of his fellow-painters could imitate. Thev sought the world over for a color like that and never found it. Ho worked on, growing paler day by day, never leveal ing hie secrot. But after ho was dead, when his fellows went to put his graro clothes on him, they found an old wound over his heart with open and calloused edges. Then they knew where he got his color. Alfred do Musset said the same thing much better in his ode to Malibran, which Is ono of tho ma&terpieces of French literature. It was written after Mali oran'i death. 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C. baking powder, -5 uz. cans. . 1 lb. can Prices baking powder.... 2 cats Lewis jo Sauer kraut, prruart, B:st mustard sardines 10 15 15 :!5 15 0r 05 SPECIAL SALE THIS WEEK. Farmers' Gro cery Co. z., i . i" oirrer. 200COCCCGOCOCOOCG3 0C03 o o o o o o o o o o 8 o o o o o o o o o o u o o k3 'tiaiytj merely wish to get at the idea. "Had you but smothered that devouring flame Which your throbbing heart could no longer ho!d, You would be living now, and still see followingpand ap plauding you The careless crowd o! this world-weary world. Knew you nolh'ng o: man's ingraft udc? What dream deluded you' to die for the wor'd.' What votive flowers made you so mad As to weep real tears upon our stage, When artists, crownei a thousand times, Never felt one-'n their eyes? Why d'd ycu notsmil: with averted face, Like other players, emotion feigning? Instead of that delirium waert you sang the willow song, Why not merely have h:ld your lyre with grace? ii '. Did you not know, mad artist, That tfcoie great cries which wetted up from your heart Heightened the palor of those wasted cheeks, That every day the hand you pla:?d upon your burning brow "Trembled more than it-did yesterday, And that to cherish grief is tempting God?" W1LLA CATHER, PlTTSECRO, Pa. r tr -w r a ir.r.wi!cox.i 1 UPHOLSTERIG, REPAIRING (2 AND PACKING I FURNITURE I I FOR THE LADIES: $ White and black curled hair for W ntlliTinrr pnoriinnft g ni)MHHMIH0l)tH)tf 5 I V. M. C. A.Bfg.. S. W.Cor. N.i 13.
