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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 26, 1898)
THE COURIER. ury. If they wish to deliver that which is paid them for the state to the state, they can sleep with a good conscience, but if they prefer Bleep leasncss and riches to an auditor's salary and a good conscience, the state, according to this decision, can not punish them for acquiring thou sands at its expense. In this incred ible position has the exact interpreta tion of the law placed the people of Nebraska and the state auditor. While Eugene Moore was being tried the newspapers of the state refrained from expressing an opinion. For once they allowed the case to be tried in court and the verdict justified their seme of propriety, but they are making it up now by anathematizing the law which compels such a decision. J Americans are getting tired of ban queting and lionizing foreigners, and paying out dollars to hear them lee ture, and of being repaid by abuse as soon as the lecturer is far enough away to call us names. The English are in sular and that means that they are convinced of their own superiority. They may consent to listen to a Swede or a Frenchman or a bloomin' Ameri can, but they do not lionize him, they never lose their critical attitude, or forget for one instant that he is not an Englishman, and therefore not worthy of much consideration. Nan sen is a cold blooded Swede who is re paying our hearty and generous re ception by criticising our hotels, our railroads and our manners to our quondam enemies and relations, the English. He came to America to make money. He made it. We made him free of the best we had, but he has not anything good to say of us. So did Trollope: so did Dickens, and Kipling and Mathew Arnold. But the artists and singers and speakers keep coming because we have money and minds open to all forms of beauty and cannot learn that we are not ele gant and that the old world despises us. American actors and actresses complain that the New York theatres are full of English members of the profession, while, when they go across the water, the English give them but scanty welcome. Americans are lack ing in insularity and need to culti vate it. We have made the inven tions which have boosted civilization further along than those of any other nation. We are publishing the best newspapers, writing the best books, painting the best pictures and we should not forget it J Franklin Matthews, a writer in Harper's Weekly, is contributing a series of articles to that paper on the west. Under the head of "Bright Skies in the West," Mr. Matthews gives the crop and poultry reports of Kansas and Nebraska. The report of Kansas occupies three of the broad columns, while that from Nebraska fills about a sixth of the space. The author says that "It is not easy to get crop statistics in Nebraska for the reason that the state board of agri culture devotes itself to a state fair once a year and not to the kind of work that is done in Kansas. You may gather facta about Nebraska mort gages easier than about Nebraska crops and products. Governor Hol comb sent me what he said was the estimate of the state board of agri culture. The chief fact about the Nebraska figures is that they show that corn is still king in that com monwealth. The value of the 33,000, 000 bushels of wheat raised was, in Nebraska, $23,000,000; of the 230,000, 000 bushels of corn raised, $42,000,000; of the 9,000,000 bushels of oats $10, 000,000; of the 5,000,000 bushels of rye, 1,800,000; of the 4,600,000 tons of hay, 14 000,000. The total value of the farm product at local market prices was 999,000,000: dairy products, $9,500, 000; eggs, $2350,000; poultry, $5,500,000; live stock, 44,000,000 a total of more than $161,000,000, against a total of $230,000,000 for 1897 raised in Kansas. "It should be recorded, in strict re gard for truth, that in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety seven Corn ceased to be King in Kan sas. The empire was overthrown by a revolution, and that revolution con sisted of changes in farming methods. To go back further in the logic of .events, it is truthful to say that the hard times in a great measure brought about these changes and developed the new farming in the Middle West.'' In view of the increasing unpop ularity of the state fair the state board of agriculture will probably de vote their time hereafter, as the Kan sas board has done, to fostering agri cultural diversity. The Kansas board has a system of correspondence which Mr. Matthews says "is probably un matched by any other state in the union. It keeps constantly in touch with all sorts of farmers and notifies them of the results in important ex periments. It issues its reports quar terly, and they are not the cut and dried affairs that such documents usu ally are. They not only contain in formation, but entertainment. They are prepared by Secretary Coburn, whose work is so valuable that he is the only republican official of import ance that the populists did not oust when they came into full possession of the state government. Mr. Coburn is a man of decided sentiment, which is mixed up in a picturesque way with the practical method be employs in looking after the affairs of bis depart ment. His reports bear in red ink such titles as these: "Cow-Culture," "The Helpful Hen," "The Beef Steer and His Sister." The agricultural college of ourstate university is doing similar work to that of the Kansas board, which has succeeded so well as to put the Kansas products $61,000,000 worth ahead of Nebraska, notwithstanding the fact that the latter's average rainfall is much higher than that of Kansas. The difference is in the head work and "the fostering care of the state agri cultural board of Kansas, which long ago learned that a state fair was of no especial benefit to the agricultural interests of the state, but that the farmers and fields were waiting for intelligent advice and development. The faculty of the Nebraska agricul tural college is in sympathy with the farmers, but a board composed of farmers and devoted to the agricul tural development of the state occu pies a point of vantage not possessed by a faculty of scholars, however de voted to the subject it is employed in teaching. Mr. Matthews says that in leaving for the west a Chicago editor said to him: "An American race of giants is to come out of the Middle West." I think you'll find indications of it. They are the most intelligent people on earth. The native-born population number 90 per cent of the whole. They have had hard times and have been in distress, but whatever may be said of them and their vagaries, they are already beginning to produce giants in intellect." . MlMMMMMIimiHIIimilllllHlOmHIIIIIIIMM MIMIIIHIMI 1 The Passing Show. WILLA CATHER. . MMIIIIMIMMIMMIIMIIIMMM8 MIMIMMMMIMIMIMMIII Illlt Mr. E. S. Willard is one of the most work, to never weary of experiment discerning character actors of his gen- ingwith a given spiritual organiza eration, one of the keenest intellectual tion in a given environment. His interpreters of modern.drama, and as work has a scholarly flavor; it smells such he deserves to be taken seriously, of the midnight oil. Acting has become one of the most His analysis is so clear, so acurate, intensely subjective of the arts; play- 6 J penetrating that it, is almost dis ers have their own playwrights, who passionate. Undoubtedly he lacks the are en rapport with all their pergonal warmth, the magnetism which is the mannerisms and predilections, and chief charm of strongiy temperamental who write for them one part over and players. You never for a moment over, one part placed in different sur- feel that the man's whole self is roundings, set off by different foils, speaking to you across the footlights, thinly disguised by the costumes of you hear and see only a cleverly different centuries. Actors usually wrought character, an artistic cre prefer adapting their parts to them- ation. And you catch the player's selves rather than themselves to their spirit, critically and dispassionately parts. This is a perfectly legitimate you watch his character. His appeal and often admirable form of art. It is to your intelligence, is one, however, which necessarily subordinates the actor's creative in- He appeared here this year in VDa telligence, which in time quite blunts vfd Garrick." It is his first season in the edge of his intellectual acumen, the part, I believe. It isasthorough and finally paralyzes the purely err- ly admirable as his other impersona ative impulse altogether. This has tions, and, like them, just a little been the history of all those gifted cold. While he was here he spent his young temperamental actors who days out at the Carnegie library sur acbieved success .too early of Man- rounded" by dusty .tomes .on the life and times of Garrick. I used to drop in of an afternoon just, to see that quiet, studious gentleman there; it rather renewed one's faith in the seriousness of the drama. To me the most remarkable thing about his "Garrick" is the way in tell, of Charles Coglan, of John Drew, of Edward Sothern. Having once charmed by peculiar gifts of tempera ment they were assured that those same qualities would charm again and ceased from that travail of the intel lect which inevitably accompanies artistic progression, and with their which he reproduces the atmosphere own hands built the wall which shut of the time. He plays the historical them from the stars. "Garrick." The note of modern in- I like Willard because he is the tensity is never sounded. This is a antithesis of all this; because he is so "Garrick" of other times and other calm, so self-contained, so ascetic, so manners, a player of the Drury Lane seemingly concentrated upon his work theatre; always somewhat theatrical, each night and so careless of the often declamatory, who reads Sbaks results. I saw him every night last pere as the actors of the eighteenth week and it was always the same. You century read him. In the tipsy scene go into the theatre with much the I fancy Mr. Willard rather overdid same feeling with which you open a this theatrical side of the man when, novel by Henry James. You may not in speaking to the woman he loves, be greatly moved at any time, but the "Garrick" forgets his odious part for mostresDectablepartofyourmentality a moment, and talks of the true in will be awakened, refreshed, interest- spiration of the stage. He spoke for ed, satisfied. You will see a theme per- her ear alone, and even "Garrick" fectly handled, an idea developed with would scarcely have indulged in de consummate skill, and a high artistic clamation then, however florid his conception admirably portrayed. usual manner. In the last act, when There is no man on the stage today, entreating the girl to quit his apart- Richard Mansfield excepted, who ments and return to her father, this keeps his personality so entirely out tinge of the theatric is almost entirely of his work as Willard. Behind each absent, and I thought the character part you recognize the same piercing became more convincing from its ab- mentality, but his physical and emo- sence. Yet it is in the tipsy scene tional personality he leaves behind that Willard does his best work. Mr. Proudpop You surely don't be lieve in infant damnation, do you? Mr.Sourmug Well. wears told that heaven will be a place of peace and rest. "What is the 'winter of our discontent,' pat" "When you have to write summer jokes with the thermometer ten degrees below, Sabscribe for The Codrieb, $1 a year. him when he steps upon the stage. He has no favorite attitudes which are always applauded, no thrilling intona tions like Sotbern's famous "sweet heart," which always makes the same hearts flutter. He is altogether above the desire to please. When he pre sents a character to the public, he presents a character of his imagina tion. He gives to that character not only a motive but tastes, standards, mannerisms, personal attributes all its own. No two characters could be more wholly different than his "Professor" in "The Professor's Love Story" and his "Bailey Prothero" in the "Rogue's Comedy." Different not only in moral tone, but in physical, emotional and mental attributes. He seems nightly to have approached and made the acquaintance of his character again, to have introduced himself to it anew, so wholly is it a thing apart from him self. He seems each time he plays to feel afresh the subtle pleasure of character study, to stand by and watch with keen enjoyment while the strange chemistry of the soul is at Under "Garrick's" feigned intoxica tion, his hatred of himself and bis YiOOK C HARPER' Magazine HARPER'S x Bazaar 5 HARPER'S Weekly or any $4 Magazine With, THE COURIER One Year for $4.