The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903, March 12, 1898, Page 2, Image 2
THE COURIER. II the society contemplates. Under the long as a literary examination is not Incubus, however, of twenty Vice- the prerequisite to the possession of a Presidents General it is difficult for theatre ticket, theatrical managers the mind which has never been acknowledge the obligation that they trained and strengthened by flights are under of putting a play on which outside the ranks, to conceive how is complete and self-explanatory. Ru- r MHMMIIIMMMHMMMMMMMMKSIHIHMMIHMMMIMMMIHHIHMIM 1 the society can be of permanent and actual usefulness. War between nations will be an overwhelming disaster to one side or the other or even to both. The Maine explosion is a suffi cient indication of the total destruc tion that mines and torpedoes will be able to accomplish in maritine war fare. If the impending war between our beloved country and Spain is de clared, it will be the first time in his tory that explosives and engines of such energy have been shot well directed, one mine. pert of Hentzau opens with the reap pearance of the king who wore the coronation robes, who felt the holy oil trickling on his forehead the real king of the queen of Ruritania. The king who was never crowned by love or priest is assassinated, the corona tion king, Rudolph Rassendyl, is forced, in order to save the queen from gossip to assume and to act the king once more, before he knows the uncrowned king is dead. Well, he has played the part so many times that when the news The Passing Show. WILLA CATHER. I MIMMMMIMIMMMIMMietmHMMMMMMCMMIMIMmMIIM The two plays which are making being wasted, and the discovery that talk in New York, "The Tree of Brian has lost all his money does not Knowledge" and "The Conquerors," tend to stimulate her interest in rustic are both pretty bad from every point simplicity and love's young dream. I of view. I saw them both in one day cannot fancy a human being more and about midnight I felt that life was hardly worth the trouble of respiration. It seems a trifle incongruous to en counter such a piece as "The Tree of Knowledge" at the Xyceura theatre, odious than this Belle in the scene in which she learns of her husband's financial embarrassments. Miss Opp's father keeps a "dive" down on the Bowery, by the way, and I fancy she fAACtl'l CAA tliinrwi il.u... 1. il. used One comes that the legitimate heir to the thp n7 rt 7tmn7i7ir 7 tiiomilrt i 7 . turuu" tueiW USCa' "ne t,mn. nf T?rifnnin i H,rt h8 11. e ' and stronghold of the mild passes of sentiment anyway. It seems :,uruneiur- '""" """ ..7 domestic dramas or Messrs. Uelasco almost too fafcilli- o.nsu mi.P pedo exploded in the right spot at the right time will explode the magazine and the ship and every soul on board will be blown to atoms of flesh, tim bers, and fragments of metal. Such awful and sudden destruction of our seamen as well as of the innocent and brave Spanish tars, is what makes those in authority on both sides of the ocean hesitate before signing the death warrant of thousands of those who love life and whom God loves equally. If Spanish citizens blew up the Maine without the knowledge of Spain, Spain will and must make adequate material restitution. She cannot pay l,er tnr tlio flmn limluvl enilnns wliraA more W VW ,WWI W1M ..V.w, .... s orv his theranfd lac- 'r the ministry, had fallen under tberewas nothing else interesting to Pr soner of S and 7"' We'U rtl,0dX and cal1 ao' ust t0 rself, the fair 5"!1, " ,f.'. ? ifc tue "spell" of a female vampire, Belle teils her boy husband that, sl.o legitimate British cousin will have to take his place in order that black scandal darken not the lives of Sapt, Fritz Von-Tarlenhcim and Queen Flavia. The tion of The comes very near causing lovers to be late at the tryst, students to be late at lectures and innumerable suppers wait while the head of the house finds out how Fritz secured theletterand how many were killed in the attempt. DuMaurier's posthumous criticism of the three most famous contributors to Punch are finished in the March Har Hie frmnHnnoccf tr tArwflAtc ic than ever apparent in these and de Mille, but these are degenerate daj-s. The plot of the piece is about as follows: NigilStanyon, while study- almost too fatally easy to her to be common. Well, when life got really too monotonous, one hot afternoon when splendid discipline and courage yielded not to panic even in the moment of death, but she can pay to their fami lies a sum equal to the earning capac ity of each man in an average lifetime, plus a pension for the superannuated. But to the men whose activity is con- critical notes of himself and his pre decessors. The type is warm with kindness and goodwill to us and to those he writes of, and the iutente easily reaches as far as the central plains of Xorth America. Belle, her last name varied to suit the occasion. After setting him a merry pace for some months, the lady left him for some fellow with more money and he threw up his high calling and returned home to break the heart of his pretty little ward, Monica, with his selfish and rather theatric re morse. While he is posing as a blighted being, his best friend, Brian Boilings worth, mariies and brings his wife home. Xigil meets her and of course recognizes the woman who shared his past, the fascinating Belle. This lady is portrayed by the large, large Julia Opp. I really never saw an actress boy husband that she has been another man's. Conceive that, if you can! The boy simply goes daft. After his ravings have grown monotonousand have ceased toamuse, Belle advises morphine and gets him hopelessly bound to the drug. But even making morphine fiends soon loses its charm, and Belle hies her unto the ever fruitful tree of knowl edge again for j new variety of ex periences. When a woman goes snake hunting the serpent usually turns up This time he comes in the shape of Mr. Loftus Roupell, who tells Belle that he doesn t love her and has no fined to moving with the sun in win- ment of the second part of Waller terand the shade in summer on the Wyckoff's experimental studies called corners of Eleventh and O, whose feet "The Worker's." Mr. Wycoff was a are planted on the comparatively peripatetic seeker for work in Chicago harmless sidewalks of this bucolic during the winter of 1891 when rows of town and not upon the deck of a bat- hopeless laborers slept at night on the tleship which contains thousands of marble floors of the corridors of city pounds of powder and high explosives, and government buildings. He says: these suggestions for rendering a bill of damages to Spain will be denounced illusions about her, and thev think xsyii. j. icaiij iictci sun an ciuucsa film- will cuit u i Scribner's contains the first install- quite so large. One might almost play !! J"1" "'flf th er excellently on Miss Arthur's well known sobri- -vs:i o -i-'ibii oluujuii .aiscovers tne plot and on the night of the elopement goes to the house to save his friend. He tells Belle she ihall not go to her lover who awaits lier, and attempts to keep her by force. Then follows one of those abominable wrestlingmatches as unpatriotic. Although the advan tages are not all on the side of peace, the horrors of total annihilation "A new phase of myexperiment is be gun, nitherto 1 have been in the open country, and have found work with surprising readiness. Now lam in the heart of a congested labor mar- which would attend a maritime war ket, and I am learning, by experience, today is giving pause to the delibera- what it is to look for work and fail to tions of the administration which in find it; to renew the search under the the days of shoot and run they would spur of hunger and cold, and of the not have had. animal instinct of self preservation The advantages of war are that it until any employment, no matter how unites a country divided by petty low in the scale of work, that would partizan hatred, and kindles patriot- yield food and shelter, appears to you ism; it stimulates the heroic virtues the very kingdom of heaven; and if it of which the signs have been almost could suffer violence it would seem as obliterated by centuries of peace, but though the strength of your desire it does this at tremendous cost. must take that kingdom by force. During this prologue of war the But it remains impregnable to your country needs be thankful that no attack, and, baffled and weakened, jingo sits in the presidential chair you are thrust back upon yourself and but a man conservative and careful held down remorselessly to the cold, which quet and call Miss Opp "A Lady of Quandity."' Yet her proportions are not at all of the Lillian Russell sort; she is wonderfully well made-only there is so alarmingly much of her. She is handsome, and she is a clever actress. She has an ungrateful part to play, a "woman without even the kindly instincts of animals, a woman whose only task is to debase other people as much as possible and whose only grief is that she is not quite bad enough to satisfy her own imagina tion, a woman who is only happy when she can be actively destructive, like some hungry acid which must be burning up someone's tissues always and grows more deadly and potent u, ..a. . 1CCU3 u,u.flu uv Qnce j , confessed plays this woman well. She dresses TnmhrM, naked fact that you, who in all the universe are of sunremest importance to yourself, are yet of no importance to the universe. Youare a superfluous human being. For you there is no part in the play of the world's activ ity. There remains for you simply this alternative: Have you the pliysi caland moral qualities which fit you to survive, and which will place you at last within the working of the large scheme of things, or, lacking these qualities, does there await you misgivings acquired from the experi- inevitable wreck under the onward ence of many sequels, "Rupert of rush of the world's great moving life? Hentzau takes precedence of all the That, at all events, is pretty much magazine literature of the month. It as it appears tonight to Tom Clark is said that rights of dramatization and me. Clark is my "partner," and have already been sold, but this story we are not in good luck nor in high will be a most difficult story for the spirits. We eacli had a ten-cent stage to tell. Most dramatized stories breakfast this morning, but neither depend upon the assumption that the has tasted food since, and tonight, audience has read the story and that So of the best interests of the country as well as jealous of its name and honor among nations. J The magazines of the month of March arc unusually entertaining. Because of the universal interest in Anthony Hope's sequel to the Prisoner of Zenda now running in MacCIurest that magazine will probably have the honor of emerging at the end of the month with dogs'-eared leaves and very dirty covers. In spite of the her, poses her just as she should be. Yet when I have said that Miss Opp is clever, I think I have given her her full mead of praise. What she does she does well, but I never saw so good an actress so completely lacking in the power of suggestion, nor so continually conscious that she was acting and acting well. She is self conscious, but it is a sort of trium phant self-consciousness which car ries you with it. 1 kept feeling that she was just putting up a magnificent bluff, such a strong one that nobody dared call her. She is as totally with out atmosphere and personal magnet ism as a big scarlet tulip is without perfume. I doubt if she ever does better work than she is doing now, I doubt if she will more than a big, striking looking woman, with aggressiveness and self assurance to burn. But to return to the "Tree." Belle quite enjoys the situation created by the discovery that her sometime an nex is her husband's "dearest friend." This is so thoroughly to her taste that for a time it quite reconciles her to the monotony of country life. But seem to be in vomio in mr York theatres just now. Brian, the husband, returns and demands the meaning of this extraordinary scene. Miss Opp shelters; herself in his pro tecting arms in the most approved manner and gasps out: "Don't let him speak! He will poison your mind against me, Brian there has been a shadow between us all these months. I knew it, but I was helpless. I told you some of the truth, but not. all. Do you re- mem oer?' "I told you that, before 1 met you, a thief had stolen from me all that a woman holds most dear. I told you so much but no more. 1 didn't tell you the name of the man." to me,! now," pants Holl- "Tell it ingsworth. mercy to you," 'There is why most of them are a failure. after an exhausting search for work not for long; she soon feels that her we must sleep in the station house. talents, which are of a high order, are "I kept it secret.-in she says. "Tell me the man." "Nigil Stanyon,': she cries, is the thief! ' You may think that even this play could not sink any deeper into the mire of nauseating melodrama than this but it did. After IXjgii leaves them Belle twines herself about poor little Brian, who is shorter than she 111 llfllf n linorl ,! -J . ever be anything "i , 7 .V i , , ' T ieuuces I1,m wa striking looking state of abject and maudlin adoration, men nns mm up With morphine, and when he is asleep, signals to her lover and softly and silently elopes! Yes, just like the unfortunate Bakerman in the "Hunting of ;the Shark," she "Softly and sucnUy vanished away And never was heard of again." And I don't know; any better reason than that the shark was a Boojum like most sharks. ' Xow if you can conceive of anything