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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (April 23, 1898)
THE COURIER. ture, in driving the Spanish 'from tbeir American residence in Cuba. Uo college boy whose conscience has been quickened by years spent in the study of conclusions based on abstract truths and the beauties and harmonies of science could speak with greater love of country and scorn of cruelty and baseness, nor be influenced so little by sordid designs of territorial acquisition. They have recurred in their language to the declaration of the Fourth or July, 1776, with a heart iness that shames all those who have thought the senate of the United States capable at a supreme moment of being influenced by any other senti ment than undivided love of country. Nobody knows how long the war will last, or how much treasure or how many-lives it will cost. We only know that a naval war with -the matter-annihilating explosives of the cen tury will be more horrible than Jules Verne's most impossible flights of imagination. The war may kill and destroy so much that the nations of the earth will agree not to fight again. It must come to that point some time and the American-Spanish war may bring that conclusion within reach o the world. But war is not an unmixed evil. Like death in a family it makes union stronger. The strenuous sacrifice of the civil war made heroesand heioines of commonplace men and women who would otherwise have lived longer and altogether trivial lives. Nothing .which stimulates patriotism and en courages individual self sacrifice for the good of the whole is to be avoided. When war is no more some recurrent and universal passion which seizes upon men and induces them in com panies to struggle and die, must take its place. Else the strenuous and the serious, which has made the mothers' sons, born between the yeare of 1860 and 1870 into men of might and high courage, will be lacking. The absence of tradition and of hereditary social position in this country makes money about the only dictator of place and power. The tendency of a long con tinued peace is to reduce the number of prizes to be striven for to one and that one money. The reproach that the dollar is king in America is not altogether undeserved. National peril and long trenches filled with our clean limbed, clear-eyed young soldiers, will bring back again colonial ideals of what life is fSr. S Although rheMaine massacre is not alleged as the cause of the approach ing American-Spanish war, it is none the less the casus belli. No one will admit that we would give up treasure and blood for an abstract principle and general love of freedom and a de sire .to see it spread all over the face of the earth. We do not want Cuba because we can not handle our own population with the results that the Declaration of Independence seems tx promise. The debt that we must as sure if we take Cuba and may be obliged to guarantee anyway if we drive Spain out, coun terbalances any attractions the sugar island may offer. We are disgusted with the long cruel campaign carried on by the Spaniards in Cuba, but no more so than we were before the Maine massacre when there was no formal thought of demanding, as we have now done, Spanish evacuation. The fact is we are maddened to the point of revenge by the murder of the sailors and we are not primitive enough to acknowledge it. The preservation of international dignity seems to have demanded that we fight for a few negroes, for whom we do not care instead of our own sailors whose bodies lie rotting in the mud of Ha vana harbor. But all the same the unofficial common people who will make up the army that will finally convince Spaine she is de trap on this side of the ocean know better. They are not fighting for an abstract prin ciple. That is ever too bodiless to create the desire for revenge that thousands of men are will ing to die to attain. The spirit which makes every American citizen a part of the whole resents be ing maimed of 2G6 members of the union and that is what's the matter. If it were not for this spirit the union would be weak instead of the vital im pregnable 'bond it is. J The last enstallment of Henry James' ghost story which has been running in Collier's Weekly bas ap peared, and the last chapters keep up the interest to the end. Imagine a climax prophesied in the first page and in every succeeding one, everlastingly dreaded, always suspended and mas tering the characters, and the readers until the last sentence of the final paragraph. Such a story is Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw," re ferred to in these columns several weeks ago. 31 r. James in a communi cation concerning Du Maurier which appeared in one of Harper's publica tions while Trilby was running in Harper's Weekly, said that Du Mau rier had told him the plots of many stories which he had in reserve. This was in response to a confession from Mr. James that the most difficult part of composition was the conception of a plot Now "The Turn of the Screw" has certain DuMaurieresque features, viz.; idealized childhood, mysticism, the very suspension of the plot till the denoument, suspended but momen tarily threatening a cataclysmic reve lation. If it were not an imputation against Mr. James' versatility I should be sure that the plot of this story was supplied him by Mr. Du Maurier. The little girl and boy of the "Turn of the Screw" lack only the Du Maurier il lustrations to be Trilby and little Peter Ibbetson. Their unreal sweet ness, goodness and supernatural beauly, even the confidential tone of the narration, are of George Du Maurier and not of Henry James. The latter's method is decidedly not to be on familiar terms with his probably unlettered and positively uninterest ing readers. But he has learned a trick of Du Maurier as well as a plot and the manuscript is read to a group of friends around a fireplace and under circumstances in which his usual hauteur would be quite out of place. The climax of the story is intensely longed for. With an exquisite art, all his own and more literary that that of the gentlemen who loaned him the plot, Mr. James has shown the influ ence of two evil ghosts or spirits upon the naturally transparently brilliant, and pure minds of two little children. Tbeir governess finds out that these children are in the constant presence of an evil looking man and woman who or which when alive were para mours. They communicate with the little brother and sister who can see them and understand them and are gradually teaching them evil, when the governess appears. After a little while she too, sees the boogers whom the children love. She sees that the children know that she sees them but they never speak of the presence. Miles and his sister who is only six years feel that the governess is exert ing all her love and goodness to blot out the apparitions and the counter strategy which they use to nullify her influence and retain their mysterious but soul destroying spooks is the sub stance of the story. Finally the gover ness gets control of Miles the boy, so that be can no longer see the bad ghost who has been intoxicating him MB in I 1 lUllllllUllL vvm 1124 O St, Lincoln, Nebr. nn Is one of our bargains. It is polish finish and either antique or imitation ma hogany. You will like it. Our price is very low, onty 511)11 and we pay the ' freight 100 miles. Send for our catalogues if you need any furniture, or a bicycle, or refrigerator, or baby carriage. v V f'VW'fvWfvi I I l-22BBY -AJ V.V 1 1 f' i$R 1 I rfSk v i was "a thing of beauty," but a pretty foot encased in a handsome pair of shoes from our6tylieb, well fitting stock is "a joy forever," be- nftllOA that, DM etmrtlv n.r.:. No corns, bunions or cramped feet rom wearing our nne shoe? : Perkins and Sheldon u. 1129 O' Street. with mystery all his short and in nocent life. When Miles realizes that the teacher who idolizes him is look ing into that face of evil and bis eyes are looking in the same direction and see nothing, the end comes -very sud denly: "Peter Quint You devil!' His face gave again, round the room, its convulsed supplication. "Where?" They are in my ears still, his su preme surrender of the name and his tribute to my devotion. "What does he matter, now, my own? What will he ever matter? "I have you." I launched at the beast, "but be has lost you forever!" Then for the demonstration of my triumph, "There, there,"' I said to Miles. But he had already jerked, glared again, and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered a cry of a crea ture hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall: I caught him, yes, I held him I held him it may be imagined with "what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and bis little heart dispossessed, bad stopped. A FOUR-LEAFED CLOVER, Citizen Unless my eyes deceive m?, you' are the party I gave ten cents to yesterday. Beggar I am, sir. Did yon think a disss would make a new man of me? I mind the day when meadowward I tamed my weary eyes Eyes wearied by the wkdom of a sage; And when, with vision cleared, I sought my task to my surprise, I found this four-leafed clover on my open page. Ah! me. I found this four-leafed clover on my open page. A little maid had left it there-a maid who always found The sweet rare things that on that sad carta grew; Amaidwkh ears attuned for spring's first raptuous sound; Wkhears attuned for notes that spring ne'er knew; Ah I me. with cars attuned for notes that spring ne'er knew. Twixt sweet rare things of earth and heaven -the distance a not great; Come swift fulfillment of the promise fair, In pastures green, beyond the hilfcofGodk little Kale. - I did not in the clover's omen share; Ah! me. I did not in the clover's omen share. Vary Day Harris. The Couhikb has reduced its sub scription price to f 1 a year See title Pg-