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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (April 23, 1898)
THE COURIER. v L if 8 MIMMIMIMIIHIIII MMMMHI jMIIIHIMMIMMIIIIIII MM MMIM 1 r The Passing. Show. WILLA CATHER. The day you woo your town the race We cheered you through the market place; Man juA boy stood cheering by While we bore you shoulder high. Now, the way all runners come, Shoulder high we bring you home, And set you at your portal down Townsman of a stiller town" A.E. Houseman. I suppose no military funeral since Sherman's has equalled in solemnity that which awaited the body of Lieu tenant P. W. Jenkins here when it was sent home from Havana. Jfo city in the country felt the horrors of the Maine disaster more keenly than Pittsburg. Lieut Jenkins was born here, had always lived here and en joyed that universal popularity which only a military ollicer can know in a big provincional town. All the morn ing of that fateful lath of February when the news of the disaster first reached us. the dead man's brother sat at my elbow waiting for the message of the clicking wires. Two weeks later an old, broken hearted woman, dressed in black, came in leaning on his arm to thank the telegraph de partment for tlie interest it had taken in her son. Shedid not f ay much, she was not melo-dramatic; but when she left, there was not a dry eye in the office. 1 doubt if such a scene had occurred since the war of the rebellion. I sat at my desk thinking with aston ishment of the days when I used to laugh at the 'patriotic bathos" of "The Ensign" and similar military and naval dramas. The most tawdry of them would move me now. As the long search for Jenkin's body continued 1 grew to feel an al most personal interest in it, and when one of our reporters went down to Cin cinnati to meet the body I almost wanted to go too. When the casket arrived it was placed in the Allegheny postofflcc. The rotunda was heavily draped in black; back of the platform on which the casket lay was a forest of palms, and about the platform were heaped American Beauty roses. At the foot of the casket stood the Jfaval Reserves as a guard of honor;all young fellows, standing motionless and silent as statues, but with tight lips and flashing eyes. The great windows were all open; outside the sunlight flashed with blinding brightness upon the gilded dome and the curves of the river; the morning wind whispered through the hall and rustled the green fronds of the palms There were no flowers on thecasket; across it lay only the flag, his flag, and despite the heavy fringes the long end caught again and again in the breeze and strained and fluttered to be free. From the thousands who filed by not a word, not a breath; the only sound that soft fluttering of the flag. It was as though the flag itself had spoken. The body was then taken to the county court house in Pittsburg, and at two o'clock the funeral cortege was almost two hours in passing; there were four thousand men in line, all in uniform. All the troops in the state were out carrying the oldJianners that had been through the civil war, some of them were faded Etrips of silk, so burned and rent that it seemed as if the wind would rend their tattered ends flying from the staff. Regiment after regiment passed in silence, band after band each with some dirge more solemn than the last until the t f Inst band came playing Chopin's "Marche Funebre." Behind It came hearses full of flowers, and after them on a low gun carriage, tilting hearse for a soldier, was that black casket wrapped in the flag, and that new young flag seemed to flutter back the challenge of the old banners in front and to say, 'I too have my heroes!" Last fall, when the president of the republic was driven down that same street, the bands played very different music, and the crowd swayed and surged and men shouted and waved their hats in the air. That was the enthusiasm of a holiday but this was something deciMjr. An old English man told me next day it was the most genuine demonstration lie had ever witnessed in America. The impres sive feature of the scene was not the soldiers nor the sailors, nor the glit tering guns and regimentals, but the men and women packed by thousands and tens of thousands behind the ropes along Fifth avenue, each of whom was a soldier or mother of sol diers to be.' Young and old men, laborers and capitalists, stood bare headed, shoulder to should rr; women held their babies high and men lifted their little sons to their shoulders to let them see that low gun carriage as it passed. The procession Kissed on across the bridge, down the river to the old Uniondale cemetery; through the ways where many a time he had scampered when a boy they bore the hero home. Is it any wonder that here in the streets, in the markets, in the foyers of the theatres, in the vestibules of the churches, in the glowing mills where stripped to the waist they hammer out the iron plates for battle shins, men talk of war? Richard Mansfield has been with us in his new play, "The Devil's Disciple," by G. Bernard Shaw. Saint Simon once said to Madam de Stael, "Madame, you are the most remarkable woman in Fiance, and I am the most remarkable man; if we should have a child it would certainly be the most remarkable child in the world." By the same reasoning it would be safe to predict that tho joint brain production of those two brilliant eccentrics, Richard Mansfield and G. Bernard Shaw would be the most eccen tric and unusual of dramas. This fact was conclusively proven in "Arms and the man' and is no Ies9 adequately dem onstrated by "The Devil's Disciple." 1 1 is quite impossible to judge such a pro duction by the ordinary laws of dra matic art, for it flouts at all of them, and yet, by its biting satire, its brilliant, whimsical intellectuality, it achieves a distinct and startling originality, which many law-abiding dramas woefully lack It acquires, indeed, an individual and almost personal flavor. One thing at least is certain; from the Shaw-Mansfield combination nothing co cmonplace can ever eminate, and in art it is only tho commonplace which hopeIes:ly and irrevocably damns. The first act of "The Devil's Disciple" is eane, serious, rational and constructed on the most approved lines. The drama is supposed to take place at the begin ning of the Revolutionary war. The scene opens in a New Hampshire farm house. Farmer Durgeon has gone to Springtown to see his brother hanged for smuggling and died there. The minister comes in to inform Mrs. Dur geon of her loss. Then comes a bit of We Have the Finest Carriage Repository in the State. We are exclusive ajrents for the best line IMIH1IHIIMMMIIIIIIM,'IHMHIMMMIIIIHIHIIII0IMMIIMM CARRIAGES BICYCLES I of goods in America: COLUMBUS 1 I Columbus, O. CARRIAGES SURREYS PHAETONS TRAPS BUGGIES CONCORDS SPEEDING WAGONS MMMMOOMMHmiOMMMHO0 0OOMMHOIOMMMMOOOMIMIMM X H. II. MOVER. Syracuse, N. Y. IOMIMMM0 HOMMOIOO BUCKEYE BU66Y CO., Columbus. O. STANHOPES BUGGIES BANNER WAGONS SPEEDING CARTS SPIDER PHAETONS STANHOPES BROUGHAMS NOVELTIES BICYCLES 0MIMMMIOIMOMOOIOIOOMIMmOOMOMOtO0IOMMIMgoMIMIMM TRIBUNES DEERES MOLINE SPECIALS CI,0tH0OO08O0M00H0MtHMI0OfMM0OIO0M0HM?0MHMJIU S Billmeyer & Sadler, 9.09.-9.06 Smith Eleventh St.. Ioinrnln Nehr , , , . fttrffTtt'TTTTtf " flllHIHDCIII- character work which is certainly a credit to Mr. G. Bernard Shaw. The widow denounces her husband's ineon siderateness in dying and leaving the burden of the family on her shoulders. The minister makes some conciliatory remarks about her aching heart, etc, and she cries out that she has never yielded to her heart, "Are we not taucht that the heart is desperately wicked? I have never weakened, Sir, as jou did when you married a pretty facsd woman because you loved her!" She takes great credit unto hi rself for never hav ing loved her husband, and proudly as serts that while she loved the scapegrace Durgeon who was hanged jesterday, she had prayed for grace and married his brother because he was a church goer. When the minister intimates that her husband has left the bulk of his property to his eldest son, Richard, a ne'er-do-well, like his unsle, she curses her son roundly. The poor minister makes an effort to restrain her and says: "Mrs. Durgeon, I once had some influence with you; when did I lose it ?" The old Spartan folds her arms and, glaring at him, replies, "When you were weak enough to marry a woman you loved!" Presently the family assembles to hear the will read. There is the mortuary array of psalm singing, hypocritical aunts and uncles who have killed the heart to save the soul; the mother wno ha9 frozen herself in her icy creed, schooled herself in the gospel of macera tion until she can curse her own son whom her narrow and pretentious piety has 6ent to the devil. Well, these for bidding people have come together to whine over the death of a man they never loved and to wrangle over his will, when Richard, the eldest son, the "Devil's Disciple," burst in, bringing with tim the wholesome breath of life and the world. Nay, even before he en ters, his laugh outside the door rings out like the cry of life in the damps of a charnel house. He jollies the aunts and tells uncle John it's the first time he has Been him since that worthy quit drinking, and flings a few irreverant re marks at the minister's pretty wife, who pooooooooooooooooooooooo I CYCLE PHOTOGRAPHS ATHLETIC PHOTOGRA PHfi i f PHOTOGRAPHS OF BABIES PHOTOGRAPHS OF GROUPS W EXTERIOR VIEWS yum&nt THE PHOTOGRAPHER 120 South Eleventh Street. oo ooooooooooo ooooooc S MEM EXCHANGE NHL BANK LINCOLN, Neb. S. II. Buk.miam, A. J. Sawyer, President. Vice-President. D. G. Wig, Cashier. CAPITAL ?25o.ooo. TlTTtTTtrmnc. t -r rt xjjkiiujuiio; i.o. sawyer, s. z or H Itllrnhnm P. Finnnii T A T W J caster, Lewis Gregory, N. Z. Snell, J G. M. Lambertaon, D. G. Wing, S. J W. Burnham. J regards him in speechless horror. As ho moved about puffing his pipe and venting his uncontrollable hatred of his kin and their life, in almost hysterical phrases. 1 thought of that terrible ut terance of Kierkegaard's, "The only pas sion of my roul is scorn." There waB one member of this dismal family I for got to mention, a little cowed, frightened child, the natural daughter of Richard's uncle, who is taught that she is sin in carnate and is shunned as such. Among all the mastirly things that Richard Mansfield has done ir. his lime, he never did anything more delicate, more ex quisite than his treatment of that miser able little child. From the first moment when, with that quick, sheltering ges ture, too full of nervous intensity, so sug. gestive of childish sufferings still unfor-