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VOL. XIV., NO. L
ESTABLISHED IN 1880
PRICE FIVECBNTs
LINCOLN, NBBR., SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1899.
0mt
EMTBBBDIN THK POSTOFFIOI AT LINCOLN AS
SECOND CLASS MATTBB.
THE COURIER,
Official Organ of the Nebraska State
Federation of Women's Clubs.
PUBLISHED EVEBY SATURDAY
BY
THE COURIER PRINTING AND PUBLISHING GO
Office 1132 N street, Up Stairs.
Telephone 384.
SARAH B. HARMS.
Editor
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K OBSERVATIONS.
. Skirts and Superintendents.
A superintendent of city schools in
Kansas City lias issued an edict that
he disapproves of short skirts and that
the teachers must not wear them. He
likes better the long skirts that the
teacher with her arms full of books
can not bold up, a skirt that as the
teacher walks across the room leaves
a cloud of dust collected in her walk
to school. The short skirt leaves the
teacher's arms free and is a relief in
expressible. No man whether school superintend
ent or not, would to save his position,
for vanity or any other reason wear
a garment at once so uncomfortable
f so heavy, sd untidy and so unhealth-
ful as the long skirt. The Kansas,
City superintendent is doubtless one
of those superintendents of whom we
have had examples in Lincoln, men
grown petty tyrants from having exer
cised authority over. several hundred
women who had to obey him or lose
their positions. This man in Kansas
City says his grandmother and his
mother wore long skirts, and what
they wore is good enough for the
teachers in Kansas City whose desti
nies, ho controls.
The short skirt which' clears the
mud and.tilth of the street is a sensible
sanitary fashion, ono which doctors
have been urging women to adopt for
many years. Now that they have
finally accepted it, it is not likely
Stliat an obstructionist school superin
tendent will bo able to control fashion.
School, superintendents are in a class
by themselves, apart from other men.
Occasionally a scholarly, generous
man is elected to that position and
the city he serves, and the teachers he
Inspires are especially happy. The
superintendent has authority so abso
lute and so extended that unless he is
generous enough and wise 'enough to
allow each teacher to be guided by
her own inspiration the school teach
ing in thecity he supervises will, bo
come mechanical and formal. The
Lincoln school administration has
changed and there is every indication
that a man of rare scholarship, a man
ambitious for the excellence of the
school system entrusted to him, is by
our good fortune at the head of the
schools. Superintendent Gordon has
been here too short a time to demon
strate to the people the Integrity of
his ambition, but his methods are
scholarly and bis suggestions sound
and for the health of the schools and
the encouragement of the teachers
may his efforts meet with no preju
dice or treachery.
Train Theology
A carload of people hurrying into
Kansas was edified a few days ago by
a discussion between two ministers.
One said that the indiscriminate
selection by the chairman in a lodge
meeting of any one in the audience to
read prayers was highly Improper and
calculated to cast a reproach on true
religion. The other minister was
doubtful if any man were competent
to call his fellow unworthy. The dis
putants grew so interested in the
theme that their voices rang through
the car and were perfectly audible
over tho rumble of the train. And
every passenger listened. At last the
little man, the stickler for form and
propriety said, with clenched fist, that
if any lodge member were permitted
to read prayers that some man who
swore and drank might chance to be
called upon to read the evening prayer
to his brethren. At this point a man
from Kansas with long whiskers tan
ned by the Kansas sun to the color of
hay roared from his end of the car:
"Brother, that is just the sort of man
that had ort to pray." And be olosed
the discussion as effectually as a keen
witted gallery god sometimes rings
down the curtain.
The Christian.
To Hall Caine, a hypochondriacal
.litterateur living among a primitive
people in the Islo of Man, John Storm
is an ideal of a Christian. To Ameri
can men and women, accustomed to
meeting their fellows on a level, to
forgiving, and being forgiven, by
them, to doing and being done by
them, the melodramatic, insincere po
seur of, Caine's hero is absurd. John
Storm is a fanatic and then a lunatic.
In the first scene In the presence of
strangers he Insults his. father who
has educated him in preparation for
the life of an English statesman.
Like the Byronlc sophomore he never
ceases to affect, he stands aloof and
gloomy from the innocent gay little
picnic which Glory organizes. He
will not eat any pie, he scorns it and
thinks cruel, hard things of it when
Glory offers it to him. Wherever he
appears he is a wet blanket and a wet
quite Innocent of all but a nominal
likeness to the Gallllcan. Whcnover
he was tried he rang fulse. Tho next
advertisement of a Christian will be
scrutinized with a wholly irreligious
keenness. Cant, ostentatious charity
or oven concealed charity will not
blanket that enjoys its misery and the deceive anybody after a course of Hall
discomfort its application causes. His
philanthropy is of the detestable self
'exploltlng kind. Ho says: "Now
watch me while I administer first aid
to the broken-hearted," and his plati
tudes comfort only because he is on a
stage or fn a book. The villain calls
him a poseur and a fraud and although
.he is a villain his opln'on of John
Storm does not lack Instant confirma
tion from a bored audience.
It is a well known tendency of
art students to reproduce their
features in the classic Greek and
man casts, they must all draw.
Intentionally, the art student with
the pug nose turns up the nose of the
genus of the Vatican or the Venus of
Milo. But the pug nose is In his tem
perament and unconsciously his fin-
now
own
Caine. But it is questionable If this
is Just the result Mr. Caine intended
to produce.
i
Woman's Sphere Bixby.
"Excited by the discussion of prob
lems they (women) can never under
"stand." What problems? and how
does Mr. Blxby know that women will
never understand them? Woman
shares in the development of the race
and those subjects that Mr. Bixby
analyses with so much self satisfac
tion and so little lucidity to others
may be clear to woman, say in a thou
sand years. Never is a long time,
longer than the time between Mr.
Bixby's era and the creation of the
first man with just sense enough to
gers draw the type he is most familiar snatch the food which the female had
with. Criticism and demonstration collected away from her. It has been
of his fault correct it, but even the long enough for the education of both
full fledged distinguished artist ex- sexes, but still not long enough to learn
hibits this peculiar phenomenon. See the truth. that there is nothing we can
Gibson's pictures and compare them not or may not figure out. The woman
with photographs of Gibson. See question worries Mr Bixby. He is
Peter Newell's pictures and compare one of those belated, tenacious little
themtwitn pictures of Peter Newell', men not quite sure of his own In
See Raphael's madonnas and Raphael's splration but anxious and worried
portrait. The best picture Whistler for fear that the world will progress
ever painted was that one of his without his consent and- in spite of
mother, and the distinguished calm his dissent.
old lady is a picture of Whistler as he It is only occasionally that some
would like to bo and as he thinks be woman thinks it worth while to re
is. In painting that picture he was ply to' Mr. Bixby's-jibes at her sex.
not fight I rig against bis temperament Over and over again he tells the club
but working with it and the result is, .women of Nebraska that their house
consequently, a marvelous harmony is on fire and their children will burn
of line and color. while they are at their clubs, that
John Storm is Hall Calne's idea of a their husbands are eating soggy bread
Christian hero, therefore Hall Caine and cursing because the cook, cbam
is a poseur, and should be warned by bermald, and seamstress wife has
the fate of his puppet to leave off sub- taken her afternoon out according to
jectlve writing. For before hlra as the habit of all domestic servants,
before all his heros lies madness. No club woman In Nebraska who does
About him and about his heros there' not know that these charges are silly
is something Insistently unhealthful, .and that Mr. Blxby knows nothing
insane, and impertinent. His books at ell about women's clubs or club
have only the vogue of an epidemic women. The ridicule especially of club
which better literary sanitation wil women in "Driftwood'' Is objectlo
certainly cure. able, not so much because it constant-
Let alone being a Christian John Jy asserts what Is not true, but it Is
Storm Is not a gentleman, for types offensive tq me and it must be to all
of the Christian gentleman Mr. Caine women because of the contemptuous
should study the life of. Sit Philip unbelief In anything but the physical
I P" " '"-, -- "' "" ,nHiu VAJJ1C99CU bIJUrU.
Bishop Phillips Brooks, of the lowly
Nazarene Himself,
The effect of a play or a book like
Tho Christian can not be salutary.
Hypocritical goodness seems to set a
good example and testifies the worth
of holiness only as a counterfeit pro
claims the credit of gold or the na
tion's promise to pay. Eventually a
play or a book like The Christian In-
In all the coeducational schools of
this country women take the same
coursoas men and receive equally high
credits, At Oxford a woman In the
mathematics examination took a
higher grade than either man or wo
man ever earned before. In mental
capacity the century has demonstrat
ed by all kinds of Intellectual tests
uiiav ffumau is man's equal. The rt-
creases the number ot eynlcs and de- suit of the tests and the fact that wo
velops suspicion. The man whom man has accepted their terms without
his creator called a Christian was a consideration on account of sex should
selfish, a murderously selfish poseur, Influence all those who do not prefer
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