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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 13, 1900)
T. M r - t ' a IT i. ; VOL. XV., NO. .4 , ESTABLISHED IN 18S PRICE F1VECBNTS LINCOLN. NEBR., SATURDAY. JANUARY 13. 1900. -YtHfiA KMTXKXDIN THK P08TOFTICE AT LINCOLN AS SECOND CLASS MATTER. THE COURIER, Official Organ of the Nebraska State Federation of Women's Clubs. PUBLISHED EYEEY SATUBDAY IHf COURIER PRIMMD PilBLISHIMG GO Office 1132 N street. Up Stairs. Telephone 384. SARAH B. HABKIS. Editor Subscription Kates In Advance. Per annum f 1 00 Six months 75 Three months 50 One month 20 Single copies 05 Tbk Courier will not be responsible for to! untary communications unless accompanied by return postage. Communications, to receive attention, must be signed by tne full name of the writer, not merely as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication if advisable. r u o OBSERVATIONS n la Memory of Nathan S. Harwood. When Mr Harwood came to Lin coln he was a poor, young lawyer with a good education, and habits of in dustry and self denial. He and Mr. Tut tic rented an office together and other lodging being out of the ques tion, the office was their dwelling place by night as well as day. In twenty-five years of pleading and practice Mr. Harwood accumulated a competency. But his horizon was ever a broad one. He had wide sym pathies and as wide a vision. While practising law he saw opportunities for making money here and there which be did not neglect. When the presidency of a bank was offered him it was still in the time when there were illusions about bankers living easy, luxurious, highly enviable lives. Mr. Harwood yielded to the tempta tion and it cost him his life and his fortune. The failure of the Capital National Bank was a greater loss to Lincoln than the sum of the losses of deposits ors, directors and officers. Another generation will scarcely see confi dence restored to its normal tone. Bankers in Lincoln deal with a sus picious community, containing mem bers who have been swindled and acd are revengeful. The years of the panic were at hand when Mr. Har wood took charge of the First Na tional bank of this city. It was an old bank with a good reputation, but the first view from the inside must have made even Mr. Harwood's stout heart quail. One bad debt after an other soon proved the magnitude of the task assigned him. But like the. true knight and brave gentleman he was, it never occurred to him to give up the trifling proportion of stock he held and save himself. Long before even the good guessers suspected that the bank was in difficulties and while there was still an opportunity to get his name off the bonds and escape with only a nominal loss Mr. Har wood took counsel with himself and decided to do his best for the bank, the city and the whole South Platte district whose arteries it tilled. Mr. Harwood's defection at this mo ment would have destroyed the cit and he knew it and only in the long watches of the sib'lant summer nights when he paced the floors of the house forever hallowed by the midnight tread of those heroic feet, did he pity himself and groan. In the day time he was at his post, en couraging the other officers of the bank and the business men of the city. He had not even the poor com fort of being numbered among the wounded unto death. It was abso lutely necessary that he should en dure in silence and look prosperous anr happy, and he did it. In his youth he was a soldier who was re peatedly promoted "for gallant con duct on the field of battle'When more than half a century old he fought another long battle for hearth and home, for the women and little chil dren, without the stimulus of com rades fighting with him for an ac knowledged caue, and pretending that, he was not fighting at all. And he has been promoted again '-for gal lant conduct on the field of battle." There is no resident of the city of Lincoln whose property is not worth more now and whose business is not more remunerative now because of this brave and constant man who re fused to save himself at their cost. To sell stock he knew at that time to be of doubtful value, to an ignorant purchaser never occurred to Mr. nar wood, in the days before the panic when he might easily have done it. He dealt justlv and lived uprightly. He was kind to the poor, even to the intemperate poor. He gave constant ly and secretly to them. He never made spectacular gifts nor any of those false movements which fill those near enough to see the real rea son, for them with disgust. "On the day before he was buried, a proces sion of humble, sorrowing men ap plied at his door for permission to take a last look at the friend who never before was unresponsive to their entreaty. He was a helpful member of the charity organization society. He was a member of the state his torical society. He was a member of several orders. He was always bro therly and kind, and the solemn, bro therly ceremony performed by the masons at his grave was an especially fitting farewell to Mr. Harwood as well as a celebration of the principle upon which he worked out his life. "Know ye not that there is a prince . and a great maa fallen this day in Israel?" It is fitting that we should know what we owe to this man acd others who have preserved this body politic from dissolution. Heterophaeua. Ralph Waldo Emerson was always troubled by tfce disease which I use as a title. Mr. Emerson's daughter was in subtle sympathy with him and whatever he said, she knew what he meant and could supply to him for the comprehension of others. A ge nial correspondent in Omaha who noted the mistake of Mses in The Courier of a fortnight ago sends word, for consolation that on page 514 of Harper's magazine for March nenry Cabot Lodge, (the impeccable) makes the sun sink in the east and the moon rise in the west. Last month a maga zine writer saw the new moon set in the east. Thus we see that greater and lesser writers make mistakes and are afflicted with heterophaesia or calling things by their wrong names. If no mistakes were made in newspapers, books and magazines.credulity would be stimulated and might discourage the judicial attitude which weighs all things and submits them to the per sonal test. The reverence tor state ments in print which still afflicts the world is dampened by the errors in print which the heretic discovers and persistently cites. And as credulity and belief in error has been the cause of much suffering, the unmistakable and irrefutable mistakes of scribblers contribute their part to the firmer establishment of truth by helping to destroy the authority and tyranny of print State Historical Society. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week the Nebraska historical society held two interesting sessions at the university. The annual address of the president Mr. J. Sterling Morton, was on the subject of freight rates then, (in the fifties,) and now in Ne braska. Mr. Morton's style was always picturesque., graphic and forcible. His daily practice in newspaper writing has clan tied his speech, so that in his address of Tuesday night as in all of his recent speeches there is not a word too much and every sentence is point ed and of structural importance to the whole. In both style and form, therefore, Mr. Morton's work on The Conservative, has had the same effect upon the product of his brain that it would have had thirty years ago. The demonstration of this effect of steady newspaper work is a tribute to the practice of journalism.but it is a more remarkab'e evidence of the elastic, always youthful and impressionable temperament of a man, who since his boyhood has done with his might what his hands found to do. has con served tradition, and built over against his own house and in his own town a temple that, will remain even unto the fourtli and fifth generation. Mr. Morton said that at a very early ago he appreciated the value of the potato as a food product and the first crop he planted at A.bor Lodge "by hoe and hand power'' was pota toes. They grew and grew, the yield was enormous. A few yeara later, the price of potatoes in Denver being twenty cents a pound, and Mr. Mor ton being consumed by that fierce love of money from which even the most pastoral of men is not entirely immune, sent two wagon loads of his pink, plump beauties to Denver. They sold for twenty cents a pound but the freight charges were fifteen cents a pound exclusive of the cost of sacks which Mr. Morton bore. Thus although the potatoes sold in Denver for .$1005, the producer received only S5-J.75 as his share from which must be deducted the cost of sacking and the large cost of primitive methods of seeding, weeding and harvesting. The present rate to the shipper of thirty-five cents per hundred pounds on potatoes from Nebraska City to Denver is a little more than a third of a cent a pound or one forty-fifth of the old cost of transportation to the shipper. Dr. L. J. Abbott of South Omaha, read a paper entitled "The State Re publican convention of 1870 and inci dents of that campaign; a character sketch of Governor Butler." He characterized Governor Butler's pop ular and impressive oratory, his loud, sonorous tones and his habit after fierce denunciation of sinking his voice to a whisper, in the production of his really powerful effects. The ad dress was an able one and was follow ed with the closest attention. Mr. Clement Chase of the Omaha Excelsior read a short biography of his father, Col. Champion S. Chase of Omaha. So tender and just a tribute to the life of a man who bore so im portant a part in the history of the metropolis of Nebraska is worthy a place in the records of the state. The narrative of the boyhood of Mr. Chase which was spent on a New Hampshire farm his school life in Kimball Union Academy at Meriden his experience as paymaster in the warand later h's emigration to Ne braska and participation in public affairs was candidly recited by his son. Possessing the sympathy and understanding of a father's plans, aspirations and principles that per haps only a son ever comprehends Mr. Chase was an ideal biographer of a man who loved his kind and who was loved by them in return, who was mayor of Omaha for seven years and whose admistration was the best the city has ever had. In collecting and preserving local history and the biographies of the pioneers, of the men who broke the sod and established families which
