Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 27, 1900)
h VOL. XV., NO. IV ESTABLISHED IN18SG PRICE FIVE CENTS fl l H M B JWBI-c3BCRSi5!J3i?r-BBfrBMWBiWBEBB"J"K K J 5P LINCOLN. NBBR., SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 1000. Entxzedin the rosTomcs at Lincoln SECOND CLASS MATTER. THE COURIER, Official Organ of the Nebraska State Federation of Women's dubs. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BT THE COURIER PRINTING AND PUBLISHING GO Office 1132 N street, Up Stairs. Telephone 384. considered Is the most beautiful. Its enhance the city's fame, unite the arrangement is a series of circles and citizens in n combination etTort for courts; In the centre of the circles a Lincoln which, more than anything monument or building closing the else has served to remind us of our end of the courts, a noble art gallery common interest in the city, our com or municipal building. Lincoln was mon ownership of the streets and the laid out by a pioneer who had not re- real communism of everybody's an fiected upon the eternal sameness and nual income of money, culture and monotony of parallel lines. Our social enjoyment. streets lead nowhere. A resident of It is extravagance to accept Lincoln for the past twenty-five years or six thousand dollars for a SARAH B. HARRIS. Editor Subscription Kates In Advance. Per annum 9 1 00 Six months 75 Three months 50 One month -. 20 Single copies 05 The Cockier will not be responsible for vol nntary communications nnless accompanied by return postage. Communications, to receive attention, mnst be surncd by tno fall name of the -writer, not merely as a guarantee of good faith, bnt for publication it advisable. in closing his eyes and seeking to re call the view east on O street or sauth on Eleventh street would fail. But place him in Imagination on the corn er of Eleventh and J and the most un observing will see the west facade of the state house and the south facade of the university. Or looking south on Fifteenth street from O the state house crowns the gen tie ascent . Th is last is the street from which the clever coachman, who was taking Mr. W. D Howells a drive about the city, pointed out the capitol to him. Few enough are the noble or inspiring architectural monuments in this rather squalid and sordid city of ours. Outside the city where the green, gray, yellow, red, and purple prairies stretch in gently curved lines, broken by the thin fringe of timber along a stream or defining the boundary of a farm, the landscape is inspiring and those who have grown up on these mysterious reaches grow homesick five site that when we have a site of our own money cannot buy. Mr. Thompson is willing and anxious to give some thing to the city. A library building without books is like a body without a soul. If Mr. Thompson would do nate ten thousand dollars for books to the library after it is erected every one who uses the library would be sure to remember to be grateful to the magnanimous donor. Whereas if he furnished a site that we do not need, the superrogatory would incite no gratitude and might even irritate some of us. English in the Schools. An essay or letter returned to a pupil with a genera! notation of bad grammar is not of special advantage to him when, the supposition is, he wrote it In the first place as well as he knew how. In the number of subjects which it is stylish to sup- g OBSERVATIONS. g The Library Site. At the intersection of Eleventh and J streets there are 120 square feet. The site offered by Mr. Thompson on Fourteenth and M street is only one hundred feet in width. That is not a sightly sight. The ground is low and there is no approach or Yista that the handsome building might close. The Eleventh and J street site is the when the comparatively common- pose the grade scholar must be taught place Atlantic Ocean or Rocky moun tains is the only view within sight. But this Fifteenth street view of the capitol on a moonlight night, when the world is clothed in mvstery is very beautiful indeed. Even on a dark night the tiara of electricity shin ing on the burnished, silver dome and glancing oft" from the roof into the velvet blackness of the trees, is be witching. "What the city needs is grouping. A library built at Elev eith and J, would give character to, would frame the view from O street. The city lacks distinction. height of ground. 'I lie east windows To ignore the site proposed and ac of the noble Greek cross structure, cept one which is no nearer and fronting on four streets,which may be would not beautify the city is certain- The function of the public schools, his teachers have no time to correct his English. His English, that when he leaves school and applies for any sort of a job above shoveling dirt will be the qualification most sharply scrutinized. Employers do not ask questions in geology, botany, astrono my and "nature work." If they ever knew any til' ng about them, most business men have forgotten it all. If the taxpayers of Lincoln could read the letters and essays these stu dents of everything but English write, they would agree with Mr. Bushnell who objects to puttmg in the high school a chemical laboratory such as the have at the university. built there, will frame a view of the capitol building. The north windows give on the court of the State uui rersity. The west and south on the rolling plains of the valley that bounds the city on the west. With ly a great mistake. Mr. Saulsbury has offered a plan which does not comprehend an ex cavation. He proposes to lay the foundation on the brick pavement already laid, which will, in that case, the capitol and university at the two become the lloor of the basement and ends of the parallelogram there would only be the fourth angle incomplete. A' handsome building in that site, built on ground owned by the city, a site which no one can buy, which only the city owns and which can be duplicat ed in impressivensss only by the cen tral building of the university group, would be an ornament to the city. furnace room. Steps lead up to the is to teach the children "t; ground them solidly," as the old fashioned teachers said, in reading, writing, arithmetic and grammar. An over whelming proportion never reach the high school. Therefore the money contributed in taxes by the over whelming proportion's fathers and first floor and the corners between the mothers should be spent on the lower wings or arms of the cross may be terraced with grass above the curb stone which encircles the building. It is beyond the power of anybody to donate so suitable, so commanding, so convenient a site. The street car line is within a block. The court grades and nut given in large chunks to the high school. These boys and girls are taken out of school because they need to work for themselves or their families. How unfair to con tinue to divert the taxes the hulk of which is contributed by the lower Having four fronts, the building house is a block away, the state house middle class to the support of a high in the street can be open to the most favorable quarter of the wind. Sep arated from ail other buildings by thirty feet of road the danger from fire is minimized. Every citv has its own claim to four. Not even Mr. Carnegie himself could buy this priceless site from the city. It belongs to the city and only the city can build on it. The street fair showed the city that it had school which the sons and daughters of the lower middle class, (basis of classification is property,) cannot at tend. This view of the public school is not usually popular with school boards, which look forward to the beauty, but perhaps Paris, all things real estate that properly used would graduation of a handsome class of fifty or a hundred as the most satis factory climax to a year's delibera tion and debates. in considering the public school scholar's ignorance of English, its uses and economy it is most difficult to say why in eight years of instruc tion Lincoln children fail to learn to speak and write the English lan guage correctly. If it were only an occasional child that failed in spell ing and grammar when called upon for a practical demonstration of his education, it would not be a matter for dismay, because there are dull children whom no met'iod will polish. But it is the rule for the modern pro duct of the Lincoln schools to spell incorrectly and compose turgidly: Some critics attribute the result to the meagre salaries paid the teachers. It has seemed for a long time that the trouble was in the multitude of sub jects taught The hours of the day and week are divided into so many subdivisions that the time spent on English is comparatively trilling and its subordination to arithmetic hi made so apparent that the little stu dent is impressed at a very early age with the small necessity of paying any particular attention to the study of grammar and spelling. The child ren who arc very fond of reading, un consciously plagiarize for themselves in time, if not a style at least a mode of writing not vulgar and at least correct and harmonious, a mode made up of an arrangement of some one else, with strains of Kipling, Scott and the curious composite key of the magazines mingled in tantalizing mixture. A child who has been pro perly taught the counterpoint of lan guage can make his own chords and create his own effects. It is humiliating to local pride, but the Omaha schools are immeasurably superior in the instruction of Eng lish, that is, judging, as an outsider only can, by the product of the two systems of schools. Little children in the Omaha schools write legibly, spell correctly and compose with sim plicity and clearness. Omaha child ren are of the same mixed nationality as Lincoln children. The teachers are paid higher salaries and probably more attention is devoted to the de spised subject of English. Nathan S. Harwood. If all the story were told, and the whole story would Include a report from every business man who did business with the First National Hank during the years of the panic, Mr. Harwood's defene of the city and the southern half of the state from bankruptcy would be better under stood If the First National Bank had fallen all the other banks would have closed their doors both in this city and in the whole district of the South Platte, and no large busi ness house either in this city or this district would have been able to sus tain the shock. In those summer
