THE COURIER.
versity without, sacrificing the in
terests of tlie numbers who do not
expect to go to school any more, it is
much better to relinquish the title
"accredited school." In this connec
tion Principal Davenport of the high
school says:
"That it is the business of the
higher educational institutions to
adapt themselves to the lower and not
the lower to the higher that the no
tion of the lower school as a feeder
to the higher is pernicious; that every
line of school work must justify it
self, instead of being justified by
what in most cases can never come,
and that the work of each grade must
be as good to stop with as to go on
with. Otherwise the tail wags the
dog."
The sooner the people of Lincoln
and the people of Nebraska accept
these conclusions the sooner will the
public school system begin to per
form the functions which the whole
people arc taxed to support. The
university is for a few, the high
schools are for perhaps fifty times the
number attending the university, but
still a few compared to the millions
in the grades, the only school of ninety-eight
per cent of the whole num
ber enrolled.
Erminie.
Erminie is a tuneful, merry opera
and Francis Wilson plays it as an
opera, which is also an idyl, should be
played, with a lightness, a grace, a
freedom from responsibility and,
above all, with'in absence of insinuat
ing coarseness. It is this coarseness
which has done more to satiate thea
tre going people of all theatres than
anything else. The managers are a
long time finding it out, while their
audiences get slimmer and slimmer.
Mr. Wilson s funny. Ilis voice has
the despairing circontiex and break
that distinguishes DeWolf Hopper's
most successful effects, but the form
er makes his playing an idyl and
thereby says in his frame of an
actor, while Mr. Hopper gets outside
of it and becomes a minstrel and a
clown. Mr. Wilson's fooling is Sliaks
perian with shrewd, quaint turns of
his own. His role in Erminie of a
cowardly thief is not especially be
coming. He is happiest in the brave
ry of a lion tamer, or of a magician.
He is a jewel of a man and needs to be
well set. Rags and illtitting clothes
detract from the distinction which is
his by right of originality and gen
uine wit. Lulu Glaser is a bit of
thistledown as tc lightness and airi
ness of motion. She possesses, what
is rare in woman, a sense of humour.
Her gestures are not learned from a
book but fitted with nicety to the
words she says or the song she sings.
The shepherdess song was sung with
the abandon and good humour of
May Irwin and more musically than
Miss Irwin sings. Pauline Hall and
Lulu Glaser are two actresses, one
without temperament, the other with
a way of her own with an audience
that fools it into thinking she likes
everyone present and is delighted to
meet him under just those circum
stances. Pauline Hall has a good
figure and sings convctly enough but
she does not identify herself as Lulu
Glaser,the mirthfu1,pretty,little light
opera singer glad to meet us and sorry
to part.
Expansion.
Americans who claim to have had
tbeir finest and most sacred feelings
outraged by the purchase of the Fili
pines lack historical confirmation for
their pica that such a purchase ia un
American, unconstitutional and un
George Washington. The purchase of
Florida, Louisiara, the acquirement of
the Northwest Territory Texa6 and low
er California, and the purchase of
Alaska excited lhe Fame remonstrances
and references to Washington and the
original designs of the Pilgrims and
Puritans who emigrated to America.
In 18G7 when Secretary Seward bought
Alaska of Russia for $7,200,000, these
people whose tentacles are always quiv
ering in expectation of a shock, express
ed their convictions with religious emo
tion that the Republic had disowned
George, and made America a byword
foi greed and rapacity. They added
that, anyway Alaska was nut worth the
price, being inhabited only by the
esquimiux, polar bears, reindeer and
sea gulls. All that was said of the ex
pediency of the Alaska purchase is now
said, with the same beat, of the Fili
pines, with a change in the allegations
against the climate.
Against the Alaska purchase it was
urged that the price was too high. Yet
the annual income from Alaska has
been more than $2,000,000. Between
1870 and 1880, Americans purchased
from the natives more than $19,000,000,
worth of seal skins. And the gold and
other products are not yet tabulated.
The development of the country has
just begun. In fifty years the anti
expansionists will concede the wisdom
of incluoing the Filipines and Puerto
Rico among the belongings of the
United States but they will still threat
en overwhelming dissster to any con
tinuance of the policy. Meanwhile the
law of growth and expansion of what
ever is normal beneficial and the self
distruction and final disappearance of
weakness and disease will continue to
operate. Wherever the weak dies the
strong and healthy will be substituted.
And as America and England seem to
be the strongest, they are consequently
the best and will continue to supplant
the weak and degenerate until a people
stronger still, and more worthy to live
deny their right to so many of earth's
acres.
f MOOOMOMOOOIOOOOM0000000000090t
: THE passing show:
5 WILLACATHER t
.A Great Denver Novel.
Mr. Francis Lyndn lias long been
known as a writer of exceeding'y
clever short stories, most of them
railroad stories, among the best of
their kind, but definite rather than
suggestive an( a trifle hard in their
clear-cut outline. I scarcely expected
from him one of the strongest novels
of the year, but that is what he has
given us in "The Helpers." In these
days when literary art is so generally
employed to depict graphically the
under side of things, it is a novel
experience to pick up a book to which
the author prefixes such a dedica
tion as this:
'To the men and women of the
Guild Compassionate, greeting: -Forasmuch
as it hath seemed good in the
eyes of many to write of those things
which make for the disheartening of
all human kind, these things are
written in the hope that the God
gift of loving-kindness, siiared alike
by saint and sinner, may in some
poor measure be given its due.''
Even if Mr. Lynde had not ex
pressed his intention so explicitly in
this prefatory note, it is discovered
at once that the author wrote with
a hot purpose in his heart. It is a
western story, transpiring in Denver
and the mining camps in the moun
tains. It has in it more of Colorado
than anything I ever read and there
is a good deal of Colorado. A young,
civil engineer, MeHard" by name,
comes to Denver and falls in with
wealthy ranchmen and mine owners
who come down to town for a "time,''
and he bucks the tiger and runs
through with his patrimony and
eventually gambles Uis coat off his
back and becomes one of that lierce,
alert, vagraut population that sinks
into the slums of the city, never
knowing where the next dinner is to,
come from. This manner of li.Mng
between the pawn broker's shop and
cheap lunch counters, Mr. Lynde
aptly describes as "a species of can
nibalism which begins by the eating
of one's personal possessions." Gra
dually, as his clothes wore out, Jaf
fard withdrew from his old friends
and shunned the Brown Palace hotel
and lost himself in the forbidden dis
tricts of Denver where the tiger
rages night and day and absorbs the
entire existence of his devotees who
go hungry to glut his greed, like the
miserable devotees of some Satanic
religion. '1 here is something in the
strong and vivid handling of "Jef
fard's" li'e in the dark undertow of
Denver, of the easy descent to Av
ernus by way of Larimer avenue, that
recalls not a little Stevenson's treat
ment of "Robert Herrick'' in ''The
Ebb Tide." Indeed. Denver very
nearly did for "JafTard" for good, un
till the better-balanced, stronger
handed people among whom he had
fallen came down to the mudsills
and rescued him. I believe that is a
story that has been lived a good many
times before it was ever written, and
that this is not the first young tender-foot
who has been swept from his
moorings by the swift, hot current
of life out west, and then reclaimed
by the great-hearted people who live
there. Since Mr. Lynde wished to
write a novel on the helpfulness of
men and women to each other, it was
very proper that he should stage it
in the west, where the newness of the
civilization and excess of transient
life brings about an almost colonial
condition of society. Everyone is
practically away from heme, every
one has left his friends behind him,
and the common exile draws men and
womsu very close to each other, and
makes quick friendships. Naturally
the chief factor in "Jaffard's rehab
ilitation was a woman, and "Con
stance Elliott"' is in herself worth
wr.ting a whole book about. She was
the daughter uf an old miner and
capitalist, and one of her father's
friends says of her: "She's had her
ups and downs and they've made a
queer little medley of her. Trap and
tatidem and a big house on Capitol
Hill one month, and like as not two
rooms in a block and a ride in the
streetcars the next. That's about
the way Connie Elliott has had- it-all
her life, and it's made her as wide
awake as a frosty morning and as
good as a Sister of Charity." She
was eminently the person to help
'Jaffard" or anyone else, for she had
seen a good deal of the tree of knowl
edge of good and evil, as most west
ern girls have, and she knew what to
do for men who are sick from it, and
she was strong and compassionate
and not afraid yf the truth, or of any
of the unpleasant names it is called
by. And like most western girls she
lived close to the lives and interest
of men, and was no stranger to the
wars that are waged in the streets
and counting houses, and she knew
the value of money, and how hard
dollars come and what, they cost the
men who make them. She had a
mind as clear and alert as her gray
eyes, aud she had experience and
knowledge and adaptibiiity and all
the things which go to make life rich.
She was as strong and loyal and frank
as a man, and as tender and compas
sionate as a woman. Perhaps it was
because her mental horizons were so
wide that her heart was so large, and
perhaps her love was enduring not
because it was blind, but because it
saw all, and knew the ways of life.
After Mr Norris' tribute to Western
Women in "Blix' and Mr. Lynde's
apotheosis of them in '-The Helpers,"
some chivalrous fellow should feel it
incumbent upon him to take up his
quill in defence of the young ladies
born within the pale of the more rigid
conventionalities.
w
EnglamVs New Dramatic Poet.
The world of letters is very prop
erly concerned just now over the
advent of a new dramatic poet. Phil
lips' "Paola and Francesca" is cer
tainly the most notable poem pro
duced in England since the days of
Lord Tennyson's better work and
there is cause enough for sincere ad
miration of it. This is an age of
quick appreciation and easy victories,
and never was the world more bent
upon indulging in enthusiasms, upon
making gods and assoiling them. A
man has but to do a clever thing to
wear the Red Badge of Success and
be classed with the immortals and
the next year forgotten. The im
mortals of ten months, how many
have we seen rise and fall in the past
ten years! It is small wonder that
young aspirants value the laurel but
lightly when it is so painlessly won
and are disposed to make ignoble uses
of it. Here is Mr. Phillips who pub
lishes a poem of great beauty and
delicacy and much dramatic merit,
and lo! the English reviews assert
that lie is thu greatest dramatist
since Shakspere and as noble a poet
as Keats. If Mr. Stephen Phillips is
the man I think him, he must have a
very poor opinion of English criti
cism. The plot of Mr. Phillips' play is
extremely simple; of dramatic in
cident there is almost nothing and
little attempt is made at character
ization. The persons cf the drama
are beautiful shadows, of such stuff
as dreams are made of. Tne action is
quiet, never violent or compelling,
the tragedy is in the situation purely,
a tragedy of the soul that is develop
ed without dramatic accessories. The
piece might be played anywhere, in a
garden, on the rude stage of the old
Globe theatre, so untheatric is it.
indeed the play is built on the lines
of the Greek tragedies rather than of
modern plays, and it is a drama of
fate, in which the characters are
driven to their doom by a force seem
ingly outside of themselves.
The first act is staged in Giovanni's
Castle. Giovanni, a warrior old and
deformed, is for political reasons to
wed Francesca di Rimini, a maid
"fresh from dewy convent thoughts."
He has sent his younger brother,
Paola, to fetch her thither, and on
the journey the old miracle of nature
and youth has been accomplished, as
when Lancelot trough t Guinevere to
Arthur's court. Paola and his train
enter, bringing Francesca. From the
the dialogue between the two it is
easy to see what has occurred, though
the girl is as yet unconscious of it,
and Paola will not call it by a name.
He entreats Giovanni to excuse him
from the wedding festivities and let
him be gone with his troops, but the
old Lord detains him. The old, blind
nurse, Angela, comes in among the
wedding preparations and heralds the
dark workings of fate, as do the blind
sooth-sayersof Aeschylus. She sees
another man approach her Lord's
young wife, but will not name his
face. Lucrezia, cousin and kinsman
of Giovanni, has loved him all her
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