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VOL. XV., NO. XV
ESTABLISHED IN 1SS6
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LINCOLN. NEBR., SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1900.
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:
OBSERVATIONS
n
Loa
John Raskin.
Josiah Allen's wife heard her hus
band regret that there were so few
women of the type Ruskin describes
in his book ''Sesame and Lilies."
Over, and over again in this book Rus
kin exhorts women to cease doing for
the sake of being. A womac, he ad
vises in a hundred different ways,
whereof he knew how so well, to cease
weighting her shoulders and harden
ing her palms in service. He thought
that man would be fed. warmed and
comforted by the contemplation of
woman as an object of beauty. Why
should she scrub, sew, bake, sweep
and dust to make him happy, when
she might drape her limbs in classic
garments and sit down where the
light softly falls, in an attitude hap
pily preserved for her consultation
on the low reliefs of the Grecian urn ?
Mrs. Josiah Allen catching the dis
approving looks which the man of
the house directed upon her as she
was scrubbing hie clothes, decided to
consult "Sesame and Lilies", herself.
Reading therein that making her
hands hard and knotty in household
ministry she was breaking the cob
webby law of beauty, Mrs. Allen con
cluded that sho would reform, for
Josiah's sake Her squat figure had
long since forgot, the sway of the
rose. Only the healthy, russet red of
her cheeks and the clear twinkle of
her eyes suggested sturdy, irrepressi
ble field flowers. In the book to wo
men Mrs. Allen read over and over
again In the hundred, cunning phras
ingsofone idea, "Oh! woman be a
rose, be a lily!" and Mrs. Allen de
cided to obey the author whom Josiah
thought infallible.
When the poetic spouse returned
from the barn with foaming pails of
milk, he found his wife carefully dis
posed in a rocking chair in the mid
dle of the room with a beam of light
from the setting sun resting tenderly
upon her hair. "Strain this mHk,"
be roared, but Samantha looked
gravely and sweetly past him at the
setting sun and the illuminated west.
You will remember that Josiah had
to get his own supper and his break
fast and to continue doing the work
outside and inside until he remember
ed with aching regret the homely
services he had disparaged at the
command of Ruskin. To convince
his wife to give up her role of a rose
he was obliged to confess that he was
"a blame fool" and Ruskin was too.
Samantha Allen took Ruskin seri
ously. It is doubtful if he thought
his own advice would be followed
literally. In choicest and most musi
cal phrase he informed woman of her
mission in life. Of the women who
knew him, only his mother ever loved
him and that was because she was
his mother. He was a champion of
woman whom all the women he knew
rejected. He said he was a champi
on of the poor man, and his books
were the most expensive ever pub
lished. No laborer oT- the sort he
wrote about was ever seen reading
one o'f Ruskin's books, it is there
fore reasonable to conclude that be
aimed high, but according to history
he never hit anything. A review in
the current Scribners is fair to Rus
kin and to the artists he contemned
as well as to those he admired. Turner
has long since ceased to occupy the
whole of even the English horizon
and Ruskin who apotheosized him is
slowly getting into focus. Ruskin's
fame and claim to human interest is
not as an authority upon and god of
art or architecture or social matters.
He was a genius in words. Like Ten
nyson his phrases were perfect, bril
liant, fascinating, but the whole of
his work was lacking Hi effect and
meaning. Nobody is an authority on
art. Only the great painters, sculp
tors, architects can suggest changes
to other artists and to an inspired
understanding it is permitted to ex
plain why pictures are beautiful.
More than this the generations of
men will not long endure.
The Mode in Hats.
Between the year of 1850 and 18G0
Godey's magazine shows that the hats
were rimless, oblong, or oval cups,
worn as Tommy Atkins wears his
cap, and attached to the head in the
same way with an elastic. Since then
women have worn queer shapes
enough, but none were entirely
devoid of grace and beauty until the
cynic woman-hater that sits enthron
ed in Paris delivered the styles for
this spring. Conforming to the en
tirely artificial coiffure of the day the
hats arc heavy, solid looking rolls of
silk mull, silk or ugly straw, with an
occasional dead bird flattened out as
if for broiling on top of the hat. The
type or model is the turban of the
Turks. But the copies or conven
tionalized turbans, lack the grace, the
structural simplicity, the excuse of
long custom and religion of the
Turkish headcovering. A Turk knows
better than to attempt to wind a
sheaf of brittle straw about his head.
The turban of the Turks is yards of
softest silk that easily passes
through a finger ring. With the deft
ness of more than two thousand years
of practice he winds it in -irregular
rolls about his head and fastens it by
a motion swift and inimitable. He
wears it with dignity. It is a na
tional heac dress and protects his
head from the vertical rays of the sun
that is a near neighbor to Turkey.
It has also the beauty of sincerity:
the rolls arc rolls of silk and not hol
low, scratchy straw that bends and
bulges in the breezes.
A vase has certain parts such as
the rim or lip, the neck, the body and
the base. None of these can be ignor
ed or entirely obscured without de
stroying the beauty of the vase. The
Chinese have made vases with a drag
on or amorous bird twined about
them but even they have not dared
to make the dragon or the bird larger
than the vase it ornaments. The
style-maker in Paris had a pipe dream
of a hat that was like a turban and
was yet not a turban, of a hat that
had no rim and no crown the two
inalienable, unalterable character
istics of a hat. When he awoke and
reflected on his profane millinery
nightmare, he laughed and twisted
straw and silk into the shapes he had
seen it worn on the Brocken of his
dream. The French women rebelled.
Something of the obstinacy of the
classic Greek is born in the French
woman. Her hat must have a crown
and brim, her skirts must retain the
folds of pendant drapery. It is said
that Paquin refused to make the
sheath skirts of last winter, but gave
always to the back breadths or his
skirts the essential fulness. In
France the high corset that makes
the torso rigid has never been worn.
The French women know better
whatever the style. Like the Greek
potter, however original the form and
decoration, his vase was still a vase
and conformed to the law of vases.
At the present time the Parisienne's
hat is not a nightmare of a turban.
It has a brim and a crown and the
feathers and ribbons and gauze are
subordinated.
Nebraska women lost their freedom
long ago. They wear anything how
ever unbecoming and absurd that
comes from New York. Some of the
richest and most knowing of the New
York women insist upon a modifica
tion in the season's shape, but women
in the interior of the United States
will still wear anything at all that
they can be made to believe i chic.
The over-loaded, heavy, formless
things with no ancestry and no dig
nity that fill the shops now a-e unbe
coming and if we were a free and in
dependent eex they would stay in the
shops. Why do the manufacturers,
dealers and ptylc-makers not endeavor
to dispoil the tyrant man of his righ ,j"
to a hat or a coat or a westcoat? Be
cause in the last analysis the tailor,
the haberdasher and the hatter are
man's servants. Man ha work to do
and he must not be fettered. Woman
has nothing to do but fascinate man.
To accomplish this she will let her
feet be bound to lameness as in China,
she will let her face be vailed as in
Turkey, or as in America, where her
anxiety to be fascinating has destroy
ed her sense, she will wear any hid
eous harness or emblem commanded
by Vogue.
Eric Hermannson's Soul.
Miss Willa Cather has poems in
The Librarian, a poem in The Critic,
the Saturday Evening Post has ac
cepted a story and the current Cos
mopolitan contains a story by Miss
Gather called "Eric Hermannson's
Soul." Eric Hermannson is a Swede,
with the blue eyes, yellow hair, and
height of the men in theSagas. Near
Red Cloud where Miss Cather's child
hood was spent there Is a large Nor
wegian settlement and her stories of
the Nebraska Norwegian though
colored by a strong imagination are
of the soil. "Eric came of a proud
fisher line, men who were not afraid
of anything but the ice and the devil.
Eric was handsome as young Sieg
fried, a giant in stature, with a skin
singularly pure and delicate, hair as
delicate as the locks of Tennyson's
amorous prince, and eyes of a fierce,
burning blue whose flash was most
dangerous to women. He had in
those days" (of his first coming to Ne
braska) "a certain pride of bearing,
a certain confidence of approach, that
usually accompanies physical perfec
tion. It was even said of him then
that he was in love with life, and in
clined to levity a vice most unusual
on the Divide. Hut the sad history
of those Norwegian exiles, transplant
ed in an arid soil add under a scorch
ing sun. had repeated itself in his
case. Toil and isolation had sobered
him and he grew more like the clods
among which he labored. It is a
painful thing to watch the light die
out of the eyes of those Norsemen,
leaving an impression of impenetra
ble sadness, quite passive, quite hope
less, a shadow that is never lifted.
The change comes quickly or slowly
according to the time it takes each
man's heart to die.' At the dce
of the Norwegians: "The , -
all boisterous with d- ot be 8Ure'
