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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (April 28, 1900)
X THE COURIER glc, the shrinking fiom ineffectual competition, and the desire to insure an income, however small to their families. Though a permanent in corrigible office-seeker is not a high type, commercial conditions are re sponsible for him and for hid rapid propagation. But meanwhile hats oil to and no jealousy towards the man who has conquered by force, persis tency and readiness for the oppor tunity that comes to everyone and is grasped by so few. The Bulwark of Democracy. The public schools of the District of Columbia as a part of the system of the great Republic have been in vestigated. On complaint of many parents and employers of the gradu ates of the public schools of the Dis trict that they murdered English and could not do simple sums in arith metic, the sub committee of the sen ate committee on the District ar ranged asimple set of questions on arithmetic, geography and history. Pupils in the first year of the high school were selected for the examina tion and the report of the committee, after the papers were examined con firmed the worst that the employers of the graduates had ever said about them. "Less than a third of the high school pupils could pass the ordinary examinations for clerical positions established by the Census Bureau or the Civil Service Commission not withstanding the fact that these pupils have finished their instruction in arithmetic." In history these pu pils (first year high school) began the study in the third grade, they study it through the fourth and fifth, in the sixth they use four text books of his tory, in the seventh they study Unit ed States history from the time of the Revolution and begin English history in the eighth grade. The answers to the history questions are especially confused as: Give a brief account of the Puritans or of the Pilgrims: "Pilgrims were called pilgrims be cause they pilgrimed and journed." "The pilgrims prayed for providence which was at times granted to them." "The exiles from england were called Pilgrims after the rocky coast of Ply mouth upon which they landed." "The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth rock early in the spring in a small boat called the May-Flower. .When they landed they were few in number. Be ing opposed to the weather they died. Their clothing was not very thick for winter and their shelter did not pro tect the cold wind, rain and enow from comsng in." Name the three branches into which the Government of the United States is divided, and state in general the duty of each branch: "The juditial is the disobeyers of law." The jupicial is vested in the attor neys and the clerks.' "The Judicuary department explains or expands." "The Judicial body is to look after wills orphans &c." "The Judical consists congressman formed into a body and is called con- "The Senate, the House of Repersent- ersPopulary Assembly are the three into which the government of the Unit ed States is divided." 'The Government of the United States is divided into three principal branches Financial, State and In terior.' "The three branches into which the Govennment of the U S is divided is the House of Representatives Senate and the Legislature." "The Interior Department has charge of the agricultural conditions of the country making of roads for national uses and the improvement of our Army and Navy." "The Government of the United States is divided into three branches; the House, the Senate and the Legis lative Committee, consisting of Presi dent. Vice President and Cabinet. The President writes out his plans with help of Cabinet and sends it to the House and Senate, where they approve or dis approve just as they think best.'' It is discouraging for the people to find out that after they have spent their money for school buildings, the latest sanitary plumbing, uniformed janitors, and books from the School Book Publishing Trust and doled ut what was left to teachers, that the pupils know so little. The public schools have a reputation of being the bulwarks of freedom and in some way only completely understood by ora torical candidates who desire to em phasize their devotion to American institutions, they are. They may teach devotion to a republican form of government. It has been demon strated by examinations held in all parts of the country that they do not convey a working kaowledgD of writ ing, arithmetic, geography and gram mar. Stevenson's Letters. It is an old fashion and a new one to prove the world is going to the dogs, that genius is madness and transmittable only as neurasthenia. Gloom has her volubte children every where. We are all grateful to a genius who remembers his dut7 to the uninspired and the coramonplac, who treads under foot all repining, who makes light of suffering, who with no religion except the love of humanity keeps the "lower lights burning." The Letters of Stevenson, edited by Sydney Colvin, are those of an invalid who refused an invalid's perquisities or immunities. He was a successful self-made man, though he never boasted of it. Suffering from hemhorages which wou'd have spilled the courage nf a less courag ious man, be married and supported by his writing, a wife and a stepson. He wrote an incredible number of stories, essays and poems long after other men would have been dead. He did more than preach the some times severe duty of cheerfulness, he practised it. He wrestled with sick ness and pain all his life, and did bis work too. His noble, loving spirit is shown in the letters. They are to those who already love the novelist like the command of a beloved cap tain to charge the enemy. His path was steeper than ours, his pains were sharper, but his jests ne.'er faltered and he carried the burdens of strong er but less spirited and less generous comrades. It is not exactly a duty to read the Letters but everyone who reads them will be strengthened, em boldened and purified to do his duty and look pleasant, when the vice closes in a grip that frightens the unconverted.. Philistine Philosophy. "What Mr. Howells says is true that "as a people we are imperfectly mon ogamous." Ethnological observation of tribes and nations indicates that the specialization or separation of men into families is one of tLc meas ures of civilization. The world is very old and the conclusion on which marriage laws are based, is fairly demonstrable. Savage, civilized and semi-civilized man may be measured, more or less imperfectly, by their marriage laws. Of course, man's obedience to them is not slavish but, as the prohibitionists urge in regard to whiskey, the law is an encourage ment to temperance. Eliot Hubbard in the Philistine, preaches a doctrine that has been ad vocated from time to time by men and women who believe that because the bird ot time is on the wing and has only a little time to flutter, it is best to fill the cup and in the fire of spring fling the winter-garment of re- "GRANDM1THER, THINK NOT I FORGET." (WillaSibert Cather,in April Critic) Grandmitner, think not I forget, when I come back to town, An wander the old ways again an' tread them up an' down. I never smell the clover bloom, nor see the swallows pass, Without I mind how good ye were unto a little lass. I never hear the winter rain a-pelting all night through, Without I think and mind me of how cold it falls on you. And if I come not often to your bed beneath the thyme, Mayhap 'tis that I'd change wi' ye, and gie my bed for thine. Would like to sleep in thine. I never hear the summer winds among the roses blow, Without I wonder why it was ye loved the lassie so. Ye gave me cakes and lollipops and pretty toys a score, I never thought I should come back and ask ye now for more. Grandmitner, gie me your still, white hands, that lie upon your breast, For mine do beat the dark all night and never find me rest ; They grope among the shadows an' they beat the cold black air, They go seeldn' in the darkness, an' they never find him there, An' they never find him there. Grandmitner, gie me your sightless eyes, that I may never see His own a-burnin' lull o' love that must not shine for me. Grandmitner, gie me your peaceful lips, white as the kirkyard snow, For mine be read wi' burnin' thirst, an' he must never know. Grandmitner, gie me your day-stopped ears, that I may never hear My lad a-singin' in the night when I am sick wi' fear: A-singin' when the moonlight over a' the land is white Aw God 1 Fll up an' go to him a-angin' in the night, A callin' in the night. Grandmither, gie me your clay-cold heart that has forgot to ache, For mine be fire within my breast and yet it cannot break. It beats and throbs forever for the things that must not be An' can ye not let me creep in an' rest a while by ye ? A little.Iass afeard o' dark slept by ye years agone, An' she has found what night can hold 'twist sunset an' the dawn. So when I plant the rose an' rue above your grave for ye, You'll know it's under rue an' rose that I would like to be, That I would like to be. 4 , pentance. A fastidious taste is sub ject to change. The choice of six teen is not the choice of thirty. Sa tiety, sicknpss, selfishness, drives a healthy, intellectual mate to other comrades. All this,, which Js not much is urged by Mr. Hubbard as reason enough for promiscuity. The experience of the old, old world and the few laws it has evolved from ten thousand years or more of living does not affect Mr.Hnbbard's satisfac tion with his solution of unsatisfactori ly mated pairs. Mr. Reedy, the edit or of the St. Louis Mirror, reviews Mr. Hubbard's opinions and doctrine from the standpoint of a law made for all sorts and conditions of men. His critique is so discriminating that it is herewith reprinted: Hubbard and His Gospel. Mr. Elbert Hubbard, one of the pro phets or the better day for everybody, has been to the city and gone. There has always been a suspicion of pose about Mr. Hubbard. The man, upon nearer acquaintance, dispels the sus picion. There is no fake about him. He be lieves in his work. He believes in humanity, ne believes in himself. For all his canny methods in business, the man has something rapt about him. There's a flash of the fire of poetic madness in him. ne bas a leaning towards mysticism. He be lieves in inspiration, ne talks of his psvehic sense as one to whom it is a great and grave verity. The jocose Hubbard is the most superficial The true man is earnest, almost solemn. When he talks of certain things his face is that of one who sees celestial things. The contrast between the brashness of some of his writing and his personal diffidence is startling in the extreme. His abstraction is ap palling when you remember his ef fusive writing. He talks with a queer combination of "horse sense" and "the moving of the spirit." His personality is hypnotic more especi ally upon the women. Practical as Hubbard :s. there is much of the seer about him. He's "David Harum" and Emerson. He is Walt Whitman and Ruskin. He Is strangely of the vulgar, and frustra tlvely transcendental, brutally strong, and softly feminine not effeminate. As he talks of his work the hearer realizes that Hubbard did not set out to put theories into his work. The work came first. The theories grew out of it. That explains why his explanation of his work is so un satisfactory to those who approach it only from the view-point of the logi cian. His doctrine is hardly a doc trine at all so far. It may become a doctrine later. I think it will. I think Hubbard is going the way of Tolstoi, and the founders of new creeds, but his common sense is a good brake. He is not apt to go too far, though, of course, one cannot sav where these celestially enfanced egoists mjy walk in pursuit of the truth they see ahead. To me there is no doubt at all that Elbert Hub bard is one of the men who are fully possessed of the thought that they are close to the Divine, that they have an insight into the things hid den from others, that they are ves sels filled with the essence of the God head. In the Hubbard lecture, and in some brief talks with him. socially, I lound traces of all the dreamers, old and new, hints of all the heresies, sug gestions of the great visionaries of our world. The man is big enough, mentally and spiritually, to be a suf ficient explanation of his wonderful success. He is a gigantic dynamo of individuality. That individuality is, in the aggregate, attractive, though now and then it is fearsome; that is to say, it awakens a dread that some of its manifestations may proceed to dangerous negations. Elbert Hubbard is a sublimated variation on the modern "prophets," "divine healers," "Christs." The man is a mystic philosopher, for all his gospel of work. He is evidently no believer In crime or punishment. He docs not think seriously of laws. His cult of beauty and peace is one which he expresses as individualism, but he would carry individualism practically tc the point of annihilat ing all individuality, except, of course, his own. Translate Hubbard's life theory into Russian and he is "Nek hludoff," the hero of "Resurrection." "Love your fellow man so well," he says, "that you will not try to impress him with anything. Let him be free, utterly free. Let him work out his own salvation. Bind him not. The evil in him is useful, is good out of place, as dirt is simply matter in the wrong place." This is a high, noble, true doctrine, within limits. It will do for mystic philosophers who are in no danger of applying the philosophy emotionally. It will work well while - H W . ( y ;