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THE COURIER.
early rising. The completion of the
American part of the Paris exposi
tion far in advance of other buildings
is an example of the American habit
of hurrying, favorably commented
upon by the president of the French
Republic and by delegates or com
missioners from all other nations.
Commissioner Peck was surprised at
the dilatory, restful habits of the
French workmen. By his constant
exhortation to them to "hurry," by
his own example and that of the few
American artizans he took with him,
he succeeded in completing the Amer
ican building in time for the opening
day. According to the correspond
ents it was the only building ready
for the exhibits. Painting, music,
sculpture and literature are allevia
tions U the pain of existence. Life
would be arid without them but the
makers of literature are arrogant.
The busy little business man who has
made his capital by industry, brains
and energy and keeps a great manu
factory going by force of will and fer
tility of resource is disregarded or
considered only as a subject tor ad
vice and expostulation from literary
fellers. But if it were not for the
bustle and hurry which has got on
the nerves of the Englishman and the
literary American there would be no
money to pay for the expensive Turk
ish cigarettes of the writers who pro
duce a page a day of choice English
only to revise it next day as being
unworthy of their reputation. The
after dinner dreams, which they crys
tallize and sell at a dollar a crystal
would be hurried and more frequent
ly interrupted if it were not for the
modest workers, whose hurry and
preoccupation the men who have time
to write out in full their first and
second names do not comprehend or
appreciate.
Mr. Eliot Gregory in the May num
ber of The Atlantic, under the title
4,A Nation in a Hurry," distresses
himself causelessly about the wear
and tear of American life, the ex
penditure of vitality, the nervous
cess, tension, etc., etc, and the other
familiar complaints urged by Dick
ens. Anthony Trollope and twenty
others from their easy chair retreats,
soothed and inspired by nicotine and
self satisfaction.
America was discovered so late by
white men that they have had to hur
ry ever since to catch up. The bour
geois American haste to accomplish
in 408 years what it has taken other
nations five or six thousand years to
build or develop, shocks literary sen
sibilities. But as aforesaid, when the
habit of energy is contrasted on the
same job with Latin grace and in
dolence, the need of repose in Ameri
can life does not appear so exigent to
Americans as to the few who write
books and "articles" disturbed by the
noise of active life and strenuous ex
ertion. The man who can make an
honest living or accumulate a fortune
even at the cost of tired muscles, and
though the processes make a racket
is entitled to the deference of all
cults and even to the literary cult.
The supercilious latter is the only
one from which he will probably never
receive it.
Cultivating the Roads.
Sun-Sower and rosin-weed spread
from season to season until they take
possession of a field once serving man
kind by ripening oats, wheat, or corn.
The thriftiest farmers, more to drive
out the weeds than for the sake of
the ground, have planted the wide
margins of the roads to oats, millet
and corn. If all the fanaers culti
vate the highways nobody would ob
ject, their own arable land would be
increased, and every farm within
reach of the wind-blown seeds of
thistle, sunflower and rosin-weed
would be benefited. Doubtless the
first farmer who ploughed and plant
ed the margins of the high way
thought only of increasing his acre
age. If the custom were universal
the weeds might gradually be lessen
ed if not finally destroyed. The lit
tle black specks that appear in Ne
braska oatmeal after it is cooked and
ready for the table are only chopped
rosin weed, harmless, but suspiciously
black and unhealthy looking.
Ggarettes.
Hundreds of sickly, red-eyed little
boys aetat eight, more of nine, still
more of twelve and fifteen years may
be met on the street smoking cig
arettes. Manufauturers of the pois
onous packages insist that they are
innocuous and that cigarette smoking
is as beneficial to youth as it is profit
able to tobacco dealers.So?But what is
the cause of the blazzy.old f aces.the flab
by muscles, the red eye lids, the South
American indolence and laissez faire
of the boys who smoke them? They
cannot all be the underfed, poorly
bred children of the vicious. And
the teacher? say the boys whose
clothes and breath smell of cigarettes
are always inferior scholars. There
are no statesmen, no great generals,
no successful business men., nobody of
any account who smokes cigarettes.
This may only be a coincidence. It
may also be a coincidence that the
Spanish, the South and Central Ameri
can people, the Turks and the French,
all of whom smoke almost exclusively
cigarettes, are undersized, of a pale,
Chinese yellow, and lag at the tail end
of the procession of nations.
In other places there are flourishing
anti-cigarette leagues but nobody
ssems to care about the degenerating,
flaccid, narcotized little Nebraska
boy, who begins to smoke almost as
soon as he doffs dresses and is grad
uated from the nursery.
The Pacific Cable.
The Alaskan route proposed by Mr.
Harrington Emerson has not yet been
seriously considered. The projectors
of the southern route, twice as long
and twice as expensive, summarily
dismissed the proposition of the com
pany who offered to build the north
ern caole without a subsidy from the
government, but with a promise of
national patronage. The objection
that the ice in the north Pacific
would cut the cable and prevent re
pairs is silly. There is no ice in the
north Pacific in the region of the pro
posed route. The Japan current keeps
the waters warm. The thousands of
visitors to Alaska in the last twenty
years are suprised most of all at the
warmth of the climate, the luxurious
vegetation of the coast districts, and
the balmy, tender air. It is much
further north of the Alaskan penin
sula, and the chain of islands that
the warm Japan current is finally
overcome and the region of perpetual
snow and ice begins. In this north
Atlantic region there are co long
stretches of deep sea without islands,
but there is a friendly, neighborly
chain of islands connecting North
America and Asia. The waters are
too cool for the coral insects, that
pest of the Pacific which has shown
ac especial greediness for cables.
The Hill bill for a Pacific cable
passed the Senate on April 11th. The
cable it provides for is a Government
line from San Francisco to Honolulu,
with a view to extension hereafter to
our more distant island possessions.
The appropriation is 83,000,000. The
cable is to be laid by the Navy De
partment. When completed it is to
be operated by the Post Office Depart
ment. Revenue in excess of operat
ing expenses to be pa!d into the
treasury.
The House referred this bill to the
Committee on Interstate and Foreign
Commerce, which has reported it back
with an amendment wiping out the
entire Senate measure and substitut
ing the text of the House bill intro
duced last December by Congressman
Sherman of New York.
The Pacific cable contemplated by
the Sherman bill, as afterward amend
ed by the Interstate and Foreign
Committee, is a very different enter
prise from that which the Senate has
approved. The government has noth
ing to do with its construction or
operation except in time of war. The
bill authorizes the Postmaster-General
to contract with an American
cable company for the transmission
of official messages to Honolulu, Guam
and the Filipines, and further to
China and Japan, for twenty years at
a rate not exceeding $300,000 annually.
That is, the cable of the House bill
is to be a commercial enterprise, sub
sidized by the Government to the
possible extent of 86.000,000 in twenty
years.
The annual deficit in the post office
department induces the tax pay
ers to hope that the department will
not be given charge of the Pacific
cable. The company that offers to
lay this one in the north Pacific with
out subsidy and agreeing besides to
lay one to Honolulu is still ignored in
favor of the south Pacific plao which
will keep the rubber, wire and cable
wrapper manufactories busy for a
longer period.
When England Conquers.
The ultimate victory of England in
the Transvaal is assured. The brave
Boers do not expect anything else
themselves unless some other nation
intervenes, as England has intervened
in the past between them and the
Zulus. England has conquered before
and has grown wise. It is not likely
that the Boers will be disfranchised
or punished in any way other than
that involved in becoming a part of
the British empire. The French Ca
nadians have shown how thorough
ly since the sixty-three years of their
last rebellion they have become a part
of the British Empire. They have
sent regiments to the Transvaal and
the Roman Catholic Premier at Ot
tawa has shown himself a devoted
servant of the empire. It is not
enough for England to conquer by
war. The Australian Englishman
and the Canadian Englishman, vote
and hold office. England to them is
just what it is to an Englishman in
England, not the little island but a
great empire of loyal Englishmen.
The Boer will vote and enjoy more
freedom, though not as much tyranny
after the war as before. A peaceful,
loyal citizen is worth more than a
rebel with a soldier to guard him.
A newer or less experienced nation
might overvalue the worth of victory.
The problem of the Transvaal is to
convince the Boer that be is to be
allowed to run his own country, only
admitting settlers to a share in local
self government. The French Ca
nadian runs his own affairs. Be sure
that it is no make-believe. The tur
bulent, exacting, excitable French
are ready to fight at the drop of-the,
handkerchief. They are as ready in
Canada as in France. But for sixty
three years they have found no oc
casion. There has therefore been no
cause for rebellion.
Millinery Bird.
William Wilson of Wantagh, New
York, is the largest dealer in stuffed
birds for hats in this country. He
says in The Sun. "I probably handle
more birds than any other three men
in the business." This statement
may be ouly a boastful advertisement.
So many men consider their business
"the most important and most ex
tensive of any in the United States."
However that may be Mr. Wilson says
he employs twenty men to skin and
stuff birds for the millinery market.
He says that nearly all of his birds
are purchased in the market, skinned,
their wings cut off, and resold to res
taurateurs and hotel keepers.
'During the past year 1 have hand
led about twenty thousand wild ducks
mostly teal, broadbills, mallards and
shelldrakes, which were purchased in
the markets of Washington, Balti
more and New York. All of these
birds were killed for the market and
would have been killed just the same
even though it were not fashionable
for the ladies to wear feathers on
their hats. I might add that all of
these were resold after being skinned,
for table purposes. The same is true
of the thousand of snipe and other
game birds which are handled in the
millinery line; the birds are killed for
the market, and will continue to be
killed, whether or not fashion calls
for the use of feathers in the mil
linery art. The pigeonB, which are
used quite extensively, are purchased
at the markets and from the sporting
clubs, but the principal trade com
modity is the wings of ducks and
other game birds, which are chopped
off by the marketmen and sold to me
in large quantities. No song birds are
killed for millinery."
Ornithologists, who have been em
ployed to identify birds on the thous
ands of hats for sale in New York,
report that larks, robins, blackbirds,
bluebirds, swallows, wrens, humming
birds, terns and gulls are used. And
that the song birds of New England
have been appreciably diminished.
It is a point to be decided entirely by
an examination of the wings and
birds that decorate the hats. The
statements of a dealer and taxider
mist whose business has been affected
by the agitation for the protection of
song birds needs additional confir
mation. Mr. William W. Wilson's
address is Wantagh, Nassau County,
New York. He keeps a record of all
birds handled and offers to furnish
any further information about the
kind of birds handled in his trade, to
any one interested in song birds and
their preservation.
The Spanish Cannon.
"With the existing colonies or de
pendencies of any European power we
have not interfered and will not in
terfere." Mr. Whedon quoted the
foregoing clause la the Monroe doc
trine last Tuesday afternoon to shew
that in espousing the cause of Cuba
which until the Peace of Paris unwil
lingly belonged to Spain, the United
States had broken the provisions and
obligations of the Monroe doctrine.
Yet Secretary Root quotes the Doc
trine as though he still believed in its
verbal inspiration and our own un
swerving adherence. Mr. Whedon
has a lawyer's habit of quoting docu
ments and applying the quotation
immediately to the point he is seek
ing to establish. From the enuncia
tion of the Doctrine to the declara
t.on of war with Spain, the people of
America supposed they were keeping,
and making an effort to keep the
Monroe doctrine. As a matter of
fact obedience has been accidental.
There has been no temptation to
break itsprovisions, which have been
rather a favorite topic of speculation
and reference than of any ac
tual service as a guide or a light.
The Spanish cannon presented by the
government to the city of Lincoln and
set upon a a pedestal on the universi
ty campus is more than a symbol and
souvenir of the war with Spain and
American victory. It marks the be
ginning of the time when the east
shall be west.
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