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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (June 2, 1900)
BIMBiSEH THE COURIER. women, seized the one opportunity in a pallid, fut'lc life to impress his views on a large audience. As a lec turer in a Kansas normal school, the unscientific, unverified statements of an address delivered before the dele gates from the north, south, east and wes, he has given the country an in. accurate notion of the standard of in telligence in Kansas, and Kansas club women may exert an influence which may remove from the teaching force of the state so Ignoble a representa tive.... Heroines of Nineteenth Century Fiction. It is many years now since I have read anything written by Mr. William Dean Howells from any other motive than a sense of duty and a desire to know what the most famous living lion in America is wrltiug about. He has discarded objectivity as immate rial, inconsequent and irrelevant. He has taken it upon himself to write soul cycles. Incident, plot action he considered in his earlier period, ne now concerns himself with motives, atmosphere and what he recognizes as truth. In an imitative, spiritless, col orless style the students of story writ ing at the State University of Ne braska are following him. To read Fielding or Thackeray or Kipling or Stevenson after doing a stint of How ells, Jnmes or Barrie is like riding a young, mettlesome horse over moun tain and into the valley after a ride on the merry-go-round in the com pany of sophisticated city folk. Field ing, Thackeray and the rest are free. They are not trying to demonstrate tjbat their way of writing novels is the only way. They are not weighted by self-atsumed duties as teachers and models. They have a story to tell and they tell it with complete self-forget-fulness, and recklessness, for the time being, as to its sale or storage on the bookseller's shelves. In ''Heroines of the Nineteenth Century," Mr. Howells has consider ately assumed the charm of his earlier manner. Shrewd observation of ex terior sights and impressions, of Miss Burney, and of Miss Edgeworth. for instance, as two authors with whom he is well acquainted characterizes these charming essays of Mr. Howells. It is such a relief to be rid, for the moment of the young ladies whose outterfly agonies of speculation as to the consequences of an action they contemplate taking or words they in tend saying to "him." It Is then a great pity that Mr. Howells and Mr. James should both have decided it was their mission to depict, character from the inside. The well-bred boundaries of his hero ines' souls cramp Mr. Howells. He needs more room than the crowded quarters he has chosen to occupy for so long. As a gentleman and a fellow craftsman should, Mr. Howells has studied Miss Burney and Miss Edge worth from a respectful distance. He has not made any of those reve lations his heroines have had "to grow accustomed to of their intimate thoughts. Mr. Howells has treated these real women as an unmitigated realist ought to portray the heroines it is his business to create. This most admirable thesis on the heroines of the nineteenth century should work an Edgeworth, Burney and Aus ten revival. Mr. Howells' quotations are so deftly and discriminatingly made they do but whet a taste for more. The Right to YelL Rutgers faculty is bitterly regret ting the legacy of $1,000,000 it has lost by not believing that the million aire Mahlon C. Martin really objected to noise. Mr. Martin was worth $4,000,000 and had devised one fourth of his property to Rutgers College. He was an old man and the pride of his life was Shady Cliff, his estate. The college established the athletic field close to his house and the shouts and oaths of the students disturbed the old man. He complained to the college authorities, but they conclud ed he was crauky to object to the racket from the inferno of the field. They were sure that he had made his will and left a million to tne college, so the cunning little student boys were not interfered with. As the o!d man sat on his porch and listened to the oaths of the men whom education was supposed to be refining and mak ing more fit to meet the struggles and solve the puzzles of life, the noise and tli boys got on his nerves and he changed his mind about the value of a college education. Finally, seeing how indifferent the faculty was to an o'd man's comfort when they were assured that the old man had willed the college a million dollars, Mr. Mar tin changed his mind and left his money elsewhere. The right to quiet is never assured in a college town. This posthumous revenge for the destruction of the pace of an old man's last days seems to the students and faculty of Rut gers like persecution. But there are thousands of people whose days have been disturbed by the noise of stu dents, who are enjoying the discom fiture of Rutgers. The Telephone Ordinance. The Independent Telephone Com pany is dissatisfied with the ordi nance granted by the city council be cause the right to the streets and alleys is only granted to the company and not to its assigns and successors. Members of the company say that there is a telephone syndicate in New York (name net given) with a capital stock of $60,000,000 which might wish to buy their franchise after it is secured. This being so, so large a company is surely not hard to locate. Why should the city not ssll a fran chise directly to this company with sixty millions to Invest? The Idea, as I gather it from newspaper interviews with ingenuous members of the disappointed new company, is that the franchise is very valuable it they are allowed to sell it after they have received it from the city for nothing and valueless if they are not allowed to sell it. This is clear enough to financiers, but to the great common peop'e it is mixed. The rejection of the franchise as granted by the coun cil demonstrates definitely that the Independent company desire the fran chise for a speculative purpose. If the franchise with a selling clause is so valuable to outside people why should not the city receive the price? The alleys and streets belong to the people. The telephone poles are placed at the sides of the streets greatly disfiguring them and without the slightest regard to the tastes or the views of the abutting property holders. The people, as a whole re ceive nothing for this disfigurement of the streets. The telephone com pany now installed here is making an abnormal rate of interest on the in vestment. It charges four dollars a month for urban telephones and three dollars a month for suburban tele phones. Illegitimate returns from any investment, except the diseovery of a mine, are only secured by an ar rangement with the people who sup ply the interest, to grant the investor or iuvestors certain privileges. Fran chises have been granted hitherto by the people or their representatives without adequate compensation or requiring bonds from the company that when the investment paid fifty percent or o.'er the city which alone makes the plant valuable shall re ceive a share of the returns. In directing the attention of the council and people to the rates which the Bell company is charging and the value of the franchise they are en joying for practically nothing the agitation for the admission of a new company has already accomplished something worth tabulating. The New Inferno. Hiprah Hunt's journey through a modern inferno is illustrated in the current Cosmopolitan with pictures apparently sketched on the spot by Arthur Young, a draughtsman of imagination. The men and women who make the world a place of ex piation for their companions are shown in the world of spirits getting their punishment in kind for the sort of misery they Inflicted on others in the material world. Mr. Hunt, dress ed as the caricaturists always dress a missionary, in a straight linen duster effect, an antique beaver bat, a bun dle, a slovenly umbrella that looks like a small tent folded, gaiters and a solemn, depressed look, watches a hypnotist wearing a long chain about his body, grasping a heavy ball of iron, and carrying on his shoulders a fat and coarse skinned imp with spurred hoofs who beats the hypno tist up a hill. There is a picture of the married man who passed himself off as single, yoked to a stalwart, bearded woman imp and chasing down a rocky hill pursued- by stones and yelling imps with pitchforks. Fur ther on Dante Hunt sees a naked old man, hitched to a post by a halter. It is an arctic region and though he cannot die again, he suffers the ago nies of freezing to death. The man who walked over others is the bridge between two crags. The man who climbed up in the world and then for got his friends is compelled to climb a spiked pole, surrounded by ubiqui tous imps with devilish pointed ears and forked tail like a serpent's tongue. Mr. Hunt is chaperoned by an imp instead of Virgil. In lieu o'f the schol ar's robe the imp is dressed in black wings and carries the classical purga torial pitchfork. Crag and cactus, stoues, boiling water, ice and all sharp pointed things are the proper ties of Mr. Hunt's inferno for latter day sjnners. The Chart and Compass. Boer sympathizers are in the habit of dilating upon the educational in stitutions of their favorite poople. Cronje is a brave man, a very clever fighter and his English captors are singing his praises as a modest, sim ple gentleman. The British trans port Milwaukee carried General Cronje, Mrs. Cronje, and tha General's staff officers to St Helena, where they are now lodged in one of the military fortresses on the island. On the passage across the ocean the General spent most of his time in the apart ments alloted himself and wife and maintained a stolid silence. That Cronje bore out the idea that the Boers are a simple, unaffected people who live their lives out in their na tive land, rarely ever visiting other countries was shown by the fact that Cronje one day asked Captain Web ster: "How do you go from one port to another with no land to steer by?" The Courier has repeatedly said that Kruger had not yet accepted the fact that the, world was round and that it whirled through space. This statement is not a figure of speech but a fact, Kruger thinks such doc trines unbiblical. Think how far be hind the brightest of the Boers are. Cronje does not yet know what Co lumbus had to know before he start ed out to discover a northwest passage. Eliot Hubbard's Gentleman. In the Independent Mr. Hubbard gives a receipt for a gentleman. He says that a gentleman must have three qualities and Mr. Hubbard spells them all three with a capital so: ''Sympathy, Knowledge, Poise." There are plenty of ignorant men possessing the first and last that are gentlemen essentially. Knowledge applied to conduct and speech makes a man more cf a gentleman if his spirit be gentle; it increases his sym pathy and directs it judiciously. Poise is self control and a sense of humour. Without it a man is either a lugubrious egotist or a practical joke pun-making cad that is worse than no attempt at a gentleman. That knowledge has little influence in transfcrming a bor into a gentleman, any undergraduate assembly, any su perficial observation of undergradu ates will demonstrate. The Fourth Biennial. The convention of delegates from all the federated Woman's clubs in this country will meet in Milwaukee next week. Several auditoriums are necessary to provide for all the meet ings that have been planned and which will be held simultaneously. Aside from the interesc the delegates have in the programs the biennial assembling of women from all parts of the country strengthens the Union because it proves the unity of the whole country. Just exactly what the Federation will accomplish has not yet developed. But it seems certain that such numbers, so large a company, with so strong a purpose to elevate, teach, learn and assist must even tually have a dynamic influence upon the race. A full, report in detail of all the meetings and speeches is of course impossible, but a summary of minor meetings and details of the more im portant ones will be printed in this paper from the club editor's reports. Missionaries in China. Angry, hostile Chinese follow the missionaries about the streets of Pe kin. The movement against all for eigners is in sympathy with the poli cy, if not with the wishes of the Empress. Russia, France, England and the United States are at the door. The Boer war has demonstrat ed that a force only one eighth as large as an invading army can win, for a time at least. With his genuine objection to war the Czar is not likely to precipitate one, even with so small a foe as a Chinaman. The war in Africa has made all nations afraid of war as they never were before. So in spite of the attitude of the Chinese "Boxers'' to all "foreign devils'' and in spite of the signs of peril to all foreign residents Russia, France, England and the United States do not venture to put an armed force into China even for the purpose of protecting their own countrymen. The Chinese cooly Is superstitious nd densely Ignorant. Witnesses who have seen a Chinese mob testify that It is more terrible and sanguinary than any French Revolution demon stration. Oriental cruelty is a thing apart. To the western mind it is in conceivable. The Record says on this subject: "That every nation of influence hav ing a representative at Pekin should be prepared to use force at a mo- -4 -A -? . y