THE COURIEIL
houI of what was once an animal and
in a certain specified existence either
prepares himself for a lower or higher
form of life in the next stage, by
leading a vicious or virtuous life in
this one.
A man who would lay an ax to the
dignity and-beauty of a neighborhood
is reverting to some very low form of
animal life. The next breath he
draws will be through the black un
differentiated nostrils of an animal
who has no mural instincts or reason
ing power whatever. It will take
him aeons to reach the comparatively
distinguished pig, cow or dog form,
all of whom know what a tree is and
respect it. This endless punishment
will but have begun in a hundred
years when other trees v ill have tak
en the place of the noble beings so
lately assassinated. In this thought
there is a little comfort to the people
living on the treeless, or at least,
small-treed plains of Nebraska but
for the present day toilers there is but
little satisfaction in the thought of
the inevitable punishment Comman
dand Fowler has recklessly prepared
for himself. So far, June 17tb, there
is no report that the Board of Public
Lands and Buildings has even re
primanded his destruction of the
state's property. He is hi nisei f in
capable of realizing the extent of his
crime. When the committee asked
him why he cut down the state's de
light he said he wanted more pasture
for his cows. Ic addition to the trees
he cut down, he piled up brush heaps
among the young timber, set them
afire and thus killed the next genera-t-'on's
crop.
IIIIIMIIIM
Governor Theodore Roosevelt
Practical politicians are sincerely
skeptical of reform and impatient
with and disgusted at mugwumps and
men who scratch tickets for any rea
son whatever. Yet reformers reform
and purifiers purify. This era is bet
ter than any otter era. Examine
periods five hundred years apart in
the history of the world, ignoring the
intermediate periods and each one of
these periods, till we reach the year
one of the birth of our Lord, is a dis
tinct improvement upon the one five
hundred years nearer the beginning
of our era. This being so, then men
have made the world better. Not
the men who obeyed the party bosses,
the priests or the diets, but the non
conformists who have thought for
themselves, who have made new plat
forms and new creeds, who have
ignored old words and phrases, un
harnessed themselves and helped
those of their neighbors and brothers
who wished to be free. Their words
and deeds have survived and have,
century by century raised the aver
age. This result has not been ac
complished without ridicule. It is
recorded in Genesis that Shem and
Ham were born after Noah was tive
hundred years old. Then the Lord
directed Noah to build the ark and he
was six hundred years old when the
floods descended. The exact number
of years is not recorded but for nearly
a hundred years old man Noah was
the butt of the country-side. Old
men, maidens and loafers chewing
the B. C. for tobacco and making
their vicinity bad to smell and sick
ening to see, came and leaned over
the fence Noah had finally been oblig
ed to build to keep the crowd out.
They laughed, swore and spat at him
and his family but Noah was sure he
was right and that his inspiration
was sound and he finished the ark
and his teed and not theirs peopled
the earth.
Theodore Roosevelt has not the
American fear that he will have the
laugh on him. He is not a hermit,
disgruntled, sore-headed reformer.
He believes in getting a certain num
ber of men to agree with him and
then in doing something to make his
part of the country better. He has
the ind'spensable characteristic of a
successful reformer, he believes in
himself, in the strength of his arm,
and in his own ratiocination. Mn
Steffi ns in the June number of Mc
Clure's recognizes Governor Roose
velt's ability to get things done which
is a much greater and rarer gift than
the faculty of seeing that they should
be done. There are plenty of the lat
ter sort standing all day long on the
corner of Tenth and O. But they are
there where they are with their
hands in their pockets bDcause they
have not the power of convincing any
one else of either their good sense,
their integrity or of their ability.
"Mr. Boosevelt always has recognized
that he bad not only to keep clean
himself, but to get things done." Mr.
Steffins says:
"He hesitated once when he was an
assemblyman. He became a leader
in the House during his first term,
and he put through several reform
laws by forcing or persuading the
party to take them up. In a subse
quent term he was so influenced by
his many Mugwump friends that he
stood out alone, with a few followers
to fight; just to fight. This lasted
only a few weeks, however. He saw
that he could accomplish nothing by
personifying a universal protest; so in
he went again to get things done, to
put through all that it was possible
to force upon his party, and his rec
ord in this legislature was a good
one."
Mr. Lou Payn was Superintendent
of Insurance. The Governor knew
his history and conduct of the New
York state business witn the insur
ance companies. When his time ex
pired in the middle of Mr. Roosevelt's
term Payn was glad of it. ne wauted
an honest man's indorsement and
asked the Governor to reappoint him.
The Governor refused anc Lou Payn
said he would make him. Then he
sent petitions to the Governor signed
by all the presidents of insurance
companies, by bankers, by life-long
republicans and by Mr. Piatt, for his
reappointment. No use. Then be
induced a majority of the republican
senators to promise him they would
not confirm any superintendent that
the Governor should appoint. But
Governor Roosevelt always has a
card to play, ne said he would bring
charges against Payn, for instance of
a large lan made by a corporation
officer to the Superintendent of In
surance. He could prove the charge.
Payn's conviction would embarrass
other financiers and politicians and
iLe New York senate appointed the
Governor's designate.
Governor Roosevelt also believes
that corporations using the public
highway or any part of the public
demesne should pay taxes on the most
valuable part of their property which
is, as everyone knows, the franchise
itself. Mr. Steffins says, that "most
of the corporations contribute largely
to the campaign funds of both politi
cal parties in New York. Republi
cans never offer any acti-capital legis
lation; the democrats offer a great
deal and intend none. The demo
cratic position in the state is well
understood. Most of the big Tam
many men are interested heavily in
the local corporations, and their pri
vate secretaries sometimes write the
anti trust, anti-capital planks." The
corporations In the case of the Go
nor's franchise tax bill thought they
had killed it in commitiee, but here
again the Governor won the trick.
He sent a special message to the
speaker and the franchise-tax bill was
passed by both houses. It is so re
freshing and so unexpected, this in
stance of a man in the twentieth cen
tury with Noah's persistence and
faith in himself and that the last aad
final laugh will be his, a man that is
not dismayed by the information
that the thing he wants to do can't
be done, or that other and smarter
men than he have been governors of
New York and minded Piatt and
winked at questionable administra
tions of the various state budgets.
Governor Roosevelt might as well be
Adam insofar as he is uncontrolled
by precedent and undismayed by
what other men have tried to do and
failed.
The Thompton Matter.
If the fusion convention nominates
honorable, clean candidates for the
legislature their election is humanly
speaking, sure unless the nominees
of the republican county convention
will announce their withdrawal from
the position of Thompson candidates.
The publication of the contract sign
ed by Mr. D. E. Thompson, and agree
ing on his part not to attend repub
lican caucuses if the populists would
vote for him for senator has made a
profound impression on the republi
cans of the state. The members of
the delegation can claim that the
affidavits throw a new light upon Mr.
Thompson's character; that whereas
they had always supposed him unsel
fishly devoted to republican princi
ples, to the flag, to all patriotic meas
ures for the expansion of this coun
try and the firm establishment of good
government, to the gold standard and
all that republicanism means, they
have been shown over his own signa
ture, sworn to since the county con
vention by fourteen legislators, that
hejiolds'all thesearticles as cheap as
the price of his own elevation to the
senate of the United States, that,
Therefore be it resolved they cannot
consistently as republicans ask the
republicans of this district to vote for
them as senators and legislators, to
vote for a sworn traitor to republi
canism and all its tenets.
-Minium
D Annunzio's Novel.
The code of the border days would
have sentenced and executed a man
like D'Annunzio before the ink of bis
book was dry. Men of Italy may al
low a man to live who has written of
a woman, and that woman, Signora
Eleonora Duse. their greatest actress,
the world's greatest actress, as D'An
nunzio hBS done. But in America
some father or brother or honest,
faithful friend wonld kill him before
he could make any more ''copy."
Poor Duse who is an artist fell in love
with a cad who happened also to be
an artist. He grew tired of her and
uiade a book out of their love affair in
which he ridicules her "no-longer-young
fondnesses." Unfortunately
the Italian standard of manliness is
not American and if this man is kill
ed Duse must do it and she says she
will.
The ability to write has no connec
tion with character. Most abandon
ed wretches have been able to write
books which critics who love litera--ture
for its technique and not for its
influence upon life, have pronounced
works of art. I agree fully, with that
most interesting, paragrapher, Walt
Mason of Beatrice, that such vicious
books as 'The Triumph of Death" and
all of the miserable list of D'Annun
zio's composition have done great
harm and the author would better
have died in infancy. His life has
been a curse to the race, and even the
Italians who have read his books have
been made more cowardly and dirtier
thereby, and learned less respect for
women. D'Annunzio himself is a de
generate. He would beat a woman if
she annoyed him and ' he could find
one weaker and less effeminate than
himself. ForJ)use's sake I hope she
may never meet the man who has be
trayed ber confidence and made copy
out of her soul his own long since
having rotted.
0IHMIMHI
A Life on the Ocean Wave.
A sailor is proverbially easy prey
on land. He is an amphibious ani
mal and his gait, speech and reckon
ing have been regulated by the roll
of the ocean for so long that he is
inclined to awkwardness and apt to
make mistakes on land. Admiral
Dewey guilelessly took the word of
the peop'e nearest him and supposed
he had only to announce his candi
dacy for the pres:dency to have it
conferred upon him by the first na
tional convention that met after his
consent had been secured. His first
surprise, after he had told a World
reporter that be had changed his
mind about answering the call of the
people to the presidency, was that the
people must know immediately wheth
er he was a democrat or a republican.He
had served his country as an Ameri
can. He had taken orders from the presi
dents of this country because they
were successfully bis ranking officers,
and on the sea and in foreign ports
nobody cared and almost no one knew
whether the president was a repub
lican or a democrat. The Admiral has
travelled enough, and has represented
America as a whole for so long, that
he is able to take a foreigner's view
of his own country. The distinction
we land-lubbers make between demo
crats and republicans Dewey did not
make when he was in the China seas.
When he sent a message to Admiral
Diedrich of the German fleet and ad
vised him to keep his ships out of his
way he spoke as a representative of
America to a representative of Ger
many, To that German, Dewey was
an American officer at the head of a'
viotorious, splendidly manned fleet,
an American officer representing a
nation of very determined, hard-headed
fighters who had just whipped one
country and were ready to tight an
other, if necessary. Dewey has but
made a sailor's mistake in thinking
of America as a whole. For not know
ing that we cannot understand a man
who does not know that republicans
are always right and democrats al
ways wrong, or vice versa, for not
knowing that in times when the na
tion makes choice of a president, the
people whose tastes differ would soon
er fraternize with a nottentot than
with each other, Dewey has been call
ed names by democrats and republi
cans. He is a super-sensitive man or
he would not have walked the floor
when we criticised him for giving the
house that was given to him, to his
wife. The nomination at Kansas City
was out of the question, but he has
made enough mistakes while he has
been swinging around the circle, and
he and Mrs. Dewey have been criti
cised enough to give him a taste of
the delights of a presidential candi
date's life. Members of all parties
are glad that he had sufficient pre
vision to retire, before, as a candidate,
be got into the direct line of tire. His
investigation into the preliminaries
of becoming president has not en
couraged him. He cannot be a sim
ple minded, kind hearted gentleman
and be a candidate In the first place
he has married a wife and that com
plicates things. She is ambitious and
designing, first a protestant, then a
catholic and again a protestant for
policy, she is revengeful and willing
to snub those who have offended her
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