THE COURIER.
A. -
V
t
fs
t
It"
A
it-
charged and it has not been refuted
that the general telephone ordinance
passed last Monday night, was drawn
up at Omaha in the offlca of the Ne
braska Telephone Company. If the
council is counsel for the company
then the latter should pay all salaries
of the fourteen men who were elected
by the citizens to represent their in
terests. In refusing this opportunity
to save the citizens of .Lincoln $30,000
a year, in neglecting to pass an or
dinance reducing telephone rates, in
passing an ordinance ostensibly for
other companies which bears internal
evidence of having been drawn up by
the management of the resident mon
opoly the members of the council
have assumed a suspicious attitude,
obnoxious to most- of the citizens. An
ordinance lowering the rates to the
prices obtainable by competition
would be better than letting another
company in. But in shutting out the
citizens from the advantages of com
petition without lowering the present
exorbitant rates the rouncil is ignor
ing a duty.
The Nebraska Telephone Company
in forcing subscribers to sign con
tracts, several years ago was unneces
sarily arbitrary and absolute. The
charges for a very poor service and
antique telephones have not the pro
per commercial relation to the cost of
service and machines. But the prices
are based on the absence of competi
tion and the strain that the market
will stand. Electricity is a cheap
energy and growing cheaper. For
these reasons strong objections to the
resident company exist and a rvial
company would receive custom by
repulsion, even if the service were no
better. Discontent with the action
of the council is deepened and ag
gravated by the evidence of the votes
for and against the measure, that Mr.
D. E. Thompson's influence has been
enlisted by the Nebraska Telephone
Company, by promises to return the
help when most needed.
j J
Summer Reading.
L;ght enough for the breezes to
bellow and fold, cooling, not contro
versial, the mlr'summer fiction num
bers of the magazines, covers and all,
are refreshing. The Century's cover
is a colored print of fish with pink
bodies and thin fan tails bigger than
they are. The clever artist, J. Carter
Beard, has made the coolest picture
of the season, for his models are only
gauzy fans with incidental heads,gently
waving through and streaked and dap
pled by the water. Between the cov
ers the colored illustrations of the
article, on "Treasures of the New
York Aquarium," reproduce the sin
uous grace of fishes, who swim more
easily than birds fly. Mr. Beard
selected his fishes for midsummer illus--ytration,
in cool greens, blues and
pinks. The riot of reds and purples,
shown in the magazines at the other
end of' the year In the holidays is
quite absent from all the magazines
of the month. Never say that art
ists are separate from practical, every
day life when they can fill magazines,
which are read by those who do not
read books and by almost as many as
f read newspapers, with colors that
mitigate the heat as effectively as a
punkha, ice-cream soda or any other
American or Indian device for lower
ing the temperature.
Mrs. Ruth McEoery Stuart in "The
Author's Reading in Simpkinsvllle"
retaliates for all the receptions, teas
and amateur musicians that intrepid
lion hunters have wearied her and
other authors with. Her rebuke is
timely and this city should remember
it and take pity on the next celebrity
who stops o.-er in Lincoln, on his
wage earning tour of the country.
1
It is not singular, that we who are as
the sands of the sea for monotonous
mediocrity should wish to see, touch
and speak to one, whom genius or at
least talent has distinguished, but
how tiresome for the celebrity, who
has but come to preach, lecture, read,
sing or play to us as an audience!
We are as the sands of the sea and the
affectation of pleasure at meeting us
is a strain, and may cloud his memory
of Lincoln as a pleasant place to read,
lecture or play in. It is therefore
unpatriotic as well as thoughtless to
force him into our drawing-rooms,
make him "stand in line" and be
introduced by a real but merciless
worshiper to the multitude. It is
also a distinct pecuniary loss to the
celebrity, for many who would pay a
quarter as the price of seeing "how
he looks,' his long hair or his Byronic
collar and hauteur put the quarter
back after they have shaken his limp
hand and enquired his opinion of the
west. Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart
has a large number of worshipers
among the would be literary. Her
genuis is not of the towering frozen
heights sort. The stories of "Sonny"
indicate a warm, lively interest in
nobodies and I fear we have prolonged
her audience to ennui by reason of
this, her virtue.
"Hezeiciah's Wives" by Lillie Ham
ilton French is a bird romance in the
Ernest Seton -Thompson style, which
he has made the only way to write of
animals. Bertha Runkle, a new au
thor begins a long story which the
publishers promise, in the confiden
tial department at the end of the
magazine, will take eight months to
finish. And "this is strange," as the
walrus said, because it lanes a well
known name to overcome the popular
impatience with serials. They also
threaten the consistent repudiator of
the serial that if he does not make
"king's excuse" in this case of The
Helmet of Navarre, he'll be Borry.
On the cover of Scribner's a maiden
in a flrst-of-the-century gown (called
empire now) with a book in her han,
flowers in her Florentine-effect hair,
and diaphanous drapery, duplicating
the curves of the hair, about her light
figure is returning from a summer
afternoon's reading in the woods be
hind her. She is sedate and medi
tates. The background is green and
all the tones are the cool colors of the
trees, their shadows and the verdant,
lambent grass. The cover is the work
of Bessie Wilcox Smith.
Mr. Henry McCarter illustrates Mid
summer in seven full-page, colored
illustrations. His method Is one of
strong outlines, that reminds one of
those heavily outlined pictures in the
old Franklyn primer, pictures that
made so strong an impression ou the
retina that the aged eyes which once
studied them saw them etill clearly
seventy-five years later. The striving
for atmospheric effects and the as
pirations, tenets and experiments of
the impressionists have weakened out
lines, and solid mountains and trees
fade into each other as though they
were soluble. These strong silhouettes
of Mr. McCarter's are in the
nature of a relief and of something
long loved, lost and found again.
Even the clouds are not suggested but
are heavy with moisture and rotund
as clouds always are to a child. They
have recesses and some float much
nearer the earth than others. The
color of all is real and may be recog
nized as adequate interpretations by
the unprofessional eye. The illumina
tions of the title page are charming
and I have threaded their fairy story
forest filled with enchanted deer and
squirrels with delight. But most of
all the solidity of McCarter's moun
tains, trees and the heights of bis
cliffs, canons and mountain-tops are
grateful to the fad-weary.
Mr. Maxfield Parrlsh In his illus
trations to Edith Wharton's story of
"The Duchess at Prayer,"' has done
what he has done so well before. In a
picture eight inches by five Mr. "Par
rish has drawn the world of the
Duchess, a garden, where she and her
lover wander, watched by a suspicious
priest. The heroine and her lover are
two specks as they would be to, any
spectator, she, just skirts and a wide
lace collar to show the woman and
the duchess, and he another speck
dressed as a cavalier with a wide
plumed hat and boots with flaps
turned over at the top indicated by
a needle point of white. It is enough.
All the other cavaliers painstakingly
drawn by supernumeraries bring the
couple near. A lesser man would
have given them the whole page acd
left out their world, the maze of
tesselated, walled, terraced garden
with arches and noble flights of steps,
with yews and poplars for newel posts
leading up to a darkling gloom. Hu
man beings are so little, compared to
the world, but most illustrators leave
out space and the world so that the
mannikin hero may have the whole
page and thus he destroys proportion
and relativity.The width and depth of
Maxfield Parrish's illustrations do not
narrow and materialize the story.
They spiritualize, place, proportion
and people it. In the picture alluded
to the top of the page shuts out the
sky, but the sky is there, In the fore
ground mirrored in a calm fish pool,
so deep below the pavement that
subterranean depths add their fasci
nations to the subtlest of pictures.
Edith Wharton's story is of the raid
summer type, written for the purpose
of chilling the blood with a tale of a
man built into a tomb by an out
raged, but very supercilious and dis
agreeable husband who finishes his
vengeance by poisoning his wife.
Ernest Seton-Thompson interprets
the story of the "Coyote that Learned
How." Mr. Seton-Thompson stands
between man and animals and has
begun to tel' us, who never can un
derstand, how animals think, reason
and learn. Most men have no means
of verifying his interpretations.
There have always existed men who
told remarkable stories of the lucid
thinking of the live stock they own.
And there are those who have watch
ed for demonstrations of animal sense
which have never been granted. Mr.
Seton-Thompson understands much
more than the ordinary man, but he
has a quickening sympathy, a lively
imagination and the literary gift.Tnis
is a suspicious combination for a man
in the witness box. His stories are
interesting if not true, and it is not
for one who cannot understand the
language of the wolf, the wild horse,
the cow and the coyote to dispute his
testimony. I would that it might be
corroborated by a less intelligent, less
literary gent than the author of
"Some Wild Animals I have Known."
Mr. Barrie's serial on "Tommy and
Grizel" is an irritating yarn wherein
Mr. Barrie's overweening self con
sideration and study is only thinly
disguised. Tommy is Narcissus and
cannot love a woman because she is
nothimselt. Personal dislike of the
author of a story is uncommon and
provincial, but Mr. Barrie chose to
sit in front of a mirror, draw what
he saw and sell the sheets to men who
publish a magazine. Refraction or a
defect in the glass may have dis
torted the-image. Mr. Barrie is not
so mean a thing as he has drawn, hut
the sub self-consciousness of the story
offensively and constantly suggest
the autlw.
A very iogeoiousdevice ;is a play
for amateurs where every character
has something in his hand from
which he reads, so that the actors
may not be obliged to learn their
parts. The longest story, "The Green
Pigs" Is amusing and the pictures oy
Mr. A. B." Frost are in his best style.
It is unfortunate that I am unable
to bestow their proper titles on any
of the women writers mentioned in
the foregoing review. An ignorance
of the matrimonial history of every
one excepting Mrs Ruth McEnery
Stuart is my apology.
Barbarity to Convicts.
Reports of cruelty at the penitenti
ary are multipIying.A discharged con
vict is not the best witness, but one of
the various boards and committees at
the state house can verify or disprove
the charges. If the warden's practices
are cruel, unlawful, inhuman and de
grading every citizen of the state
whose suspicions are aroused is ac
countable to civilization it he quiet
his suspicions and does not insist that
the ill-born who are confined for the
protection of society, are humanely
treated. The blood-curdling stories
told of the present warden may be
only the vicious revenge of convicts
against their jallor.As the head of the
state Governor Poynter's duty Is plain
If the warden is a beast who enjoys
swearing at and mistreating prison
ers no political or party considera
tions should protect him from dis
missal and popular hatred. But if
the man is trying to do his duty as a
warden should, controlling the diffi
cult subjects in his charge with as
much gentleness as possible, the ref
utation of these charges is due him.
Unless they are refuted he will event
ually leave the institution a marked
man. A discharged convict's social
standing and fata is enviable com
pared to that of a warden who has
mistreated men because they were In
his power and the state executive
power was too weak or two cowardly
to investigate and punish him. AH
decent men and women draw the line
in politics somewhere and if this man
be guilty as charged, partizan poli
tics cannot protect him from popular
detestation.
A Photograph.
The photograph of Mr. Bryan on
the title page was taken two years
ago while he was sitting in front of
his tent during his brief career as an
officer in the American-Spanish war.
The conscientious voter will study
the features of these two men, both
of whom desire to be elected to the
most exalted office the world offers
''Choose ye this day a kng." No
monarch of olden time reigned over so
many people or over so rich and ex
tensive a country. To no hereditary
modern sovereign is granted the aw
ful power delegated to the president
of the United States. The bright
light that beats upon the throne of a
mm Lorn to sit therein is not so daz
zling as that which illuminates the
office desk of a president chosen by a
majority of 75,000,000 people.
J Jt
His Qualifications.
During the progress of the last
senatorial contest in the Nebraska
legislature, Mr. Thompson's qualifica
tions for the position of United States
senator for which he was a candidate
were frequently discussed. Republi
can senators have generally been men
of standing at home, men . why had
studied finance, economics and his
tory, men with opinions on subjects
that are discussed in the senate, men
of innate and cultivated respect for
republican Institutions and the bis-