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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 11, 1900)
TH5 GOURJER T V h r Sm A t well educated, their birtbdays bril liantly celebrated, and the family's in come devoted to their culture and rec reation. The only circumstances in which a Chinese woman can revenge herself upon fate and custom are en joyed at the expense of another wo manher daughter-in law. A bride groom's invariable custom is to take his bride home, where she is the fag of her mother-in law, who beats her and destroys her self-respect, if she have any so long from birth, by calling her names, and by emptying Chinese Bil lingsgate upon her day after day. It was discovered long ago that Chinamen liked little feet, so they doubled the girl babies' toes under and bound them tightly so they would not grow. The torture is exquisite and the little girls are beaten when they cry. They learn to hang their little bundles of feet over the edge of the bed, so that circulation may be dead ened and their torture decreased. What mercy may missionaries or any foreigners expect from heathen who have so little pity for their own baby daughters who insist upon this terrible torture, from century to cen tury, because they prefer small .feet? Nothing but shot and shell can bring these people into the kingdom of civi lization. Missionaries work at a dis advantage against such before-Christ barbarism as this. Immense sums are expended to Christianize one Chinaman. The process is too slow, too expensive, and the result is un satisfactory. The Chinese believe that their civilization, a civilization in which one female in three attempts suicide, is the highest and best in the world. Europeans and Americans are of the route his column must travel, the part it shall play in the opera tions and the point where he must effect a junction with the other forces. The plan may work, but Waterloo was only a more conspicuous demonstra tion of the uncertainties of a divided command. Waterloo, on both sides, was a series of accidents, unforeseen and unprepared for. Military men in Washington are opposed to the plan, though Secretary Root and President McKinley are said to approve it. A Rustic Cavalier. Musty stories of how the boy with a bent pin and the hickory pole caught more fish than the man in the golf suit carrying a jointed pole and a book of flies.orof how the pale, shrink ing young man, bullied by six feet of red-eyed brawn, turns out to be the champion welter-weight of Hoboken and smashes the bully all to pieces, are common enough in the newspa pers. They appeal to a very large class of people (who flatter themselves they are rough but ready, uncut and unpolished, but really a great find for somebody. Magazines are a cut above newspapers, as a rule, and magazine publishers are not in the habit of pand ering to the universal egotism by using the worn out surprise effects, just re ferred to. In "Cavalleria Rusticana," on earth, by a tender, vibrating at mosphere. There are still faithful ones who will not see the purple shad ows, because the chromo makers have not put them in their parlor orna ments, but the school has corrected the eyesight of a great many. In literature It is evident that the chromo workers who paint life, not as it is, but as those who have seen other p'ctures of life want to see it, are still rewarded with an audience. Every new country has to pass through a period of being traduced by those who are willing to describe it and its inhabitants as the geograph ically distant fancy it is. The most accomplished and most alert people in the world live in Nebraska. The nov elists picture us as an illiterate, pro fane, half-starved, but withal kindly people whose crops are entirely burnt up by the sun and wind without relief of rain every year. They send the heroic, gaunt young homesteader bark to his parents in Illinois or Iowa, after he has buried his wife, innocent, yellowed haired little girl, on the prairies without a mound or a head stone to mark the spot fnc 'tear the coyotes will dig unA'ue body coyotes, according to jHfrs. Peattie and Miss French (.Octave Thanet) and others being, 'jtist as fierce, blood-thirsty and onposed to the peaceful settlement of a Nebraska story, by George Beards-Tebraska ab Providence. History, as ley, printed in the August McClur-e's, Bobby Grant, populist candidate for the legislature, and swearing horribly, with the evidences of refinement ab sent both from his drss and his face, is dowered by ths author with a delicacy of thought, a generosity of action and a Quixotic chivalry that opposed to Action, records that Ne braska has fewer crop failures and raises a larger amount of produce to the acre, than any other state in the Union. The rate at which settlers who have come into the state in a movers' wagon with their whole prop- erty either pulling the "schooner" or barbarians, and missionaries from Eu- recalls the d"&vs when knitrhthond was following it, have grown rich is very rope or America are regarded with ;n tlnwcr it, !; nf mnnip nf, i. mn. rapid. It is true that an occasional .. . ..... .,,.. js . f ' . ... rue couiempb we ieei lor uie muuiuuie man of the Indians. Gentleness and demonstration are played out in China. We must show them that we can shoot straighter than "they can, and are willing to tune quick and complete vengeance for any slain American citizens. The beginning L sible thati a man may at the same time man or tDe son tlml Poets ana matfa- be a gentleman, who scorns appear- z,ne story-teiiers love to write aoout, a man leaning on a uoe or a piow or anything tall enough to lean on in his vicinity, writes to his folks in Illinois or Indiana to come get him or send him his fare home. Women-writers of the bad boy's reformation and cdujP cation in the old country district school was that moment when tflie young pedagogue knocked him dawn for insubordination. The Chihese will only begin to appreciate that we anccs, who swears like a pirate and whose table manners remind one of salvages squatted around a black pot f'All flf hflilPf? flfiir Rllf. n (rnntlomnn 1 is more frequently dressed with due V regi regard to the customs and conve- nancc of the day, lie has a fine feeling for the niceties of language and is not adjectively limited to Damn. The objectionable feature of this story is that it hints that all the real gentle men and true cavaliers in Nehraskn. can teach them a new religion.yiiter- are uncultivated, profane men, men atureand a new agriculture land a wltll uearts of goldj with oreeches new mechanical development J when stuffed into their boots and with we have knocked them down goi d and WUiskers streaked with egg and tobac- nara ana tney are sua aazeu ana nn ititae. anh ar Mip Xphrasirn .n. . weak from the blow landed by civiliz ation. After that they'll be teachable enough, and learn to do business, build railroads and modern ships and boats. By no other- or more gentle process can tne women of China! take their places in the world as ("human beings. Not that America fully ac- knowledges a woman's born &hare of things yet, but because of the efforts of a few brave women whoshrunk from but were not deterred by rijdicule, we have the advantage of our,' cousins of China, though we still comje into the world unwelcome and remain in it to the end handicapped by prejudice. V Divided" (Command. Each detachment of the -army ad vancing on Pekin is accompanied by a commander-in-chief. The words are a contradiction of terms and the ac- tlemen heretofore presented by the magazine writers, who have not de served to live in Nebraska they have made such slanderous copy out of it. "Cavalleria Rusticana" is of no partic ular distinction, literary or otherwise. It is mentioned here only because it is another instance of the inability of writers to tell the truth about Ne braska. Eastern people who publish magazines, aud who read tliem, have preconceived and unverified ideas about, this state and these stories are written to gratify their prophetic souls and in spite of truth. If a sketch were written in plein air of Nebraska men and women, their homes, and culturc as they are, the publisher might decide that it lacked local col or, even as the impressionists' outdoor pictures of outdoors were at first re jected by the unprofessional because they said they were unnatural. An tual operations of an army command- opinion formed not by an examin- ed by as many men as there are divis ioAs must be disastrous. The Ameri- STVan troops are on the right of the ad vaipce, their flanks will be in commu nication with the German and British forces. Every evening the generals hold a consultation, when the plan of : operations for the following dBy is agreed upon. Each officer is informed at ion of nature but long habit of liv ing with chromos and the rigid ob jects formerly painted by artists from which all light-vibration was ex cluded. If the painters worked then as they do now they must have worked in that thin ether above the atmosphere where every object is not softly embraced and glorified as it is like this sort of a man and this situ ation. They like to flutter about a prostrate figure and say, " , the poor thing!" Their sympathies are near the surface and ordinary life does not make demand enough upon their en dowment. So cowardly murderers re ceive bouquets and Nebaska gets a black eye, that a fertile soil and sun and rain enough to mature the great est crop on earth does not deserve. Wherever the shiftless man with a tendency to lean on hoes or trees, locates, he is sure to fail. The fasci nations of a new country have drawn many idle adventurers into it. They have settled in Nebraska, leaned on things for a season or two, then gone back where their townspeople and relatives had begun to straighten themselves of their burden. Their doleful tale of an unresponsive, sun baked soil is their only excuse for a reappearance. The tattle reaches the lady novelist's ears, she listens, as hhe has learned to listen for copy. Per haps his laziness has plaintive, dreamy eyes and his tale about the yellow haired baby, the coyotes and all the rest turns into copy and he into a martyr as he talks. Nevertheless the drawing, the coloring and the compo sition are all wrong. Vaudeville's Revolt. Theatrical managers who have joined the trust which lately reduced the salaries cf stars are informed by the White Rats of America that this association of vaudeville performers (rats is stars spelled backward), pro fesses no enmity towards the manage ment of the continuous performance houses. Their ostensible and perhaps their real purpose is to eliminate coarseness from vaudeville perform ance, so that their own dignity and that of their profession may be raised and not continually lowered, as at present. Their constitution asserts that they are not organized to tight capital or the trust, but It is at the same time an agreement to make sac rifices and be loyal to the association, whatever may be the result of Its peri odical deliberations. Actresses and all women performers seem to be ex cluded, as they are from the Elks. If purification and ascension on the stepping stones of their dead selves to better things is the real object of the organization, woman's natural aspirations towards the good, the true, and the beautiful, might be useful. On the other hand, if the real object is a strike or a combination to raise wages, the men cannot conduct a suc cessful strike without the aid of the women, for the vaudeville is two thirds female. The prospectus, or constitution, is published in the Dramatic Micro -and signed by one hupi-TA"-Ttnd fifty well known, endues. It is a very laudable object; only a vaudeville audience will not stand too much refining. Men and women go to a continuous performance because it is cheap and because it amuses them. They like horse-play between the Irishman and the Dutchman, who smash each other over the face or nail each other to the floor with a real nail and a real ham mer. Audiences laugh to exhaustion when a man runs off the stage with a hatchet stuck into what appears to be his'shouldcr blades. It is doubt ful if at first a more refined comedy will draw the crowds. Eventually, the public taste being elevated by the actors, the audiences will respond to a finer satire, but the material, as 'it is, will take a long time to refine. Newspaper English. Lincoln includes a state university, and in the suburbs of Lincoln there are two colleges. The influence of educational institutions is said to be very penetrating and stimulating. So? But there Is a limit, as every ocean, no matter how large, has shores. An evening paper's editorial columns recently contained this pic turesque if puzzling metaphor: "If Mr Campbell has any friends left they should take him to one side and tell him kindly, bnfc firmly, that ir he continues his absurd attempt to get his name before the public by keeping up his open letter-writing to Bryan, they will be forced to take the only steps remaining open." Steps that re main open, as the writer himself might say, are exotic here. We have not yet learned to recognize an open step when we see it or hear it or smell it. A Revolver Stampede. An amusing incident in connection with the last senatorial contest has just come to light. It was revealed to me not long since by a republican member of the last legislature, who said, "It is useless for Mr. Thompson to deny that he entered into a combi nation with the populists to elect him senator oa the condition that he would forswear allegiance to the re publican party. Although a republi can member, I was in the combina tion myself and had agreed to vote for Mr. Thompson for senator, and against Mr. Hayward, if the populist vote could be secured. All arrange mentswere made; some of us were waiting in an ante-room at thecapi tol lor the time when we should go in and cast our vote for Mr. Thompson. Captain Fisher of Chadron was among the number. The captain re-
