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VOL. XV., NO. XXXIII
ESTABLlbhtzD IN 1886
PRICE FIVE CENTS
1 1
LINCOLN. NEBR., SATURDAY. AUGUST 18, 1D00.
THE COURIER,
Official Organ of the Nebraska State
Federation of Women's dub.
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SECOND CLASS MATTES.
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V
9 OBSERVATIONS.
a
i
Funds Furnished by
National Committee.
It will be remembered tbat Mr.
Thompson's candidacy for the Senate
last year was not disclosed until after
the election of the members of the
last legislature. Then Mr. Thompson
came out and announced to bis
friends that he had carried the legis
lature by the use of his money and
influence and that he was therefore
entitled to the senatorship. It is gen
erally understood that he salted a
number of legislative districts al
though the exact amount of money
he disbursed is not known.
When Mr. Thompson was asked
what he had done to entitle him to
become a memher of that body of only
ninety men, selected from 75,000,000
people, he said: l,I claim the sena
torship because I put my money into
the fight and elected the legislature."
This assertion of Mr. Thompson's was
made many times throughout the
senatorial campaign both by Mr
Thompson and by his friends, and if
the republican legislative ticket is
elected, it will Le claimed again that
Mr. Tbomosun put his money into the
campaign, and won perforce of it. In
view of the assertions made two years
ago, which, if true, were not to Mr.
Thompson's credit, it has just de
veloped that Mr. Thompson did not
use his own money. My information
is authentic, that Mr. Meiklejohn, Mr.
Thompson's friend in Washington,
obtained $15,000 from the national
committee to be used in winning the
senatorship for the republicans. This
money was secretlj given to Mr.
Tiiompson by the national committee
and was secretly used. The fact, that
Mr. Thompson did not' furnish this
money has only Just been discovered.
Mr. Schneider, who-was chairman of.
the Republican State Central Com
mittee in 1898 and who conducted' the
state campaign for the republicans,
had no knowledge that this money
had been placed with Mr. Thompson
by Mr. Meiklejoha. Thus Mr. Thomp
son's claim is futile that his barrel
was the controlling factor in the last
senatorial campaign.
Elizabeth and her German Garden.
There are books whose charm lies
altogether in the action or in the plot
like "The Prisoner of Zenda," and in
some oftLe-modern stories of knight-
hood, dungeons, and red robes. There
are others whose potency is the in
effable charm ot the personality of
the writer. The author of "Eliza
beth and her German Garden, is
unknown but she is disseminated
throughout the book and though
readers do not know her name, they
know her, which is much more satis
factory and intimate. For this very
reason the author has doubtless con
cealed her name: She has told so
much .about herself in the, book tbat
she shrinks from identifying these
confidences with a specific person. It
is as though a stranger talked in the
dark and fascinated everybody within
reach of her melting voice and dis
appeared before the light was brought.
And Elizabeth's lovers are not like
Cinderella's prince, bound to find her
at any cost. She has let us know how
dearly siie prizes the lonesomeness of
her retreat and how she dislikes even
the intrusion of old friends. She may
stay, then, behind her rose bushes for
all of me. Only I hope she will write
another book right awajr. Tired of
the sound of talking, of the creakicg
of chairs, of the everlasting insect
buzz of human voices, Elizabeth is
quieting and soothes to patience.
The spectacle of an unselfish person
allowing himself (though it is usually
herself) to be made uncomfortable or
to be constantly thwarted by others,
is irritating. Elizabeth has three
babies whom she calls by the months
of their birth, the June baby, the
April baby and the May baby. She
lives in a big house in the country,
and of all p'aces in the world where
woman is allowed no variation at all,
the country is Germany. All the
same, Elizabeth lives in her garden,
and the babies tumble about on the
grass at her feet and are just as
healthy as though their mother were
forever pickling, preserving, dusting
and marking linen. With an hour or
two's oversight in the morning the
servants are allowed to do the work
of the house, while the mistress in
vites her soul in the garden. Her
neighbors, who have recurrent brew-
ing. baking, preserving, and washing
seasons are scandalized when these
seasons come and go and Elizabeth is
not driven out of her garden by them.
Like Professor Agassiz she has not
time for these things and her bus
band has to get accustomed to a table
that is not a triumph of art over
nature three times a day. Not that
he ever submits gracefully, but he
cannot cook as his mother used to,
himself and Elizabeth will not. She
will not allow, even her offspring to
deprive her of her joy in growing
things, in the hirschwald, in the sea.
She is selfish about her enjoyment of
God in'the bush. That is perhaps the
cause of the effect of restfulness. No
one imposes on any one, least of all,
upon the heroine, in this book. Eliza
beth can lay evil spirits, as children
can, only by enjoying themselves re
gardless. Her right to a separate ex
istence she does not 'claim, but she'
takes it. I wish every woman who is
thwarted, or who worries about the
nonessentials of life would read this
book, and let it influence her to give
herself more elbow room. Yet the
charm of Elizabeth and her German
Garden is still unexpressed. It is
reizend! entzueckend! wundervolliand
everything else in exclamatory Teu
tonic, but this review is as inade
quate and meaningless as the phrase,
"a dewy rose"' in the ears of a man
whonever-in his life got out of Ded
till high noon.
Predestination.
A baby in a New Jersey prison is puz
zling philanthropists and authori
ties. Six months before he was born his
mother was arrested for stealing and
sentenced to imprisonment. Three
months later the mother was given a
short reprieve and the baby was born
in a mission house. When he was six
weeks old he and his mother went
back to prison where he has since
lived his twenty months of life. He
is bright, beautiful and happy, and
prison officials and prisoners love and
serve him. The sound of his lovely
laughter is the miracle of the cell
rooms. But his mother is a thief, so
were his grandfather and his great
grandfather. His fingers are a thief's
fingers and his mother examines them
with the same gratification that a
pianist notes the loDg, muscular,
musical fingers of his baby. Students
of ethics who do not believe in born
thieves or born murderers or born
degenerates of any sort might seques
trate this little child, might bring
him up in an invironment of refine
ment, love, probity and truth. The
mother freely admits that her great
est pride will be in teaching him to
teal. In such a case the state's duty
is to protect the child and deprive
him of a mother who will surely
bring him up to break the laws of the
state.
It is very difficult to find a family
who will take a baby with degenerate
fingers. Institutional rearing is not
satisfactory. The child is not in an
atmosphere of love and at. the most
sensitive age, the institutional at
mosphere chills the warm little
things that were meant for a nest
and not for an Incubator. There are
plenty of men and women who are
ready to write books about child de-4
velopnient and their culture, the'
effects of environment etcetera, but
in this whole country there is pro
bably not more than one or two peo
ple who are willing to adopt, promise
to love and cherish, and train care
fully this son, grandson, and great
grandson of a thief. To a woman it
would mean the relinquishment of
society, all but one club, and a single
hearted devotion to one purpose the
turning of a life-stream from a vic
ious, from a muddled, foul, crooked
channel, into a straight, clean chan
nel. It has been done, but it is a
great engineering feat and the time,
the sacrifice of other designs, the
ultimate prospect of failure and dis
grace will prevent this little prison
baby from enjoying a chance to es
cape from the fate that his great
grandfather wove the warp of, his
grandfather the woof and in which
his mother has swaddled him. Never
theless if through some lover of his
kind, this baby's inheritance should
be deflected, if he might be loved,
taught and reared like other chil
dren, if instead of transmitting &
curse to his children he should leave
them heirs to an honest name and
life, the consequences would be worth
the chances of failure and the surety
of effort and struyijie.
J
Dwarf Tree.
Sometimes it takes a hundred years
and sometimes five hundred to com
plete the design of a dwarf tree. A
gardener plants the seed of a birch, a
larch, a pine or a maple, and the de
sign may be executed, if it involovcruot
exposure at the rate of only a quarter
of an inch a year. Thus a dwarf tree of
the kind raised in Japan and now so
fashionable in this country, may re
quire as long In the growing as the
Milan Cathedral was in building.
Directions are left to the heir from
one generation to another until the
design is completed as perfectly as
though performed in a life time by
one man.
Victor Hugo's story of "The Man
who Laughs." is based on the opera
tions of a Chinee guild who knew
the secrets of binding and stopping
the growth of babies. They could
make any sort of a monster that was
ordered.
These tortured little trees are gro
tesquely interesting but they suggest
torture and the ravolt of nature.
Isolation of the Vest.
Musical societies and societies for
the cultivation and appreciation of
pictures exist In the West The most
talented singers and artists mast go to
