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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 18, 1900)
THE COURIER. X. New York and from there to Paris to be within the radius of ihe energy which comes from a master. If they succeed they never come back, and the dead level of the commonplace is more apparent for their going. One man of genius in a community is often a dis concerting element, but by bis ex ample and efforts a community is stimulated. Even bis eccentricities serve to call attention to his creative energy and to disintegrate the habit of sordidness which fastens itself especially on a western community, because we are so far from the works and the atmosphere of genius. A Soldier's Aidrt. A man who has been a United States senator, who has been a re cipient of high honors from the bar and from his fellow citizens, a schol lar and an orator of no mean attain menls and pwer refers to his stren uous soldier life as the most glorious, most treasured five years of his life. General Charles F. Manderson, presi dent of the board of visitors to the military academy at West Point de livered the address to the class which fense, promotes the general welfare and secures the blessings of liberty." In the past we have wrestled with troubles more dangerous and settled them. We have taicen with safety territory more vast and, under then existing conditions, more remote, as similated populations most distinctive ly foreign, rid ourselves of the fearful incubus of domestic slavery and quelled an insurrection greater than .any that history records, restored a dismembered Union, and rejoined dis united states with a bond of cement so strong that the paradox came that disunion meant a more perfect union and secession meant accession. The republic, born in strife' Id the days of the revolution, had its second birth in conflict in the years of the -rebellion. Since the throwing off of the yoke of the mother country, wars with other countries have occupied twenty-s'.x eventful years, and twenty-four addi tional have seen continuing bloody conflicts with Indian tribes, making a half century of warfare. J Dr. Cyrus Hamlin. Dr. Cyrus Hamlin died on Wednes day, the eighth of August, in Port land, Maine. He was as original an American character as Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. He was pre eminently a man who could do things. He was not deterred by The girls' college, which ne founded at Bebek, was a revelation to Turkey as to what women might learn to do. The great Robert college, six miles from Stamboul, became almost at once an institution of international importance. It embodied'all the more enlightened ideas and principles of modern education. How CyruaJlamljin managed to get the sultan's permission to erect Robert college is a story of characteristic di plomacy. What finally brought the porle to terms wa3 the visit of Admi ral Farragut to Constantinople. The simple question which be was bidden by Dr. Hamlin to ask of the various Turkish chief officials who were din ing and feting him, "Where is that American college going to be built?" proved too much for the sultan to make light of. The sultan hastened to send word to Dr. HamUn that he might go ahead with bis college, which be lost no time in doing. The Turkish people will some day build monuments to him as the greatest of their benefactors. Mrs. Hinman, one of Dr. Hamlin's daughters, a former teacher in the University of Nebraska, is a resident was graduated there in June of the reflections that other men had failed,, of Lincoln, and bears a striking re present year. General Manderson has in common with many men who fought in the civil war a deep love of his country. To a soldier who has seen men shot, who has stepped o.er dead comrades to meet or in pursuit of an enemy, patriotism is not a word but an ex perience. To such a man patriotism fs a religion and the flag once planted by God's direction, upon any new ter ritory, must stay there. To the sold iers who survived the civil war, this country means something which the youngsters can never learn. The union is not a geographical and historical term, but a brotherhood of men which cannot .bejdissolsfid by a .resolution.- 1 know no man better qualified to inspire young soldiers than General Manderson. His scholarship and ele-. gance are wholly modern, and more over he has a soldier's vivid memories and a soldier's enthusiasms. The se- Terely disciplined graduates from West Point, eager to use the knowl edge and discipline of four years were, sped by this counsel from General Manderson: The mightiest problems with which this nation has grappled are now un dergoing discussion and seeking so lution. You, by wise, considerate action can do much to briog these questions to an ending that will iu nure to the glory of your country. Let not your minds be troubled with the contentions of partisans, in their straggle for political power. If you are'to go to the distant Filipines you will see, waving its glorious folds over you, in the tropical sunshine and still above you during the torrid tem pest, the Flagof theRepublic. Where ever it is carried by ycu it means pro tection to life and liberty, regulated by law, to all who acknowledge fealty to the great and beneficent nation whose folcUers and whose citizens you are. Let others concern themselves a to whether the constitution follows the flag, or whether the action of con gress in the exercise of the granted power to dispose of and make all need ful rules and regulations respecting the territory and the property of the United States," is needed to carry full rights of citizenship to territory ac quired either by conquest or purchase. Of one thiog the world can rest as sured, "What we have, we'll hold." Hold it! because that arduous task is before us aud the duty is upon us. Hold i!fcr tbcadvancomentof Amer ican civilization. 'Hold 'it! for the benefit of those who have been'op- Sressed. Hold it! for their prosperity, old it! for our posterity. When the firm, strong band of the government bas put down this'insur rection, with kiadly guidance and generous aid we will lead these people of the Asiatic seas to that self-government which "insures domestic tran qaility, provides for the common de- when ne had once decided that some thing in particular should be accomp lished. He had the Yankee knack, an ingenuity never baffled, by crass orientalism; he had his Huguenot an cestors' faith and determination, and an originality wholly American. For fifty years he was a missionary at Constantinople and his work and a part of the city lives of thousands. permission to build sent to Constanti- bad to become a life transformed and affected the In order to secure the college he was npple to build, he diplomat By his management of men, he disarmed suspicion and se cure co operation where a less kindly and less gifted man would have awak ened opposition. After his schools were'built and started, he had to pro- vide a livelihood for the students. He invented practical forms of indus try. He created a need and then, showed the students how they might supply it. The standard of oriental living is very low. Dr. Hamlin raised it in Constantinople by suggesting some of the-most ordinary of Ameri can expedientsforsoftening the rigors of life. He constructed machinery, and was at the same time an archi tect, an inventor, an engineer and a farmer. He was a sickly little boy with a very big head, but his activity and his taste for whittling useful things out with his jackknife; saved his life. He was too busy to diet Ab a little Doy, he and his little brother managed bis widowed mother's iarm. They needed an ox-yoke and whittled one out them selves. He was graduated at Bow doin college at the age of twenty-five. It is characteristic of his life that he did not decide to go to college un til after be determined to become a missionary. After he announced that he was ready, the American Board of Foreign Missions sent him to Constan tinople to organize schools there. He was called a man of seventeen trades, because if any machine was needed he knew how and where to get it, how to put it together when it came, or, in default, to make it himself. During the Crimean war, he saved the British army, by his bakery, which he constructed, and which enabled him to make the bsst bread in place of the stuff the soldiers had been try iog to eat. Lord Raglan was amazed at the kind of bread he made. Then semblapce to the published port-ails of Dr. Cyrus Hamlin. A Playwright's Fate. Charles H. Hoyt at forty years, is accused of insanity and placed in an asylum. He has made people laugh no one else has made so many people laugh so hard. Yet the cor respondents say he has ceased to laugh, himself or even to smile. He is the victim of his business. , His plays are originalHoy t never read anybody but Hoyt. His types are inherently humorous but his plays are coarse. The coarseness is extraneous. It is not necessary to 'the plot or its development. His use of woman was as a lure and her cos tumes in Hoyt's plays are an offense. If the river had not had such muddy banks and bed, the water would have been pure. For the hu mour in and of itself is real and sparkles genuinely. The coarseness is a matter of stage setting, of cos tuming, or his own selection of ac tresses to play his roles without re gard to their ability to act. It is this defect which will make the life of his plays as short as bis own sad life. Uncontemporary coarseness Is not endurable. The feeling against it prevents the staging of many of Sbakspere's plays, and by the same token, Hoyt's plajs wi'l not survive the decade. His mistake, for which posterity will exact the punishment of oblivion, was in underestimating humanity. He never made a hero or a heroine and the villain of Hoyt's is as good as the star. Villain and hero are played upon by the basest passions and respond to them. The audience is included in the insult for the author assumes that nothing but shameless, handsome women are at tractive. He wronged his own talent, which had more integrity than he ever recognized. His plays abound in dramatic contrasts and unforeseen denouments and incidents. Where the dialogue is wholesome it is vivid and worthy a longer life than the mantle of obscenity he casts over it will permit. Usts. If the time should come when Amer icans cease to develop American indus tries, cease to invent, create, and dis- ue uevibeu macninery ior wastiing the cover, for a long period, it is certain clothing, full of. vermin, of the sol- that other people will crowd In and diers in the horrible hospitals of the continue the work we have allowed to Crimea. - languish. We have no prescript to this country. We hold It by to-day's might, and not by George Washing ton's victories. Neither the Chinese nor the Boers are allowed to be old fashioned. Missionaries have been tried and failed, and the Chinese have had their chance to be modernized peacefully. The world is, for all prac tical purposes, the United States, Great BritainRussia. Germany and France. Spain, Italy, Turkey, Holland and the South American republics contribute no appreciable energy to the machin ery of progress. Therefore, if the former group agrees to civilize China, the long buried, rusty wheels of prog ress will begin to revolve and before many more centuries the 400,000.000 Chinese will b3 doing thelr.share of pushing and pulling on the car of progress. To Gold Democrats. Mr. Bryan himself is willing to be known, first and foremost, as an advo cate of free silver. He demonstrated to the committee on the democratic platform that he would withdraw from his candidacy rather than con sent to the excision of the free silver clause from the creed. In his advo cacy of-free silver he has been consist ent and given no indication of any in tention to forsake the arguments of 'X. The gold democrats who have de termined to vote for Mr. Bryan, rely ing upon a republican senate Ito pre vent what they call fatal monetary legislation and national dishonor are invited to consider these figures selected from a recent statement in Harper's Weekly. "The terms of one-third of the sen ators expire next March. Those of an other one-third will end with 'March, 1903. The states which Mr. Bryan must carry to be e'ected president, would at the same time, pretty cer tainly elect legislatures in sympathy with his policies and suctTIegisIatures could very soon change the complex ion of the senate. In the group of states reckoned on by the Bryan ite party, there are twelve senators to be elected in place of twelve outgoing sound-money men. while the present republican repre sentation in the senate numbers only fifty-one, or five more than a bare ma jority of a full senate. It is certain that Bryan cannot carry all of these states. It Is doubtful that he will carry any of tnem, except possibly the two or three that gave meager Mc Kinley majorities in the last election. But in order to be elected president, he must carry enough of them to give him forty-eight more electoral votes than he secured last time, and if that should happen it would pretty certain ly carry with it .the choice of enough free silver senators to make Mr. Bryan master of the upper as well as the lower house. It would enable him at once to carry through congress and write into the statute book, 'An act providing for the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver'at the pres sent legal ratio of 16 to 1.'" Therefore, the free silver issue is as directly involved in this election ls in the campaign of 1896. Tammany HalL With the blackest, most disgraceful history of any well known organiza tion, Tammany Hall still continues to be the strongest influence in New York politics and-to exercise no inconsider able influence in national politics. Mr. David Hill, and all other re spectable but more obscure dem ocrats disapprove of Tammany Hall. Everybody knows that Mr. Croker bas grown rich and en riched bis sons by manipulating city patronage. Yet with the respectable. X A A v i A I -rn ii it