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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 25, 1900)
THE COURIER V V r 3 . - 4? V new, a stronger and an all Chinese government will be established on the ruins of the Manchu dynasty. Any rough western hands will, if applied to the growth of Oriental institutions, injure the cells. But Chinese soil may be enriched and irrigated and the most ancient people in the world In troduced to modern life bv natural means. I hope that neither Auerica nor any other nation will remain in China as a mandatory power or court of appeal from purely Chinese author ity. The Chinese have a literature, a body of law, a religion. They are a civilized people, but something 'hap pened hundreds of years ago to arrest their development. This blow deliv ered by the western world may awaken what went to sleep so long ago. Just as soon as they get Into the procession the movement of the crowd will keep the Chinese moving. Every American who is proud of his race, who is conscious, as we all are, that we are the flower of creation, is racially concerned that the Chi nese should be allowed to ripen their Oriental fruitage, only stimulated by necessary gardening. Forbearance. In response to an address of wel come delievered at his home on the 16th instant, after his return from In dianapolis, Mr. Bryan said, among other things: ''I have felt that it was a great deal cheaper for me to go and see the people than to compel them to come and see me." The only con sideration which restrains him' from exercising imperial power, the pos session of which is implied by this re mark, is a pecuniary one. which he stated in these words: "I have felt that it was a great deal cheaper for me to go and see the people." Mr. Bryan presented to the Kansas City convention his platform; his com mand was, "take it," and they took it. Suppose that, instead of announcing his purpose to go and see the people, he had summoned all his resolution, issued his imperial edict, "Let all the people come and see me," and enforce it as he unquestionably could, what an example would have been presented of government with the consent of the governed. But he is going to see the people and tell them of the dan gers which threaten from imperialism and absolute power in the bands of one man. A Sketch of Mrs. Bryan. In July 1890,1 wrote a sketch of Mrs. Bryan. It is herewith reprinted, be cause of the interest which every one feels in the wife of a presidential candidate: Society in Washington, and for that matter, all over the world is much more interested in the president's wife than it is in the president him self. Emerson says that life is only a little conversation, and I say that you cannot have conversation with out society, unless one has a constitu tion like Macaulay's and it is not re ported that he ta'ked to himself. His idea of a pleasant party was where one voice and that one his, talked all the time to many ears. From gay Dolly Madison to the gracious Mrs. Cleveland, the people have intruded upon the privacy of the president's family. The people want to know how the president's wife looks, what she wears, how she brings up her children and what they say and do. By unremitting effort, President and Mrs. Cleveland have kept their children in complete se clusion so far as the newspapers are concerned. In consequence, gossip, unable to understand such conduct, says that the children must be-wit less. In point of fact they are bright and pretty, and Mrs. Cleveland be lieves that the idle tales about the children will not hurt them as much as publicity would. The president is not a sovereign, but his wife occupies the only throne in America. Mr. Cleveland's three hundred pounds of resentment at the American people for taking so much interest in hiswife is so much waste choler. Mrs. Cleveland has a gra cious, womanly manner, a trick of emembering people and of listening to any one who is talking to her with perfect attention and the manner of being especially delighted with him, that suggests stories of Recarnier's fascination. It is thoughtfulness for others that has made Mrs. Cleve land's administration so successful. She applies the golden rule in society and in forgetting herself she will be remembered longer than any one of her predecessors. If the Chicago con vention had been allowed to indorse Mrs. Cleveland it would have done it by acclamation. Mrs. Bryan's life has been one of study. Sne is an only child and her mother was almost a life long invalid. "She was such a thin little girl," her father said, "I hated to punish her when I thought I ought to." The doctor said she must be kept out of doors. Luckily she did not like in door life and all day long she tagged her father, and her little dog Frisk tagged her. They dug in the garden and her father made fanny rhymes that she whispered herself to sleep on at night. Long before she could read she knew the names of the bugs and worms that her little hoe and his big one turned up in the garden. The man showed the little girl with what exact perfection all the insects were made, and how they clung to the earth. By the time she was ready for books .he was kin to everything books were full of. She idealized the earth and its generating and regener ating character She and her father sat on the porch at night and he told Greek and Norse stories of the stars. He told her how far away they were from them and from each other though they looked so neighborly. He told her what a speck the world would look if they could look at it from Venus. Then he tcok her in his arms and crooned his own funny, man's mother-goose. The idea of the immensity of the universe and the relation of the world to the solar sys tem seldom enters a child's mind. The world is vastness, mystery, but the door-yard is a large part of it. Over there behind the goose berry bush is a wild spot, and the orchard beyond it is undiscovered still. The sense of proportion and perspective that Mary Baird acquired from her father, has bad a great influence up on her. Her father says she hever told him a lie. Her words ba.'e a Quaker literalness and simplicity of long habit. Early star-gazing or her father's influence trained her to think of things abstractly, nakedly, with out the impediments of custom and fashion. She was born in Perry, Illinois. When she tirst went to school she did not like it. The books and the con finement were unaccustomed and as hateful as new. She was naturally lazy and she did not want her inti macy with the beetles and birds in terrupted. Her father told her that if she did not go to school she would be an ignoramous and all the other children would get ahead of her. So she consented to acquire an education because she did not want other chil dren to get ahead of her. It was her good fortune when she was in the high school of Dixon to be taught by a man who was passionately fond of mathematics. He was a good teacher and inspired Mary Baird with a sense of the beauty and use of numbers. When the time came that she must go away to school she and her father traveled over most of the middle west to And the best one. They inspected many and finally decided upon Monti cello. Her first winter at this school was interrupted by repeated ilkesses of her mother. The next winter, though she hated to leave this ex cellent school, she wanted to be near er her mcther, so she went to a girls' school in Jacksonville. Illinois. It was in this town that a young man by the name of William Jen nings Bryan was attending college. At the beginning of the school year the teacners and pupils of the Fein. Sem. held a reception in the parlors of the school. On this occasion Mary Baird was standing in one of two large rooms when a group of young men entered the other one. She look ed up and noticed one of them in par ticular and asked who he was. The friend said, "Oh, that is young Bryan, you ought to meet him." At the same time he looked out int the parlor and noticed a young woman standing in the centre of a group and he asked who she was. And there you arc. By spring they were engaged. When they were graduated they were the valedictorians in their respective classes. The winter following gradu ation, that most trying and disap pointing period of a girl's lifs Mary Baird and her mother and father went to Florida and traveled about from St. Augustine and Jacksonville to Tallahassee. The next winter Mary decided she must know how to keep house and cook. So when they got home she did the house-work. Mr. Bryan decided to build a house and the betrothed spent many hours discussing the plans. When the workmen began on it Mr. Bryan's imagination had it finished and fur nished many times before even a door was hung. He wrote to his sweet heart one day that "The cellar was dug and the back fence up and it looked quite homelike." Like Tom my Twaddles and his centre table, it was the sign and sjinbol of house keeping and a family, and when he looked into that cellar he and bis wife were living in a house whose walls were not yet reared, the furni ture was beginning to look worn and tiie table was set for more than two. Young Bryan made it a rule in his courtship never to give anything to his lady that he had not purchased with money of his own earning. The first gift was a volume of Bryant's poems, bought with the prize money won at an oratorical contest. The en gagement ring was the guerdon of another oration. After they were married they de cided they wanted to study. They were asked to join card clubs, but de clined because they bad not time. After Ruth was born, Mrs. Bryan decided to study law, not because she had the-slightest idea of practicing it, but because she wanted to under stand her husband when he talked aoout his cases and also because, when they were married, they were to gether and she did not want to fall behind. It was the same impulse that induced her to study in the be ginning of her studious career. She began studying when the baby was eight months old. She read in the evening and when the baby took her daytime nap. They moved to Lincoln in 1837 and Mrs. Bryan was admitted to the bar soon after. Mrs. Sawyer, Mrs. Bryan and a few other ladies organized the Lincoln Sorosis which has had such a suc cessful career. Mr. Bryan and Mr. Sawyer organized about the eanic time "The Round Table." The lat ter was supposed to Include only the husbands of Sorosis women. But this was a poor rule, for it would not work both ways. Frequently the man of the house is found to be fond of d's cussion and argument and light on subjects like free silver and kindred topics; on the other hand some Soro sis husbands prefer cards and refresh ments. It was found impossible to keep the rule and continue the Round Table, so the rule was abolished, The tirst meeting of Sorosis was held at Mrs. Sawyer's house. Mrs. Bryan led wit!: a discussion on Uenry George's single tax thecry. When Mr. Brjan went to congress, his wife and family went with him. They were strangers and went with delight about the beautiful old city that was as new to them as if it had been built the day before their ar rival. The youthful Joy in life that Mr. and Mrs. Bryan possess is enviable and all whom they admit to their friendship are stimulated to new youthfulness by their enthusiasm. The four years that they were in Washington they spent in exploring, in study, in expeditions to the en virons, they went to the theatre, they heard the different preachers, Jewish, Jesuit, Buddhist. Cul'ud. It is doubt ful if they will ever enjoy Washing ton so much again. Anti -Expansionist. Difmal reports come from the des cecddnts of the mutineers of the Bounty, on Pitcairn island. There are one hundred and forty-two of them and they are woefully weakened by the in termarriages that have been going on since 1789, despite the absence of liquor and the existence of a quite fervid relig ious feeling among the people. The last report says that the young men evince a desire to Wva the island and its idyllic, but boresjisedo-nothingnees. The case of the Pitcairn Islanders is a presentation in little of the evil effects of a community trying to live by itself and do things without the aid or con sent of other communities. The fate of the survivors of the mutineers is the fate of all communal experiments. Their faculties have been numbed for want of use. The people have stagnated by keeping to themselves. They deliberate ly set themselves to the task of refus ing expansion and keeping out of touch with the world of modern civilization. And now they have become, in a little more than one hundred years, mental and moral weaklings. Expansion is growth, and those who reject it reject progress. Conflict is a developer of strength, and those who avoid it seek defeneration. The life of ''glad idlesse" is a delusion and a snare, and the more so as the "idelesae" ideal comes nearer a realization. What applies to a commu nity on a little island will apply, on a larger scale, to a great nation that re jects expansion and avoids conflict. The case of the Pitcairn islanders is recom mended to the attention of anti-expansionists in the United States. The Mirror. Knicker You say your son is a con tractor. What is his special line? Bocker Debts. He So yon won't marry me? She No; let us remain friends. Town Topics.