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VOL. XV., NO. XXXVII
ESTABLISHED IN 1S60
PRICE FIVE CENTS
Q?t
LINCOLN. NEBR., SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1900.
THE COURIER,
Official Organ of the Nebraska State
Federation, of Women's Gufcc.
ENTERED IN THE FOSTOFTICK AT LINCOLN AS
SECOND CLASS MATTER.
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY
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SARAH B. HARRIS.
Editor
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s
g OBSERVATIONS.
4.'oo'''v
1
Adolescence.
School patrons, that is, the mothers
and fathers of the children and youth
In the grades and high-school, should
attend the teachers' institutes, held
from time to time in this city.
It is admitted that an experienced
teacher, who has for years put her
mind to studying children, their
growth, idiosyncracies, and the gen
eral phenomena of the processes of
education, is, and becomes more and
more, an authority upon the training
of children. Like the gardener or the
florist, who studies plants to find out
just how much water, sunlight and
what quality of soil will brim them
to the highest productive point in the
shortest time, the teachers study
children, that they may make them
all, the large, f ragrantest flower of the
century.
Occasionally a teacher ventures to
take Lord Bacon's advice. Such a
one studies children-with no dogmatic
preconceptions and his instruction
follows closely the result of observ
ation. The hundreds of youth whom
he instructs are easily classified into
types, and the human stock sent to
him is not ruu into a machine regard
less of temperament and original gifts
or deficiencies.
Dr. O'Shea was the feature of last
week's institute. He is the teacher
of psychology in the university of
Wisconsin, and is one of the happy
men born to a vocation, and rinding
it without wasting his time on some
other man's job. He has studied child
ren and youth at first band, and it is
a pity that every mother and father
in Lincoln who occasionally throw up
their hands Id despair over their sons
and daughters, did not hear his lec
tures on the phenomena of adoles
cence. The parents who heard Dr.
O'Shea appreciate the trials of the
high school teacher and the strength
of their own position towards their
children, more clearly.
Dr. O'Shea speaks rapidly with an
Hibernian unexpected turn to phrases,
wholly his own. He lectured on the
mental and physical phenomena of
adolescence with the quick sympathy
and ingenuity for meeting emergen
cies that characterize the Irishman at
his best. Dr. O'Shea has made a col
lection of contributions from the
young men and women in his class
concerning their reminiscences of ad
olescence. Nearly all record the
dreams, peculiar to youth, of falling
from high towers and precipices and
of terrified, sudden awakenings from
situations of great peril. Self confi
dence, a tendency to philosophize and
to dispute authority are character
istic of adolescence, and Dr. O'Shea
thought the universal tendency of
high-school students to dispute au
thority and question doctrine should
be met by increasing their responsi
bilities and by making the student
body apparently self-governing.
Liquor and tobacco are stimulants
and Dr. O'Shea thought-they inhibit
the mechanism of the brakes or the
quieting organisms. The storm and
stress of youth particularly needs the
medicine of nature. Alcohol and to
bacco are irritants and throw the sys
tem out of balance and harmony.
The emotional life of adolescence is
the time when the heart "leaps up,''
and only the boys grown poets re
member it distinctly.
Dr. O'Shea said the Sunday-school
was not fulfilling its mission, that it
was out of touch with practical life,
and uninteresting to adolescence. A
religious view of life is especially
helpful to youth, who are afloat on a
wide, angry -sea. Religion is a pilot
and should control, more than it does,
the time when the vision widens,
when poets and prophets are made or
destroyed and when the yielding to
temptation means a life of feebleness.
A Teacher's English.
One of the institute lecturers, from
out of town, was so unfamiliar with
the medium of expression used by
scholars in this country that she was
heard with some impatience by the
Lincoln teachers, most of whom have
corrected the colloquial inelegancies
she used so freely. She said to the
teachers who looked more respectful
than they felt, "we may arrive at a
scheme," that "Reading which was
more of an element some time ago,"
that "ihat thing is not based and is
not related to the child's experience,"
that "we treasure it (the word inde
pendent) up and roll it around as a
rich thing," that we must do the
thinking along the lines of the pres
ent thought," that "I don't believe,
and more and more I am growing to
believe, that the reciting of lessons is
the most important work," that "We
have gone away and forgotten it all to
a great extent," that'"Sumpthing'
causes me tc turn a thought towards,"
etc. etc Such muddy thinking and
slovenly speaking is only excusable in
a man or woman who is not listened
to and imitated by scores of children
throughout the school year. The
lectures were innocuous to the Lincoln
teachers, most of whom knew hotter.
But such examples and such evident
inability to recognize simple, strong,
lucid English are cultivating a patois
which we hear in the shops, on the
streets and read in letters and daily
papers. It is idle to expect a stimu
lating influence from a teacher who
talked as this teacher talked. She
has no taste for literature herself or
twenty years' association with the
great works of great men would have
articulated her thought and purified
her speech. It is invidious to select
an example, and if it were not that
this teacher's lecture embodied many
of the faults of which The Courier
has been complaining, fn publicschool
teachers, this one woman would not
be alluded to here. Her duties are
administrative and she is not in close
contact with the children in the city
which employs her. Her executive
ability is said to be remarkable, and
this criticism does not concern, there
fore, the service she is employed by
the school board to render.
By Insinuation.
Why should Mr. Bryan endeavor to
convince the laboring man that in
junctions are tyrannical expedients
applicable only to him? Mr. Bryan has
studied law, he has lived more than
forty years, and he knows better. Fre
quently injunctions are used by citi
zens of a town to prevent a railroad
from laying its tracks in a loca'ity
which the Immediate neighborhood
of steam engines would make unpleas
ant for residence purposes. Railroads
do not frequently attempt to lay tracks
on the hills and in the remote and
quiet places which rich people select
as sites for dwellings. The humbler
homes of laboring men are built
nearer the factories, depots and sta
tions where the freight is discharged
from the cars. Near the edges of con
gested traffic districts the working
men build their homes and have pre
vented many an expansion of the rail
road yard into their door yards by in
junctions. .Yet Mr. Bryan said in his
speech on Labor Day at Chicago:
'The meanest thief and ihe most
brutal murderer are entitled to trial
by jury; why should this right be de
nied the laboring man?" "The mean
est thief" and the unost brutal mur
derer," if the two men could be found,
would undoubtedly be discovered in
squalid surroundings. It if not likely
that they are on any city or county
assessor's books. They are, therefore,
most likely poor men themselves the
Amdition that Mr. Bryan so constant
ly offers his aid and advice to amelior
ate. Nothing has yet been found
more unprofitable than vice, and bur
glars, murderers and drunkards finally
dwell in the dark, dank, bad-smelling
places of the earth. It is there that
the police hunt them down, and Mr.
Bryan implies that the republican
party has taken these outcasts, who
are forever fleeing from daylight and
seeking holes to hide in, under its
wing, and granted them privileges
that are refused to the carpenter,
stone-mason, engineer, day laborer or
skilled workman.
The history of injunctions has yet to
be written, but I am sure that the
records do not indicate that the de
fendant is always a poor man and plain
tiff a rich man, trying to restrain the
poor man from coming into his own
or enjoying his equal rights.
The State Fair.
The pomological exhibit at the Ne
braska State Fair was remarkable. Ap
ples, peaches, plums and melons were
large, sound and sweet. The apples
and peaches were especially fine. Ne
braska has taken one national pre
mium for the best exhibit of apples
and an international second prize for
apples. It was a favorite saying of
the oldest inhabitants, that fruit
would not grow in Nebraska. It may
still be a favorite saying with calam
ity howlers, who, with their first
breath on earth, vowed that that
special spot where they Inhaled it was
the most plague-ridden, barrenest
spot on the globe. But to the normal
man who can laugh at a grass-hopper,
Nebraska's fruits and grains are the
best that are grown. The State Fair
is a yearly demonstration of the fruit
fulness of the soil and the high aver
age of sunshine and shower. This
year the fair has been a success, both
in attendance, exhibits and receipts,
and the managers are confident that
another year will put the association
squarely on its feet.
j J
Grass-Fed Cattle.
Stock-men in Kansas are trying a
new menu on cattle. The expense of
feeding cattle entirely on corn re
duces the margin of profit, and if the
amount of corn fed in a year can be
reduced without reducing the weight
of the animal or the quality of the
beef, the stock-man's problem is an
swered. The hill-grass of parts of
Kansas and of some regions of Ne
braska north of the Platte is very
strong. Underneath the soils, produc
ing these grasses, are chunks of lime,.,
the grass is wiry and nourishes the
cattle so that they bring nearly the
same price in the Chicago market as