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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 6, 1900)
- i y W rv , v h- ii v l VOL. XV., NO. XL ESTABLISHED IN 1SS0 PRICE FIVE CENTS LINCOLN. NEBR.. SATURDAY. OCTOdl R C. 1900. S THE COURIER, Official Organ of the Nebraska. State Federation of Women's dub. EXTKBEDIN THE rOSTOmCK AT LINCOLN AS SECOND CLAI8 MATTES. PUBLISHED EVEBY SATURDAY BT TIE COWER MII1IIG HD rUBUSlIK GO Office 1132 N street, Up Stairs. Telephone 384. SARAH B. HABBIS. Editor r- Subecription Kates In Advance. Per annum 91 00 Six months 75 Three months 50 One month 20 Single copies 05 The Cockier will not be responsible for vol untary communications unless accompanied by return postage. Communications, to receive attention, must be signed by tae (nil name of the writer, not merely as a guarantee of good faith, bnt for publication if advisable. 1 s g OBSERVATIONS 4.'co Plain Women. A joung woman committed suicide in New York' the other day, not be cause she was hungry or deserted or friendless, but because, as she said in ,her explanatory note of farewell, she T was so homely no one would marry her. She was one of those young wo men whom our system of economics condemns to a life of inaction. Her father was a small merchant, whose family was well fed, comfortably housed and adequately clothed. The daughter was one of several children. Her parents considered that her edu cation was complete. Her mother, with the help of a competent maid, had reduced the house work to a sys tem. So the daughter was not indis pensable in the house. There was nothing for the girl to do but to wait for some one to marry her. Anyway, she thought there was nothing but that. Of an ungainly, unattractive figure, lacking that special feminine charm that glorifies most women, she was ignored by the men she knew. Ungraceful, homely, without femi nine charm, of no obvious use or ne cessity, a wall-flower from her youth up, and, withal, possessing a heart that glowed with love for all beauti ful things, and ardently desiring to be loved in return, ir only for her hu manity, this girl knew she was as a weed and could never be tenderly re garded. After a few imitative at tempts to propitiate a favor and a notice not to be gained that way, this homely girl killed herself for lone someness and unattained love. Yet as sure as the sun shines in Nebraska, if she had waited but a while longer with wide-open eyes for the first cjiance of usefulness, she would have found a sphere. She could have gone to work and earned enough to make her presentable, if her miud was fixed on that. If her nose was snub, or crooked, the dermatological surgeons would have turned it down or straight ened it, to order. Her complexion, for a price, could have been made shell pink, massage would have im proved her figure, and her dress-maker could have done the rest. All this takes money and time, but while she was earning it, she might have en joyed visions of her prospective love liness. Suicide showed that she was lacking in grit and resources, or she may not have read Mrs. Harriet Hub bard Ayer on how the homeliest may be transformed into a houri. There are hundreds of young women who are enmtyie of life because they have not yet found their place and function in it, and nobody seems to care to help them. They get moody and contemplate suicide with increas ing favor. For a day then their world must submit to their occupying the center of the stage, and yield a prom inence to the dead, the living longed for and never received. The antidote for ennui is work. The worker nukes her own market and her own niche. She takes her place at the centre of confluent inter ests as by right. She has the same conceit of herself as a man, and by right ought to have. Whoever heard of a man's killing himself because he was homely and lacked grace and masculine charm. The most gro tesquely ugly man I ever knew is adored of women, because he is uncon scious of his ugliness, because his spirit is wholesome, and because he has made himself the centre of his world. The ugly woman, with a dif ference, lias the same opportunity, if she only possessed sense and logic enough to recognize it. jt & Child-Study. Dr. G. Stanley Hall patiently points out, in a recent number of the Forum, to heretical mothers who do not be lieve in the science of child-study, that children are not little adults, with all the faculties of maturity on a large scale, but unique and very dif ferent creatures. He says: "The pro portions are so very different that if head, body and limbs were each to grow in its original proportions until they reach adult stature, they would be monsters. Adaptable as children are, their ways and thoughts are not ours: and the adult can no more get back into the child's soul by Intro spection than he can pass the flaming sword and reclaim his lost Eden. The recollections of our childhood are the mere floatsam and jetsam of a wrecked stage of development; and the lost points of psychogenesis must be slow ly wrought out with toil." The child who is continually watched and in truded upon by his bungling mother Is worse off than the neglected child, who-may go to bed and to meals un washed, but whose gossamer-web of Imagination is untorn by ignorant Angers. Mother Joseph. The Ursuline convent, in Galveston, was a refuge for the drowning, terri fied people, swept by the wind, the waves and their fears to the tallest and strongest building in the neigh borhood. The wail and shriek of a frightened negro is indiscribable the two are one; the sound begins a shriek and ends a wail. If there were no sound of wave, wind and falling walls to frighten one, that African shriek, that half human, half animal howl, would freeze the blood. Mother Joseph suddenly found herself the head of a convent and buildings filled with panic stricken negroes, who were momentarily increasing their hysteria by yelling. She ordered the convent bell rung, and the howling stopped long enough for her words to be heard. "You must stop your wailing," she told them. "If it is God's will that we shall perish, we must die like Christians. Pray to God like Chris tians. Resign yourselves to God. To those who will, we will administer the holy sacrament." To the awe-struck, half-naked crowd of men, women and children white and black while the tempest boomed and the waters beat against the walls, the sisters, in the dim light, administered the rites of the church, while others tied up wounds, and others dragged fugitives through the windows. The horror of the scenes at Galves ton, the most overwhelming disaster which has Lefallen a city since Pom peii was destroyed, is mitigated by the unselfishness, and heroism of men and women who forgot their own terror in trying to save and encourage others. The Lincoln Hoodlum. In the license of carnival week the small boy has enjoyed himself with out restriction. Lincoln is the para dise of hoodlums, who are not, by any means-, restricted to poor families. Accompanying the bands and various processions throughout the week were bands of boys. Wriggling in and out, between the legs of the players of wind instruments, whose eyes, fixed on the music, were blinded to the foot-way, the boys maddened the mu sicians, who stumbled helplessly over their tormentors, and anon clubbed their instruments as weapons against them. Young thieves watched the booths on the street for something they might grab, and stole the bags of rosin left by the trapeze perform ers hanging to the ropes. They loos ened the guy-ropes, and did their best to make existence uncomfortable for everybody. When these boys get to be men their parents will be sur prised to find that they have no fear of the law and no regard for the rights of others, and .they will, wonder when, they learned to steal. The pilfering boys.who steal fruit from. grocers and fruit stands, and put everything loose and unwatched in their pockets, are the clerks of ten years later who forge, steal from their employers, and land in the penitentiary. The mother's tears mighLbave been spared, if she had repressed, with old-fashioned se verity, the tendency in her son, years before, to take some small article that did not belong to him. The vandal ism, which is later expressed by paint ing signs on buildings and destroying property, is also cultivated by the apathy of the Lincoln police in regard t ) the thievery of the small boys, who are allowed to torment the merchants. Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Whether the Princess Pless or some other princess wrote "Elizabeth and Her German Garden" it does not mat ter. The publishers of the penny dreadful series have long known that if they wished to be popular in their audience of cooks, house-raaids and char-women, their heroes must be lords and ladies, dressed in ermine and the stillest of silks. They must be fed on the costliest of dainties, and always approached with ceremonious observance. Otherwise the audience i? bored with its commonplace and undistinguished heroes and heroines. Humble men and woman do not want, to be despoiled of their belief that the queen always wears a crown, and that "dnoks" are always haughty and un reasonable. But Elizabeth and her husband, '-The Man of Wrath,'" ignore our passion for associating, if only in a book, with the blooded great. It is only casually that the watchful reader discovers that Elizabeth and her mann live in a castle, and that they are the Princess and Prince in a German prin cipality, and that there are baby Eliza beths and "little men of wrath," all over town, infant god-children of the prince and princess in the castle. Elizabeth's love of her garden and her translation of nature into a book is the most successful attempt I know of. Nature without the human ele ment is hard reading. The 'sight of clouds, sea, forests, mountains, flow ers, awakens enthusiasm, but. to read of them is stupid. A book of sky and mountains is all well enough for an edition tie luxe, a book that, so far as reading is concerned, need have only covers and an illustration or two. By the subtle literary sense that Eliza beth possesses, she knows this and re strains her allusions to the growing things in her garden. The charm of
