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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-
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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
