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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (June 29, 1901)
VOL. XVI., NO. XXVI ESTABLISHED IN 1886 PRICE FIVE CENTS - I LINCOLN. NEBR., SATURDAY. JUNE 29, 1901. THE COURIER, twiimn TH rOtTOmCX AT LINCOLN IB IBCOMD CLASS MATTKB. FUBLI8HED EVKBY 8ATOBDAY -Bl- TIE CNRIER railTHK IID MLUIII. GO Office 1132 N street, " Up Staire. Telephone 384. SARAH B. HARRIS, : : : EDITOR Subscription Rates. Per annum 1 50 Six monthe 1 0 Rebate of fifty cents on cash payments. Single copies ...... ...... .. 05 Thb Coram will not be responsible for rol ontary communications unless accompanied by Communications, to reeeire attention, must be signed by the full name of the writer, not merely aa a -uarantee of good faith, but for publication if adflsable. VATIONS. 8 OBSERVATIONS L'' Resortless Lincoln, Whatever the advantages of Lin coln in regard to health, commerce and education, it is a dreary place for youth, if youth were ever dreary. Ihere are no streams but muddy ones, and when the little boys eo in swim ming they come out of the water plastered with a coating of slime and mud, so that after a week of swim ming the Saturday night bath is still inevitable and unavoidable. Not that boys object to mud; they like to turn in a moment their sunburned little bodies into octaroons. It is a metamorphosis which delights and surprises them. If boys were more fastidious mud would have no fasci nations and Lincoln would no longer be the famous swimming resort they consider It. In the fall there is little " or no nutting or fishing and in the winter there are no inns to suae down. Old boys and old girls who were more or less successfully raised in .Wisconsin, Michigan, Vermont or Ma"ine, pity the lfttle boys and girls of Nebraska who have no hills, no clear purling streams, no nutting, no berrying, no maple-sugaring to amuse them. No wonder the little boys are driven to pilfering fruit from private grounds; there,is so little wild fruit and childhood's demesne of field, for est, and running stream is so scantily furnished. There is less for the girls than for the boys, girls being more fastidious, and having an unconquera ble aversion to dirty water. Girls therefore early get into the habit of sauntering the streets, gazing into the shop windows, and at the very uninteresting people on the streets, till mothers are in despair over the difficulties of bringing up nice, home-keeping, modest young women. But the mothers of Lincoln have not the most excellent tutors for their daughters. A forest, an ocean, a lake or a clear creek, and a mountain or two are inestimably valuable in bring ing up the young. Beside a mountain or the ocean, the vulgar, cheap and trivial is thrown into high relief and even a very young and very green young girl sees the difference for her self which is much better and will last longer than if her mother had explained that such and such conduct is ignoble. The sweep of the prairies is inspiring and discourages vulgari ty, but interpretation of their real grandeur is possessed only by older and tired eyes. The mngniticent, monot onous, round earth, stretching to a distant horizon on four sides is a more subtle experience than a moan tain or an ocean bathed in pink, white, purple or blue, but a child, un less he is a poet too, is not quickly or perceptibly affected by the vision. Recreation is as necessary to youth as rest and contemplation is to old age. Movement, change, noise are in dispensable to youth, and the bete noirofold age. In Lincoln in the summer time one can ride, walk, bowl, play croquet, a few can play golf and tennis and billiards, or dnnK wnisuey for amusement. I think I have enumerated all the local possibilities in the way of amusement. Only the comparatively well-to-do play golf, tennis or can own or hire a horse and buggy. So the citizens of this little city are restricted to walking, croquet and whiskey and soda. Whiskey, for tunately Is not the resource for youths that it ia for older men. Realizing the scanty opportunities for amuse ment afforded by the surroundings of this region, and the natural longing for green pastures and still waters there is more charity for the pale, pirltless little cigarette boys that loaf all day long on the opera house steps of on the benches which the tobaconists have placed in front of their shops to the discomfiture of every woman who passes them. The streets, where the human comedy is enacted over and over again, are the only popular resort. Any innocent amusement which attracts young men and women away from the streets should be encouraged. The time will come when the city council will realize the municipal need of a green, cool place, decorated with flow er beds and fountains where the chil dren and young men and women will find it easier to amuse themsel ves. Un til the time arrives when the council shall have the money and the desire to make beautiful parks the streets will be our ouly casino. torials to a stenographer whose at tention is concentrated upon her dots and dashes while the voice which has electrified and frenzied thousands of his countrymen communicates the direful predictions which later appear in The Commoner. To get the effect of a human voice, which is most dif ficult in print. Mr. Bryan uses repe tionsof the same word, and spells them in lowercase.smallcaps.and cap itals successively with a sprinkling of exclamation points. This gives the impression of impressive reiteration of the same word, rising from the oratorical pitch to the final eagle scream of which Mr. Bryan is a past master. The device was In use in the emotional literature of the Elizabeth an period but I know of no modern writer who employes it. It is a hys terical and childish method of em phasis. A cub reporter on a daily newspaper who persisted in such archaics would be scornfully dismiss ed. Mr. Bryan's english is, however, so entirely of a bygone period and contains so many inaccurate coloqui alisms that a solecism, like the one referred to, is inconspicuous. Excla mation points are used now-a-days only by school girls. They are still a part of a font, but the exclamation points in the printer's case are bright when the letters and other punctua tion marks are dulled and worn bv . . t . 3.mJ use. Most typewriters are uuu ulicu with the exclamation-point. Ignor ed by the printer, the scholar and the type-writer manufacturer, the point is certainly out of fashion. "Perhaps! perhaps!! PERHAPS!!!" Men who make speeches for a living get into a habit of gesticulating and of mentally posing before an audience even while they are only writing on an insensate, irresponsive typewriter. Mr. Bryan doubtless dictates his edi- University Evolution. The western students first grapple with the problems of higher educa tion has marked an uncouth,but a des perately earnest heroic age. It is for Nebraska University students already a past age. Nothing shows this more plainly than the faces of the gradu ates, as they present the annual class play in the widening commencement stage. In the old days of bread and water and economics social and do mestic as well as political, the soaring ambition of the senior found Goethe, Shakspere. Browning all inadequate expressions of their seething emotion. The clutch of the diploma so long striven for, stirred an ardor that cm braced the celestirals. The old gods fought on the side of the students in their Trojan days. Heaven and earth were called upon to witness the cul mination of their struggles. And earth, at all events, gave heed, in the prairie town where a literary society program was a notable event, and a cane break involved not only the male student body, but a large part of the coeducational minority, together with bystanders and the city council. No onebeside Salt Creek but knows that today this yearly procession of black-robed lads and maidens means more to us than ever before. We have come, happily, to a place where the procession is simply usual and or dinary, awakening no special com ment. So the class has come to re gard itself less solemnly, and even witli some humorous sense of its re lation to life. The class of 1901 In the annual commencement play touched the highest point yet reached in this particular, "A House Boat on the Styx" adapted from John Kendricks Bangs, was in some respects a de scent. But it was a little farce wholly intelligible to any hearer, direct, not without point, and completely with out pedantry. It marks a distinct gain in adaptability and genuine common sense, over much more pre tentious student work. And if it marks the close of the tragic age of the student Aeschylus, perhaps it is as well. Reward for Total Abstinence. One of the great life insurance com panies has begun an unusual experi ment. Influenced by a petition sign ed by Messrs. John Wanamaker, ex mayor Hewitt, iDoctor Edward Eve rett, Senator Tillman, and other not ed men, the company has agreed to establish a total-abstinence class of policy holders. The petitioners urged that a uniform rate for total abstinence men and for occasional drinkers is unjust to the former be cause, of course, the rates are based on the average length ,of life and the amount of premiums paid in by the average policy-holder. The moder ate drinker does not live as long as the total abstainer and therefore pay fewer premiums, to the company, but the drinker shares in the lowered rate that the addition of the total-abstinence policy holders to the whole- number of policy holders elfects. TrJT agreeing to make the experiment for a given number of years the company exacts an oath from the clients who wish to avail themselves of the total abstinence rate that they do not? drink and a pledge that they will not. As a matter of course the man who drinks and dies vitiates his policy. When the new regime is fully estab lished, men will be heard declining a drink not for the sake of principler not because of any ethical reason, but because if they do drink it will, cost their relatives five, ten or fifty thousand dollars. It is a strange phe nomenon that men who are ashamed' to plead abstinence on account oC principle will do so with perfect sang--f roid when the matter at stake is dol lars and not earthly and heavenly salvation. The hesitation is not al together unworthy. While the num ber of hypocrites who plead greater holiness remains so large, the men who keep the deeds of the right hand concealed from the left are grateful to a bunkoed generation. It is doubtful if the plan will work because of the rivalry between ttie companies. A policy with a vitiating- clause in it is not an assuring paper even to the total abstainer, who can not be sure, being but a man, that he will not sometime, in an hour of des- M u J 4 i . :i i ,fi 4 h! . 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