VOL. XVI., NO. XXVI
ESTABLISHED IN 1886
PRICE FIVE CENTS
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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
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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-
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