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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (June 29, 1901)
:3&eaB$u6ESsM r , ( THE COURIER. 10 LINCOLN-LETTER. Lincoln, Ncbr., June 26, 1901. Dear Penelope: Wednesday and no letter from you. A young lady of elegant leisure, like yourself, is not. going to crowd herself to compose letters to a friecd who is not in her class anyway and can not get up an answer fit to be printed on the same page with hers. Especially, in this warm weather a literary dilettante shrinks from getting too near the fires of genius which sometimes scorches me, Penelope, when I open your hot stuff. If you were a young lady, Penelope, who had to earn jour own living, you would compose for it; not music, but stories. It's you that has the quick wrist and that knows how to turn the sentence into 8 great joke. But, dearest, it you depended on your pen it would be a long time before you could afford strawber ries with your porridge. I suppose you do nothing more laborious these days than sip sorbets and soda ice-cream drinks. If you only had a house and a husband to look after you would learn what care and anxiety are. Jack has been playing golf lately. I Mo not play because I am so thin and he aays the work will make me thinner. Jt has just occurred to me that Jack is unusually positive that golf will hurt me. I wonder who there is, out there, that Jack is so interested in. The last- June wedding between a sterling young business man and one of Lincoln's fairest daughters has been celebrated and there are so many ster ling young men and so many triple plated, so many fairest daughters wear ing veils and standing under floral bells, so many "officiating clergymen", and all that, the last fortnight; that the human miud tires of the monotony of repetition. It will be a year or two, probably, before the eastern style, or absence of it, reaches Lincoln; but most of the mil lionaire heiresses who have married this June have ordered the ceremony with absolute simplicity. There have seldom been more than thirty present . Those were intimate friends and close relatives of the groom and bride. The thousand and one intimate friends of a rich girl were not invited. And the bride with drew before the wedding to the country home of the family and when the hour struck, walked (Think of it, Lincoln brides!), walked through the village streets to the plain little church, where the pastor in the same coat or gown he preaches in, married them. The bridal parties were not smothered with flow ers, and the little churches were only fragrant with garden and field flowers. The oppressive ceremony which still characterizes the weddings of the west is doomed. After a while in Lincoln the bride will pace into the church followed by a little procession of relatives and friends. She will not collect a trousseau of such vari ety and number that long before her things are worn out they will be out of date. It is no compliment to the groom's ability to take care of his wife for the father of the bride to buy her dresses and lingerie enough to last her a dec ade. Besides, it is very bad for a young husband to lead him to think that you do not need even a dress a year. More over the ordinary father can not afford to bpend a year's income on his daugh ter's trousseau, especially if he have other daughters. Do you not think yourself that there is too much fuss and feathers, too many little girls holding a calla lily upon which is impaled the Ring, too many bridesmaids and too much trepitant ex pectation and suspense? Anyway it's, this way where I live at, down in Lincoln. Then the howling mob that follows the unhappy and scared bride and groom to the station. If it is at night the strang ersjwho occupy the bertha are scarcely amused by someone else's joke. They ask the name of the place and ever afterwards bold a grudge against Lin coln, and believe that the place is full of fools who accompany their friends, that are only going as far as Chicago, to the station and bawl silly bleats into theairandtheearsof total Btrangera. If there were anything new about the performance it would be funnier, but each new wedding party is liks a flock of sheep bleating in exstacy over their out-worn methods of appraising strangers that a newly-wedded pair is getting on board. June is nearly over and so many wed dings at once will not occur again for a year. Jack says I ought to keep still about other people's affairs, and that's so. A much greater nuisance than June weddings, their fuss and feathers, and the crowd of silly friends that make wedding days hideous are the officious people like myself, who criticise things that make the weather warmer but do not mitigate the nusiance. Speaking of officious people, have you any friends who pick at your dress and tie every time they see you? Would you not go around a block in the Bun to avoid an interview with these well-meaning but officious people? Women who never get their shire waistB and dress skirtB justified irritate the eye and the sense of propriety, but the very absence of mind which causes them to overlook the proper precautions in regard to their own waist and skirt operates to make them oblivious of their neighbor's short comings. This is a rather ill-natured letter, Penelope, but I have suffered from these officious friends rather more than the ordinary woman because my Lincoln friends seem to think 1 have no sense at all. These friends stop to reg ulate my attire (more in summer than in winter because the former is the open 'season for shirt waists, but I could endure it with more equanimity in winter on account of the temper be ing Bhorter in summer,) not for any consuming desire to improve my ap pearance, but because my skirt or waist or neck is not arranged just to suit them. And seems to me all my friends, especially, are set upon having their own way, and of course my toilette is never satisfactory to them. The only thing that makes me more and more sardonic and skeptical of their true philanthropy is that after one glass of fashion has laid hands on my person, the next G. O. F. I meet, is likely to re arrange my costume into the graceful lines of my own original draping. You are so assured, you have the manner of la grande dame, you are occasionaly even supercilious, so 1 suppose you are not subjected to assault and battery several times a day. It is queer to Americans, isn't it, the spectacle of the King of England auc tioning off the wines laid down in 1869 and 1979 in Buckingham palace and in St. James palace? The bottles are blown with the royal arms and it is sug gested that after the wine that was made for royal throats has been poured down democratic gullets whose owners profess to despise emperors and every thing pertaining to them, the bottles with thejroyal arms of England blown into their rotund bodies will still be worth a small fortune to the owners, so wild are even the most vociferous demo crats to possess something made for a real king. It'does not seem quite dig nified for King Edward to auction off his wine cellar that was the good Queen Victoria's. Fancy President McKinley selling wine to raise money to pay off his debts. King Edward is getting an extra price because he is king. To exploit or trade on bo high a position as king is unworthy the position. Think of the W. O. T. U. and their throat and lung capacity, if the President should turn saloon-keeper. Not even McKin ley could have been ejected the second time if in his first term he had employ ed an auctioneer to sell off some wine in bottles wherein the arms of the United States were blown. Americans as in dividuals are doubtless no better than Englishmen but the arms of the United States were never blown into a wine bottle. The impossibility of such a sale in America shows how far we have come. In Washington's day no one would have been shocked to discover that wine bottles were manufactured and stamped with the arms of the Unit ed States. At the sale in New York the other day Croker, who is an Irishman and claims to be a democrat, bought forty one dozen bottles of pale, golden sherry from Edward, King of England. Speaker Henderson, the speak9r of what is supposed to be the most demo cratic body in the world, was granted an interview with King Edward re cently. The man who stands for the proletariat said: "I have never enjoyed a more agree able halt hour interview than the one 1 had with King Edward yesterday. He was perfectly frank and agreeable and in accord with American progress. He looks forward to even more cor dial relations than now exist between the English-speaking nations. Ameri ca may depend upon the fact that she has no more cordial friend in the world than King Edward. While the details of our conversation may not be repeat ed, I can assure my American friends that England may be depended on in any ordinary controversy which may arise between the United States and the rest of the world." I am writing this in rather a scorn ful mood because it iB easy to see from Speaker Henderson's account that he is exultant because King Edward has no ticed him and has assured him of bis good feeling towards America. As yet the King has betrayed no pleasure at meeting the speaker. But his Majesty is used to meeting very important peo ple and bore himBelf, during" the inter view, with admirable composure. It is easy enough to scoff at Henderson, way off here in Nebraska, because he lost his head when the King of England said: "How do you do," and "I am glad to see a prominent American," it that is the way kings, complaisant kings, greet American citizens. But suppos ing we had been thus addressed. We too would have cabled it to America and told the story o'er and o'er to our friends and repeated it again so that the glory of it would last our posterity down to the most remote generation. Here in Henderson's family iB the be ginning of a tradition that will feed hiB great grandchildren with distinction enough to satisfy them, although none of his posterity come again within the radius of the intoxicating light that bathes a king in so much dazzle that no man can come near him without losing his balance. My reflections are jaundiced because when I was in Eng land I could not get one of the royal family to look at me though I am just as much of an American as Henderson. This iB a long letter which I doubt you will read with much patience in this hot weather. Faithfully, Eleanor. let me tell you before I go away. 1 hen you can think about it. Just let me ) state my case. You have no right to re fuse an old friend a hearing. That's all I ask. Ever eince I can remember anything I can remember you. Have you forgot ten when we helped our fathers put in the little slim cottonwood cuttings that grew into a row of trees between our two farms? I've sat under those jounu cotton woods herding the cattle on our corn stalks, and watching the tops of the old maple grove where you were swinging, more times than J can tell you. The day before we Bold out to go to Kansas I sat there and watched Brin die and Speck and the five ShorthornB and Baron Mason with his buucb, and wondered if your father would buy any of them. When we came back from Kansas with nothing but the covered wagon and the , horses, it was some comfort to think I was going to be in my old seat in the school house, across the aisle from you . Well, you weren't there, you know. When 1 found that you were in Lincoln high school I first thought of going through college. Of course you didn't know it, nor of what it's been to do it. But you ought to know that I couldn't have done it without you. Nobody knows the struggle it's been sometimes, If we could have had the old farm again it would have been dif ferent. But a square mile of Furnas county isn't worth as much, some years, as our iow of cottonwoods along the old creek. I know how men go crazy out there when they watch the clouds come up, day after day, and blow away again, and bo little rain would save the , whole crop. You put in your work just the same, you know. And some times it doesn't count, though everything in a man's life depends ou it. That worst year it was my junior year I went into a doctor's office, and after a while I earned something. So 1 Jv kept little Dick alive. Children can't " live the way grown folks have to some times. And when you're out there, it's not so easy to get away. I've thought of walking back here to find work, but a fellow couldn't tell what might happen at home before he would strike anything. Next year there was about a third of the alfalfa crop. I went back with just two dollars and a suit of store clothes. Many a time when I've pushed a broom in a big department store, between twelve and two at night, so that the fine skirts of fine ladies would be safe from dust for next day's special sales, I've gone to sleep as I walked. And when I thought of the next day, with a five cent loaf for breakfast and logarithms for dinner well, it wasn't for the loga rithmic roots I Ehoved that broom. You never knew, and I wanted it eo. It's little enough I have to tell vou now. but I can't go away again without telK inCT if P..)innn ..n..MI nnf Via onrrl'l when you think it over, that you've been a force stronger than drouth and hail and Kansas grasshoppers, and most that hunger and cold and heat can do to a man. Anyway, think it over. I'll see you tomorrow before 1 go. Cora Do you believe in palmistry? Merritt No, my dear. The only time I was glad to find a life line in my hand was when I was shipwrecked. A UNIVERSITY GRADUATE. KATHARINE MEL1CK. For The Courier. No, I'm not going to frame it. That diploma iB not what I've been working seven years to get. That and the an nouncement of the Lake Forest fellow ship I've been working for are both of them means to an end. The end is you. I know you are amazed but you must 2 Cycle Photographs Athletic Photographs V Photographs of Babies 0 Photographs of Groups Exterior Views yxpi&im&nid THE PHOTOGRAPHER 129 South Eleventh Street.