t -rr
THB GOURIBR.
I
:
arrives, pick up tlie country paper in
the hope of finding out what the
world is doing and for the recreation
of the stories and anecdotes. In a
recent examination of the literary
part of the patent insides of Nebraska
papers. I find that stories of cannibal
feasts, of poisonous hi sects and rep
tiles, of tortures inflicted by Indians
.and of retaliatory tortures inflicted
by white men upon them; stories of
outlawry and of strange murders, and
Aerial stories of adventure make up
these inside pages which are the only
fresh reading matter offered from
week to weeK to the wives and chil
dren of the Tarmers of Nebraska.
The inferior and unwholesome charac
ter or the patent inside matter sup
plied Nebraska publishers is, of
course, corrupting the taste of the
rising Nebraska generation. But the
publishers are not to blame. It is
not a money-making business, pub
lishing a country paper in this state,
.and the patent insides are an econom
ical necessity; but if the syndicate
which supplies the newspapers witli
matter would employ men and women
of discrimination and taste to select
.the stories which the patent publish
crs give to their compositors to be set
up and printed on the Insides of pa
pers which are sent with blank out
sides to their country patrons, the
taste of the advancing generation
might be perceptibly affected by the
change in literary diet. But the price
of discrimination is high, and it is
not likely that the publishers of the
patent insides stuff will incur any ex
pense to improve their product when
it sells well enough as it is.
J J
Suits of Woe.
The sight of a long black box drawn
by black horses and driven by a man
in black with a chalk white face, de
presses every one whose vision it
crosses. Undertakers are pleasant
men. There is one in Lincoln who is
a thoroughly good fellow. He goes
about chuckling to himself over some
choice bit of humour he has discov
ered but does not venture to com
municate for fear of displeasing his
patrons, who are so accustomed to
seeing an undertaker look solemn,
that any other expression seems a
ghastly lack of sympathy. The death
of a beloved friend is bad enough.
"Why should the undertaker who takes
charge of the body attempt to deepen
the shock and frighten tLe children
of the neighborhood by driving up in
a vehicle which looks like a coffin on
wheels with a buggy top fastened to
it? The most sympathetic undertak
crcannot sympathize with the friends
of the people he buries. If he did he
would not last long, sympathy is such
a draught on the system. If he does
not sympathize why should he pre
tend to by driving about in a ghoul
ish, ghastly vehicle that frightens
every little child who meets it? The
undertaker can make our woe no
.sharper, but the hypocrisy of his ex
pression and of his rig, lrequently
irritates the mourners. Then, be
sides, the extra blackness of his trap
pings and expression sometimes ap
pear in the bill, and the chief mourn
er lacks the audacity to remonstrate
with one who seemed so genuinely
broken-hearted in the hours of death
and I nial. Undertaking is an bon
iest and very useful business; but
the merchants who are engaged In it
afflict the community by insisting on
so many and such conspicuous funer
.al trappings. They intrude by many
signs and symbols of woe upon the
'natural, unpremeditated grief of the
mourners, and they scare children.
If ,he men engaged in this legiti
mate business drove about in incon
spicuous vehicles, cheerful looking
buggies of brown, striped in red, they
would be more acceptable to the
community. The consplcuousness of
black In their garb and expression is
what 1 object to, and the hypocrisy
of all their customs. There Is no
reason why an undertaker should
not wear just as cheerful clothes and
drire as cheerful a buggy as any other
man. He has no grief to express, and
he should not attempt to express it.
If he would lay aside his lugubrious
attire, expression, manner and ve
hicles, we might the sooner give up
some of our absurd funeral customs
which serve to harrow the feelings
rather than to soothe them. The
plumed, urned hearse, that ostenta
tious relic of a grief worn upon the
sleeve, is a vulgarity which will be
longer disappearing than all the rest.
From the custom of carrying the
body of a dead friend upon a bier to
the grave, we have come to the glass
hearse framed in black, and it is not
an evolution.
A Real Woman's Club.
Listening to other women read pa
pers on the culture that was Greece,
on the dimensions of the parthenon,
or on the causes of the dissolu
tion of the Roman empire, is the
devoted club woman's idea of a good
time. Men will occasionally listen
to one of their fellows read a paper,
especially if they know the time is
coming when they will have an op
portunity to criticise it. Some men,
mostly lawyers, ministers and pro
fessors, belong to a debating club;
but the large majority believes that
ten hours of labor is enough exercise
for the mind, and they prefer the
clubs where they can get something
eatable and drinkable, can talk and
tell very stale stories that were not
funny even when they were new, to
other good-natured and unexacting
men who have not donned their over
coats and faced a storm to bear about
what ailed Borne or to listen to an
exposition of the beauties of Greece.
Some college women of New York
city have decided to have a real club,
too; a club whose reason for being is
not to cultivate but comfort, and a
cup of tea together and perhaps a
game of cards: a club where man
cometh not. Although she prefers
man to any thing else the world con
tains, woman does enjoy a retreat
whence she is assured man cannot
arrive. Although men love women,
they do not want them in the club.
I think each sex desires a place from
which the other is forever and finally
excluded. There is no such place
unless it is the club. When men and
women mingle in society there are
always a few who feel slighted be
cause wherever and whenever they
are together the question of attrac
tiveness is settled over again. The
men pay the attentions and the wom
en receive them. And it is the most
difficult task In the world to main
tain these several attitudes without
offense to some one who has been giv
en an altar promise of absolute de
votion, a devotion that may be meas
ured with a jeweler's scale and not
found to dip on the wrong side. Such
a constant keeping in mind of a sol
emn promise is embarrassing.at times,
to attract! e members of either sex.
It is a strain, and if it were not for
the absolute seclusion of the club it
would be harder than it is now to
get men out to parties and routs.
Women cannot forget their appear
ance when men are about. They are
careful not to excite the disapproval
cf women, but there is not so much
anxiety about the latter's opinion.
Some women go through life hated
by all other women and they know it;
but the detested are rather flattered
than otherwise. It is, in a way, a
tribute to superior fascinations.
But since the establishment of girls'
colleges and the assured entry of
young girls into the joys of college
life, when grown into womanhood
they like each other better than they
used to a decade ago when woman's
love for woman was measured by the
attentions or snubs of men. In the
girls' schools a thoroughly wholesome
and enthusiastic liking for women in
groups is developed, not at all like
the unwholesome, feverish devotion
of couples developed in the old-fashioned
female seminary; not, however,
that tliis latter phase of adolescent
feminlntiy has altogether disappeared.
Girls pass through stages of devotion
to this woman or that one, and the
spasms can only be mitigated. The
contemporary girls' college teaches
girls esprit du corps and they need
it. Largeness, the pleasure and
wholesomeness of associating with a
large number of one's peers who are
engaged in a similar occupation with
ourselves, stimulates the social sense
and is retarding the development of
those pitifully narrow women who
cannot comprehend the use of any
institution outside of their set.
Girls in good girls" schools do not
miss young men. They talk about
them and weave pleasant romances
about them, but the girls would re
sent the intrusion of men into their
games, dramas and classes more de
cidedly than would their teachers.
In a co-educational institution, girls'
fraternities are introducing young
women to each other and teaching
them the charms of purely feminine
society.
At last the college women of New
York are to have a real club house,
containing a restaurant, library, bed
rooms and every thing that a wom
an's club should hare. The women
who are going to start it and have
charge of it are college bred. It is
to be called the Woman's University
club, and 482 women have signified
their intention of joining. To be
eligible to membership a woman must
belong to one of the colleges included
in the Association of Collegiate Alum
nae, which includes Nebraska uni
versity, Vassar, Bryn Mawr. Smith,
Wellesley, RadclilT, Barnard, Cornell,
Oberlin, Wesleyan, Syracuse, Massa
chusetts Institute of Technology, Le
land Stanlord, Northwestern, West
ern Reserve, and the universities of
Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas and
Chicago. It is announced that the
annual dues of this club are ten dol
lars for resident members and five for
non-resident members, and that mem
bers who join now will have no initia
tion fees to pay. It is not possible to
run much of a club in New York on
ten dollars a year. The club may,
however, receive so many five dollar
subscriptions from college women set
tled in different parts of the country
that it may continue its existence
and be comfortable and comforting
to the college women of New York.
The club has the best wishes of The
Courier. The women who are found
ing it have kept alive in their hearts
the glowing memories of the compan
ionship and society of their college
days, and their desire is to light a
fire that will warm others so haunted
and like-minded.
Eben H olden.
A story of an old man who carried
an orphan boy in a basket on his back
from northern Vermont to New York
state In the forties. When the boy
was left an orphan by the drowning
of his mother, father and elder broth
er, the town authorities found that
the boy was penniless, and decided to
put him in the poor-house, until the
bogy uncle appeared and claimed him.
Uncle Eb. Holden was only a farm
hand with no visible property, and
the town council had no more eye
then for character than town coun
cils have now. So Uncle Eb.. who
foresaw the ruin of the boy's soul, if
he were committed to the care of a
man like the Uncle, kidnapped the
boy when he was only six years old.
He started out in the night carrying
the little boy as a squaw carries her
pappoose, only strapped into a basket
instead of on a board. They traveled
by night through cornfields and for
ests and although the wicked uncle
was often on their track, he never
caught them. The journey is unique
in literature. The rest of the story
does not quite equal, in the open-air
effects, the first chapters, where
the old man who was a boy in heart
and had a boy in a basket on his back
journeyed through Vermont from
north to south and landed in a farm
house in northern New York. Tncle
Eb. is a shrewd naturalist. He is a
poet, a lover and servant of all youth
and innocence. He serves the boy as
the lion served Una, to frighten wick
edness and corruption from his path.
The atmosphere is out doors from the
beginning to the end.
Mr. Irving Bacheller, the author of
the book, is the organizer of the
Bacheller syndicate which supplies
papers of the better class with excel
lent reading matter. In consequence
of a long trial of what the public likes
to read, he has acquired a discrimina
ting taste. He knows, far better than
the writer who continues to write
historical novels about obscure per
sonages very little of whose history
has been preserved, that we who read
novels like the plein air, and sim
plicity, and that we do not care to
rack our brains in the effort to re
member which Louis it was who said
"After me the deluge" and which
Louis' head was cut off and to identi
fy and date many harder speeches
and acts. The novelist who has spent "y
years studying the costumes, conduct,
manners and morals of the seven
teenth century and writes a novel
thereof is like the club woman who
prepares a paper to deliver in one
hour which could not be read in five
hours. Both waste the good-will and
impose upon the patience of their
audiences.
The novel is not a medium for
teaching history. It is not an exam
ple of anything except literature.
The tiresome efforts of the historical
novelists whose books are bought by
hundreds are rebuked by the sales of
"Eben Holden" and others somewhat
like it. Books containing a hero,
wholesome, tender, possessing homely
common sense and a quality of virili
ty are what all men and some women
dote upon. Abraham Lincoln pos
sessed the quality which is not hu
mour, it is not common sense, itvf ,
not ability, it is not sentiment or:i
love for children and the weak.it is not
shrewdness, and it is not strength, it
is not camarderie, but it is a loveable
ness which is a combination of all
eight and something else added in
herent in the person. This quality
has not yet been named in English
The French have a word which ex
presses it better, but the kind of a
hero I mean, of whom Abraham Lin
coln is the prototype, is so entirely
American that no foreign word can
characterize him satisfactorily.
Eben Holden has the middle of tin
stage all the time. The little basket
boy grown to a man, tries to divert
attention to the distinction of bl
own school and college performance
but does not succeed. The little boy,
grown a man, is a prig, and the re
cital of his virtues is tiresome, espec
ially as he tells he story himself.
F5M
