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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 1901)
y r THE COURIER. w i j j; JyJ -- mil Of course maids, being women, en joy a bargain. I know a laundress wlio reads the Sunduy papers week after week to find out just what she can buy at a bargain on Monday. In order to get her "wash" out in time she rises lung before the specified hour of half past five. She buys with discrimination, too; a discrimination which i constantly growing. She brings her purchases home and ex hibits them witli a wholly feminine and pardor.able pride in her grow ing capacity to adjust her purchases to her needs. She no longer buys tilings that she does not need because they are cheap. She buys them be cause they arc within her means and she recognizes the correspondence be tween them and her own reasonable wants. It is not fair that the hired girl should not buy her things in as cheap a market as her mistress buys them, and rule IV is not unreasona ble, considering that Monday has been adopted by the dry goods stores as "bargain day." The hired girl can make the house hold ::u happy and ailing, or she can make the household happy and heal thy. In order to prepare healthy food she must either be a natural cook or she must have learned the art. The latter method is very much more reliable and satisfactory. The time may arrive when to protect it self the union will demand proof of ability before granting a card of as sociation to new members. In such a period the union will hare the dig nity and prestige of a first-class or ganization. In the hope of such a development, as well as on account of a desire for the improvement of every woman's lot, the thoughtful mistresses of Chicago encourage their housemaids. in the timid attempt they are making to enhance the dignity of their trade. Mrs. Henrotin, whom all club women love, is inclined to believe the movement a happy one. Nevertheless the efficient and faith ful hired girl who knows how to cook, launder, sweep, dust and perform skillfully the hundred and one house hold labors, does not need the pro tection of a union. She can almost make her own terms, because she is a rara avis, and sought for as the Ar gonauts sought the golden fleece. The few such honorable and honored servants whom I have known occupy a unique position in the regard of the families whom they serve and love. When the final rewards are made these faithful, competent ones will receive a larger meed than they ever fancied theirs. In the ruck of sloven ly girls who do not realize their mis sion, the few who have dignified their trade are likely to be forgotten by the fretful women whose dishes have been broken and whose tempers have been ruined by the incompetent and un faithful. A tribute to the few is hereby offered by an editor whose pages they are not likely to see. The Independence. Mr. Thomas W. Lawson was snub bed by the New York Yacht club, and since his boat has been so badly beaten, the country people who never saw a body of water larger than Man awa, but who are nevertheless much elated when a boat of "ours" beats a British bo.it, believe that he made all that fuss to get his name before the world. Mr. Lawson paid $30,000 to a Boston florist to name a new pink "The Mrs. Thomas W. Lawson" pink. It is apparent, therefore, that he is not averse to being talked about. Members of the N. Y. Y. C. got it into their minds that Mr. Lawson thought the international boat race was an opportunity to still further advertise Mr. Thomas W. Lawson, and they re- sjnted being used for such a purpose. When the owner of the tail-end boat came to Newport, not a pennant dip ped, not a gun was tired and the atmosphere in his neighborhood was very chilly. Mr. Lawson lives in Boston, but he is not of it, and to a man of his push and ambition for a prominent place in society, the closed doors of the aristocracy are very annoying. The great-grand-son of a man like Mr. Lawson, if the money remains in the family, might be received by des cendents of the men who sailed in the May-Flower, but a faster rate than that is unknown to Boston. We cannot quite analyze the con tempt we feel, or justify it either, for the man or woman who tries by ad ventitious means to obtain a place in society, society is not willing to grant. To attain an honorable place in the world and the esteem and society of the best people is a laudable ambi tion; yet no one is laughed at so much as the man who shows that he is will ing to pay a large sum of money for position and countenance. Mr. Law son dllowes himself to talk to report ers about his love of art, about how he spends his evenings at home, etc. He said recently: "As a rule we all work behind a mask and the two thirds of us we conceal is generally the best in us. It is that two-thirds that 1 will not show the public. It is my home life, my tastes, my diver sions." All this is so much a matter of course that it would not occur to one to the manor born to say any thing about it. Paragraphs taken from an interview granted to an in genuous writer who was preparing a special article on Mr. Thomas W. Lawton for the July Ainslee's, illus trate what I mean, and it is an ex ample of the ridiculous sort of stuff that is being written about rich men by those who know better but who do not use their knowledge. However the article in question may be a paid advertisement in which case I with draw my strictures on its author: "The door opened softly, and Mr. Lawson's secretary placed a vase of long-stemmed pink flowers on his desk. His face lighted. 'Those are the Mrs. Lawson pink,' he said. 'Are n't they beautiful?' As he spoke I noticed a new note in his voice. "Just then Mr. Lawson adjusted his curious gold chain. On the end was a locket, on one side was carved a gypsy's head, the other contained a miniature of a sweet-faced girl. "It is the picture of my wife,' lie said, extending it, 'at the time we were married. Her name is Gypsy. Yon will notice that each of the beads in this chain there are three hun dred and thirty-three is carved with a gypsy's race just a little fancy of mine, that's all.' "At that moment Mr. Lawson's carriage was announced." The Making o! a Marchioness. Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, whose last name is something else now, a name by which she will never be identified by any body not in her immediate circle, has written a story which appeared in the Century maga zine of J une, July and August. I think Mrs. Burnett is at her best in the long short story. "The Mak ing of a Marchioness" is a story of a woman who, first of all, was exquisite ly kind. She had an income to lire upon of about a hundred and fifty dollars a year, which was left her by an unpleasant old woman who em ployed Miss Fox-Seton as a compan ion. Miss Fox-Seton had been a governess. She had cousins in the peerage but no income whaterer be fore the death of the old lady. A gentlewoman's struggle with poverty is always pathetic; and when, as in the case of Miss Fox-Seton, the com batant is so brave and sweet, so capa ble and helpful, an author has no trouble in making her heroine and heradrentures very interesting in deed. Mrs. Burnett has the faculty, so vainly striven for by so many of her contemporaries, of writing an in teresting story. At the very begin ning it is no effort to identify her characters and remember their names. Acquaintanceship with them pro gresses more rapidly than with new people in real life; but she does not skip any of the stages. By which recognition of the laws of the mind she avoids confusion. An aspiring author with concepts of the iniridu als of his story, but who fails to dif ferentiate them, forces the reader to do his work. For instance, in this week's edition of The Courier there is a story written by a young girl who has neither studied the art of com position nor has she any intuitive knowledge of it. The intluence of cheap and untrue literature is ap parent both in the style and thought. The Mrs. Holmes novels are ricious, not because of the presence of the element for which nore's are locked away from the jeune femme, but be cause of the entire absence of refine ment of view, and for the falseness with which all aspects of life are pre sented. Youthful readers look in real life for what they read about in these books. Not finding it, they imagine false resemblances or make up love stories long before the time for that sort of thing has arrived. The commonness of mind which the Mrs. Holmes and Mrs. Soulhworth novels develop and encourage is ap parent in the first creative effort of a constant reader of their unfortunate tales. But all this is another story. Miss Fox-Seton is an elderly, un romantic English woman. Her lover, who does not prove to be her lover until the last page of the story, is also elderly, without the flavor of romance unless romance may be said to cling to every member of the English peer age. He possesses a magnificent tiara and a ruby "as large as a trousers button," which the Walderhursts for generations have given to their fian cees at the moment of acceptance. Like an occasional big trout in a much-fished brook, Lord Walderhurst has been chased and frightened from one cool retreat to another by inde fatigable mothers and daughters, until he has made up his mind to snap, with his eyes wide open to the hook, the very next alluring bait that is dangled before his sophisticated old nose. Only he is positive that he does not want to bring up a beautiful girl, used to conquests and to audible admiration. Such being his state of mind, of course there are only old maids and widows left. At the house party in the country, where most of the action takes place, there are two beautiful girls, one spinster, Miss Fox-Seton, thirty four years old, and a widow. The widow writes stories and talks in epi grams, and naturally she has no chance. Miss Fox Seton is an ador able example of Christianity actively exerting itself for the happiness of neighbors. She is rewarded for her unselfishness and for the unconscious practice of all the virtues by an offer of matrimony from one of the richest and noblest gentlemen in England. Her modesty and humility are so deep and so unassumed that she cannot be lieve that he really means it, and he has to tell her that he "likes her bet ter than any woman he ever saw," before she can believe him in earnest This phrase will conquer any woman, no matter what evidence to the con trary she possesses, and Miss Fox Seton accepts her middle aged suitor. Mrs. Burnett's heroine has excellent taste: the best biood of England flows in her veins, and she takes such gf.,d care of her clothes and selects them with such unusual (for an English woman) discrimination for color and style, that in spite of her poverty, Mie is distinguished looking. And it de not affect her dignity that she run on errands and serves as a purchasing agent for the rich people who employ her. Breeding has sifted the coarse ness outi of her ancestry for ten gen erations, and the fine product which coursed through the veins of Miv Fox-Seton, flowered into acts of kind ness to all the world. Not until the book is finished and meditation sets in does it occur to the reader that Mrs. Burnett has written the story with a moral purpose the reward of virtue. It is old-fashioned now-a-days to reward a hero and especially a middle-aged heroine In allowing either one to make a good match. It used to be the style, year? ago, when Sunday school books were more popular than they are now, to reward virtue and punish vice. The method satisfied our consciences and our notions of what should be and what should not be. The modern writer to a certain extent ignores these crude, primary instincts in the people whom he expects to buy and read his books. And we do not like it. Henry James satisfies his sense of what he owes the people who pay a dollar and a half for his works by arguing that art demands that the good die in unrewarded discourage ment or lead colorless lives in conse quence of the early commission of magnanimous and painfully self sacrificing acts. But he does not take his audience with him, not if we know ourselves he does not, and lie has lost his prestige with the common people the only kind of people that there are enough of to make the pro fession of writing profitable. The good must live happily ever after ward, and the wicked must be rolled down hill in the modern equivalent for a Grimms' barrel tilled with sharp spikes. Otherwise the author's sales fall off. Upon Mrs. Burnett the modern rules in regard to leaving a single' lady in unremitted spinsterhood. to contemplate for the rest of her life the very meagre rewards of being good to fussy old women, have had no effect whaterer. Very subtly and without directing attention to what she is doing, this author rewards rir tue and lets the disagreeable receive the meed of vulgarity. For in Mrs. Burnett's mind it is not only wicked to be untruthful, selfish, dishonest and overbearing, but it is also vulgar and underbred. This is a sound view. Politeness is Christianity and the meek will inherit the earth. "The Making of a Marchioness" also teaches girls that the most glittering and truly valuable matrimonial prizes are not to be caught by conscious ef fort, but only by the practice of wo manly virtues at all times and not alone in the sight of the man whom they are calculated to impress. Miss Fox-Seton was the only woman in the house-party who had no designs upon Lord Walderhurst; but after living in the same house with her for a week he sent his man to London for the trousers-button ruby. This action, which got about somehow, created the most intense excitement in the breast of every marriagable woman in the house except in the one pertain ing to Miss Fox-Seton. But the old woman whom she was visiting, like the old women in Grimms' fairy-tale-who send lovely girls out in the snow to pick strawberries, sent Miss Fox Seton eight miles of a hot afternoon, when she was tired out, to fetch a basket of fish for the dinner party which the vain old lady was going to