rHE COURIER.
V"
H
Library System." A little wooden
book-case with doors that lock secure
ly is made and stocked with twenty
live books. This case is placed in the
home of some child who wishes to be
"librarian," and who lives in the
densely populated or poor districts of
the city. Some society girl who wishes
to devote a part of her time to some
serious work is then selected to take
charge of this little library branch.
She comes o the house where the
books are kept once a week and un
locks the case and allows the little
hostess to distribute the books among
her friends. Then she reads to them
or plays games with them. The child
who acts as hostess invites only her
own friends to join her library circle,
for the laws of caste are nowhere so
inexorable as in Poverty Flat and any
social friction would be fatal to the
end ic view. When the host is a col
ored child the six or eight guests are
apt to be colored, and when the host
is a Jew the whole group is made up
of Jews. Eventually the children
thus Interested are apt to come to the
central or branch libraries.
So far the plan is certainly a good
one, but all kindergarten theorists
are apt to run to extremes. For some
reason or othar when people begin to
theorize about the training of the
youthful, whatever sense of humor
they may have had departs and they
recognize no restraint.
A new ruffle has been added to the
children's librarian's duties in the
shape of what is called the "story
hour." Children whose mothers have
little time, to give them are assembled
once a week and the librarian devotes
an hour to story-telling. To this plan
there could be no objection; but th
enthusiastic librarians have conceive
a gigantic plan of reducing all liter
ature to the kindergarten dimension.
They tell the story of the Trojan war,
omitting the story of Helen's elope
ment; the story of Faust expurgated
for the youthful mind, the story of
Napoleon's energy, maintaining a
careful silence as to his ambition.
In short; these enthusiastic libra
rians simply abolish the elements of
evil from literature for the benefit of
the "pure young mind." This would
be well enough if they could also ban
ish it from the world in which these
children must live, but it is doubtful
whether this milk-and-water train
ing will make much impression on
wise little Jewish girls whose backs
are bent with carrying babies ever
since they were old enough to stand
alone, or on negro boys who have just
helped to clean their father's razor
for a cake-walk.
I am not sure that the kindcrgar
tners have any particular right to re
write Homer and Virgil and Faust
and the Bible, even if they do it with
a lofty purpose. The thing only ges
back to that mistaken endeavor of
kindergartners to make study easy,
to make work play, to make duty in
clinationparadoxes which it fairly
staggers the mind to contemplate.
To keep from a child the knowledge
that the world is a hard place to live
in, and that he will have to do many
difficult and distasteful things before
begets through with it, is as disas
trous as to keep him out of the reach
of those childish diseases which arc
ten times as dangerous if contracted
when lie is older.
MMIIIIIIMIIMIIIMMIIIIMMMIX
Judge You eay the defendant turned
and whistled to the dog. What followed?
Intelligent Witness The dog, eor.
Tit Bite.
LBB3. I
l II it
MMIIIIIIHII
The New England building at the Pan
American exposition, a cut of which ap
pears in this week's issue of The Cour
ier, is the work of Josephine Wright
Chapman, architect, Boston, Massachusetts.
The Zetetic club of Weeping Water
has issued a neat year book and calen
dar, containing programs for the twenty-one
meetings of the coming year.
Organized in June, 1884, under the
motto, "Mutual Good Will and Mental
Growth," the Zetetic club now claims
nineteen members, with the following
officers: President, Mrs. L.Woodford;
vice president, Mrs. G. Girardet; secre
tary, Mrs. M. Hay; treasurer, Mrs. E.
Shannon.
The year will be devoted to the study
of modern English authors, the list
selected including Buskin, Tennyson,
Jean Ingelow, George Eliot, the Brown
ings, the two Arnolds, Mrs. Ward,
Charles Kingsley. Robert Lytton, Drum
mond and Dean Farrar, Sir Walter Bee
ant, William Black, Robert Louis Ste
venson, Rudyard Kipling, J. M. Barrie
and Marie Corelli. In addition to these
will bIbo be held an art meeting, a social
meeting, a business meeting and an eve
ning with the journalists and short
story writers.
The old home that sheltered the poet
Longfellow from his infancy to man
hood has recently become the posses
sion of two women's clubs of Portland,
Maine the Portland club and the Wo
man's Literary Union, the latter being a
federation of the various clubs of the
city.
The conditions of the gift are that the
dwelling shall remain unchanged, and
that a building suitable for a museum
and a library shall be erected in the
rear.
Mary Butler, a colored girl, carries the
mail from Uniontown, Fayette county,
Pennsylvania, to Jumonviile. a moun
tain settlement. During a blizzard in
the dead of winter before last, says the
Woman's Journal, the sub-contractor on
the route from Uniontown to Jumonviile,
thoroughly disgusted with the hard
ships he had to endure, and unable to
get any other person to take the work
under his name, threw up the contract.
Mary Butler was only eighteen years old
but she had courage and wanted the
$140 a year. She made application for
the position. She was not worried by
many rivals for the job, and in due time
got it. Since that time she has not
miesed a single day. Rain, snow, sleet,
heat and hail have no terrors for her.
She leaves Uniontown at three in the
afternoon and goes Bix miles to the top
of the mountain and back to Uniontown
the same evening, and then has a long
way to go to her own home. Sometimes
she drives and sometimes she walks.
The route which she covers is lonely and
difficult. She does the work of a man
and does it well.
, Gobang What is your objection to
divorce?
Eopeck It encourages matrimony.
Town Topics,
"Don't scatter your energies and don't
hurry too much," is the sensible advice
given by a leader of the Woman's Civic
league of St. Paul, Minnesota. "Where
ever possible do constructive work in
stead of destructive. Don't tind fault
publicly with the town officials and
don't undertake to reform them. Keep
after the thing you want, not after the
men. Arrange a meeting at a time when
the men can come and ask all your city
officials, the members of your common
Council, all your ministers, your chief
scribe and Pharisees leave nobody out
Let the authorities understand that the
organization ia formed for the purpose
of cooperating with them in their work.
By the use of a little tact it is often pos
sible to secure the cooperation of a bad
man in a good cause, and not infre
quently you will And that the man ia not
half so bad as you thought he was or
at the newspapers of the opposite party
Bay he in."
The youngest regular reporter on rec
ord is Mies Ethel Keener of Muncie,
Indiana. Beginning work on the Mun
cie Star when she was only thirteen
years of age, she was given the task of
gathering suburban notes, but soon was
transferred to the society work in the
city, and at the age of fourteen is the
regular society reporter of the paper.
She attends the high school, attending
to her newspaper work in the afternoon.
A pretty little modeler in clay and
marble has dawned on San Francisco.
She is Miss Sybil Unis Eastorday, a
sculptor.
On the top floor of an old five-story
building in Montgomery street, in the
Latin quarters of San Francisco, she has
her studio. She is a member of Bo
hemia, and quite an interesting figure in
the world of art.
Day after day Miss Easterday chisels,
molds and fashions portrait busts, fan
tastic groups, products of her own im
agination of life size statues, as her
muse wills, says the Kansas City Star.
It a stranger should by any chance gain
admittance he would see a graceful fig
ure clad in duck trousers, negligee shirt
and low cut shoes busily engaged in
working on a mysterious, partly draped
group in the best lighted corner of the
room.
The first thought would be, "What a
handsome, athletic boy!" t$ut a full
look at the face and a glance at the
waving mass of blue black hair would
reveal the fact that the possessor is a
beautiful young woman.
"You are wondering why I am disloyal
to the clothing of my sex and have
adopted male attire?" she said. "I only
wear this suit while working in my
studio, and I do it to be free and com
fortable. When I first commenced my
work I found that skirts hampered my
freedom. When the first barrel of plas
ter casts was brought into my studio
and the white powder left a trail along
the floor, when my tub of wet clay tipped
over and covered my skirts with sticky
substance, when I caught my heel in
the binding of my gown and tipped over
a frame, knocking down and breaking a
model which represented weeks of hard
work, my patience gave out and I de
termined to adopt and wear a practical
costume."
Her latest work, aside from the myste
rious group which is not nearly com
pleted, and the exact meaning and pur
pose of which the artist is cot ready to
explain, is a life-size figure of a woman.
"Reverie" ie the subject and the treat
ment is original, The figure is standing
erect, the curves are beautiful and true
and the face tells the story of conflict
ing emotions.
"I love this woman," the artist re
marked as she touched the figure caress
ingly. "I almost believe that some day
she will breathe, live, speak; at times I
can make her do all three. To me she
is not just a piece of marble."
When asked if those skulls upon the
wall meant anything, if they were any
thing more than more studies, she re
plied tersely, "Yes, shattered bopee,"
and then changed the subject.
Around the room are paintings of
flowers, which were done at ''Hopkins,"
when the sculptress thought she would
be a painter, before she learned that she
could realize her ambition of becoming a
maker of marble figures.
The studies in oil are also original.
They tell of the home life on the farm
and of the girlhood of the artist,
A glance into the past of this young
woman reveals some interesting facts.
She was born oh a farm about twenty
fire years ago, and from babyhood was
interesting, original and unusual. When
a child her chief amusement was to
make mud pies, only her pies, unliko
those of other children, developed into
the likenesses of animals and men. On
the days when there was no mud bIis
played indoors and her mother was often
horrified to find that the little girl had
delved into the butter tub to mold the
butter into the shapes of horses or cows,
or boys and girls. Later the girl began
to carve figures out of wood, and as she
grew older she developed ability in
painting and drawing.
Wheu she grew up there was an inter
esting collection of crude wood carvings
in her room at the Easterday farm house,
and there was no peace on the farm
until she had gained her parents' con
Bent to go to San Francisco for a courso
of art instruction. The Hopkins Art
institute there found in her one of its
cleverest pupils. On the farm she had
dabbled, too, in painting, and from un
der her paint brush there sprang yellow
haystacks and gray oaks with such crude
naturalness and realistic effect as to
make plodding illustrators stare. But
for her painting she did not care so much;
her passion was sculpture, and she
plunged into clay modeling and its ac
companying studies of anatomy with u
determination born of a great love for
the work.
As Bcon as she had mastered sufficient
technique to work independently, she
took her studio and shut herself up with
her work, and while the sun ehono no
one was admitted. Earnestness and
ambition kept her within four walls, and
the little art world of San Francisco had
almost forgotten her until it found her
work prominently placed in the Insti
tute of Art exhibitions. Since her art
studies have appeared at all the princi
pal art exhibitions and have been given
prominent positions.
The Twentieth Century Food company
has been in existence only eight months,
yet it already has proved a solution of
the problem of housekeeping to more
than a hundred families, and may be the
pioneer of cooperative housekeeping in
all parts of America.
Samuel H. Street, a manufacturer of
cereal, is the originator of the plan and
president of the company. Said Mr.
Street: "The id a wbb suggested to me
by the vast amount of money wasted in
the production of food. By that I do
not wholly mean the waste that feeds
the garbage pail, but the money that is
paid first to the producer, then the
wholesale dealer, then the retail mer
chant. After these comes the waste of a
hundred Sres being run to cook a meal
instead of one, a hundred cooks, where
six could do the work. Take the hun
dred or two of families we cater to today;
the mistress of each home can tell her
tale of woe. It deals with cookB whose
productions were not fit for healthful
living, of food thrown away and house
hold expenses running beyond the fam
ily income Some of these housewives'
today have dispensed with help. Toey
find it aBavingot money and patience.
We buy everything at the very lowest
prices, of the producer or the wholesale
man, and although we have our profits,
we can cater to the multitude so that
the cooked food in many instances costs
less than the raw product. Our deliv
ery wagons call at magnificent houses,
at modest homes, at apartments where
we aid in light housekeeping, and at
offices, business bouses and all sorts of
places where the human stomach has to
be stayed."
Piled in one corner of the room are
hundreds of zinc cans of different sizes,
each one double, with three inches of
space between the outside and the lin
ing. In tbe bottom of each is a "beat
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