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THE COURIER
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BOOK REVIEWS
BY SARAH B. HARRIS
The Craftsman
GIMLET and chl"l, a new-venture
Its name is The Craftsman, hall
Ins from Eastwood, N.Y.,Iaunchl
the first of October. 1901. "Loner life
to the captain and the crew." The
literary freight of the Craftsman:
William Morris, some thoughts upon
his life, art and influence. William
Morris, his career as a socialist. The
firm of William Morris & Co., decora
tors. The opera of Patience and the
aesthetic movement. Two friends,
Morris and Burne Jones.
With the initial number of the
Craftsman the united crafts of East
wood, N. J., begin a work for which
they hope to gain the sympathy of a
wide public The new association la a
guild of cabinet makers, metal and
leather workers, which has been re
cently formed for the production of
household furnishings. The guild rises
upon thoe foundations into which the
genius of William Morris and Burne
Jones is built and the united crafts
will endeavor to extend the principles
established by Morris In both the ar
tistic and socialistic sense. They seek
to substitute the luxury of taste for
the luxury of costliness. They teach
that beauty does not Imply elaboration.
They employ only those forms and ma
terials which make for simplicity and
dignity of effect und they hope to unite
in one person the designer and the
workman.
Morris, the master, put this principle
In practice. He executed with his own
hands what his brain had conceived,
and his apprentices followed his ex
ample to the limit of their power.
Morris direct aim was to perfect the
art of the artisan. This aim the
United Crafts" declares is theirs also.
To make known their existence and ob
ject. The Craftsman, the monthly
periodical, has been established.
Its issues will be devoted to
the consideration of the rela
tion of art to labor, and to pleas for an
art developed by the people for the
people. The first number contains an
excellent likeness of the noble head and
face of Morris and eight illustrations
of furniture and rooms filled with the
simple, strong furniture such as Mor
ris made to last through generations.
The desks, chairs, sofas and tables are
parts of squares. They are simple in
line and many of the chairs and tables
are pegged together so that the
strength and simplicity of their con
struction is fully shown. There are no
whorls of decoration to afford baffling
caves of dust, no veneering, no slender
spindles to break at an unwary touch,
no spidery legs to be carefully avoided
by one's portly grandfather. The lines
are neat, strong, clean and above all,
secure. Such furniture Is a lesson in
sincerity and frankness and the lasting
and wearing qualities of these virtues.
The subconscious influence of furni
ture and the familiar objects of the
home upon a child Is being pointed out
by students of the department of child
culture. While the world of the child
is rmall and contains few objects and
while the mind of the child Is most
plastic and retains, after age has ob
scured the Impressions of middle life,
distinct recollections of youth, It Is
apparent that furniture which teaches
a It soon of sincerity, strength, and
simplicity plays no unimportant part
in the formation of standards of char
acter value.
The Old Town
Nebraska City is not the metropolis
of Nebraska, nor the cite where the
most business It done, but it Is one
of the oldest towns of the state, slt
unted on the Missouri, that slow
creeping shallow river that capricious
ly drops out of sight nnd reappears
again, that occupies a wider bed than
It can fill most of the year, so that in
the spring it can have room to stretch
when the melting snows broaden and
deepen It to more than four times Its
usual volume. Around Nebraska City
the land that is rolling swales in
other parts of the state is roughened
into hills gullied by the little streams
that hurry to the river and shaded by
bird-planted and hand-planted trees.
Nebraska City and Brownvllle are the
only towns in the state with a visible,
brooding past that a noisy, bustling
present does not Interrupt, overshadow
and dispute. Nebraska City has at
mosphere. Miss Bullock's prose poem
celebrating the beauty and charm of
the Old Town, has Just been repub
lished by the Morton Press of Ne
braska City. It is finely illustrated
with views of the town and country,
printed on heavily enameled paper
and bound in green and white with the
sign-post pointing the way to the Old
Town and the Jeering crows perched
upon it. This book with Miss Morton's
volume of poetry and William Reed
Dunroy's Corn-Tassels and Tumble
Weeds are the most picturesque and
soil-fragrant volumes yet published of
Nebraska. Two of these books have
been published In and celebrate Ne
braska City, showing that the atmos
phere is favorable to poetry and fer
tile reflection. People living In the
west are Just now looking about for
something distinctively western to
send their friends in the east. These
three volumes, by three Nebraska
poets are breezy as the plains; they
have the wide horizons of Nebraska
and the unfettered spirit of those who
settled here from old time. They are
fitting souvenirs of the land of shal
low water.
-
Rosalynde's Lovers
Rosalynde, Mr. Thompson's new
heroine, wears thin summer dresses
and suggests a dainty spring day filled
with whiffs of cherry and apple blos
soms, but she suggests just spring and
the odors and colors and freshness that
come into one's mind when the image
of sprinng occurs to It. Rosalynde Is
girlhood, but she lacks individualiza
tion. She can represent any good and
pretty girl, but she cannot readily be
identified with any girl of one's ac
quaintance. And her lovers are Just
young men. One has "curly short hair
with a glint of gold where the ends
turn up under the rim of his cap, and
his face has a Norwegian suggestion
In its fairness, strengthened somewhat
by a peculiar yet not uncomely for
ward thrust of his rather heavy chin,
which bore a rimpled yellow beard,
short, fine and not very thick, running
thence up to his ears; and his mus
taches but half veiled his mouth." The
other lover was dark. "Ills face was
of a dusky olive, while his eyes, hair
brows and mustache were nut-brown,
with a dark-yellowish gloom hovering
about them." This Is quite in the style
of the fortune-teller, who always tells
her young lady customer, after she has
crossed her palm with silver, that
there are two lovers disputing for her
favor, one dark and the other fair.
One a son of mystery, dark-browed
and gloomy, the other fair, a very
mother's son of Joy. These descriptions
will fit any dark and any fair young
man, so the fortune-teller Is perfectly
safe Most any girl knows two young
men of contrasting complexions who
are potentially her lovers. Mr. Thomp
son's use of the word mustaches for
the ornament of one young man's
countenance and mustache to describe
the over-lip decoration of the other is
puzzling. There Is probably a differ
ence which escapes the interpretation
of a feminine reader or reviewer.
It is by no means a bad quality, this
of universality, but I think Mr.
Thompson wrote this story some time
ago, before the success of Alice of Old
Vlncennes. Alice was a nice young girl,
too, but she was of a more distinct
type; she was of the variety piquant
and saucy. One might not recognize
her In a. rencontre, but the least ana
lytic gentleman would recognize her
type. Rosalynde belongs Just to the
young girl variety; there is nothing in
what Mr. Thompson tells us to distin
guished her or help us to classify her.
And. this Is an age of analysis wherein
those who read books are accustomed
to be given the parts. Then they can
do the rest of the work and press the
specimen into the volume and the page
of the herbarium where It belongs.
Notwithstanding that Rosalynde's
Lovers Is distinctly not so clever a
book as Alice of Old Vincennes, it Is a
pleasant love story and ends as it.
should. The dreams of young girls
and of young men have no especially
literary flavor. The girl. If she hap
pens to be fair, dreams of a dark
young man, but she could not describe
him any more definitely or satisfacto
rily. She would not know him herself
should she meet him, although she Is
always looking for him. He is dark
and young and strong and chivalrous
and wealthy. Sometimes she Imagines
him painting pictures, sometimes he
has a melting tenor voice and some
times he plays the piano like Pade
rewski. The halo of her own desire
and Imagination dazzles her eyes so
that she never sees his features nor
could she describe his clothes If It
should become necessary. Thus Mr.
Thompson. His hero will be plain
enough to the girls who read his story,
and Rosalynde Is sufficiently identified
to the young men. For she was
"brown-haired, brown-eyed, berry
lipped, she had a bright and lissome
figure and she flitted to and fro tilling
the air with a suggestion of heliotrope
and violet." What unattached young
man whose dreams of women have not
crystallized Into the face and figure of
her who Is to be his legal mate would
not be satisfied with this description?
The story Is as Innocuous as a bunch
of heliotrope. It is doubtless a pleas
ure to Mr. Thompson to reflect that
the young man who reads It will say
to himself, "My girl," and every young
girl will say of Breyton, who had all
the virtues and had besides an In
come of half a million dollars a year,
"I am going to marry a man like that."
The book is bound in grey linen.
Issued by the Bowen-Merrill Co., of In
dianapolis, and is profusely illustrated
with etchings and half-tones by G. Al-
den Pelrson.
Little Mm
To bend above the pages which ab
sorbed one as a child and to find the
charm fled Is an uncomfortable ex
perience. It discredits the standards
of our childhood and lowers confidence
In our contemporary judgment a
most unfortunate consequence of disil
lusionment. Little Men, Little Women and An
Old-Fashioned Girl have illuminated
the childhood of many little girls, and
thousands, grown-up, have read the
stories to their own children. To have
one's Juvenile judgment confirmed by
one's mature Judgment and by one's
children, too. is flattering to the author
whose works are being tried by such
widely different standards.
Miss Alcott's books have been tested
thus and the verdict Is still favorable.
The new editions of these old favorites
have been given to the children of the
little girls who read about Demi and
Daisy, about Laurie, Jo, Beth, Amy
and Mr. Bhaer. And as the mother or
aunt reads the Christmas present to
the children she recalls her own child
hood and in its most exciting incidents
the children share. An old book, in a
new edition, has the charm of the old
and the new. The old book, besides
telling its own story, is lnextrlcabFy
tangled with the life of many lives.
The new edition of Little Men Issued
by Little, Brown & Co., is printed in
large type and Illustrated by Mr. Reg
inald D. Birch, who first won a de
served popularity by his pictures of
Little Lord Fauntleroy and by his
work on the pages of St. Nicholas.
DR. BENJ. F, BAILEY,
Residence, Sanatorium. TeL617
At office, 2 to 1, and Sundays, 12 to 1 p i
DR. MAY L. PLANA' x,
Residence, 821 So. Hth. T- a
At office, 10 to 12 a.m.; 4 to -Sundays,
4 to 4:30 p. m
Office, Zehrung Block, 141 So. 12tn. t. ii
DR. J. B. TRICKEY.
Practicing Optician
OFFICE, 1035 O STREET
Hours, 9 to 12 a. m.; 2 to 4 p m
LOUIS X. WEXTE, D. D
OFFICE, BOOMS 28, 27, 1, BROWN EI. L
BLOCK,
137 South Eleventh street.
Telephone, Office, 530.
DR. RUTH 3L WOOD
612 SOUTH SIXTEENTH STREET.
Phone L1042.
Hours, 10 to 12 a. m.; 2 to 4 p. m.
M. B. Jvetchum, M.D., Phar D.
Practice limited to EYE. EAR. NfiSE.
THROAT, CATARRH, AND FITTINi,
SPECTACLES. Phone 848.
Hours, 9 to 5; Sunday, I to 250.
Rooms 313-314 Third Floor Richards
Block, Lincoln, Neb.
J. R. HAGGARD, 3T. D
LINCOLN, NEB.
Office, 1100 O street Rooms 212, 213. ill.
Richards Block; Telephone 535
Residence, 1310 G street; Telephone K9M
Prof. E. L, Richcson, "
Academy, lastractor of Dancing
1133 X b . Residence, 904 K St
Member Normal School Acscxrn of Master
of Dancing, Supervisor of Nebraska. Ordeit
taken for Music. Beginners' class opv
Wednesday, December 4.
"KXl-r. T Inn'.nmt t Studio, KOOffi 'J
MlSS LippinCOtt t BrowneU Blot i
Lessons in Drawing, Paint.ng
Wood Carring. Improved hina
Kiln, China decorated or flr-ti
Stndlo open Monday .Tuesday.
Thursday .and Friday afternoon
2 to 5 o'clock. Saturday mora-
lngsStolZ
r
A Wise
Landlord
Gets the best talent that can be secured
in placing his order for inside decora
tions for his houses. He desires the
best material used, and something t'at
will stand the wear and tear of 1 1
tenant. My experience of twei ty
eight years has taught me how, when.
nnrl TrTioi-i tn nci Mnnnmr Mv DneeS
are reasonable. Estimates cheeriVly (j J
furnished.
Carl Myrer,
2612 Q. Street.
Phone i2;2
THE.
First National Bank
OF LINCOLN, NEBRASKA
Capital l200.000.tW
Surplus and Profits, . 54.253.0s
Deposits, 2.4S0.252.13
S. H. Bubnham, A. J. Sawyer,
President Vice-Pre-idei
H. S. Fbeeman, Cashier.
H. B. Evans, Feank Pabks.
Ass't Cashier. Ass't Cashier
United States Depositor
-2S