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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 15, 1902)
THE COURIER 3 the rear seats in the gallery. In liter ature she belongs to the school or Dickens. Dickens calls attention to the subjects he intends you shall cry over by turning his back and loudly sobbing while he drags Little Nell or tiie orphan Copperlleld forward. Tills action hardens the hearts. The most emotional audience will not cry to order. In the days that woman fainted, cried and screamed when any one of a hun dred accidents happened, .Miss .Morris would have satisfied the public. The new woman is hard-headed. The ath letic girl with the muscles of a cat is not easily frightened and hysterics are no longer common. Women are ashamed of tears and the great streams which used to How have been checked by the practice of self-control, and by out-door sports. The contemporary woman no longer expresses emotion as Clara Morris expresses it. Allowing for dramatic exaggeration, the picture is still so highly colored that there is no place for her on the stage. Time was, not many years ago, when she answered the definition of a great emotional actress, expressing by tears, shrieks, fainting spells and shudder ings, grief, pain, disappointment, anger, et cetera. Nothing was left for the imagination or for the constructive in stinct of the audience. We have grown sophisticated. The modern actor hints things, the audience leaps to his sug gestion; It Is antiphonal. Miss Morris does all the work herself, and in her last seasons upon the stage her audience watched her demonstrations as coldly as Nero watched the con tortions of the men upon whom he tried his poisons. On the other hand, when lecturers are a drug on the market. Miss Morris' lectures are crowded. She is an in teresting woman, and as she tells it, the story of her life Is fascinating. The Ancient Mariner had to hold on to his auditors or fasten them with his eye. Miss Morris uses no extraneous means to keep the audience in their seats, and a lecturer who can talk to a blase audience for an hour and a half without resorting to hypnosis or an anesthetic is extraordinarily gift ed. Her lecture was well composefl, pathos and humor were contrasted directly, but not abruptly; her transi tions are worthy of a veteran profes sional story-teller. From introduction to epilogue there is not a moment wherein the listener anticipates the end or wishes for it. Hers is like no lec ture I ever heard before. It Is original, but that is not it. It is vivid, but that Is not It. It is also a trille hysteri cal. She makes a personal appeal. She deprecates a critical attitude. Her lecture is more properly a recital. No one else could deliver it with the same effect, though the emotional fervor she expends In uttering it is superfluous, according to preconceived definitions of lectures. Her recital is the essence of herself and that is the charm of it. After having seen Clara Morris in Camille or as Miss Moulton there Is no critic on earth so fatuous as to believe that any criticism or demonstration of the falsity of her method could change Miss Morris' acting. Ideas, experi ences, virtues, sins are translated by her immediately into emotions and thus expressed. Whatever the vogue is now, h?r expression of life was fixed when she was born. When her acting ceased to be a truthful stage picture of the characters and manners of the modern women, they ceased to please, and the actress lost popularity. She has the same power and the same method she had in the days when she could change an opera house Into a house of mourning. But we have grown stoical and we do not weep in public any more. A primitive people or the unsophisti cated members of an old race are proud of their attainments, and they under estimate the progress attained by other races. Youth Is egotism. Knowing little of the world, the undergraduate fancies that he has traversed the circle and if he learns anything after grad uation, he thinks he will have to dis cover a new branch of knowledge. The youth Is the centre of his system. Other people are subsidiary and un necessary. He is voluble concerning his emotions, his troubles and his aches. He feels that the world Is cramped and thai he is really too big for it. With all her talents and with her tolerably long experience of life. 'l.ra Morris is essentially young. She Is the centre of her system. Her emotions are primitive and she expresses them primitively. She has had a wide ex perience but it has not modified the original Clara. She is as intense and positive, as assured of her own inspira tion as when she began her remarkable career. Rosa Bonheur was a great painter, but she posed her animals. After awhile her lions posed for her without suggestion and they will .-tliy posed for all time. Miss Morris Is a posetise. Her artificiality is natural. At -H -.i High School Athletics Among the occasional types of the next iiarter of a century will be the wan. nervous little school girl. Phys ical culture is making flabby muscles firm and elastic. The conscientious little girls, nervous about examinations, are acquiring poise, repose and self-control through the development of classes in physical culture. Girls need the course in physical culture more than boys. The latter are Irrepressibly active and their clothes do not hamper their move ments as the draperies worn by girls do. It is said by students of anthro pometric statistics that the American young woman is the tallest, strongest, ablest woman in the world. She Is not so tall as the Gibson woman, who, measured by the furniture with which the artist considerately surrounds her, is nearly seven feet high. Hut the well-bred American girl of eighteen and twenty is a magnificent creature. The sorrowful thing about her is that some how the duties and responsibilities of her sex seem to age her rapidly and in the fullness of life, when she should be blooming in the fragrance of ma tured womanhood, she droops. Is in clined to nag, and for relief takes one after another of the profusely adver tised nostrums. She lacks fibre. School girls in the seventh, eighth and high school grades are on the bor derlands. Most of these girls no longer climb trees, play pull-away or run races, and yet this is the time of times when they should be exercising their bodies. They are not old enough for golf or for the out-of-door sports which in the last twenty years have become popular with young ladies. Girls of this age are apt to be morbid, to spend their leisure in reading unwholesome love stoties and in dreaming of an im possible future. They are inclined to think too much of themselves and to magnify their troubles. The tendency of education at this period particularly should be wholly objective. Play with their schoolmates and friends of their own age leaves neither time nor ener gy for vain imaginatings. The strenu ous concentration of basket-ball makes Mrs. Holmes and "The Duchess" look like thirty cents. Of all the developments of the public school regime in the last twenty years nothing is working so much good to this generation and the next as the courses in physical culture, especially as applied to girls. And the girls in the grades and the high school need it more than the older girls in the uni versity who dance, walk and do a small amount of housework occasion ally. The thin, undeveloped bodies of the little girls need the intelligent exer cise of a carefully educated physical director. Nothing that the girls can learn from books is of so much im portance to them and to their futuie as strength, and knowledge and skill to use their bodies. Miss Spurck, the physical director of the Lincoln schools, studies the girls who are In her gymnasium classes and a few years under her training corrects spines and shoulders deflected from normal lines. The late ex hibition of the gymnasium classes of the high school and the seventh and eighth grades was a pupils' recital. Many of the girls were slender and very far from the developed Ideal of perfect womanhood. But their preci sion in drill and quickness and good Judgment In the games promise a fu ture of health and usefulness. The need of a gymnasium is urgent. Without it progress Is hampered and only those children can take the exer cise v.lio can pay for It. The public is not aware of what has been accom plished and of what the poorer little girls are deprived. A few dollars spent now in the transition period will surely aid in making strong women. No one who has paid any attention to the conversations of women when they meet on the street or in drawing rooms, has failed to be struck by the monotony of the subjects treated. Servants come first. If that subject Is ever disposed of, ailments of various kinds come next. Few of the house keepers of Lincoln were trained to use the muscles and strength latent in every organism. Few have attained tiie possibilities of existence and many are hopeless Invalids because they did not lay up strength In the days of their youth, but spent their play-time reading Mrs. Holmes. "The Duchess," and other futile authors. The gym nasium is not a fad. but the most en lightened necessity. That way health, religion, morality, symmetrical devel opment lies. The Primaries Kvery voter interested In the pros perity of the city should take pains to Investigate the records of the coun cilmen who ask him to sign their peti tions for candidacy. It Is of no vital significance what party they belong to, but it is of immediate and per sonal interest to every voter whether the man who wants to be a council man has demonstrated that he Is cap able of joining In the deliberations of the council with an unprejudiced mind and forms his conclusions by consider ations based on business and is unin fluenced by spite against the mayor or by any other Irrelevant motive. Not to oblige a neighbor should the honest man Ignorantly sign a petition. Many of the councihnen have repeatedly demonstrated their unfitness for places in the city council. The objectionable minority have been kept from wreak ing their vengeance on the citizens who had the bad judgment to elect them by a bare majority of good business men in the council. This majority is threat ened by the approaching election. If the gang succeed in its plans, the mayor will be no obstacle to plunder. Their strength will be sufficient to cairy any measure over his veto. Their desire for re-election is purely personal and selfish. They have re peatedly shown their indifference to the welfare of the city. The time is approaching when the citizens can show them how their services are re garded. The only danger is that busy men will not take the time to inves tigate and that the candidates will be re-elected by default. Judge Comstock has made Hie office of police judge honorable. He has kept the records of his office perfectly and the depraved of the city have come into contact in the impressive moments of their appearance before the judge witli a conscientious gentleman who has en deavored to deal as mercifully with them as justice allows. He has refused to hold the office longer. During ills incumbency the city ha3 had the serv ices of an upright, able lawyer who has tried the miserable offenders brought before him with patience and an unquenched desire to do justice. His successor should be a man of the same convictions and practice. .? - fC r? " Treatment of Anarchists Anarchists believe and teach that the conventions by which members of a community have agreed to abide are Inexpedient and have a tendency to dwarf the sovereignty which they be lieve inheres in each individual. There is a fascinating quality in the idea of perfect independence and freedom. Boys, luxuriously clothed, fed and lodged, dream of a life on the plains or on board ship, and the character istic of a life on the sea or the plains which enraptures them is its freedom. Coarse fare and clothes and an unwholesome, dirty place to sleep do not lessen the attract heness of the visions boys see. Occa sionally a boy runs away and the dlf ference between what he is able lo buy for himself and what his father has furnished him sometimes brings him home again. There are others who still prefer freedom, and In spite of un accustomed hardship do not return to the mothers and fathers who have dls ciplined them. This tenacious love of freedom for its own sake grows less and less exact ing as the boy adjusts his muscles l the weight of responsibility. Never theless the assassins of kings and rul ers are young men who die bravely de claring that their execution and the hatred of nil but anarchists are of no consequence. They are ready and will ing to die If their death exprex a protest against all human govern ment which they sincerely believe Is bad. All the assassins are young. The old rascals are cautious. Mr. Henry Holt, in the current number of "The IJevlew of Ueviews," advises a new treatment of anarchists. The govern ment must take them at their word. They say government is bad. and ex hort converts to resist It. Therefore 01 -ganized society can put the anarchists outside tiie operation of the law. If he attacks persons or property society can protect itself against htm: but If his own property or person is attacked he can not have recourse to tin- law or any of the legal conventions which men have adopted in tile course of centuries to protect what thy call their rights and insure to each individual his inalienable liberty. Hoodlums can kill the anarchist or deprive him of his property. In the bill pro posed by Mr. Holt, for the anarchist, there are no courts and no policemen, no soldiers, no governor, no president. His life and his property are only safe so long as he protects them unaided by the institutions of society. In a way tills amounts to the same thing as tiie isolation of anarchists on a desert island; but it is much more practical. The parts of Mr. Holt's scheme are: Kxclusion of immigrants of a owed anarchistic sentiments. "And I would exclude Kropotkin and Tolstoy more carefully than 'Jerry the Iteil.' " Sec ondly, taking the anarchist at his word obliterating his relation to the gov ernment so far as permitted by his un avoidable use of government facilities and by his power of self-defense, which power involves the reciprocal power of defense against him. Thirdly, the ex ile of all persons whom the withdrawal of government protection lias not taught the beneficence of law. Fourth ly: The exiled anarchist who returns shall be Imprisoned for life. Fifthly. For the anarchist assassin (and he is as much tiie assassin if he tries and fails, as if lie succeeds), the asylum. President Itoosevelt suggests in hi., message that anarchism be made an offense against the law of nations like piracy and the slave trade. Senators Hoar and McComas have introduced hills making the profession of anarchy punishable by exclusion, two perfe tly natural consequences of a declaration of hostilities upon organized society Why warm and harlxir vipers in tie breast when the viper's business Is to bite, and the only difficulty in his way is tiie difficulty of getting near enough the flesh to bite It? The moment .1 man or woman publicly declares that organized society is all wrong and ad vises men and women to destroy it that moment he should be arrested anil tried. All that the jury has to do is to discover if lie said what he has been arrested for saying. If he said it and is teaching the tenets of anarchism, the jury will so find. The law, accord ing to Mr. Holt, should sentence him to an existence without appeal to the pro tection which it affords the humble-t northern citizen. This is better than killing the professor of anarchy, be cause if he Is young enough to le.u 11 and sincere enough the punishment 1 educational. It Is the strongest con ceivable object lesson of the blessings of law and the dangers, discomforts and exasper.itions of anar. hj. Another man. or discorer has ad ocatcd the same treatment of ,inar hj. in the London Times. Isolation on an
