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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 22, 1902)
THE COURIER I mob; I've never seen one that had a man in It. It has to tally up a hun dred against one before it can pump up enough pluck to tackle a sick tailor. It's made up of cowards, and so is the community that breeds it; and ninety nine times out of a hundred the sher iff's another one." He paused appar ently to turn that last idea over in his mind and taste the Juice of it then he went on: "The sheriff that lets a mob take a prisoner away from him Is the lowest-down coward there is. By the .statistics there was a hundred and eighty-two of them drawing sneak pay in America last year. By the way It's going, pretty soon there'll be a new disease in the doctor books sheriff complaint." That idea pleased him anyone could see it. "People will say, . Sheriff sick again? Yes, got the same old thing. And next there'll be a new title. People won't say. He's running for sheriff of Rapalio County, for in stance. They'll say. He's running for coward of Rapaho County. Lord, the idea of a grown-up person being afraid of a lynch mob!" Mr. Clemens discourses about the de tective, Sherlock Holmes myth as fol iows: "I know about detectives, on account of having them in the family; and if you don't want them to find out aboit a thing, it's best to have them around when you do it." A group of Conan Doyle fed miners is talklns about the celebrated detec tive who is visiting the town: "Look at that head!" said Ferguson, "By Gracious! that's a head." "You bet!" said the blacksmith, with deep reverence. "Look at his nose! look at his eyes! Intellect? Just a battery of it." "And that paleness," said Ham Sand wich. "Comes from thought that's what it comes from. Hell! Duffers like us don't know what real thought is." "No more we don't," said Ferguson. "What we take for thinking Is just blubber and slush." "Right you are, Wells Fargo. And look at that frown that's deep think ingaway down, down, forty fathom Into the bowels of things. He's on the track of something." "Well he is, and don't you forget it. Say look at that awful gravity look at that pallid solenmess there ain't" any corpse can lay over it." Now although there is no one else In America or any other country who can write like this there are men who talk like it, if we except the suddenness and unexpectedness of the characteriz ations and the Hashes of inspiration that bind Mr. Clemens' loosely con structed stories together. It is idle to predict immortality for any author. After us may come a race of giants for whom our literature and learning and wit will have only an antiquarian in terest; but so far as we have gone Mark Twain is unique. The vulgarity and the lack of literary flavor in his books are trilling compared with his truthfulness, his clear vision of that which is insincere and imitation, his great concept of the lives we live, the language we speak and oar stupid blindness. Time will produce another great satirist, but in two thousand years of literature, in all climes, there have been only four writers of Mr. Clemens' rank and effectiveness In sa tirical literature. School Ventilation It is no wonder that children speak of the end of a school session as "let ting out." Betwen the air of a school room containing forty or fifty children and their teacher, and the air of a penitentiary there is little to choose and the modicum is in favor of the latter. Children are neither fastidious nor discriminating, and after the first feelings of repulsion occasioned by their stomach's revolt against the air of the schoolrooms, they accept It as they do other unnecessarily severe ad juncts of education. The visitors to the Lincoln schools are unptesaantly conscious of the bad air. They have smelt and tasted nothing like it since their own school days. They had for gotten its horrors as they have other inevitable grievances of their youth. Children have no comparative under standing of what is right and what is not. That school stink composed of carbonic dioxide and other objection able gases and vapors 13 the most of fensive characteristic of a common school and university course. Clean students who loathe the school and university classroom atmosphereattrlb ute it to the dirty clothing and bodies of classmates not in their set and con clude that so long as the public school system makes no discrimination in the admission of pupils that the bad air is a necessity. The clean pupils do not realize that the bad smell is composed of exhalations from their own lungs and bodies as well as the contributions from their less fastidious schoolmates. Grown-up people have no constitu tional nor ethical nor merely Biblical rights to keep children in rooms which Smell like those in which the Lincoln school board pens the young genera tion. This board is doing no better and no worse than the boards which have preceded it in this regard, but when other public buildings have been built with modern ventilating devices, the new schools should show adequate at tempts at ventilation. It is said that the new building now being erected on the high school grounds is to be inade quately ventilated. The other new building on these. grounds, called mys teriously the "Administration," is a failure. In bad ventilation, bad acoustics, bad plumbing the "Admin istration building" is an example of the carelessness of school boards and their blindness to jobs. Unless the patrons whose money is building the new school Insist upon a change It Is likely that the closet system and ven tilation will not be much better than in the Administration building. Mrs. J. K. Miller has investigated the Ventilating arrangements in the schools of Lincoln and made a. careful report of the result of her study to Sorosis and to the Lotos club. She exonerates the school board from all blame tor the lack of breathable air in the school rooms of this city. Nobody in particu lar is to blame unless it be the mothers and fathers who have not visited the schools and do not know about the poisoned air their children are breath ing for five hours each school day. Mrs. Miller says that one child vitiates 2,000 cubic feet of air in one hour. A high school pupil vitiates 2,500 feet in an hour. "Tlie usual dimensions of school rooms in Lincoln are 2S by 31 by II which amounts to 13,32$ cubic feet of air. If there are sixty pupils, an un usually large school, the air will be unfit for breathing in seven minutes after they have entered the room. Some of the school rooms in this city are oc cupied by sixty pupils." Their lungs require 120,000 cubic feet of air every hour but they have never had it and at the present rate of progression to wards more sanitary conditions the boys and girls of a thousand years from now will still have to breathe a pestilential atmosphere during the hours when they are learning reading, writing and arithmetic. Mrs. Miller's report suggests that the patrons or the fathers and mothers of the children who are going to school now, visit the schools, investigate the conditions and communicate the result to the board. Mrs. Miller says that the lungs of the children who breathe the bad air of the schools five days in the week are enfeebled and" that when they are at tacked by some disease their vitality is already exhausted. The suggestion is made after some years of school vis itation and deserves the consideration of all parents. At Ai --& f" ff fS Der Kaiser und Christian Science Christian Science is "Eddyism" in Germany. "Science and Health" is selling there for twenty marks or five dollars. It is in accordance with the phenomena of human nature that an English text composed with small re gard to the laws of the English lang uage should be criticised by those who are not believers in the doctrines which the book teaches, especially as it is a small book and sells for five dollars; a profit to the author of about five hundred per cent. Perhaps the prop agandists who have started Christian Science plants In Germany have taken care to have the bad English trans lated Into good German so that cause for ridicule has been removed. But the price of the book remains the same and the Emperor has the bravery to call it robbery and to forbid "treat ment" by the C. S. doctors. The Kaiser Is like the boy who did not know how to shiver. An impos sibility stimulates him. Other men are afraid of failure. They urge some one else to light their battles, they go to see their favorite editor, and exhort him to sacrifice himself and his paper pro bono publico, or they write letters to the papers themselves under pseudonymlc names. But the Kaiser has never shivered and he welcomes horrors that other men run from and hide from. That delicious moment when the roots of the hair stiffen und hold the hair straight up from the scalp, when the blood leaves the heart empty and the llesh is as cold and pimply as the skin of a dressed goose, the Kaiser knows nothing about. It Is not becaus'e he Is brave. He does not know fear. Temperamentally he cannot apprehend It. He knows what Christian Science is, or rather what Christian Scientists say Christian Science is, anil as he is an observing man he has noticed what a determined, loyal, anxious-for-martyrdom denom ination or sect it is. Nevertheless he has issued an edict that Christian Scientists cannot be received at court, and has told the police not to allow them to hold public meetings. The Kaiser has prisons to put peo ple in who do not obey him. The Christian Scientists are not afraid of prisons or of lines and the zealous ones who have gone to Germany as mis sionaries long for martyrdom. They want to die on the battle-field. No mayor, nor governor, nor president in this country has been brave enough to do what the Kaiser has done, though many have been willing to hold some other champion's coat. The contest In Germany will be watched with interest both by those who believe that Mrs. Eddy's book is an interpretation of the Bible and by those who believe that it is not. v" fc- High "C" While Mrs. St. John, the chorister and solo soprano of the Methodist church at Middletown, New York, was rehearsing the choir in the Intlam matus from Stabat Mater, the music committee was present in the rear of the church. After a solo by the soprano a member of the committee called Mrs. St. John aside and told her that members of the congregation had tolerated her high "c's" just as long as they could and that she would please not sing them any more, inti mating that in the lower register her notes were pleasing and fully repaid the church what they cost It. Mrs. St. John Instantly piled up her music and dismissed the choir. Next day she resigned. Congregations can appreciate the dis comfort which must have preceded this desperate action on the part of the committee. Mrs. St. John doubt less possesses a canary soprano voice capable of reaching dizzy heights. But such a performance requires effort and does not harmonize with a church service. A church service should be a har monious whole. It Is not like a vaude ville where each performer tries to dazzle the audience and dos his turn irrespective of every other member of the company. People are supposed to go to church to praise God, to pray to Him and to get new inspiration that may be worked into conduct. Mrs. St. John's ambition to reach a certain note was harmless enough, only it had noth ing to do with religion or worship and the note itself is not especially musical. By repetition it got on the congrega tion's nerves. The music committee was consulted and probably upbraided. The committee attended a choir meet ing and just after the acrobatic so prano solo in the Stabat Mater, it was mad enough to speak to the soloist and tell her the congregation could not stand that any longer. Of course the details of this interiew and the vexations which preceded it have not been published. Hut to one who knows the ways of congregations, choirs and sopranos the details are easily constructed. The possession of a single bone of the megatherium Is enough for the scientist who knows the mammal scale to construct the whole animal. This climax In the af fairs of a. choir is nn open book to church-goers, who from the days of their early youth have had nothing else to do for two hours every Sunday but watch the choir and construct realistic dramas from the clues Its behavior has furnished. The Monorail For fifty years in Ann-rim the cur rent of population has been towards the towns. At the close of the nlne tenth century the movement towards the country began. Taken to his busi ness by fast suburban trains the city man preferred to live in the country with his children, where he could see the sky and be quieted by the grass and by field (lowers ami by all the as pects of nature that man can not pro duce and which are obscured and strangled by the presence of crowded humanity. Farm life has been made more social by the trolley car and by rural free delivery. Consequently the price of farm lands has risen. Another effect of the increasing popularity of agricul ture is apparent in the Increase In the number of students and the distin guished personelle of the faculties of agricultural colleges. A few years ago most of the undergraduates ignored the agricultural courses and those who registered for agriculture were con sidered hoeIessly jay. The change has been accomplished by the Improvements In transporta tion coupled with excessive urban tax ation. New York millionaires are mov ing to the country and the same ten dency lias begun In Chicago and In other large cities where the gang rule and the industrious pay whatever price it charges them. Eventually the in dustrious give up tlie unequal strife, and run. ' With the extension and cheapening of rates of the telephone and telegraph, with the lengthening of the trolley tracks into tlie coun try, the development of surburban life is likely to be the feature of the cen tury. Ground for the new one rail line be tween Liverpool and Manchester, thirty-four miles long, has just been brok en. A company with a capital of II million dollars is building it. Mr. F. B. Behr, a London engineer, describes the system in Everybody's Magazine thus; A trestle shaped like the letter "A," with an average height of four feet on level ground, will support the single rail on which the cars are to travel. They will be put astride of this rail and their momentum will supply most of tlie equilibrium. Guide rails on either side of the trestle will give the train its necessary support on curves or when overloaded on one side. On a monorail which Mr. Behr is now oper ating in Ireland some of the cars are ordinary railroad coaches bisected for a third of their depth by the tunnel in which the wheels are placed. Oth ers are petitioned into two long, nar row compartments. On this road steam locomotives are used, built Siamese-twin fashion, with one boiler on each side of the rail and the run ning gear between them. The rate of speed Is one hundred and ten miles an hour. If the system is successful it will be introduced here and a man can go from Chicago to tNew York In nine hours. Omaha would be less than half an hour from Lincoln, and San Francisco less than a day and a night, and Chicago morning papers would be delivered in Lincoln in the morning. The Liverpool-Manchester line is to be divided Into five blocks, each seven miles long. If the way is not clear the motive current can be cut off and the brakes applied automatically. Mr. Behr expects his train to attain full speed within two miles of the start ing point, and brakes will not be put