THE COURIER
OBSERVATIONS
BY SARAH B. HARRIS
A Man and His Son
A man with a comfortable Income
may drink and drink immoderately for
years, and except for a lessening of the
respect shown him at the club, on the
street and in society, neither he nor
his family will suffer the diminutions
of intemperance. On the other hand
the laboring man who spends a tenth
or a fifth of his daily wage for liquor
deprives his family and himself of some
of the things known as the necessaries
of life. His earning capacity Is slowly
but certainly affected by the liquor he
drinks. If he is a skilled laborer and
his wage Is based upon the delicacy
and cleverness of his fingers, whiskey
makes them tremble and his deftness
becomes awkwardness; his wages are
reduced because the product of his la
bor and talent Is no longer of the first
quality.
Hunger and cold and unattended
sickness wait Just around the corner
for the day-laborer who drinks. Be
tween the man of securely-established
Income and hunger and cold there is
long time and the friends of better
days. His sentence is just as sure of
execution as the poor man's sentence;
but he is reprieved again and again by
friends and circumstances. Before the
wolf can sink his fangs in the flesh of
a rich man he must break down bar
riers of custom and ramparts laid by
friendly hands. The poor man has
friends, too; but they do not stand
shoulder to shoulder to resist the pres
sure of the class below them. If a rich
man does anything disgraceful his
friends plead with the men and women
he has injured to let him off. For the
"sake of his "wife and his children, fo?
the sake of the name which so
ciety has said is honorable, and
which innocent children Inherit,
his creditors are implored not to
prosecute him. When a poor man
takes what does not belong to him he
is called a thief. Embezzler sounds
politer, but for a thief who has no po
sition In society, for one who is not
supported by the crowding shoulders
of a class, we do not take the trouble
of three syllables. He Is a thief and
his road to the penitentiary is unin
cumbered by the solicitations of a
class.
In the play of The Climbers the hus
band of a good woman and the father
of a young son is a thief, a born thief,
who began his career at school. First
he stole his wife's money and then he
Btole other trust monies. And besides
he is a coward. Some criminals have
the courage of their business. Burglars
have a certain kind of courage and a
kind of pride in their own proficiency
and dare-devilishness. Many burglars
who consider that they stand at the
head of their profession in this coun
try relate their crimes with poorly
concealed exultation when they are
finally sentenced to a long term in the
penitentiary. But this man when he
was caught was so big a coward that
he tried to run away and had to have
the electricity turned off before he
could stop lying and protesting his in
nocence to people whom he knew were
aware of his guilt. Well, when his
crimes were completely disclosed and
every listener knows that he has heard
the confession of a born thief who will
steal as long as he is allowed to live,
all his friends begin to plead for his
immunity from punishment. The es
cape of such a man from human pun
ishment of his crimes because of high
connections Is one reason why the poor
laugh at law and conclude that it is a
matter of money and not of the degree
of crime.
But it is not immunity from punish
ment that produces the highest types.
The laboring men of Lincoln are in the
way of becoming a more temperate,
more courageously and consistently
moral class than the doctors, lawyers,
bankers and merchants of Lincoln.
Among themselves and unnoted by
men of affairs they have talked over
the question of saloons and determined
that they must be exterminated. They
do not believe that they can stop liquor
selling or liquor drinking; but with
high courage and confidence in their
own united efforts and Influence, they
believe that they can force the adop
tion of a plan which will close the
doors of saloons where the respectable
class meets the law-breaking class on
the same plane.
As it is at present, the youth of tills
educational centre are not ashamed to
go into a place where the most re
spected citizens are met to drink and
treat and be sociable. If we are not
our brother's keeper the most hardened
and selfish will not deny that the ma
ture have charge of the young, the
father of his boy. The saloon Is an In
stitution which is approved and li
censed by the mature. It is a lure to
the young. Good citizens, by common
consent, go in and out of the saloon in
the sight of the young. The older ones
practically say to the youngsters:
"This is a respectable place. It Is
where we get our dally drams, it is a
beneficent institution which supports
the schools, and you are taught that
the public schools are the bulwarks of
American constitutional government."
American youth are quick-witted.
The fathers of the boys do not need to
furnish their sons with anything more
forcible than the paternal example. If
the fathers consider the saloons a nec
essary Institution of the city and make
use of them, the mother who has
taught her sons that their father Is a
noble man and a safe guide has the
ground cut from beneath her feet.
However fond, and chivalrous the boys,
rightfully their ideal is manhood. The
bright boys, have quickly learned the
current view of woman. They think
her very desirable as a, housewife, to
get their dinners and mend and wash
their clothes: but when it comes to
practical living, life as it is among
men, of course the mother Is not good
authority. If the bread-winner is re
vered and respected as he should be,
he is the pattern that his son copies
and should copy. If he Is a habitue of
saloons, the mother's remonstrances
are tolerated when the son becomes a
regular saloon visitor; but from the
point of view of the son as an under
study to his father, her views are
prejudiced and womanish. The boy
who has begun to visit the saloons
earlier than his father never reaches
his father's stature of usefulness and
dignity.
The saloon tempts a boy where he 13
most vulnerable: his fear of ridicule
and his liking for the society of his
own sex and age. Whiskey is an ac
quired habit. Gregariousness, love of
popularity and dread of ridicule are an
inheritance from the most ancient of
ancestors. When one youth says to
a group of his comrades, "Have this
with me," it is conventional for every
youth to be host and guest In turn.
Every boy's father has been in the
same situation and the boys have ob
served their fathers' generosity and
acceptance of the old custom. Almost
before they know it the boys are
drunk and noisy and quarrelsome and
have started on a lifelong career" of
uselessness and of absolute social and
economic bankruptcy.
j j ji
s- V
Frank Stockoa
There are authors whose books we
read and admire without feeling the
slightest desire to know the men who
wrote them. There are other authors
we hone to know, after reading their
stories. Heaven is a place not paved
with gold and entered through gates of
pearl hung on gqld hinges with dia
monds for knobs. Gold, diamonds,
cats-eyes and opals are not food to the
spirit. They are principally of value
on the earth because only a few pos
sess them and their ownership confers
a kind of distinction. Lincoln womei.
go to Omaha to get print dresses anJ
other kinds because they do not wish
to meet the same pattern pn the street
or be met by a woman who has a gown
of the same pattern at home. There Is
some excuse for this. By the same
token it is the naif custom of our mer
chants to buy the same pattern In all
shades and by the five hundred yards.
The feminine desire for exclusive
weaves and patterns is unrecognized,
or at least It is ignored and the wo
man who can, goes to Omaha or the
next largest city within reach of her
purse In order to satisfy a want to
which the dry-goods merchants are In
different. The grocer's . wife or the
banker's wife will continue tc patronize
Omaha shops in spite of the reciprocal
relations of the grocer and the banker
because the local merchants ignore the
universal longing for distinction of
however trifling a sort.
The desire for association with rare
spirits is the desire for distinction, for
a view just a little bit above the heads
of .the multitude, for isolation from the
vast herd of seventy-five million peo
ple who now occupy the plains and
wooded uplands of America in place of
the buffalo and mountain lions which
we have exterminated. Hundreds have
felt while reading Frank Stockton the
desire to know him. He could find a
pearl in nearly every oyster he exam
ined. ' He was not looking for rare
types but for the native nobility of
every human being. It Is his quality
of recognition that made the common
place man and woman, still conscious
of a jewel concealed, long to know
him, to come within the rays of the
kindly light of his spirit. His lips
were touched with a coal from the
hearth of a god. It glowed again 'with
a human warmth. Kipling 'is of the
elect, but who of those who have read
his camp poetry, his tales of Simla and
of his own boyhood at school wish to
know him personally? He is of the
elect, but his point of view is the pdlnt
of view of a reporter who would not
hesitate to make a good "story" out of
his own grandmother's misfortune.
Frank Stockton was not so great a
writer as Kipling, but his reserve and
gentleness have made him perhaps the
best-beloved American author. His
humor is of the sort that everyone en
joys. He does not make a butt of this
one or that one. Kipling's humor is
coarser fibred. He is a practical joker
and enjoys another's discomfiture. And
the man with no sense of humor what
ever is further along in the course of
evolution than the man who plays
practical jokes.
Frank Stockton was not an effusive.
Insistent democrat; but he loved the
finely composed temperaments and
minds of what we call the common
people. His heroes and heroines do not
wear purple and fine linen; they are
men and women of courage, reserve
force and resource in extremity. With
out saying anything about the abstract
virtues, his heroes and heroines are
chaste, honest, brave, loyal, modest,
unself conscious. And in the homely
clothes that most of us wear, meeting
the emergencies of life that all are
called upon to face and overcome or be
conquered by, his men and women are
stimulating examples of how to live
and make the world better foe our
lives.
It was when he wrote "The Lady
or the Tiger," ten or fifteen years ago,
that the world began to talk about
him; but long before that lovers of the
good short story, of the virile and the
wholesome, of the indescribable gen
tleness that was his, knew Frank
Stockton and gave the preference to
his stories in the magazines. Greater
writers have passed away in the last
decade, but none more truly regretted
or with a wider and fonder circle of
readers than Frank Stockton.
In literary merit. In fresh and orig-
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