Elia Peattie articles from Omaha World-Herald

NO DISTINCTION AS TO COLOR

Chicago Woman's Club Abolishes the Prohibitory Rule at Its Last Meeting.

Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson Scores Her Associates for Evincing a Lack of Moral Courage.

Action May Cause a Split in the Federation--What Has Been Done in the City of Omaha.

The color line is down in the Chicago Woman's club.

Early last winter, Mrs. Fannie Barrier Williams, a well-known and much esteemed colored woman, applied for membership in the club, and was refused. Since then the color question has arisen again and again, till it had to be fairly faced. No palliation or compromise could keep it out of sight. The compromise was tried, however. It consisted of an amendment to the by laws as follows:

The qualification for membership shall be character, intelligence and reciprocal advantage of membership to the club and to the individual.

It shall be the duty of those proposing candidates for membership, as well as of the committee on membership, to consider the reciprocal advantage of membership to club and the individual.

The committee on membership shall vote upon candidates by ballot. Three negative votes shall prevent the favorable two-thirds vote by ballot of the board of managers shall be required to elect to membership in the club.

DR. STEVENSON'S VIEWS.

It was thought by those who wished to be agreeable, and to sit comfortably on the fence, that the reciprocal advantage" requirement would amicably settle the matter. The move to admit the colored woman could be killed painlessly. It would simply be decided in the event of the proposal of a name of any negress, that the advantage would not be reciprocal. This weak amendment might have carried, had not Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson arisen to announce her principles. Many who heard her, declared that her speech was the strongest effort ever heard by them from man or woman. Dr. Stevenson is an emphatic woman, with a deep nature, positive opinions, natural and unpretentious eloquence, and absolute bravery. She told the women what she thought of the club which professed to speak for the highest achievement of womankind and yet lacked the moral courage to declare explicitly for equal opportunities for her sex. The women were swept along by her impassioned eloquence. An unconditional amendment was offered to the constitution. It reads:

Membership shall be conditioned on character and intelligence without regard to race, color, creed or politics.

It went by an overwhelming majority.

Dr. Stevenson had thrown her searchlight into the hearts of the women. They were ashamed of what they had seen there--ashamed of the motives that had prompted them to oppose the admission of any woman, because of the accident of race.

But the club, it must be remembered, has fought only a small part of the battle. It is one of the largest and most valued clubs in the general federation of clubs, an organization numbering at present nearly 75,000 women. No club can remain in the federation which does not have a constitution conforming to that of the federation. The Chicago club will be forced to carry the federation with it, or, in course of time, in all probability to leave the federation.

MAY SPLIT THE FEDERATION.

It may easily happen that this action will cause a split in the federation. Many southern clubs belong to the federation, and it was a matter of much comment at the last biennial meeting of the federation, that the southern women were among the most scholarly, influential and charming in the assembly. Some of these women have risen to an intellectual plane which leaves all race distinctions far in the background. Some of them never, at any time, would have done anything toward retarding the development of any woman, though her skin were black as tar. But these exceptional women can hardly be expected to carry with them the sentiments of their clubs, nor can they break down the sad old prejudice which shadows the south. One has not, however, any disposition to accuse the southern clubs in advance. If the truth of the matter were known, the opposition would be strong right here in Omaha, to any proposal to admit women to membership. Some time ago the matter was brought up in the board of directors of the Omaha Woman's club. There was not a dissenting voice there, be it said to the credit of that body of sixteen representative women. But there was a decided feeling that it would be better if the question were not brought before the club for some time to come, and until a stronger esprit de corps was established. The question was proposed to the board, apropos of Mrs. Mahammit, a young and beautiful colored woman of good education, and honest intellectual ambitions. Mrs. Mahammit showed singular good sense. Rather than engulf the club in difficulty of any sort, she started a club among her own race, and has led that society of women along pleasant fields of study. Not long ago, as president of the Omaha Colored Woman's club she was invited to address the 500 members of the Woman's club. This she did with singular modesty, propriety of language, and good sense, and met with the warmest applause. So far, and no further have the women got on the color question in this city.

IN THIS CITY.

There are those in this city who feel that the club loses much by not including in its membership such women as Mrs. Mahammit, Mrs. Pryor, Miss Lucy Gamble, and others. The strong and assertive intellect of these women, their good taste and sweetness of disposition would be an addition to the club. But there are many members of the club--and they are not all southerners--who would vote against their admission, and who, in the event of such admission, would probably leave the club.

It must be taken into account that no club is under any obligations to admit any woman, or any specie of woman which it prefers to keep without its membership. A club is not a public concern. It is an organization of a private character not chartered, composed of persons of similar tastes, organized for purposed of amusement and improvement. Such a club does not profess to be unselfish. Its first duty is to its own members. The will of its members make its laws. If these women do not choose to assume an altruistic attitude, or a liberal attitude it is their own affair. Yet, on the other hand, in so much as these women stand for the elevation of the sex, it seems but consistent that a persons of good character and intellectuality should be admitted to assist them.

The color question will inevitably arise sooner or later in every woman's club in the federation. Certainly it must arise in all clubs which are located in cities. The result cannot be foreseen. It is to be hoped that the women will preserve that dignity of demeanor which has thus far characterized the women's clubs, and made them impervious to the attacks of their critics. The question is one that should lead to the development. It puts to the test the character of mind, heart and spirit of the women composing the enormous membership of these clubs. It will demonstrate whether these women are loftier of mind than the average, or whether they are governed by the same narrow prejudices as the unrestrained, the sectional, and the unfortunate. ELIA W. PEATTIE.

STEAM EFFECTS IN THE SKY. Plumes and Columns of Pearl That Glorify New York's Atmosphere.

If the architecture of this town were as admirable as the atmosphere at its best, it would be about the handsomest city on earth. The New York atmosphere on a bright March morning, almost painfully brilliant with sunshine, all flutter with flags and decorated with the opalescent plumes of a thousand steam jets--graceful evidence of the busy life below--is a thing to astonish the dwellers in most other great towns, says the New York Sun. The steam plumes are, on the whole, the most charming and airy feature of the housetops. One of the few esthetic blessings conferred by the elevated railroads is the billowy mass of steam that each train leaves in its wake, and when electricity shall become the main motive power the loss to the life and the imagination will be almost irreparable.

There is great variety to the manifestations that come from the steam vents. They vary with time and place and weather. When the sky is clear and the barometer high, whether the atmosphere be warm or cold, the pearly outpourings are swallowed up almost instantly as if by magic, until one suspects that the sun that sacrifices the escaping vapor also burns it to nothing. The behavior of the jets on damp days, when the vapor is heavier than the air, is strange and confusing to one unacquainted with the simple principles of meteorology involved. The elevated railway trains which ordinarily leave behind a long, billowy cloud parallel with the track, to be gradually absorbed by the spongy atmosphere, journey on with wild and shapeless masses of vapor falling about their wheels and thence downward, until the cold air lying close to the street has condense the clouds into invisibility. The harbor on a clear, windy day owes much to the vapor, like strings of monster pearls, or soft ropes of [?] weave that every steam craft puffs out upon the breeze. Sometimes a modicum of carbon, aided by a peculiar relation of the sun, converts the mass into smoked pearls halved with rainbows. A nice knowledge of steam machinery would enable an expert to calculate the speed of a vessel by counting the number of pearls a minute puffed from the steam vent.

The wild and fantastic swirl from steam vents on clear, windy days, when the vapor has no earthward tendency, often suggests a Miltonic war of angels in heaven, and a lively imagination may enable an observer to see Michael pitter against Satan and the whole panorama of the angelic warfare.

Wherever the Jersey cliffs bound the view of a street the heights are ribbed with mimic clouds, and every murky background of the larger avenues is peopled with nodding smoke plumes, that, taken with the murk, suggest the solemnity of a public funeral pageant. There is a touch of the majestic in the feathery outpourings of a few great chimney stacks, especially when the air is calm, the sky is clear, so tat the white mass is clearly defined and the sunlight

THE LATEST PLAY OF IBSEN

"Little Eyolf," in Which He Lays Bare the Human Heart.

A Deep Delicate Study In Himan Emotions-The Main Incidents in the Play.

The Great Norwegian May Have Taken a Lesson from Maeterlinck, the Belgian Dramatist.

Henrik Ibsen's last play is " Little Eyolf," and it is prettily published by Stone and Kimball, Chicago, in the Green Tree library.

It is a psychological presentation of an unhappy marriage. The woman, Mrs Allmers, lowes her husband passinately. He loves he quietly, incidentally and complaisanlty. She is beautiful and rich. Hr has married her because of these things, and becaise her beloved sister had suffered with him the inconveniences and chagrins of poverty. That sister had a home with him, and spent most of her time caring for little Eyolf, the maimed son of Allmers. This little Eyolf was injured by falling from the table when he was a little babe. Allmer's sister Asta had gathered him up in her amrs, and carried him, broken and harmed past remedy to the young parents, wehre they say oblivious or thie world, wrapped in each others smiles.

"The law of change" had been doing its fatal work. Allmers was absorbed on a book he was writing on "Human Responsibility" Mrs. Allmers, idle, beautiful, beglected, wandered about her gardens, or down by the melancholy flord, or about her magnificent rooms and brooded on love. She was thrilled with the consciousness of her own witchery. She knew that any man save her husband would have found her irresistible. She knew that nay many books he was writing She would, perhaps, have destroyed it if that would have availed to bring him closer to her.

Allmers, meantime brooded upon the words he was writing in this commentary of human responsibility. He left home and went up among the montains He determined to return , sacrifice his book, whihc he had expected to be his life work, and devote himself to his unfortunate little son-who was dreaming of being a solider, and who could never, at best, be anything more than a scholar.

He comes back, finds his little son tricked out in a tiny soldier's uniform, and is moved at the pathos of the contrast between the possibilites and the poor lad's aspirations He is tender with his sister, and kindly with his wife, and in this mood confides to them his change of plan. His wife, who has had one trimphant moment when she hears him declate that he is about to relinquish the writing of his book is seized with a new torment of jealousy when she learns that he intends to devote his life to her starnge little child-the child she has nver been able to get close to her heart.

In the midst of this scene one of those peculiar characters by which Ibsen and Materlinck imbue their tales with awesome fatality-a persage of inevitable disaster-enters. This is the "ratwife," who has the power to lure the rats from any house, or island, or town by playing upon her pipe With her she carried an ugly flat-nosed dog which possesses like herself a hypnotic power over vermin of any sort There is a suggestion of the pied piper in all this, of course, and yet more a suggestion of the old pagan tales of the obedience animals to luring music Perhaps that is more than a hint of fact at the bottom of it Anyway, the old rat-wife terrifies them all with her mystery and her threats The rat-wife looks hat her dog, and says, nodding at Allmen

"Moseman and I-we two do it together. And it goes so smoothly-for all you can see, at any rate I just slop a string through his collar, and then I lead him three times, around the house, and play on my Pan's pipes. When they hear that, they've got to come up from the cellars, and down from the garrets, and our of their holes, all the blessed little creatures"

Little Eyolf asks: "And does he bite them to death?"

'Oh, not at all," she responds "No, we go down to the boar, he and I do-and then they follow after us, both the little and the big ratkins Then we push out form land, and I scull with one oar, and play on my Pan's pipe. And Moseman, he swims behind (With glittering eyes) And all the creepres and crawlers, they follow and follow us out int othe deep, adep waters. Ay, for they have to!"

They try to get rid of the rat witch-who says she once lured her own Jover into the black water. She goes, haf-chagrined, but inscrubtable, pausing ot say to Mrs Allmers: "If your ladyship should fund that there's anything that keep nibbing, and gnawing, and creeping, and crawling, then just see and get hold of me and Moseman"

The husband and wofe are left alone. She chafes and fumes under his inattention. At length she breaks into a jealous woman ralling against her own child, who has evil eyes, and she says

And a few minutes later the little boy, who has gone to play on the beach, having followed haunting way in which Ibsen can refine an emotion till it seems like the distillment of some tortured human hear. It has an air of actuality which refuses to be discountenaced. The repraoches of the husband and wife are as foolish, as angry and as unjust as one can imagine their early vows of love were excessive , volupiuous and unholy. The child which as been given them as the accident of nature does not seem to them to be the palpable form of their love-as it would had their natures or their realtions been different He accuses her of hacing lured him to her arms, and made them both froget the little one on the day it was unjured She is haunted with those large eyes staring at her from under the gree water, where, the peasant boys say, he floted slowly after the boat of the rat-wife

"Are they evil eys?" Allmers hurls at her, in cruel reminder of her own angry remark, "are they a chil's evil eyes?"

His love for her seems deas She is maddened with remorse. They cannot bear to be together. Meantime, the sister Asta, has discovered that she is not the sister of Allmers, as both of them had always supposed This causes her to reject the importunities of a very frank and charming young civil engineer, who seems the one perfectly healthy and happy moral in the play. For asta feels that her happiness during the years she and Allmens struggles together in poverty arose from other reasons than that of their supposed relationship Meanwhile, the hatred between husband and wife seems to hourly increase. Her tumult wears itself away-as even the most violent storms must do- and she grows calmer, and sets about laying out a plan of life for herself She has lost her child, and in losing him has lost her husband. She could not live with such a vacuity as that in her heart She decides to look after the wretched little children who have swarmed over her state-the children of her tenans Her husbad, who has confessed his life to be empty, and who has spent his time since the event of the tragedy looking in melanoholy mad infatuation at the waters of the flord, comes at length to attain a sort of resepct for her resolve. Though he has declared that they could never live together again, he concludes to make the effort She accepts this decision with humility-too woen with suffering to rejoice when joy comes. And, indeed, it is bbut the faint shadow of joy. In short after several years of wedded life, these two people enter for the frist time upon something which may develop into a marriage in the sacred ses of the word

Asta, who realizes it all, fairly flees from the house At the last moment she consents to give as much of her devotion as she can to the very attractive and infatuated civil engineer. And the Allmens are left, living together and endeacoring by their acts of explation and self-sacrifce to escape from those child eyes that stare up at them for the flord

The whole play seems to be alive with unseen forces It is not the personages in the play any more than their Destiny that holds one.

It has often been said that Maeternick felt Isben's influence, but vertianly in "Little Eyol" the influence of the great Flamand is felt by Ibsen.

The trick to turning the sensitive human heart as bare as the scapel lays bare the brain is Ibsen's own, however. He probes deeper than any man, living or dead into the mysteries of marriage, which, by common consent, men and women conceal by a conventional smile. He knows that nothing but love can bring serenity, and is too much of a student of human nature to suppose that serenity is frequently an incident of married life among highly cultivated and complext creatures. To depcit the various sorts of miseries is his sorry work. He builds no ideals-Ibsen. He presents only what seems to him to be the conditions Probably he would say that he is no responsible for them He is master and when his men and women suffer other men and women must needs suffer in sympathy. But his books are sorrowful, and remind one that the century is very old and weary.

He does not, however, remind one that the sky is a yong today as it was yesterday, or that the springs of a thousand years from now will bring out grasses as delicately fringed as those that grew on the mountain paths when Petrarch was a Lover. For Ibsen the sky is gray and the flord is sighing He stands among his fellows a giant swathed in dun drapperies-a master with a mysterious brow- a man with no message, but with an eloquently weary paint.

ELIA W. PEATTIE.

THE WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE FAD

Equal Rights Getting to Be a Fashionable Thing Nowadays.

Great People Are Backing It Up—Other Matters of Interest Mentioned by Mrs. Peattie.

The cause of woman’s suffrage is being made fashionable. Hitherto, while it has had the advocacy of many persons of influence, intelligence and eloquence, it has not received the personal support of such persons as those who now promise to work for the abolition of the word male from the constitution of the United States.

True, at one time, the cause of woman’s political enfranchisement was particularly popular. This was after the close of the civil war. The tremendous struggle for the emancipation of an alien race. and the sympathies which arose as the consequence of those sufferings, and which for years threw a halo about the republican party, and made it dear to the hearts of the young and the generous-minded, had paved the way for other large actions on the part of that political part. The men who could call the African “brother” were very willing to call their feminine compatriots “sister,” politically as well as in other ways. At that time, when small objections had ceased to assume the proportions of obstacles, and when men had caught a glimpse of what brotherhood meant, it was but natural that those who had borne the brunt of the battle, fighting for consistency’s sake, should desire to make that consistency complete by giving to patriotic and intelligent women the same privileges they had extended to the unmoral slave—the man who had been denied the right to frame life upon principles of his own, and who was, therefore, generally speaking, unequipped with active opinions, either for good or evil. That this mass of slaves should have been actuated by feeling of gratitude rather than revenge, that their naturally affectionate natures should have triumphed over what was primeval and vicious in them, has been one of the mercies extended to this nation, and it makes an episode in history which has not yet had its appropriate monument. That will only come when some man with literary and moral genius writes a chapter of the black man’s emancipation from slavery with esoteric pen.

The coarseness and violence of some of the women who rushed to the defense of woman suffrage, and the effeminancy and nauseating personality of some of the men who stood by them, aroused in the conservative, and in the short sighted, feelings of aversion to the cause, which destroyed its popularity and made it a just.

A cause will grow under persecution, but it will die under ridicule.

If those who were discouraged by the personality of the leaders of the suffrage movement had only paused to reflect that it takes persons possessed of morbid egotism, extraordinary bravery, or fanaticism, to lead a new faith, they might have been patient and kept to their faith, regardless of its leaders. The leader of any principle is never the usual, average person. He or she must be strong in the approval of self, or sustained by a belief in the approval of the diety. Egotism or religion must be the food on which these isolated individuals feed A Napoleon or a Joan of Arc must lead on to victory. Perfect mental balance, sunny considerations of what is expedient, a care for appearances, and mercenary calculations can not be found in the advocate of a new and great principle. The extravagancies of the leaders of a cause are what attracts to them the attention of the world, and impresses upon the mind the peculiarities of the faith.

The Spectator calls attention to the impetus which the suffrage movement is constantly inquiring, and which one cannot deny or be blind to, no matter how he may stand personally, in regard to the matter.

The signing of a petition for striking the word male from the constitution is the manifest result of the growth of public feeling, and at the same time the names signed are many of them of such importance as to give much emphasis and acceleration to the movement. Among those names are Bishop Potter, Mr. [Condert?], Judge Barrett, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Mary Mapes Dodge, the editor of St. Nicholas; Mrs. Lowell, Hamlin Garland, the novelist, Dr. McGlynn, George B. Forrest Brush, Alice H. Northrup, George W. Turner, Theodore Sutro, Helen Gould, William O Donovan, Daniel Gompers, Mrs. Candace Wheeler, Walter Damrosch and many other distinguished persons.

By and by, perhaps the petition will find its way out west, a little belated, like the fashions in hats, and then all of us, men and women, will talk very much about whether we do or do not approve of removing invidious distinctions between law-abiding citizens.

Many of the strongest opponents of the movement in this part of the country will be among the women themselves. As a class they do not want suffrage. The Woman’s club has occasionally been agitated by the fear that some of its members might compromise it by the advocacy of suffrage. But fortunately for the well-being and harmony of the club, the members are agreed in thinking that acts are more direct value than theories, and self-culture, with altruistic tendencies, appears to be the religion of the club.

Suffrage is not even discussed at the club, though occasionally some inadvertent reference to it awakens applause.

The truth is, the west has got so used to thinking of itself as essentially radical that it frequently shows an extraordinary conservatism from the very effort to restrain itself from too radical demonstrations.

Yet it would not be in human nature for women in this part of the country not to feel interested in the efforts In the east to secure a constitutional groundwork for future suffrage legislation. No class of men in this country could be indifferent to a question involving their enfranchisement, nor can women be expected to be so.

We are trustful creatures, we women, and believe that us a whole the men mean to do what is best for themselves first, and for us secondly, yet, sometimes, when we see what a mess they have made of certain things, we modestly reflect that we could not have done worse.

We are patient, too—perfect Griseldas—yet the continual paying of taxes without representation, the endurance of the penalties, but the enjoyment of the most distinctive privileges of citizenship, [fill?] us with a sense of injustice.

True, we are reminded that with wider privileges must come an increase of responsibility. But if we are willing to assume it the men need not worry. They are not so anxious to protect us from those responsibilities which are without emolument or honor.

However, that sounds rather bitter, doesn’t it?

And I could no more be bitter, where my fellow man was concerned, than I could be bitter toward the sun in heaven. The only excuse a candid woman can make for bitterness toward men is that the right man did not love her. Such stupidity as that a woman never can forgive.’

One of the favorite prophecies of man in regard to the woman with the ballot in her hand is the awful degeneration of woman. But who has not seen women come into the offices and shops and return them.’ As for the women, when were they ever so high of purpose, so honest, so hopeful and so independent as now? When, in fact, were they ever so happy, in spite of troublous times and the threatening outlook?

To return the question of suffrage, the women of this city enjoy a limited exercise of it. It concerns the public schools. And one of the things they might to do is to put a woman on the school board at the next election. There are men on the board who can attend excellently to the practical part of the work. But it need a woman to look after the moral part of it. It does indeed.

Why not elect a women to fill one of the coming vacancies?

There is an effort being made by Mrs. Potter Palmer and some her lieutenants, to interest prominent and wealthy women in the raising of a memorial to the Columbian exposition. The plans are to erect memorial buildings representing science, art and music, which are to be national affairs, but are to be situated at Chicago The woman of America must be the support of the scheme if it is to succeed. One original feature of the plan for raising the money is that those who may not feel able to give outright may have their lives insured for the benefit of the memorial.

The usual Monday evening meeting at the Young Women’s Christian association will take the form of a musicale, of which the following is the program:

Part I

Plano Solo……Selected Miss James

Solo—“Hush a Bye” .….……. Denza Mis Arnold

Piano Duet. .....Rubenstein Mrs Smith and Miss Terrill.

Reading...Miss Shirley

Part II

Piano Solo……… Miss James.

Solo—“Just as of Old"..….. Pease Miss Arnold

Piano Duet—'Sonata Diabell '...Mrs. Smith and Miss Tor[ell?]

After the entertainment the ladies will serve ice cream and cake, which will be sold for the benefit of the sick.

Tomorrow is a general meeting of the Woman’s club. The departments of political and social science and philanthropy and reform divide the program of the day between them Free discussions are to follow the reading of the papers.

“Oh to be in England, now that April’s there,” signed Browning from somewhere off in Italy, where the more torrid spring robs April of those tender charms which make her most beautiful of all the months in the mother country.

April here is not like April in more humid climes, and it is seldom that the average person cares to celebrate her.

Yet, even now, the gray dove hides among the willow fringes by the little Paplo; and the jay always like a large blue bell on the lithe limbs of the cottonwood The winter wheat is brilliant on the hill sides, and in softer tints the young grasses clothe the haylands. The sky is softer than ‘twill be next month, and the storms that show themselves along the horizon, and which one sees through the opening of the hills, accent the beauty of the theater out upon the plains beyond the town. It is, indeed, an amphitheater, rather than a theater, and the world is round as any saucer, with its convex cover of ether and cloud. through which the impetuous April sunshines cordially.

The bloom upon the apple and the cherry trees is beautiful indeed, and the perfumes are the light burden of the winds, which curry also the strange and appealing odors of the fallow ground, dear to the nostrils of the husbandman.

Undulating and ever undulating, away toward the west go to plenteous hills, and front away in secret chambers of sunset and sea come winds. blowing toward the rising place of the stars. So with bursting of bud and scattering of flower, with the significant whistle of amorous birds and the labor of man and horse, with shower, and sun, and chill. April draws to its close here in our Nebraska.

And all the little school maids wear violets in their plaited hair.

ELIA W. PEATTIE.

Purify the blood, tone the nerves, and give strength to the weakened organs and body by taking Hood’s Sarsaparilla now.

INTERNAL REVENUE.

Nearly every workingman in Italy wears a beard on account of the cost of shaving Now it is proposed to aid the barbers by putting a tax on beards.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ART

It Is Not Languishing, So Far as the City of Omaha Is Concerned.

Mrs. Peattie Writes of the Omaha School of Fine Arts and Other Things of General Intercat.

The Omaha School of Fine Arts has reached a place at last where it is self-supporting. It has been for some time under the charge of the Western Art association, but has never been a very heavy burden to that organization, and is now in a fair way to have no further need to assistance. The work of the art school has a different quality to it this wonder than it has ever previosly had. Hitherto there has been a arge enrollment of pupil, some of whom were in earnest, and some of whom were not. It was the fashion among many to work for one or two afternoons. The work was taken up by many as a sort casual diversion. Among these, there were, of course, some very earnest and enthusiastic workers. And little by little thhis class of sudents has gained ground until there is now a class of students has gained ground, until there is now a class og thirty-five insustrious and ambitious art students.

Five-sixths of them are women, and a rivary in work exists among them which shows the genuine earnestinese with whcih they are animated.

They are there, many of them, by 8 in the morning They work until 6 at night, and some of them return in the evening This is the sort of spirit that made thism Cincinnati and Chicago art schools possible, and its exisence here is far more cheering to one ambitious for Omaha's artistic development than mere numbers could possibly be

Mr J. Laurie Wallace, the conductor of the school, feels that there is very much promise in the work of certain of his pupils.

Unfortunately, the continuous work in the class room keeps Mr. Wallace from doing as much work in his studio as his friends would desire. And this is all the more to be regretted as Mr. Wallace knows how to work along the right lines. He knows how to recognize the beautiful when he sees it, and he recognize the beautiful when he sees it, and he recognizes it as quickly on the Bluffs by the Missouri as he would in the mountains of Switzerland. The consciousness that we have a may smong us who might catch the pecliar beauty of our sky, our plains, our bluffs, and our broads ravines with their wonderful beds of yellow sand, their willow thickets and aspen groves, makes those who are about such things feel a sense of loss that such an artist lacks the time to do the work of which he feels copable, and toward which he is drawn.

By the way, did you ever hear of that early first landscape painter of Omaha, who painted for years, and who finally gave up the effort to feed on the artistic husks of this commercial city, and who now wears a straight jacket down in the Lincoln insane asylum!

There is one art student in this town whose work is more than promising. It has already reached a certain degree of achievement. This young man is Frank Shill, the most talented student, probably, who was ever connected with the art school here.

It is not intended to give the impression that the young man does not need a great deal deal more of hard study. He does. But he has, undeniably, a true, if not a thorough technique and a perception and sentiment that will assist him to do something really excellent if he will only be patient and keep at his studies. The balefil effects on a money maing town such as this, upon a student of any branch of art cannot be too much depreciated. The influence is so strong that it causes the young enthusiast, even against his better instinct and judgement to enter into the money masking market. But even from a financial point of view, it is better ot be patient and thorough. The returns are so much larger when they come. The mediocre, self-conscious artist soon becomes as tiresome to the public as twice-told tale.

But, however, all this has little or nothing to do with Frank Shill, who paints away quietly in his little studio is in a disused two room cottage which stands in the same yard with is home. He has managed to get a north light in it, and while he has not distance enough to do justice to a very large canvass, that is probably a blessing in disguise, since a small canvass, that is probably a blessing in disguise, since a small canvass is safer for a young artist than a large one, just as the short story is the proper thing for a uovelist to serve his apprenticeship in. The largest canvass Mr. Shill has represents "The Gambles," a young man sitting, bowed with humiliation and sense of loss, beside a bare table. The tone of the while picture is gray-the very light is gray-and the effect of this is to give on a subtle conception of the sombre tinge of the young gambler's mind Mr Shill's bost sketch is, however, to my mind a little unfinished one of the Platte river bottoms. The sands are sallow, with a tinge sometimes of pink. The water runs between the ridges like the fingers of a great hand. Above is the opaque Nebraska sky, and between the while, clear atmosphere. It is not a sketch which would not please everyone because the subject is, perhaps, monotonous. But it is attractive to me for the reason that it shows unmistakably that the young artist known how to observe, understand and accurately reproduce a peculiar phase of nature. It shows the from some source he has acquired the courage to look at things with his own eyes, and not with the eyes of some other man.

Mr. Shill can also paint a good portrait but his work in that line may yet be considered largely experimental. For whie he has appreciation and intelligence to catch the most distinctive qualities of any subject-and it is these traits which makes the fine painter of portraits-yet he needs a more intimate acquaintance with the human body.

Never to eary in the study of nature, to persist in spite of all obstacles int he study of the human form is the price that must be paid for excellence in art.

Mr. Wallace has done some of the best portrait work that has ever been done in this part of the country. He has a trick of bringing out the distinctive trait of his subject in a way that seems like an illimination to the unobsercant person who has looked without more than having seen the faces which Mr Wallace reporduces on his canvas. The lionine head of Jules Lumbard, for example, the alert trim, compact features of Dr, Kohnstamm, or the phiz of Mr. Scott of the Chcago Herald, while its expression of tenacity and combativeness, are the sort on which Mr Wallace does his best work.

However, when he paints a sketch of tawny grss, a bunch of trees, autumn-tinted, a far blue line of bluffs and the swooning, deep dky of the Nebraska plains, he suits me best.

There never was such a studio in this part of the country as that which Mr. Fred Parker has at the extreme northern part of the city limits, on the Florence road. The parker place needs no decription to any one possessed of a horse and the appurrtenances thereto, for out about Florence lie the drives which most allure one on summer evenings And whoever is in the habit of going out in that direction kows the neglected and luxuriant garden, where the pretty terraces have long since fallen one upon the other and lost their outlines, the cedars and pines are unacquainted with the knife of the pruner; the grass grows in long and untended masses, the wild grape climbs as it likes about the trees The little house slouches down among its trees like a chilly man in his old overcoat.

Back of this house about 100 feet is the studio of Mr Parker-a very substanital brick building, long, with windows looking toward the north; with an office, a magnificent picture gallery, a work room and a dark room. It is heated by furnace, but it has a fireplace of fine proportions at one end. Egyptian, Mexican, Italian and American Indian curios docorate the place. The pictures on the wall are the work of Mr. Parker's brush from early days of boyhood, when he painted extraordinary compositions of fruit, to the later time, when he made coppies of famous pictures in the falleries of Rome and last of all, is the days of Omaha and Nebraska work. The subject of these last and best pieces of work include many subjects, ranging from Will Morris as a grave digger to Will Girely as a Roman senator.

All of which is entre nous of course.

Elia W. Peattie

WHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE -------- Water Colors and Painting on Chine Exhibited at the Western Art Show. -------- A Comparison of Efforts and Results—What Patience Can Accomplish—Skill That Exceeds Native Taste. -------- The water colors at the exhibition of the Western art association are not, numerous, but they are interesting. Unfortunately, a number of those which are best have no names written upon them, and at the present writing it is impossible to tell who the artist of them may be. So unusual a fault is this, however, that one can only admire it. The painter who forgets to append his name to his picture must really have painted for love of his art.

Miss Shultz has two little landscapes here which are charming. One is a grey landscape—the twilight of morning, perhaps—flushed through with pink and yellow. The light on the water, grey, yet with a promise of gold, is precisely what one sees in that dim lighting after the darkness of night. The difficulties of a landscape in grey are easy to imagine. The trees must be defined, yet dim, the water have light on it, while is yet nursing shadow; the sky, flushed with the expectation of light, yet still dim with the remnants of darkness. Technically and poetically, such a subject needs delicacy—exceeding delicacy of treatment. The other landscape is a bit of greenness, well handled. Miss Shultz has found out how to handle greens, and that is saying very much. She does not, of course, do it as well as she will five years from now, but to find out the path is much. For if one once learns the correct path to a destination, that destination will be reached if patience and strength hold out.

Miss Ball has a large number of sketches, as well as drawn, but not truthfully colored. The marine view presenting the sea as it is at South beach gives the sea in a new phase—a phase doubtless peculiar to South beach. The truth is, Miss Ball is too much enamored with purples. Purple is a good thing—even kings have thoughts so—but nature has been far more sparing of it than has Miss Ball. Miss Ball is a good draughtsman. And she is certainly a very clever woman. But her painting is not so good as that of many others of her experience. In short, her feeling for color is not true.

Miss Ethel Evans bus done some really beautiful work. At least if the fishing smacks in sepia, which hang in the uppermost corner of the north end of the water color room be hers, she has done a delicate thing The composition is excellent, the tone rich and tender, the drawing strong, the whole atmosphere poetic. As the catalogs and the numbers on the pictures have not yet taken to themselves their right relations, one cannot always be sure that one is attributing a picture to its real creator.

Miss Teana McLeanan has a number water colors displayed, but Miss McLeanan’s best work is not in water colors. Neither can Miss McLeanan draw figures well as yet. But Miss McLennan is still young—and there is no question but that she has talent. There is no one in Omaha who paints roses in oil as well as she.

Miss Lynn Curtis appears to be one of those exceptional persons who know what they can do, and refrain from imposing upon their limitations. She has in the water color department four pictures. One is a study of books, one a study of leaves—the leaves of the Virginia creeper—one a study of acorns and oak leaves, and other a study of chestnuts. Clean, simple and faithful, these beautifully executed and modestly selected subjects stand out noticeably from their surroundings. The study of acorns and oak leaves has a bit of delightful color in it – the color that God makes on those objects, in fact. Miss Curtis, having the self-control to refrain from painting the things which she cannot paint, shows a quality which cannot be too highly commended. Those limitations which she has recognized, she will doubtless have the ability to extend. To do a small thing very well speaks so much better for the intellect and judgment of a person than to do a large thing poorly.

Miss Rosewater has some pansies which are well treated. The background shows that Miss Rosewater has learned the principles of the relation of backgrounds to the subject under treatment.

V. Parks has a jaunty little thing in three little maids who present back Gurdened with bags of planks after the fashion of Bohemian wood-gatherers. The delicacy of their garments the quaint incongruity between their plump little figures and their laborious tasks, is amusing, just the sort of a thing for a Christmas card or picture book. This is a line of art that any person with a piquant fancy and the ability in draw well would be sensible in cultivating.

H. Herkt has a production that must be overlooked. It is painted on green paper, and it represents some green pines, behind when dimly looms a brilliant green castle. Calomel is the only remedy for biliousness so profound:

But this, perhaps, is only less pleasing than the watermelon through which a knife—a real, live, pearl handled knife with blade of steel—is thrust. To the credit of the committee to it said that neither of those things have been hung on the wall. On second thought, however, might it not be that the knife in the [?] is a tribute to the excellence of the watermelon? Perhaps it was thrust into the picture by a hungry negro janitor, and is allowed to remain as a signal compliment to its life-like appearance. The price of this picture is $7 50, which considering the price of steel knives since the passage of the McKinley bill, any one will admit is cheap.

Charles B. Worden has a scene on the Hudson at West Point , and the portrait of a bugler. Lieutenant Worden is a military man, and it is respectfully suggested that he make his country his mistress, for art will never occupy that position, no matter how she may be woed.

The china department is not yet complete. Miss Melions Butterfield is the chief contributor from Omaha. This is really a pity, for it is said there are other excellent painters of china in this city, but it may be that the best of them hesitate to compare their work with Miss Butterfield’s. This remarkable woman not only paints china exquisitely, in designs original and beautiful, but she does her own firing in a kiln in her studio. Neither high glaze nor sent glaze has terrors for Miss Butterfield. She does not hesitate to select designs which need several firings. She has a fish set composed of plates and a fish platter which is certainly remarkable. The center of the fish platted is a blue surf, the last wave presenting the comb to the view, the whole delicately and truthfully treated. But this is of less interest than the border. Conch shells, flat oyster shells, sprays of coral and bits of sea weed interwoven with perfect art, make up this [tine?] and intricate border. This is done in a pale sepia tint on a sea green ground and is really the very daintiest things of its sort that can imagine. In decorating dishes with dull solids Miss Butterfield is especially happy, Chocolate and gold is a favorite combination with her, and she has a number of effective pieces in this combination. A dull bine plate with a touch of gold; a dove-colored plate with a bit of decoration; a plate with “black-eyed Susana” on a reddish-brown background, a cracker jar in pale green with conventional hawthorne blossoms and enamel of gold are among the many really exquisite pieces displayed. There are vases which have bolder designs. One with the locust leaf on it is really a triumph of faithfulness—the dull grey-green of the leaf with the pale, purple flowers are made perfect by the glaze on them—which is just such a luster as nature gives to the locust in the sun. Miss Butterfield has not a piece exhibited which she has any cause to regret.

Miss Holmes, presumably of this city, has two plates and a cup exhibited which she designates as “smoke work.” It is certainly not artistic work, and it should not be in an exhibition of artistic china.

Mrs. Risden has some fairly good work in the way of decorated plates.

Miss Russell of Lincoln has quite an imposing display. There is one plaque, evidently done under a microscope, and no doubt the result of many weeks of the most tiresome labor, which is certainly a finished production. The dull green curtain which forms the back ground of the picture is a wonder of infinite painstaking. The border is mellow and marvelously elaborate. Over the shoulders of the woman who forms the central figure there falls a mantle of yellow of splendid color. But this vast elaboration is far more appropriate for a plaque than for a plate, and it is bad art on the part of Miss Russell to put the heads of lovely women on plates. For example, it would be a pleasure to anyone to possess the head of Amelie Rives, which Miss Russell has beautifully painted on a side of glass, but to eat sardines or even ripe cherries off the pallid cheeks and red brown tresses of aesthetic Amelie would be a distinct pain. Miss Russell’s ability with her tools is greater than her native taste. A very fine display of the work of Mrs. Phillips of Grand Island is expected.

ELIA W. PEATTIE. -------- BOUND TO STAMP IT OUT. ----- The Molders’ Union Claiming the Brother hood Is the Tool of Capital.

John Quinn of the molders’ union was asked today about the charge that the union had begun to expel members of the brotherhood of machinery molders, beginning with Ed Mnellney.

“I have been a member of the molders’ union for thirty-one years and worked in a foundry thirty-seven.” said Mr. Quinn, “and worked eighteen years in the Union Pacific shops.”

“You don’t belong to the brotherhood?”

“No, that I never will. The union is brotherhood enough for me! The reasons that I don’t belong to the brotherhood is this. We can remedy all the evils that exist in the organization within our own ranks without coercion.”

“Was not Muellery expelled because he belonged to the brotherhood?”

“He was not. He was expelled because we claim he had become an agent of capital to divide us into factions and to destroy us. There can only be only one molders’ union when men work in the same business. Manufacturers and employers of labor may compete with their war[e?]s in the market, but the molders’ union will have no competition. That is why we intend to stamp out the brotherhood with both feet”

“How about the other molders who are members of the brotherhood.”

“Are they expelled now?”

“They are not.”

Mr. Quinn added that as soon as the brotherhood men had dropped it they would be brothers again, as the south and the north were after the war. “We are for unification and federation of interests,” he added. “There will be no trouble.”

From other sources it was learned that the brotherhood men, except Mueller, who is their vice president, have been given until the next meeting to leave the brotherhood. -------- ANXIOUS TO MAKE PILLS. ----- Ambitious Druggists Examined by the State Board of Pharmacy.

The state board of pharmacy met at the Millard hotel at 9 o’clock yesterday morning to examine applicants for registration as pharmacists. There was a full attendance of the board, the following being present: H. C. Cook, Red Cloud, president; Max Becht, Omaha, vice president; H. D. Boyden, Grand Island, secretary; James Reed, Nebraska City, treasurer.

The following applicants were examined: James Bishop, Bernard Robinson, Frank E. Green, Omaha; Elmer O. Binke, A. R. Blockman, R. E. Chittick, Atkinson; H. F. Malks, Chadron; Charles B. Coneth, Orchard; Robert Sturgeon, Chamberlain; J. J. Williams, Wayne; W. S. Frankling. Verdigris, and C. W. Ferguson, Chappell.

The board adjourned to meet at Lincoln today and at the Bostwick hotel at Hastings Thursday. The results of the examinations will not be made know until after all three of the sessions have been held. -------- NEVER WOULD BE MISSED. ----- Police Court Prisoners Who Are Not Wanted in Omaha.

“Look here, Fitzgerlad,” remarked Judge Helsley in a wrathy manner. “You are not wanted in Omaha. You’re a theif and no good. You have been ordered out of town and I propose to put you where you will keep your hands off of other people’s property. I'll give you ninety days in jail”

Fitzgerald stole a coat belonging to E. A. Silks of 417 North Nineteenth street, and there are several charges of burglary floating about his head. Charles Fengle, who is a partner of James Reynolds, now in the county jail for the murder of young Nestle last spring was caught in town last night by Detective Dempsey and he will spend a month on the hill.

Thomas Howard, another thief, was given a similar dose, but he seemed to relish it and wanted more.

E. Yovgen and J. M. Henney, two pugilists, were taxed $11 in the aggregate for fighting without using rules or in a secluded spot. -------- THE RHOADES-BEEDLE NUPTIALS

Mr. [?]. D. Rhoades and Miss Hannah L. Beedle were united marriage at 2017 Harney street by Rev. A. W. Lamar, pastor of the First Baptist church, last evening at 6 o’clock.

Mr. Rhoades is well known, being the son of one of Omaha’s early settlers. He has grown up with its prosperity and is now bookkeeper of the Bank of Commerce. Miss Beadle is the niece of Mr. T. H. Turner of Turner & Jay, and stands high in the regard of all who have met her since her arrival in this city.

Many beautiful presents were received by the pair from their friends. After a reception tendered them by Mr. and Mrs. Turner, they left for a tour of the eastern cities. They will be at home to their friends at 1506 South Thirty-third street after December 10. -------- RECEIVER FOR THE SUGAR TRUST.

BROOKLYN, N. Y., Nov. 11.—General Henry W. Slocum, Henry O. Hayemeyer and S. V. White were today appointed receivers of the sugar trust. The bond is $500,000 each with two or more directors. The motion for judgment is reserved and the injunction is superseded as soon as the receivers take charge.