Elia Peattie articles from Omaha World-Herald

A TALK ABOUT CHEAP DRESS

Mrs. Peattie Tells the Girls How to Garb Themselves Tastily and Economically.

Dress Reform and Those Who Advocate It- A Paper Read to the Young Women's Christian association.

[This is a part of a paper read before the members of the Youg Women's Christian association, and the girls who attend the Noon Day [?].]

One of the fundamental differences between civilization and savagery, is that in savagery a person is not obliged to wear any more clothes than conduces to comfort, whereas in civilization, a person is under obligations to make himself more or less uncomfortable by the wearing of many, and elaborate garments. In fact, to such a large extent is artificially confounded with civilization, that it is almost safe to say, the more uncomfortable a person's clothes feel, the more highly civilized he is. To be sure, it does occasionally occur to some of us a better and honester civilization might teach us to be at once comfortable and fashionable, but after experimenting a while with Greek draperies and empire robes, we return to Demorest and the fashionable book, and to all the discomforts of the age, with meekness of spirit.

The pleasantry of the old world, shut in their quiet valleys, or wailed in their mountain towns, are not susceptible to the fashious, but have come, instead, to adopt a national dress, which descends from mother to daughter, and which is made of materials that outlast two generations. The Breton woman would take shame to herself as a spendthrift if she got a new gala gown every year. She is quite content with her now kerchief, and an occasional addition to her silver ornaments, and would look with disdain on the girl who found it necessary to change even the fashions of her jewelry. as one who might well expect, and would certainly deserve, to come to want in her old age. However, little by little, these marvelous old costumes of Europe are disappearing as the railways make their way among the quiet folk. and the women from the cities incite the gentle peasants to a futile rivalry. For, indeed, it is most futile. The peasant, used to finding a sort of uniform prescribed for every occasion, and to having costumes provided which are the cumulative result of the exercise of taste for centuries, has no idea how to exercise her individual taste. She has been so long provided with ideas, finding them ready made to her hand, that when once she rejects these old ideas she is singularly devoid of original ones. She has hitherto had a certain kind of a garment for christening, for marrying, for burying, for working and for dancing. Let her put aside these appropriate and characteristic garments, and she will produce but a hideous caricature of the prevailing fashions. You have, all of you, for example, noticed some brown-faced bohemian woman on our streets. About her round, comely face will be a kerchief of orange dud purple. Her purple skirt had crimson waist, her shawl of wonderful weave and many colors, her stone ankles with their purple stockings, her strong-shoes, and her awkward but splendidly powerful stride, make her a remarkable figure. Her clothing is appropriate. It is harmonious to herself. She and the clothes are in accord, and she makes a pleasant sight to the eye. But wait a few weeks. She will have observed, and she will have visited the bargain stores. And what is the result? Shoes which have destroyed the strength of her old gait, without giving her any of the grace of movement which the women possess whom she would faith imitate, a hat of many colors, which will not stay on straight, and which perches above her smoothly braided hair in a ridiculous fashion; an ill-fitting cloak which she does not know how to wear; and absurdly made dress which draggles in the dirt. From being a peculiar but appropriately dressed woman, she has become a guy and a [stoven?]. She has, in short, emerged from the comforts of semi civilization into the discomforts of civilization, without acquiring any of the style which is the mitigating circumstance of fashionable dressing.

Women have grown a [trife?] suspicious of those who talk to them about dress reform, because of the experiences that we have had in our attempts at wearing reformed clothes. First, there was the deeply respected Amelia Bloomer, who gave us a convenient, comfortable, hygienic, and utterly hideous costume which suggested badly made underclothes and which was worn by a few women with more moral courage than estheticism for a few months or years and then discarded. Later on came the efforts of the esthetes, and we of the present generation tried sad green draperies embroidered with conventionalized and tried to think we did not look untidy. But we know that we did. We working women have nothing to do with Greek draperies, and anyone who offers them to us is a fool. We cannot sweep, iron, wash, write, sew, wait at the dry goods counter, use the typewriter, carry the babies and canvass for books in Greek draperies. Moreover, we will not try Draperies are pretty things to lecture in, and to give physical exercises in, or to wear when we are playing the violin to a perfumed audience. But the Greek gown is an ideal thing for our most elegant hours, and is no more a part of this bustling, energetic, relentless age than is the Koman toga. And heaven knows what the business man of today would do in a toga. Therefore I advise you whenever the dress reform lecturer begins to tell you to wear Greek draperies, to leave her to the mellow flow of her own ideas, and hurry off about your business. Such talk may earn a living for the lecturer, but it will never be of any use to you I am morally sure that if I went through one of my hurried days in Greek draperies that before night they would be fluttering about me in sheds like a battleflag after an engagement.

No, for work and for play, we must have tidy, convenient, trim clothes, which will not get in our way, which will become us and which are fashionable. One of the choicest remarks of the dress reform lecturer is to advise one net to wear fashionable clothes. The reason she gives is that it entails much expense, is apt to be unbecoming, and is often injurious to the health, and disfiguring to the body. These are good reasons, and we might profoundly respect them if we were not morally certain that as soon as the lecturer got well out of sight of the audience to which she has been given such advice, that she will, herself, don a garment of the most fashionable make. I am not going to tell you not to dress in the fashion because I do not believe in wasting energy. I know, whatever I may say, that you will dress just as fashionably as you know how, and as your purse will permit. And, therefore. I shall say nothing against-it and especially, as I dress just as fashionably as I can myself. I would very much rather spend the time this evening you how to dress appropriately. The Parisian is the best dressed woman in the world-unless-it is the New Yorker-for the reason that she knows how to dress appropriately. The trouble with almost all young girls is unless they have mothers who exercise a great deal of firmness, that they try to dress too well. That is to say, they wear finery. Now, there are only a few places where one may appropriately wear finery. And if you are not in the way of going to such places, then do not spend your money on it. If you do not go to the parties, balls, dinners and afternoon receptions, do not buy such materials such colors as you would naturally wear at such places, and which are at only for such places. Do not pretend to be anything but what you are. One does not succeed by pretending, but by being exceedingly honest in regard to one's self. If your purse is limited, then waste none of its precious contents in purchasing cheap finery which will show its cheapness, and mark you as cheap, too.

Never get a cheap silk when you can buy a good cashmere with the same money. A plain material, honest of its kind is always preferable to a pretentious material which is dishonest of its kind.

In stocking up one's wardrobe, one should begin with the necessities first. Get your neat home dresses, your tidy and service street dresses, your dress for church, the theater, or evening wear at your friends' homes; then after that, if you can afford to get any finery, or have any call to wear finery, why, buy it, that is to say, if by doing so you do not neglect any duty to others, or to yourself. A large part of the money spent for gowns is put in trimming. And it is a safe proposition that in nine cases out of the trimming hurts a gown more than it helps it. Dressmakers, however good in taste naturally. are apt to become enamored of their fashion book, and they study the plates they see in them, rather than the women who come to them to be dressed. For example, a short time ago someone conceived the unhappy ties of running ruffles or bands of silk around the skirt at equal intervals, thus slicing the body up into three or four sections. The effect was as bad as it possibly could be from an artistic point of view, and the woman who wore a skirt trimmed in the fashion could not look picturesque, no matter how graceful she might naturally be, or how much she paid for her clothes. Women with an instinct for good dressing very soon perceived this and are discarding the fashion as one which has no elements of beauty. As one uses discrimination in every other act of life, so one must use discrimination in every other act of life, so one must use discrimination in fashions. in telling you to be as fashionable as possible, I am only meaning to be honest with you. It goes without saying that women will try to be stylish. If they can only discover what is good style and what is bad, and will have the distinction to choose the good all will be well. I say the distinction, for it does indeed take a person of some personal pride and sureness of herself to be able to reject as unworthy of her a fashion over, which the rest of the world is going wild. But the lady will not wear anything grotesque, or immodest or out of keeping, no matter how fashionable it may be. She will only be fashionable so long as it is in keeping with dignity and propriety.

Economy sometimes takes bad forms. I have known women to let their tins, overtrimmed gowns, as they became shabby degenerate into morning dresses. And arrayed in this soiled finery they would drag about their work, untidy and repulsive in appearance. I have known girls to wear out their white party slippers and the light silk stockings doing up the housework in the morning. There is no economy in such proceedings. Life is so short that we cannot afford to waste any of it in looking slovenly. The true economy is to wear work clothes in working hours. if you are doing housework, come down to your work in the morning in a neat gingham, with your hair carefully combed, an apron out and a collar. Please wear a collar or some equivalent for it. There is nothing so freshens up the face as a bit of white about the neck. Do not, under any circumstances, wear curl papers or any other disfiguring thing about your head. There is no excuse for it. it is an insult to the miracle of God's new day to appear with the head disfigured. I honestly think that a wife who appears in curl papers has no right to complain if her husband makes love to another woman. Romeo would have revolted at the sight of curl papers. And it may be added that they seem quite as bad at night as in the daytime. A woman has no business to look ridiculous at any hour of the day or night.

But all this is, perhaps, wide of the subject. To return to working dresses. If your work is of the sort that brings you down town, let your business dress be severe-severe is not too strong a word to use. Wear some becoming, but dark color, black, blue, brown or gray. Do not waste money on trimming. It will only detract from the tidiness of the gown, catch the dust and be a nuisance from its need of repair. Let your dress be good fitting, keep it well brushed it, do it with a flower or a bit of ribbon, not with the trimming. Let your street hat be as severe as your dress One occasionally sees young girls wearing light, meuh trimmed hats to their work. These have probably been their theater hats which have become soiled, and are being worn out. But such economy is indeed mistaken. Do not wear out your finery at your work. better wear a 50 cent sailor hat at your work than a soiled theater hat.

If you are not very sure of your taste, and if you have not a genuine talent for combining colors, you will find it much the safer way. in planning a street costume. to have every article of one color. If hat, wrap, dress and gloves are of one quiet tint, any girl will present an attractive appearance; whereas, if one ventures on contrasts, she may make a distressing error if your means are such that you can seldom buy new wrap, it is best to decide upon the color that is most becoming to you, and adhere to it, more or less, season in and season out You think this would not be pleasant? Think it over a moment. Almost all of us look better in one color than in any other. For example, there is a lovely lady in this town, a dear friend of mine, who has a beautiful red brown hair. Her eyes are red-brown too. Her complexion is very delicate She looks very much better in red-brown than any other color. When she wears that she becomes a sort of symphony. And she is so well aware of the fact that in one shade and another she wears red-brown year in and year out, and has come to be known to her friends by that wonderful hue. She has one of the most harmonious personalities imaginable, and is so picturesque that she always arrests a stranger's eye. So I really think, that for usual wear it is well to choose one of the staple colors, if I may so term them, and in this way it is not necessary to get a new costume throughout every time a fresh gown is purchased, but the gloves and hat left over from the old costume will do to wear with the new one, and the harmony will be preserved and the money saved.

It is always hard to advise young women to save in the matter of shoes and gloves. Shoes and gloves cost one more than one's dresses One does like to have a shoes that fits perfectly and looks well, and a glove that harmonizes with her gown, and which is not soiled. No incongruity is more offensive than a fresh face of a woman and a soiled glove. When one's purse is narrow it becomes necessary to exercise caution in buying gloves, not alone because of the difference in their durability, but also because of the great difference in their capacity for keeping clean. The undressed mousquetaire tan colored glove is the most artistic glove ever made. Perhaps it is the only really artistic glove worn to day. But it becomes soiled the first time that one wears it. If one has a half dozen pairs, and can have them cleaned as they become soiled, it is very well. But if one is limited to one, or at most, two pairs of gloves, it is very certain that they will not be kept clean. A woman's hand is a sweet thing. It appeals to the imagination And no woman who appreciates it will degrade it by putting it in a dirty glove if she can help it. I admit that it takes a great deal of energy. as well as some money to keep one's toilet in constant repair. But it takes energy to enable one to succeed in anything. It takes energy, for example to keep the buttons sewed on your shoes. The woman who does not sew the buttons on her shoes is fit for crimes against domestic comfort too distressing to even mention.

By dressing simply, by getting rid of the idea that one looks better in finery than in plain clothes, one can afford to have the underclothing in an attractive condition. I have seen women undress who reminded me of whited sepulchers, so fair were they without and so unsightly underneath. In the purchasing of gowns. it requires discrimination. You will do much better to buy good cloth and make your underclothes than to buy it ready made. The cloth in ready made underclothing is almost invariably poor. and comes much trimmed to make it attractive. have your under garments fit you. Have them well made. Trim them appropriately, and have plenty of them. Do not wear any garments that cannot be frequently washed. And please do not imagine that, because some garments chances to be dark in color that it does not deed to be washed just as often as if it were white. Forgive me for saying these things. Perhaps they are superfluous. As to the comparative durability of ready-made and home-made clothing. The ready-made will war about eighteen months, while the home-made will usually wear two years and a half. May I also beg you to be very very sure there are no wrinkles in your stockings, and that your petticoats are short, so that if it is muddy they will not become soiled, and that you will keep fresh braid on the bottoms of your dress skirts. It takes time and hard work, but it is worth while. Besides, why not work hard? Nothing worth getting was ever attained without it.

There is one great economy I wish to speak to you about before we leave this subject of underclothing. And that is, to economize the body God has given you. Whatever else you do, do not waste his strength by abusing it. Do not draw it out of its fair shape with torture vests of steel. In other words do not lace your corsets. I heard the other day of a woman whose bust measure was thirty-eight inches and her waist measure twenty. I can only say that she came under the category of a criminal. She has injured her body And to injure the body is a crime. IF she ever has a child, it will be fairly safe to predict that he will have a tendency toward consumption, or, in some other way, show a fatal weakness Woman was given the sacred mission of bearing children. And while she may at times try to forget this, she cannot escape from her destiny. Her responsibilities are with her. She is accountable to God. If she puts upon the world children whom through deliberate fault of her own, are puny in body or in mind her punishment will surely come, and it is very apt to come right here on Earth. If a mother could have a worse torture than to watch a child dying a disease bequeathed it by her own folly. I do not know what it is. And I firmly believe that the woman who "faces" lays herself liable to encounter such a sorrow, and such remorse.

See that your waist measures from twenty-four to twenty-eight inches. That is as nature intended at the least. Never mind the false measurements to which your eyes have become accustomed. Besides, if the proportions are right, you will not be conscious of anything out of the usual. Give yourself room to breathe and you will and that you can work without fatigue, that you will be much more cheerful and that you have a conscious pleasure in activity, and particularly in walking.

(Following this came and the detailed description of a neat and inexpensive summer outfit such as could be afforded by almost any young girl.)

Economize the time you spend thinking about your clothes. Do not waste your time dreaming about them, or planning about them, or talking about them, any more than necessary. There is very much more need for economizing in the time spent in talking and thinking about clothes than in economizing the money spent on them. When you must get some new things make up your mind what you want, buy them, pay for them, make them or have them made, and do it as quickly as you can and with as little thought as may be. The subject is an important one. It matters how you look. Dress and address they say, are the things by which one stranger must estimate another. I believe that God would not have so decorated the earth and the sky, if he had not meant us to imitate them. We are to use beautiful forms, beautiful colors, perfumes and fine fabrics, to have changes and decorations, just as he has shown us. The body is a sacred temple, and it is but right that it should be decorated. But do it and then forget it.

There are two bad classes of shoppers. One class dreads the work, puts it off, frets about it, and does it poorly and reluctantly; and other class goes to it with avidity, haunts the counters asks for samples, broods over them, calls in her friends to consult with her, and makes her purchases as if life and death depended upon them. Both of these classes are deplorable. Shopping is pleasant if one has money to pay for wist due needs, and it ought to be done very quickly. Indeed, I cannot see how women of intelligence manage to take so long about it. Fifteen minutes ought to suffice for the purchase of any gown.

Then do, please, consider what you are like in buying your clothes. Take your personality into consideration. If you have a sallow complexion do not buy a gray gown. If you are thin and tall, do not dress in stripes. Never, whatever you are, dress in plaids, No one but a child should wear plaids. If your face is florid, do not wear red or bright blue. If you are fleshy do not shorten your appearance with a much trimmed waist. But on the other hand, if you have a lithe, long body; do not try to slice it up. Make the most of your good points.

So many make the mistake of trying to mitigate any distinguishing feature. What I mean is, if you are tall and slender, do not try to make yourself seem less so. On the contrary, make the most of it by wearing gowns which will show your gracefulness of structure. If you have eyes, hair and complexion which are in harmony, do not try to find gowns which are in contrast so much as those which are in sympathy.

Give dress its due importance in your lives-no more and no less. It seems to me the woman with well-rounded mind will make dress a part of her life, naturally and simply without fret or fume, without excess or prodigality. She will learn to subordinate her clothes to herself. Her personality will always dominate her apparel, even while it expresses itself by means of it. You can tell a lady by her dress. And you can also tell a cultured woman by her absence of self-consciousness in regard to dress. The silly female top with her extreme and senseless fashions, it even more objectionable than the slovenly woman with holes in the fingers of her gloves, and dragging skirts and ill-fitting waist; but both are repulsive, unwomanly and a mistake. Daintiness seems an essential part of a woman, to me. But daintiness has nothing to do with foppery. The trivial mind confesses itself in its elaborate and vain apparel. The abstracted, careless mind shows itself in ill-sorted, poorly-made and unbeautiful garments. The careless mind may be noble, and often is, but the noble and intellectual woman who does not look after her dress does herself a great injustice and lessons her influence. And the top, fortunately, shows just what she is.

Buy what best suits your purse and tastes. Have it free from nervous, irritating trimming. Do not let it look as if a woman had worn her eyes or her back as if a woman had worn her eyes or her back out on it. And then, once having got it on, act as if you did not know there was such a thing in the world as clothes. If you can learn to do this you will have acquired the secret of repose.

Throw away your solid flurry. Have the courage to burn the ribbon, the feather, the gloves, and the lace you cannot clean. Never wear finery to your work. Never wear finery to your work. Never buy finery until you have got everything you need, and only then if you do not need a new book, or something of equal importance. Keep your buttons on, your dress binding whole, your gloves mended and your clothes in general repair. See that such trifling and inexpensive adjuncts to your toilet as veils, handkerchiefs, neck rushing, etc., are always perfectly fresh. And always err, if you err at all, on the side of overplainness la dress.

If you can remember these things and apply them, you will have learned how to dress with taste and with economy. Elia W. Peattie.

CUT OFF HIS TAIL. At Madras, some time ago, a valuable lion, having incautiously allowed his tail to stray into an adjoining cage, the tail was seized by an evil-disposed leopard, close to the lion's body, when, as the lion attempted to escape. almost the whole of the skin of his tail was stripped off. This was followed by such an amount of inflammation that the lion's life was in danger. Surgeon Major Miller, brother of the late Prf. Miller of Edinburgh, the surgeon to the governor of Madras, volunteered to perform amputation. The lion was seized in his cage and his head covered with a cap containing a considerable quantity of chloroform. He was then dragged to the edge of the cage and the tail passed through the bars, where Dr. Miller cleverly performed his operation. The animal made a good recovery.

QUARANTINE. French Journalism are criticising the attitude of United States delegates to the sanitary convention at Paris. The Americans have opposed every measure tending to make quarantine less rigid, Their object is to make the regulations so close that quarantine measures can be need to restrict immigration.

NAPOLEAN'S BOOK. A collection of books from Napoleon's library at St. Helens, once the property of Jerome Bonaparte, sold at a very low figure recently at a London auction.

STAND UP, YE SOCIAL LIONS Mrs. Peattie Arraigns the Sickly Forms That Sin From Nature's Rule.

A Few Clear Cut Expressions Regarding Omaha's Society In Common With That of Everywhere.

The San Francisco Arganoant, the other day, printed a London letter on the subject of the manners of the society young man of London. It was a severe but probably a just arrangement it says: The germ of unhappiness in marriage, I believe to consist entirely in the utter luxity, not to say the brutality, of modern manners. In fact, they shine by their absences. Beyond the mechanical fact that. man lifts his hat to a lady in the street, or gets up when she leaves the room. what distressing acts of politeness is be guilty of? seventh century young man thinks he confers a favor on his hostage if he accpets her invitation to dinner, generally keeping her waiting for the answer as long as he possibly can. In case something more agreeable might happen to turn up. If he goes to a dance he takes very good care not to arrive till supper time, completely ignoring the smiling-faced. nicely gowned young ladies who are anxiously awaiting his advent He wisely avoids asking the plain daughters of the house to dance, as he labors abscense of beauty-looks upon it, indeed, as a personal insult - selects a few of the prettiest young married women for the recipients of his favors, lounges away an hour in a sitting room, takes a couple of turns in a walk, settles himself down to an excellent supper (for a smart young man never visits a house where he is not quite sure of the excellence of the cook and the wine) and walks home jauntily in the morning air, with overcoat throw around and bat poised at the back of the head in the serene confidence that he has passed a well spent evening. Should some misguided person venture to introduce a young lady to him, however nice or attractive, he promptly, after the formality of presentation, turns on his heels and walks away. "Such cheek!" he mutters under his breath. "to introduce a girl to me when I know such heaps of them already." As to card-leacing after dinners or parties he considers that an exploded relic of the past. His presence at the entertainment was honor enough, and say further acknowledgment he leaves to the struggling young man who is not yet smart enough to be uncivil. A friend of mine, a mother and hostess herself half-fainting with heat and fatigue once in her early days of rhaperonage, whispered to her daughter: "Tell your partner I should like to go down to tea." To which the well-trained damsel promptly responded: "Mamma if I were to tell him that, he would never ask me to dance again!" So the patient mother had to wait until some grizzly-bearded friend of her youth, in attendance on his own daughter , took pity on her loneliness and offered her his arm. Many and bitter are the experiences of chaperons; they must smile and smile ever on the factidious young men. and tempt them with good dinners and invitations to the theater and opera, cotent to be relagated into solitude and silence themselves. With the matronly rule, an elderly woman puts on an utter imperviousness to all the natural sensitiveness of a woman. If she is wise and effaces herself. and is content with the distnat bow from the men she has so generously entertained. she may have the satisfaction of knowing that her pretty daughters dance and enjoy their balls. It will not do for Americans to set this down as an exclusive definition of London society, and to think heaven that we are not as they are for, by the most incontestibly correct evidence, our own society is no better. Mr. Ward McAllister, writing in the Sunday World of New York, says that soceity is the gay, fashionable element from the upper 10.000. He assures us that it must have larger proportions than mere wealth confers. It must have strife, and contention, and jealousy, and envy to be brilliant. It's motto is, "I go you once better." That is , if a society man gives a dinner, all other society must give a better one. If a society woman appears spledidly dressed all other society women must possess a proper envy and appear yet more richly attired. This is brialliancy - so Mr.McAllister says-and society. It is safe to believe that he has not been trying to be satirical. He has indeed, been historically accurate. Society, which owes its cohesiveness in a love of fashion, is as it has been described above. When one touches upon Omaha society, one touches a tender point. There are so many persons in it who are there almost by force of circumstances, and whose hearts are warm, and their lives pure and useful in spite of their connection with a body that aspires to be purely fashionable, that one hesitates to relapse into unkind generalization that it is as yet new, flexible, and uniformed. it is not confirmed in the worser vices of its kind. Hut it already possesses much of which there is cause to be ashamed. The manners of many of the young men here are no better than those described in the London letter quoted above. it is a well known fact, and one hears it whispered everywhere. that hardly one of the parties and balls of the winter has been a success. owing to the fact that the young men would not dance, nor talk, nor pay attention to the young ladies, nor do anything that a gentleman is expected to do on a gala occasion. They have stood around the doors in stupid groups, looking cynical-or trying to do so-and discussing, without much interest, who, arrayed for their approval, and lauched out into society for their allurement, have endeavored in vain to make themselves attractive. Perhaps is it not the young men, so much as society, that is wrong. There has always been, and always will be, something almost shameless in the cold-blooded putting up of a young girl into the matromonial market. The coarseness of it is dusguised. to be sure. It is an immemorial custom to begin with , and most folks are apt to think a thing venerable because it is old. It is surrounded by a glamour of elegance, happiness and youth. But if the facts are plainly presented they show that the entrance of a young girl into the society is the formal admission of her readiness for marriage. The young men-certainly think of it so. They have the arrogance of suitans, the synicism of roues -although they are not such-they know they are expected to compare, examine and select. They knw that the money so prodigally spent, the dinners, balls, costumes, carriages, flowers, wines, ceremoies and all the nameless elaborations of soceity are for their benefit in a way. And it is little wonder that they become rapidly spoiled, or that they do not show proper respect for the mothers who thus flaunt their daughters, or the daughters who prink and pose for their benefit. It would seem as if any woman who posessed so beautiful and dear a charge as a daughter - a girl woman- would spend her best efforts in trying to protect her daughter from the inquisitorial glances the degrading irivoloty, the envy, mallice, treachery and contentious of society. One would think that pride would insist that the daughter should be sought and not that she should be set up in the public place for view. One would imagine that the more a mother had traveled, studied and posessed, the more relined would be her heart, and the more desirous she would be of teaching her daughter to put humanity before society, the delights of learning before those of flirting, and the preservation of health before gayety. Think what a pitiful exchange all this is for happy home life. I do not want to be sour and absurd. I would not think of denying any wholesome pleasure to the young. I think young men and women should be much together. But when society interfered with them. but when it introduces the chaperon on this peculiar way that it does, when it throws young men and women together under such conditions that both are forced to think of the materialistic side of a matrimonial union, then it seems to be that the sweetness of youth, and love, and life is deliberately taken from them. No one supposes for a moment that these young men and women want to be competitors in expediture, or that they desire to be meanly critical, or to give up the best things of life for the tiresome round of noisy gatherings where people clamor like peacocks and eat half melted ices and olly salads. Not at all. They are forced into it all, and only now said then is there one who,having the money and position which enables or her to enter society, has the courage and peculiarity to renounce it all and to live the unselfish instead of the selfish life. The idea that society polishes the manners of the young if only truth with deception, kindness with perness, gentleness with bluster, and politeness with arragnace. Society, so far as I know, does not teach veneration for the aged, love of parents, love of learning, love of humanity sympathy for the unfortunate, beauty of thought, or the brotherhood of man, I have seen all the graces of manner possessed by the home-brought up boy to an equal extent with the society-developed boy. And I think the training and the manners of the home have a much more formative effect than society upon the manners of the young, so far as the improving of them goes. A large part of the Omaha naturally felt a good deal of wonder the wonder the other day that the more fashionable part of our community should have turned out in its very best clothes, spent an enormous amount of money and exerted itself in every way, to listen to the bad playing and worse singing of the Yale Glee club. It seems to me that there can be little doubt that the reason was the opportunity offered to the young ladies, for once, to have partners in the dance, and children who might by some remote chance, become suitors. Certainly, the enthusiasm about those well-dressed byt very artistic young men needs an explanation. When Omaha has had the opportunity of listening to fine music. It has frequently refused to take advantage of it. By the expenditure of a small amount of money it might now keep in the city a band of excellent musicians, who would like to settle here if there is any chance of their earning a living. But so far as known no one has bidden a welcome to these talented musical students. These men who have studied under the best masters of Gernmany remain here without a cordial hand being extended to them although they have it in their power to make our evenings beautiful with music such as we have never had here. We neglect them and spend thousands on these somewhat impertinent young Yale men who travel around the country under the false pretense of being musicians. At a time when our honest and industructions workingmen, are, with their families undergoing cruelest privations, we let all of that money go out of the town. I must say that it looks bad society it shows a low average of intellect in that body, and a disregard of the sacred responsibilities of citizenship. I do not feel inclines to mitigate these remarks by looking for the excuses which might be discovered for such foolishness. It seems to me that these minigating facts are feeble to be mentioned. Society must, if it would show a reason for existence, have some dignity about it, and some brains. It must have other things in common besides champagne and jack pots. it must not ask guests to its houses to fleece them out of their money at the beguilin poker table. It can never lay claim to hospitality while it does this. It must not permit its yuoung girls to drink so much champagne that they have to be cared for by their friends. There is no use in pretending that society has elegant ladies while some of the disgrace is like that. It must not have it it persons who owe their grocers while they buy diamonds and who freeze the grocer's collectors with frigin stares and rebunking voice till the poor man cringingly apologizes for existences. All this sort of thing may do over in Euprose, but it isn't what we want here, in the country we all love and would beautify with fine acts. We do not complain because society is elegant, or rich, or refined or well dressed or courtly, SO far as it is these things it is to be commended. Would we all possessed these good things. But in so far as it is coarse, stupid, dishonest, of low taste, mercenary, selfish and ill-bred we do not condemm it. We condemn the young men here who do not even thank their hostesses for the money and effort they expend in entertaining them, and warn them that the edict has already gone forth from some of the reality best houses in town that they will be punished for their boorish manners by not being entertained there any more. We condemn the young girls for their ridiculone affections their atterly inane exchange of flatteries and their belittling conversation. We condemn the men for their pretension - which they cannopt afford and for which the tradesman suffer. We condemn the women for their rivaliries to which they incite their daughters and the coarse ideas they implant in those young minds. We condemn them for not impressing upon their daughters any of the responisibilities and doties of life. for not looking after their hearts and minds as well as their bodies. Society-the more leisurely part of us-could help us all if it would. Why is it false so its trust? Why does it set us poor examples? Why are its manners bad and its tongue sharp, and its act selfish? Elia W. Peattie.

WOULD NOT TALK POLITICS. Hon. Brad Slaughter Turns Interviewer - Result Not Satisfactory. Lion, Brad Slaughter is a pretty good sort of a man from a reporter's standpoint, but when a World-Herald man ran accorss him in the Millard hotel office Friday night he was "no good." His stated positively that he had no news, did not want to talk politics, and turning interviewer himself the following coversation ensued. "A man told me in Lincoln the other day that Rosewater was mayor of Omaha. Is that correct?" "It is so stated on good authority." "And they say he is not making a very satisfactory one. Is he going to be impeached?" "You will have to ask a prophet, or wait awhile for an answer." "What is going to become of the gamblers?" "I don't know." "Well, what is the World-Herald going to do with the chattel martgage sharks?" Ising emThen Mr. Slaughter admitted that he thought State Suditor Moore had been a little previous" in jumping onto State Treasurer Bartley and saying his books were not correct , also that he could not give the exact date when Omaha people will have the pleasure of reading the first issue of a straight republican paper published at home. He added: "I am very sorry, very sorry indeed, to that all was not peace and harmony among our populist friends at their listings convention. On the newspaper propisition I see that though the convention decided the populist daily should be issued at Kearney the editor of the populist weekly published here announced that he would establish a daily in Omaha. Well, may God have mercy on him, is all I have to say. "

KEEP 'EM AT HOME. Proceesings to Consel County Justuces to Give Up City Offices. The legal fight to determine whether justices of the peace elected in country precints can come into the city and set branch establishments or be compelled to keep their office and transact their business exculsively in the precinct when elected was carried into the courts yesterday. The case is entitled the state of Nebraska on the realtion of V.O. Strickler against C. W. Edgertonm and is an application for a mandanics to counsel the defendant to keep his office in West Omaha precint. In and for which he was elected. Edfterton keeps an office at 1216 Farnam Street, in this city. There has been a great deal of dissatisfaction, not only among the city justices, who claim that their business is inferred with by these outside justices, but the attorneys, who have had great big and tall kicks on account of the manner in which business is done by them. The proceedings against Edgerton are commenced by the attorneysl who are dissatisfied with the present state of afairs. "Royal Ruby" its a Whisky is guarenteed absoluletely pure and eleven years old. Its great popularity attests merit. It is "a five that is a Rye" recommended for the invalidm the couvalescent and the connotseaur, put up on honor and quality guarenteed. (Bottled at distillery.) Ask forist For sale by Kohn & Co. 15th and Douglas and W.J. Hughes 16th and Webster and 20th and Farnam sis.

ODD CORNERS OF THE EARTH

Mrs. Peattie's Address at Rescue Hall on Places of Living Interest.

Strange Things About [?]--Travels From the Palm to the Glacier--Purple Speres of Sea.

This paper was read before an audience of working men--some of whom have work, and many of whom have not--at Rescue Hall last Monday evening, and is one of a series of little lectures to be given there Monday evenings during the winter, this arrangement having been made by Rev. Mr. Clark, the superintendent of Rescue hall:

The world, they tell me, is round. I have never proved it myself, but I would not be surprised if there were before me several men who have done so, and who know it is round for the reason that by going straight ahead, they have finally returned to the place from which they started. To have a round world which no one forbids us to wanted over, to know that it whirls and whirls endlessly through space, to know that the secrets of it can never all be discovered by us, do the best we may, affects our imaginations, when we come to think of it, with feelings of mingled terror and pleasure. To begin with, it is very wonderful that we cannot leave the earth, but are held on it fast with the invisible but unbreakable chains of graduation. We are prisoners here. We may wander about the prison yard as much as we choose, but not one of us may step off into the "wind that blows between the worlds." We are not allowed to visit those pleasant neighbors of ours in Mars, no matter how much we may want to do so. As yet we have not even been able to signal to them, although a little while ago they were so near that we could even see their irrigating ditches--or what we were pleased to consider must be such. M. Flammarion, the French astronomer, did, indeed, have an idea that they were trying to signal to us, because he saw, with the aid of his telescope, great lights blazing there on the mountains, so placed that they formed the shape of a triangle. And perhaps some day we of earth and they of Mars will be able to let each other know that we are looking at one another. The thought will certainly be very interesting. But the fact remains that we are prisoners here on earth, and cannot escape. We therefore amuse ourselves here as best we can, and sometimes succeed so well that we forget all about being prisoners, and feel like free men.

There is a great difference of opinion as to whether or not the earth is a pleasant place in which to live. I have heard those who insisted that it was just what you made it. There's a good deal in that--but it's only half a truth. The world is certainly very different in different places, who have tried your hands at various trades and occupations, are apt to have your heads crammed with knowledge of strange lands and curious men. You have seen the wharves where the sailors of a half hundred different nationalities crowd together; you know the dining camp, the [?] city, the mountains, the prairies, the river life, the traveling show life. In fact, you have eaten a much bigger meal, so to speak, at the table of life than those men who have stopped calmly into a fired occupation in the town with which they have always been associated, and who have stayed there, contest with their little prosperity, and free from curiosity about how the other half of the world looks, and what the world outside of their [?] is like. And you know that the world is not entirely what you make it. If I had been a man, instead of a woman, I should have prowled around the world a good deal. I shouldn't have cared particularly about packing my trunks and enrolling among the passengers of the "City of Paris," the marvelous ocean steamer, and going to Europe to visit the usual places along the line of travel, with a guidebook in one hand and, a fat purse in the other. Although even that probably has pleasures. But I would have liked to have lived with the Indians, to have climbed South American mountains, to have visited the islands of the Pacific, and to have gone to the diamonds fields of Africa. I would find out just how cold Siberia is, and how hot it is in Martinique. I would not take the world of anyone about the "heathen" of Burman or Khartoum, but I would find out for myself if they were not really fine fellows. And I am quite certain that I should find them not half bad. I would know the world from Congo to [?], from Kamchatka to Terra del Fuego. But a woman has to take things more slowly than a man, and I am afraid it will be a long time before I have covered the ground I am ambitious to go over.

But I have been in a few curious places, and perhaps you would enjoy hearing about two or three of them. Now listen to this. I will describe a place to you and leave you to decide from my description whether you have ever been there or not.

A bay, shut in with ice. A bay so wide it seemed the sea, except that the sea was just behind, warmer, and less terrible than this bay. The water, a brooding blue; the sky a blue of deeper tint. The mountains circling round the bay, wrapped in mists of blue, and the tremulous air a liquid sapphire diluted with tender and etherial radiance. The cakes of ice floating around the veering ship, all white, whiter than any whiteness save that of a diamond. And down the crevices of them, a blueness quivering as bright as a jewel and as luminous as a beautiful eye. These cakes of ice groaned and fretted. They knocked viciously against the copper bottom of the staunch, but trembling ship. Many streams flowed out from the glaciers and crossed and recrossed each other. The water was full of vexed currents. The bergs were the victims of their caprice and tossed this way and that in the so two copper-colored orbs burned dully through the ether. One of those was the sun. The other, equally bright, was a muck sun, fashioned by a trick of the atmosphere, which doubled the object looked at as the excited optic nerve of a drunken man sometimes does. One had to look closely to determine which of these two strange, dully bright bodies were the substance and which the shadow. Thus, by the mystic light of two suns, the vessel forced its way through the clustering bergs to where the engulphing blueness seemed to concentrate itself into an intensity [?] than any mid-summer sky, more radiant than any lady's eyes, more splendid than any tint of wave in sun-lit depths. The roar of falling ice dropping in the sea stirred one as if he were hearing the great mechanic working at his world. And all around this thunderous noise hung silence. No letter clamor broke in to make these crashed of ice and water less terrible. The mountains, the sea, the glacier, the wind and the sky had it all their own way there, and warred together, and were contemptuous of man and his interruptions. And up before the ship arose a mountain of ice, cut through with moraine and [?], [?], beautiful, yet fearful.

Do you recognize the place? It is the Muir glacier of Alaska. Frederick Schwatks, standing in that bay, said, "You can take what we see here, and put it down in Switzerland, and it will hide the mountain scenery of Europe."

Alaska, which seems made of silence, and forests, ice, and sea and skit, reaches its climax here---at the glacier. Its immensity is hardly to be appreciated. Year in and year out, the ice moves down from its mysterious source, never growing less, and falls thundering into the bay, and floats there in shining bergs, which wear at last into mere blocks of ice that float out to sea, and dissolve in the warmer currents of the ocean. Let me read you Joaquin Miller's poem of Alaska:

Ice-built, ice-bound and ice-bounded, Such cold sense of silence! Such [room?] Such snow light? Such sea light confounded With thunders that strike like a doom! Such grandeur, such glory, such gloom! Hear that boom! hear that deep distant boom Of an avalanche buried Down this unfinished world!

Ice sense and ice summits! ice spaces In splendor of white, as God's throne Ice worlds to the pole! and ice places, Untracked, and unnamed, and unknown! Hear that boom! Hear the grinding, the groan Of the ice-gods in pain! Hear the moan Of you ice mountain buried, Down this unfinished world

Not that Alaska is all ice and snow. In the interior it is mostly a frightful [chapparel?], made of moss, ice and decay, and is almost uninhabitable, but along the vast coast line stretches a bit of fertile land, lying between the sea and the mountains. For there is hardly an opening in the coast mountains of Alaska! This coast line is 7,800 miles long. The country is 1,100 miles from east to west, and 800 from north to south. This enormous area has in it only about 34,000 native Indians. These Indians are not of the North American Indian tribes. They appear rather to be orientals. Their slant eyes, their short, thick bodies, their superstitions, traditions and habits point to an Asiatic origin rather than an association with the North American Indian tribes. They have none of that independence of spirit which distinguishes the Indian we know. They have broad faces, squat noses, low forehead, fleshy bodies, and gestures which suggest the Japanese, except of course that the difference between the civilized man and the savage one--that is to say, between the clever Japanese and the stupid Alaskan--is to be taken into consideration. They live in huts of logs or boards. The steps which lead to the doors, bring you only to a sill, and not to the floor, and once inside the door you have to [?] again. In fact, two or three great lodges of dirt or of logs run around the entire length of the room, and these are used to place furniture upon. The second ledge will contain the beds. The third lodge will have the stores of clothes, food, fishing, [?] and hunting traps. While the ledge nearest the floor will be given up to eating utensils and the food, and clothes needed for immediate use. In the center of the but is the place for the fire. Above it is an opening in the roof. Around this fire site the family. At the head, or facing the door is the master of the house. His sons and nephews, his daughters and nieces and his wife sit around hi. Opposite, at the far end from him are the slaves--for almost all prosperous Alaskan families have slaves. They estimate their wealth in various ways, just as we do. Except that they do not seem to greatly prize land. They prefer silver dollars, and woven blankets, or rings of silver and carved hunting knives. They are a duty people, both in their homes and out. They live the year around in the midst of rotting fish [?]. Their huts are surrounded with ropes from which bang the drying salmon and other fish.

But for all their dirt they have a certain love for the beautiful. Their boats are lost as graceful as the Venetian gondola. The prow is curved like the neck of a swan, and the head of an animal, usually the insignia of the tribe, appears at the end of this graceful projection. They have dyes made of roots and herbs which are as durable and almost as exquisite as the Persian dyes, and they combine the colors in their blankets and in their baskets with something of the same instinct for art that many of the orientals do. They are skillful carvers, but it s noticeable that a very grotesque and fierce figure appeals to them more than a graceful shape. They are clever workers in gold and silver, and have even made a notice bronze. They understand the fusing of metals, the wielding of them and the use of them. Their hand-woven blankets are as strong as Persian rugs, and many of them are beautiful.

Civilization is, however, taken from them these native arts. The missionaries have discouraged the carving of totem poles, or the genealogical trees, because they considered that they kept up too strongly the race feeling in them. And the knives of these curious artists do not seem to take naturally to our tamer, if more pleasing art. The weaving of their wonderful blankets has been discouraged, and instead the women are taught to make dresses in miserable imitation of such as American women wear. The effect is not desirable. The Alaskan women looks best in a blanket, with [?] of wild goat or lynx, with a ring in her nose and her arms heavy with bangles of silver. Civilization simply makes her unendurable in appearance. As a save, she is rather interesting. The men have also given up the weaving of the baskets made from the rot of the white cedar. These they wove so close in textures that water will not run through them, and they decorated them with fantastic borders of exceeding attractiveness. But they have now become apprentices in the mission carpenter shops, from which they turn out ugly furniture. It may be that I do not appreciate the advantages of civilization.

but I am bound to say that the deliberate detection of national traits has always seemed to me pitiful. A savage is a happy man. Why not let hi stay a savage? Why make a mongrel out of him--a creature fit neither for civilization, nor savagery.

Sitka, as you all know, is the capital of Alaska. It was founded by that extraordinary Russian, Baranoff, in 1839. And under the administration of this American czar the islands of Alaska were developed to such an extent that the years of unscientific depletion which this country has been guilty of since it came into possession of Alaska, have not been able to entirely undo the work this man accomplished.

Sitka is a ghostly place, take it for all in all. Across the little blue, island dotted bay in front of it, a burned out voclano still shows the traces of dead fires. Back of the town other mountains [?], and on one of them is a specter cross, where the snow lies in gulches. For sixty years the monks of the Russian church, who live in the monastery at Sitka, have made a yearly pilgrimage to this cross of snow, in penance for their sins, encountering many dangers in their journey. Amid the freak oaks just out of Sitka is an old battle ground where the Russians and the fierce Thinglets, one of the tribes of native Alaskans, had their last battle, and at which the Russians conquered utterly. The natives will tell you that any dark night the ghosts of their dead ancestors appear there among the mighty trees. The rotting wharves of Sitka speak of vanished industries, the strange foreign houses speak of vanished civilization, the dismantled castle of a vanished power. Truly, Sitka is a town of ghosts. Baranoff's castle stands where he built it, when Emperor Paul VIII of Russia sent him out to conquer the wilderness and pour money into the Russian coffers from the killing of the sea, and the salmon, the importation of silver, ivory and timber. This castle upon a cleft rock. The rock was not always a cleft. Another castle once stood there, and the rock opened one day in an earthquake and swallowed it up. But as the rock was a natural [?], and an island in the midst of the bay, that could be defended from attack with the utmost advantage to the besieged, another castle was erected in the same place.

Around it the blue bay burns with arctic splendor of color under a bluer sky. The melancholy shores, with their fringe of cedars and cypresses are mirrored in the water. To climb to the castle rock which hangs above the town it is necessary to surmount many rotting and creaking steps. Once on top one feels that he could defend himself against the world It is a little Gibraltar. It is a natural fortress. Within the castle are still some remains of the splendor with which Baranoff surrounded himself. This man, who could live sit winter in a hut, without much food, and with poor clothing, who could fight savages, who could defy his own government, keep loyal a band of exiled soldiers, tame the spirit even to the most arrogant insurrectionists, made a mimicking of himself in his castle. His dining hall was hung in fire. His porcelain stoves reached to the ceiling. A few of the fine old paintings and jewels, the robes and arms which he had are still preserved in the little Greek church there. This peculiar man, about whom Americans know so little, was really of the most interesting pioneers this country has seen. He was a man of the people, a man of low birth. Yet, because he had executive ability united with financial enterprise, he became as independent as an island king, lie imported a train of bishops and clergymen to conduct his worship,and he had a harem of the most expensive courtesans of St. Petersburg with him. His wines were above reproach, and their limit was inexhaustible. He had a considerable people, made of savages and of Rusian adventures, scattered on a hundred islands. He kept them in subjection and comparative contentment. As a man he was recklessly extravagant, as a ruler scientifically economical as a friend the soul of honor, as a lover the heart, of treachery, as a pioneer and a warrior, the most skillful, intrepid, adventurous, diplomatic of men, made at once of precaution and daring, wisdom and guilt; he built up around him a productive commonwealth, and a reckless, profligate and brilliant court, barbaric in its splendor. The ghost of this man is the chiefest of the ghosts that seem to the mind's eye to parade the quiet streets of the present Sitka.

Sitka now is only a naval station with the accessories of a United States court, the mission and a few stores. The Greek church is still there and the Russians and some of the Indians attend it. There are many Indians in the mission, which is of the Presbyterian faith. The great United States men-of-war occasionally stop there, and the tourists invade the place. But the streets are only filled with ghosts for me.

On this western continent where the impetus of fresh, active pioneering still makes itself felt in every direction. It is seldom, indeed, that one encounters a city which has paused its prime and fallen into decay. Ruins always surprise one, therefore, Sitka has left an indelible impression on my mind. I saw much else of Alaska. I saw Juneau, its most thriving town. And Douglas island, with its extensive low grade gold quartz, and many a little town, set on an inlet of the ocean, surrounded with woods and mountains, and with the salmon canneries for sustenance. I visited gold mines that could only be reached by climbing three miles up mountain roads, then going hand over hand up ladders for 300 feet, and creeping in under the lid of a glacier. I saw mountains, grand, melancholy, with fires yet fuming in their hearts, and endless, endless reaches of bay and sounds, haunted by the white gull, and shadowy and still. But it was of Sitka that I wished to tell you--Sitka, the city of ghosts.

That is one odd corner of the world that I have seen. The next one of which I will speak shall be in the Atlantic instead of the Pacific, and in te topic, not the arctic zone. Instead of low huts of logs, there are low huts of white coral rock. Instead of cedars and cypress, there are coconut palms, with plume-like leaves, and [?] vitae, with flowers the color of heliotrope. Instead of melancholy blue waters, there are glimmering, glittering waters of translucent green, so clear that one can see the slightest article upon the bottom. No ribbon of mist twists about the shores, as in Alaska. Instead, the sunlight pours, as in Alaska. Instead, the sunlight pours upon the [?] and so bounteously that the white air quivers with heat and everything that can bear blossom or fruit riots in plenty.

The place is Nassau on the island of New Providence. This, as you of course know, is one of the Bahamas, comprised in the great Archipelago of the West Indies. It is a coral reef rising out of the ocean, and is as splendid as a garden. Fancy, if you, a city cut out of a rock, as if the rock were cheese. The streets are of it, and no maccaddam ever rivaled it for beauty or smoothness. It is a cream white very beautiful to see, in color. The huts of negroes are many of them quarried out of this stone and the walks are some times made by taking the stone away from the houses, leaving the house-block of rock standing. Great boulders of stone form the gateways. The high walls are of the rock. And houses, huts, walls and pillars are tinted in delicate washes to subdue the glare that would result, if the rock were left its native color of white. And over the walls droop the splendid palms. The century plant and the great [?] hemp grow in yards. Passionate blossoms of purple and crimson fling themselves over the walls. The royal palm rises as delicately and symmetrically as a vase of flowers among the straggling palmetto. And most striking of all the trees is the silk cotton wood. This grows as large as the banyan. Its trunk has many chambers, in each of which a horse could be stalled.

Its bark is as smooth as [?]. And from it drips the Spanish moss, gray and soft, [?] these delicate chambers.

But how shall I make you know the life in this ocean island? How give you any idea of how it seems with people and fruits? No one lives in the house. Everyone is out on the streets. The faces of the people are black, for they are negroes. Among them are the few of the natives of the island, in the sense of being aborigines. For the gentle race which was found on the island when Columbus landed there is gone--extinct. Of the island and the people on it, Columbus wrote to Isabella: "This country excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor; the natives love their neighbors as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces always smiling; and so gentle and affectionate are they that I swear to your highness, there is not a better people in the world." But this gentleness and sweetness did not save them from the greed of the dominant Spaniard, for 40,000 of them were at one time and another entrapped by promises to take them to the heavenly land, where they would meet spirits of their departed friends, and were thus conveyed to the mines of Hispanics, where they miserably perished. Since the English took the islands in 1641, the Bahamas have known many vicissitudes. Now the French have owned them, now the Spanish, now again the English Great naval battles have been fought in those beautiful bays. Governors have been captured, guns spiked, towns burned, ships sunk, and every inhabited of the island of New Providence forced to yield to the demand of arms and embark in the enemies' ships. Pirates have made it their home and have rioted there in the reckless luxury acquired by robbery on the high seas.

At the time of our war of independence, many families colonized here with their slaves. They took with them the habits of elegance and the production for education native to them. A commodore of the American navy meanwhile took the Bahamas by force of arms. The Spaniards got them away again. A South Carolina loyalist once more recovered them for the American colonies. And finally, in 1787, the English got them by conveyance, and have held them ever since. Here they have had one of their great naval hospitals. And here is a cathedral, in which the English sailors [?] by the half hundred. The plague, shipwreck and battle have all played their part in covering walls, floor and churchyard with memorial tablets of sailors who died in the service of England.

Nineteen out of every twenty persons now there are negroes. At the time of the civil war the contraband found refuge there. Many slave holders ran their slaves to the island, thinking to keep them from capture till after the war when victory having crowned the cause of the confederacy, they could bring them safe home again. These negroes have multiplied there as fast as have the [?], the pineapples and the oranges. And a merry race they are. These are not the [?], and negroes we know, dressed like ourselves in somber colors, and walking and talking with conscious dignity. Far from it. They are a black, vigorous, inordinately gay people. To live and to laugh seems to them enough for anyone. They eat the fruit that grows all about them. They wear clothes of the gayest tints. The women are splendid in scarlet and orange. The men wear shirts of red, and white braided hats. The children wear nothing at all. The soldiery is native, and the police are also negroes, and both of them the English government attire in splendid and brilliant uniforms. When it comes to a question of colonization. England knows her business. She knows that if you are dealing with a semi-savage, one of the easiest ways to keep him loyal is to put a red fez on his head and a glittering sword at his side.

Fancy, then, if you can, how up and down the street group these gay people, talking, screaming, laughing! The sunlight pours upon them. The gay awnings of the bazars flutter in the wind. Just out beyond the narrow winding street lies the bay, green and brilliant. It is hemmed in by a white bar of the coral rock, with lighthouses on it, and waving palms. Beyond is the ocean, dark-blue, tossing high waves up to the wonderful tropical sky. The people seem a part of the brightness. Their baskets are laden with russet and golden fruit, and they carry their burdens on their hands, walking, with long, even strides. Everything is carried upon the head. Naked boys are weighted down with roses which they are taking to the hotels to sell to the English and American ladies. Every one begs. Every one has a palm outstretched. The shops are wonders of color. They put all their stock out where it can be seen. There are tamarinds, olives, oranges, lemons, limes, citrons, pomegranates, pine apples, figs, sapodillas, bananas, sower [?], melons, yams, potatoes, gourds, cucumbers, pepper, cassava, prickly pears, sugar cane, ginger, coffee, indigo, tobacco, and heaven knows what else. The children suck the sugar cane as they run along the streets. The men and women drink intoxicating drinks made of it. The white bales of cotton gleam on the wharves, amind the [?] of hemp. The white sails flap out in the bay. The parrots cry from their lattices. The tame monkeys perk at one from the gardens of the English residents. The lizards crawl up and down the sunny walls. And from every [?] bit of soil upon the white rock grow flowers. Truly, a wonderful place, full of life, and motion, and [?] and color. The women are many of them beaitufl. But here they dwell in an uncongenial climate, in the midst of a race which has never been cordial them. Their lives are serious, and often sad. The conditions are all against them. There, at Nassau, it is different. They are as nature intended, under a tropical sun. They have the sun. They have the food which they were meant to have. Industry is not enforced upon them. They can live the easy going life which they all desire to lead. They are not looked down upon. And the consequences is that they blossom out into undeniable beauty. They walk like queens. Their faces are smiling, handsome, and amiable. They laugh much. And they dress in bright colors and wear [?] combs of tortoise shell upon their heads, and roses at their waists, and strings of beads or chains about their necks. To be sure, they may not have a shoe to the foot, but what does that matter in a country where one is more comfortable without any clothes at all?

Every house of pretension, such as the English live in, for example, is surrounded with a gallery with shutters or [?] at the outside. This keeps out the glare of the sun and the dust. When these [?] are closed, a dim, pleasant light, and a refreshing coolness pervades the rooms beyond the galleries. And here, with every contrivance for taking life easily, live the wives and daughters of the English officials and planters or these of the American representatives or of the invalid from any land who has sought health here in this excellent climate. Hammocks are swung across the rooms, cane sofas, with linen covered cushions suggest the siesta. Chairs of turned Vienna ware and of wicker stand about. Great jars of roses decorate the rooms. Tame parrots play about. Without, in the little court the palms toss and the fountains play. As for the huts of the negroes, they consist of a place to sleep, an outdoor oven for baking, and hammocks where the people lie.

Nobody appears to be troubled with any abuse of duty. No one is trying to do anything in particular except live, and go out on the bay in the cool of the day, and sleep through the heat. It is the tropics, surely. Here in the United States and the temperate zone, time hurries on. We make history. We are conscious of the passage of years. We are forever fretting. There in the tropics the flowers blow and fade, the fruit ripens and rots, man is born and dies, and the sun shines on fiercely, and the long waves break on the white shores. That is all. That is Nassau of the Bahamas, in the land of sunshine, in the midst of summer seas.

I could tell you of other places, stranger yet. Strange little holes of earth, where people live squirrel-like existence, snugly hidden from the rust of the world. But I chose these two because they were so very far apart. One among ice, and the other amid sunshine. One inhabited by a serious race, doomed to death with consumption from the chill vapors of its habitat; the other gaining life and strength each year, and bearing progeny like rabbits. One under the glacier and the other under the palm. One where the people are dumb, fierce, savage, cruel and morose. The other where they are gay, fanciful, frolicsome, indifferent. One where they sigh and one where they laugh. Both superstitious. Both ignorant, scorning knowledge, caring nothing for national development, almost without the sentiment of patriotism. Both easily held in subjection by the Anglo-Saxon race. Both very inferior people-- but still people, and therefore of, interest to us. For try as we may we cannot escape from the fact that all men are akin--that all are brothers.

NORMAL COLLEGE NOTES. Round of Social [?] Filled in the Last Week.

Mrs. Emma Beardon of Wray, Colo., has been visiting her college home this week. Mrs. Beardon was formerly Emma [?] of Hepburn, Ia.

Prof. George II Colbert supplied Dr. Curtis' place at the Third Presbyterian church Tuesday evening as lectures.

Colonel Walters has two large fencing classes this turn, one for the ladies, the other for the gentlemen.

Prof. and Mrs. C. W. Wallace were called to Wahoo Monday. by the death of Mrs. Wallace's grandmother.

Misses Stephenson and [?] of the city school visited their alma mater Saturday and attended a social in the evening.

The two Y's gave their term social Saturday evening. They gave their term social Saturday evening. They gave a good program, followed by a social, when an unusually large number signified their institution of joining the association for active work at once. The power for good of these associations is fully appreciated by the management, and a room specially fitted up for them is always at their disposal.

Miss Lucia W. Raines has moved to the college building for the winter, and has an elegant suite of rooms in the north wing.

Mr. and Mrs. A H. Edwards moved into Tennyson cottage this week.

Miss Daisy Wilson and Miss Margaret Spencer, two popular young ladies of the school, very handsomely entertained about twenty couple of their friends in the musical department of the college Monday evening. Music, games and an elegant supper was enjoyed by all. The supper came from the Kansas homes of the young ladies, and if that was a sample of Kansas products this year none need to go hungry there.

The military company is very popular this term. A great many new members have come in, and since the older members have been target practicing many of the "old guard" have fallen in again. The rivalry for the best sharpshooter is quite spirited. The regular target practice [?] every Saturday morning.

Sunday school was at the college chapel every Sunday morning at 9 o'clock. People attend it from miles around.

John Marshall, jr., of this city talked Sunday morning in the chapel for the interest of the Young Men's Christian association.

Mr. A. DeKalb of Jefferson county visited his daughter Laura Wednesday.

Mr. J. W. Martin of [?], Pottawattamie county, Ia., visited his son, T. E. Martin, Monday.

Active preparations are being made for the proper observance of Thanksgiving next Thursday. A sermon, big dinner and an evening of amusements of various kinds are already arranged for.

Dr. A. P. Burrus of Lincoln gave an interesting talk on the preservation of the human teeth at the general exercises Friday morning.

New students are coming every day and the Wester Normal college is rapidly assuming its old time attendants. The large chapel is already crowded at the general exercises.

POLICE EPITOMIZERS. Several Robberies and a Couple of Lively Fight.

James Murphy has been arrested on a complaint charging him with assaulting and attempting to steal a watch from J. E. Sumeral of the Keystone chop house.

[?] who runs a fruit stand at Tenth and Farnam streets, and Celia [?], the woman with whom he lives, were out for a drunk yesterday and indulged in a [?] battle about non at Ninth and Douglas streets. They were arrested by Officer Monroe.

C. J. Samuelson yesterday reported at the police station that a cow was stolen from his barn Saturday night at Nineteenth and Douglas streets.

Harry J. Richter was taken to the county jail yesterday by his wife and at her request was locked up and will be examined as to his sanity. The man is quiet and apparently harmless, but has evidently from some cause completely lost his reasoning faculty.

J. F. Gardner's office and room at 209 South Twelfth street was burglarized last night and a lot of clothing was taken.

Jane Spencer and Meg Reldy, two "colored courtesans, who occupy a room at No. Old North Eleventh street, became involved in a fight above 5 o'clock yesterday morning and the right arm of the Spencer woman was slightly slashed with a razor. Her assailant was arrested and the injured woman taken to the Presbyterial hospital, where she remained until last evening.

Miss Helen Trudowski, who was bound over $500 bonds on the charge of wrongfully witholindg property belonging to the late Mrs. Dr. [?], was released on bail furnished by [?] friends Friday evening.

IT IS OF EVERYDAY SERVICE

Mrs. Peattie Speaks of the Use of Beauty in Ordinary Life.

A Paper on the Subject Which Was Read Before the Young Women's Christian Association.

There is no life, however hard and harrased, which has not in it beauty in one form or another. The more beauty a life has, the happier it is. And it is therefore clear that as we surround ourselves with beauty we will be happy. And happiness, I need not tell you, for you have made the discovery a long time ago, is the one thing that makes life worth living.

But to be surrounded with beauty and not to know it, would be, as you will all agree, a mere waste of beauty. It would be as if you were in a strange land, on an island, rich with fruits you did not know were edible. You might stare to death in the midst of plenty for the want of knowing that the fruits were good to eat. Therefore, to know how to discover the beauty about you is quite as necessary as that the beauty should be there. And I wish to help you, if I can, to learn how to find out that beauty and make much of it. I know you must already have found out a great deal about this your-self. Some of you have perhaps found out a great deal more about it than I have. To such, I can only give my ideas, not that [Ibey?] may learn from them, but that they may compare them with their own.

Nothing crushes the life out of a woman like ugly surroundings. The farmer's wife, living out on the prairie, is a sad example of this. She lives in a cabin made of pine or of sod or logs. A manure heap is in her yard. No flowers grow in the coarse, unwatered soil of the prairie. The grass is irodden out of sight. There may be a few wind torn poplars toward the stormy northwest to serve as a wind-break, but no shade about her door mitigates the glare of sun or the harsh rains of the plains. Within her house are bare walls, undecorated buds, a fire for warmth, a table at which to feed. Just the materials for satisfying the necessities of life, nothing more. And day after day comes the ceaseless drudgery. Cooking, washing, ironing cleaning, husking, sewing, endlessly, endlessly, over and over, the tedious labor. And to what end! To keep longer in the weary body the spirit which sickens with disgust at the barrenness and poverty of life.

Not long ago I was the Insane asylum at Norfolk. More than one-half of the women there were farmers' wives.

"I like to be here," one of them said to me, looking down sadly at her hard hands, "it's easier than work on the farm. Only sometimes I wonder who puts the children is bed at night, and who braids Besale's hair."

And there was a young girl there, too, who came from a farm. She had lived back in Ohio, amid trees and hills, and beautiful rivers, and the friends who loved her. When her mother died her father was taken with the idea of coming, to a new country where he could earn more money. So he took up a claim out on the [?] prairie. His daughter came with him. She worked patiently for him in his home. She tried to study. But she could not get the hills, and the trees, and the friends of Ohio out of her head.

"Let me go home," she said to plead with her father, "please let me go home." Her father was a solemn Scandinavian. He had no sentiment. And he didn't see why she should have any.

"Home," he said, impatiently. "Why this is home. What are you fretting about? Haven't you get everything you want?"

The girl said nothing more. But in her eyes there came the look of one who always strains the gaze after something she may not see. And one day when the father came home he found no meal ready. His daughter was sitting there in the chair, looking at him. But when he spoke to her she did not answer. And she has never spoken since. " Acute melancholy mania," the doctors call it. And it is incurable. Day after day she sits in the asylum, head bowed over her young hands, speechless always, dreaming, no doubt of how the autumn woods back in dear old Ohio, drop their red leaves into the river which goes singing on its way, and how the friends she used to call to her at night after school, as they all went home together, before she knew the awful solitude and silence of the prairies.

Do you see what I mean? [?ller] mind perished for want of beauty. And the tragedy is happening around us every day. And it is more terrible than death--oh, far more terrible than death!

But this is not the worst of it. That women should die or go mad for lack of that which seems to them beautiful is not so bad after all as that they should commit sin for lack of beauty. And I maintain that the person who loves the beautiful as she should will not do a great wrong. She is not willing to so destroy the loveliness of her life. If she loves beauty she will want to make her life a fair thing to look upon. She will not [mar?] her voice with impatient tones, nor her face with mean expressions, not her friendships with petty actions, more her work with bad performance, nor her love with small coquetries.

All this unsatisfied hunger for the beautiful is necessary. The beautiful is right here with us. It abounds, free as the air. It is to be had just by reaching out our hands for it. Believe me, it is [?].

If the poor little [Scandlian?] girl I told you of, had known, and if her father had known, and if her father had known, how grave was the danger that threatened them; and if they had known, how grave was the danger that threatened them; and if they had also known that their lives out there on the Nebraska prairie could be made as beautiful as they were back in the Ohio woods, the awful fate would never have overtaken her if, when they arose in the morning instead of thinking only about cooking the porridge, or hitching up the horses, they had together stood for a moment at the door, and noticed the sky of tender able that hung above the plains, I think perhaps such despair would not have settled down on her. If she had kissed her father at morning and at night, and if they had not concealed their love for each other, but had spoken of it and shown it openly, I think she might not now be sleeping on that narrow white bed in the asylum cell. If they had gone out together for a [?] day now and then, and had got well acquainted with the other farmers, and tried to do something for them, and had shown them some hospitality, the poor girl would not have reached her [?] state. The beauty of love, of friendship, of gaiety and of nature would have driven away the black furies of melancholy.

Truly, if you will believe me, you can be happy if you can only learn to recognize the beautiful when you see it.