The courier., 1902-05-03
HE COURIER

pearl hung on gold hinges with dia-
monds for knobs. Gold. diamonds
cats-eyes and opals are not food to the
spirit. They are principally of value
on the earth because only a few pos
sess them and their ownership confers
a kind of distinction. Lincoln women
go to Omaha to get print dresses AM
other kinds because they do not wish
to meet the same pattern on the street
or be met by a woman who has a gown
of the same pattern at home. There Is
some excuse for this. By the same
token II is the naif custom of our mer-
chants to buy the same pattern in all
shades and by the five hundred yards.
The feminine desire for exclusive
weaves and patterns is unrecognized,
or at least it is ignored and the wo-
man who can, goes to Omaha or the
next largest city within reach Of her
purse in order to satisfy a want to
which the dry-goOds merchants are in
different. The grocer's wife or the
bankers wife will continue to patronize
Omaha shops i'm spite of the reciprocal
relations of the grocer and the banker
because the local merchants ignore the
universal longing for distinction of
however trifiing a sort.
The desire for association with rare
spirits is the desire for distinction, for
a view just a little bit above the heads
of the multitude, for isolation from the
vast herd of seventy-five million peo-
pie who now occupy the plains and
wooded uplands of America in place of
the buffalo and mountain lions which
we have exterminated. Hundreds have
felt while reading Frank Stockton the
desire to know him. He could find a
pearl in nearly every oyster he exam
ined. He was not looking for rare
types but for the native nobility of
every human being. 1t is his quality
of recognition that made the common
place man and woman, still conscious
of a jewel concealed, long to know
him, to come within the rays Of the
kindly light of his spirit. His lips
We're touched with a coal from the
hearth of a god. 1t glowed again with
a human warmth. Kip!ing is of the
elect, but who Of those who have read
his camp poetry, his tales of Simla and
of his own boyhOod at school wish to
know him personally? He is Of the
oil h,,f h &c int Of &c ho v,6i int
Of view of a reporter who would not
hesitate to make a good ''story" out Of
his own grandmother's misfortune.
Frank Stockton was not so great
writer as Kipling. but his reserve and
gentleness have made him perhaps the
est-beloved American author. His
humor is of the sort that everyone en-
joys. He does not make a butt of this
one or that one Kipling's humor is
coarser fibred. He is a practical joker
and enjoys another's discontinue And
the man with no sense of humOr what
ever is further along in the course of
evolution than the man who plays
practical jokes.
Frank Stockton was not an effusive.
insistent democrat; but he loved the
finely composed temperaments and
minds of what we call the common
people. His heroes and heroines do not
wear purple and fine linen; they are
men and women Of courage, reserve
force and resource in extremity. With
ont ca wing auvfhtpp ahOllt fhe a ahstract
virtues, his heroes and heroines are
chaste, honest, brave. loyal, modest,
unself conscious. And in the hOmely
clothes that most of US wear, meeting
h.. af 70 fhaf oil