The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-08-15

gave Country" dinner to a Marty nj
friends from Atchison and Topeka
and this is what they had to eat:
Brotled SQUAD. creamed sweet corn
green peas. wax beans. tomatoes
MISUNDERSTANDING baked
apples with cream, milk and cider and
spring water, delicious country butter
crabappIe jelly. and everything on the
table was raised on the farm.
Mr.. Howe has not OWNED his
country place long and has not per-
fected all his schemes for its improve
ment and development, but it is a safe
bet that he will make Potato HIP
pay. In dollars and cents as we'll as
pleasure and profit for himself and
his friends. For that is Mr.. Howe's
way. There is a legend around Atchi-
son that the editor Of the Globe who
has worked hard and faithfully and
made a fortune. as fortunes in Kansas
go. could make money on a desert is
land. But Mr: Howe IN his well known
Atchison Globe philosophy has de-
clared that every man who calls to his
aid industry. good judgment, economy,
temperance. fairness and honesty will
get on" and can't fail to ''get on
This. in brief, is the Globes sub
timely practical. sensible, everyday
religion: Be good-that is, cultivate
habits of industry. patience. polite
ness. economy and honesty-and you
will be prosperous. 1t is simple good
sense to do right. To do wrong car
ries its inevitable punishment; to do
right its sure reward. "a man does
not need to be thief to know that
1t Is foolish as well as wicked to
steal" And Mr.. Howe has practiced
what he has preached with the result
that he has made himself a rich man.
OF course it may be. urged that he is
no ordinary man-that he is a genius
and people will tell you that he has
gift for business, too, and the Mid
as touch" SO that all his investments
turn out we'll. But when was genius
rewarded by material success unless
backed by the plain virtues which the
Globe breaches six days out of the
week to a bigger congregation than is
reached by any Sunday preacher in
Atchison?
Sights. which are copied by newspa-
pers and magazines all over the Eng
lish speaking world. and to the ad-
mirers of his best known novel The
Story Of a Country Town. which Ebert
Hubbard recently pronounced too
good book to be one of the six Best
Sellers" Mr.. Edgar Watson Howe is
perhaps chiefly valued for his bril-
liancy, his wonderful insight into hu-
man nature. his keen flashes of wit, his
subtle irony, and his remarkable gift
for realism which imbues his accounts
Of the most commonplace events in the
human story with such pathos and
such humor as Romance could never
offer. But to the real Globe clientele,
the ten thousand bonafide subscrib-
ers of the sworn subscription to
whom the Globe is a daily household
necessity, Ed Howe as he is usually
called in Kansas Is the exponent and
priest of a homely everyday religion
Of common sense and common virtues,
preaching punishment and reward on
earth. a belief in the Now and a faith
that the Hereafter will take care of
itself.
To Atchison and the vicinity the value
of the Globe can scarcely be measured.
Atchison is one of the best towns in
the world: freer from scandals and
spite and calumny and hypocrisy and
meanness, and snobbishness and envy
and hatred and all uncharitableness;
cleaner and more honest and better
to live in than most towns and who
shall say how much credit for all these
things belongs to the man who has
been preaching them daily In his for
chile and highly entertaining manner
in the Globe for more than a quarter
of century? A F. j.