Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1910 — FIRST SCHOOL-DAY IN ALSACE [ARTICLE]

FIRST SCHOOL-DAY IN ALSACE

After finishing Mr. Zelaya, fate preb ably will begin at the other end of the alphabet again. , It will be a feather In the cap of Secretary Knox If he can bring about a safe and sane Nicaragua. The fellow who was weighed in the balance and found wanting must have neglected to drop a cent In the slot What’s In a name? The Indian desperado chased to his death by three armed posses was called "Willie Boy." • ■ ■ i ■ Wouldn’t It be horrible If Germany should, while England Is without a budget, decide to lay down a few more DreadnoughtsT . - .... Doubtless It Is the Influence of International marriages manifesting Itself 'ln the unexpected spunk of the British House of Lords. G. Bernard Shaw says If he came to America people would drop everything else and rush to look at him. What Is that old story about the fly on the wheel? The Kaiser read hls own message to the Reichstag. Perhaps this habit is the reason why European documents of this character are so much shorter than they are here. The new Chinese minister to this country brings sixty-seven servants with him. Astute man. Had he made It fifty-seven he would have been In a pickle with the paragraphers. Ton can’t work and worry at the same time, concludes the Atchison Globe philosopher. Men can’t, but women can pile disaster on disaster, while cleaning up after the children or doing their hair.

Those so-called craters on the moon may be merely the marks of bumps received In collisions with other orbs, but that theory does not seem to explain the presence of a tall cone in the center of so mfrny of thenv Because he married a show girl a New York man has been disinherited by his father, who intended to leave to him about (3,000.000. The disinherited young husband thinks he will be able to live on love, but the show girl salth not Football Is a game for men, no 7 doubt but let us suppose the girls were all to decide It to be too brutal to watch and were to refuse every invitation to attend the matches. How long would the game last do you think? Through one season? Dolls have a human element In them which make It most unlikely that they will ever be supplanted permanently in the affections of children by the “Teddy Bear” or "Billy Possum” or "Kermlt Lion." Such toys have their day, as novelties do with older people, bat the Eskimo dolls, which have been highly popular since the discovery of the north pole, indicate a return to Hie simple, old-fashioned doll which little mothers have played with for countless generations. • There is no doubt that modern industrial development tends irresistibly to large corporate organizations and to affiliations which will reduce the' friction' Of competition where powerful interests are liable to come into conflict with destructive effect. But the working of such a system cannot be safely left to the will of those who devise and direct its operation. It must be Bubject to regulation, to requlieuients and* prohibitions of law, at once effective and enforclble. The adjustment of jegulatjon has not kept pace with the development, and they must somehow be brought into harmony by adaptation to secure the benefit of development without an abuse of the power that accompanies it ,pr the sacrifice of rights and interests that fall in its way.

John Stewart Kennedy's magnificent bequests to religion, education and philanthropy place him at once in the front rank of princely benefactors. Hit thirty millions compare favorably with the outpourings even of a Rockefeller or a Carnegie, especially when we take Into account the charities of his lifetime. Mr. Kennedy gave quietly while he was alive, and probably kept back his final vast gifts because It la Impossible to give away such a fortune and do It quietly. Therehy. It Is true, he lost the chance of seeing his name In the newspapers every day and playing the much-quoted oracle on every conceivable topic of the times. We do not say that a taste for such things Is reprehensible. Possibly a man does well to bestow his benefaction while he Is still on the spot to see that the right use Is made of them. But it Is Impossible not to admire the older traditions which looked upon charity as a business Involving only the giver and the taker and not the reporter and the camera man as well. There are still . many more examples of the old type among us than the world suspects. The death of a Kennedy or a Jpanes reminds us of the fact. Often hay, not an obstreperous cow, started the great Chicago fire. Mrs. OXaary'a momentous milking fc* a

myth, as much so as Wllllim Tell and the apple, as Cleopatra and he? fascination. And another* great dlsilluaioplzer has appeared, one who dissolves the fables In corrosive sublimate quite as conclusively as does Guglielmo Ferrero or any German higher critic. The new historian Is "Big Jim” O’Leary, stock Jyards politician and gambling king, son of the Mrs. O’Leary of famous memory, and by virtue of his sonship heir to her knowledge of exactly how the Chicago fire did start. He has felt moved In the Interest of truth and of vindicating hls parent in human history to attest the facta in the case and to exonerate the blameless bovine. Mrs. O’Leary, her aoh avers, believed In the big stick In the upbringing of her progeny, and tolerated no antics In her cattle. If little Jim, who Is now "Big Jim,” wasn’t tucked la bed by 8 o’clock, he caught it sound and hard. Nor did the disciplined bo vines In the O’Leary barn dare flick a tall In tho milker’s eyes or kick over a lamp lighting the lacteal operation. Neither Mrs. O’Leary’s children nor her cows ventured to misbehave. It was green hay In the loft, over whose antics the lady could exercise no control, that by spontaneous combustion kindled the historic conflagration. All the little O’Learys were In their trundle beds, the cowa were locked in the barn, Mrs. O’Leary herself was sleeping like the just, when the green h%y developed Are that, before it was quenched, had burned three-fourths of Chicago over. The cow is cleared and the widow justified. Thus evaporates another fake In the interests of prosaic truth and the higher verities. Barbara Fritchie never wagged her "old gray head" above the "rebel horde” In Frederlcktown. Sherman never rode the twenty miles a-down the Shenandoah to save the day. But we had hopes that Mrs. O’Leary and her cow werd real figures upon the historic stage. These hopes are now shattered Irremediably.

A glimpse of the strenuous and sustained battle against ignorance fought by the pioneer teachers of the Old World in the days preceding the French Revolution is given by Rev. E. Gllliat, in a recent book, "Heroes of Modern Crusades." It seems almost incredible that conditions so hopeless should need to have been righted in times so-near to ours. — 7— ~ -—— When Monsieur Stouber undertook the pastorate of Ban de la Roche, a territory In the Vosges which belonged to Protestant noblemen, as feudal lords of the soil,, he found the people very wild and Ignorant. When he first went there he visited the only school. A number. of children were gathered together in a miserable cottage. As he entered he heard an appalling noise of scuffling, quarreling and shouting. “Silence, children, silence!” he cried. "Where is your master T" One of the children pointed to a little old man who was lying on a bed in the corner of the room. “Are you the master of the school?” asked the pastor, in some dismay. "Yes, I be the master, sir—l be.” •'Humph! But don't you teach the children anything?” "No! I don't teach the children nothing—for a good reason.” “It must be a very good reason indeed. What is it, my friend?” “Well, I don’t know nothing myseH. sir, so how am I to teach?” “But. my good friend, why did they send you here, then?'! "§«»pause. sir, I be too old to take care of the pigs.”