219.71
Nobby Cutawav and Sack Suits at Steinberg's Clothing House.
The Weekly University Conrier.
The Largest College Journa Circulation in the United States.
Published Every Friday Morning by the COURIER COMPANY For Kansas University Students.
CHAS. LYONS. O.B. TAYLOR, President. Secretary.
EDITORIAL STAFF:
FRANK G. CROWELL, EDITOR IN CHIEF
ASSOCIATES
JOHN PRESCOTT
F. C. KEYS,
L. A. STEBBINS,
H. F. M. BEAR,
W. R. ARMSTRONG,
NAN. LOVE,
LILIE FREMAN,
GENTIR'E HUNICUMI
GENTIR'E HUNICUMI
BUSINESS MANAGERS:
EARLE L SWOPE. (WILL A. JACKSON.)
From the Press of P. T. FOLEY.
Entered at the post-office at Lawrence, Kansas,
as second-class matter.
With this issue the present board of editors of the Courier retires from their arduous labors. To one unacquainted with the cares, the work and the time consumed, the task seems but small.
In our salutatory we expressed our determination to be just and unbiased. To that end we have labored. Whether we have made a success the public and the students must be the judge. True it is that the Courier has not been a model paper. To those, however, who are disposed to view only with a critic's eye, we would ask: "What endeavor have you made to promote its aim or further its advancement?" Contributions were solicited, you answered not. Being a student's paper it should receive the support of the student not only financially but also by production concerning the advancement of the student and our University.
No set of students can edit an acceptable journal without some aid. An attempt at editing a college paper exclusive of outside support without conflicting to a certain extent with one's studies, which should be his first thought, is impossible. However, we have endenvoured and striven while continuing our studies to publish a paper just, unprejudiced and unbiased in all its assertions, and we hope as we step out of the editorial sanctum our places will be filled by a board of editors who will uphold the reputation of the COURIER.
Law Library.
What would one think of the collegiate department of the University, were the students expected to pursue their investigations in history and science with only such library and appartus as they should furnish for themselves? Manifestly were such the case, the collegiate department of the University would soon dwindle to an insignificant third rate school. Yet the State has provided practically nothing in the way of library for the law department and expects to
grow and keep pace with the advance of tae other departments in the University. For Kansas to have a law school and that school not provided with the reports of our own State, is just about as consistent as to expect a student to become a good botanist without ever seeing a green leaf or a flower. Isn't it about time the great State of Kansas invested the paltry sum of $150 in Kansas reports or else abolished the Kansas law school?
There are a great many students to whom it seems never to occur that it costs money to run a college paper. They receive it regularly; they know their subscription is due from the beginning of the year; they read short articles in its columns asking them to pay up, but they don't pay. Nor are they members of that class who are trying to beat their way through the world. They simply neglect to pay. They either forget or do not realize that what is of so small importance to each of them is in the aggregate of vast importance to the paper.
The second term now beginning, there will of course be a large number of good resolutions in regard to devotion to studies. Don't be afraid to make good resolutions. It can't hurt you and it may do you good. You didn't do as well last term as you should have done. Do not doubt that you can apply yourself better, and above all things, do not be content with having brought out less than the best there was in you. The student who has lost all hope of improving or is satisfied with his past efforts had better quit and go home. He is wasting his time. Good resolutions spring from a desire and a hope for improvement. Do not be afraid to make them. If they are finally broken in spite of all of your efforts, what of it? It is hoping and trying through and over many failures that eventually achieves success.
Prize Oratory.
Thank the stars, the humbug is nearly over.
The Oratorical Association in about fizzled out.
I am told that the late contest was about as poor as they make 'em. A sickly attendance, few contestants and orators on par of interest with an Episcopalian funeral service.
If we have to choose a "best orator", let it be decided between the rivals by a game of poker or by flipping nickles. In poker, barring the luck of the deal, the advantage of a meaningless phiz, and the number of cards up your opponent's sleeve, the result depends on your skill. In flipping nickles, you can, after much
I wasn't present, and so can't sweat to the truth of these allegations. That only four competitors entered for the race, shows that the coat of novelty has about worn off. The fact, too, that the prize oration was a plea for mugwumpery, Pharasceism and political floptery, proves that the Oratorical Association is teetering—beg pardon! I mean totering—on the brink of the grave.
practice, top heads, or tails, as you prefer. But in an oratorical contest neither skill nor practice nor ability have the faintest thing to do with the issue. It is simply a lottery where one man has just as good a chance as the other fellows. It has the one merit—that of giving every chap an equal show, regardless of his attainments.
Take a contest. Pick out three preachers and put them on one side of the room. Get three lawyers and put them on the other side. Then escort three ladies to the rear of the room and bid them give marked attention. Now, when the performance is over, let each of these sets of judges retire to itself for a verdict. Have you the least suspicion that the decision of all will be the same? Have you? Now instead of bunching preachers, and lawyers, and ladies each to themselves let a board of arbitrators be made up, one from each rank. Will the award of this conglomeration be a just one? Do you think so? No, it'll be about as fair as pulling straws: Maybe you'll get the long one, maybe you won't.
Nor is this a theoretical view of the case. Ask anyone who has ever attended half a dozen contests. Ask them if the cracked-voiced, knock-kneed orator isn't as liable to carry off the honors as the fellow of impassioned tones and handsome presence. Why, I remember a contest where one speaker was so outrageously bad as to be positively ludicrous to his hearers; but, bless you, that same night captured the prize.
can't be coached and created for an occasion. Oratory is the fruit of development. It is a rare combination of brains and voice and gesture and life.
Oratorical contests are different from other contests in this—that in oratory the result depends not on the merits of the rivals but on the whims of the judges. Take a rope-pull, and the end which has the strongest fellows wins. In a foot-ball game the battle is between the kickers; and no committee of three lookers-on has the award. In a spelling match, the one who gets his letters right outstands the rest. But in the lists of prize oratory, the puny adventurer with tin armor is more than likely to pluck the laurels from the most valliant knight.
Elocution isn't oratory, An orator
Mind you, I am not attacking the art of oratory. I am not opposing exhibitions of oratorical skill. I would have a chair of oratory as big as the largest of the professorial seats. I would provide assistants, and I would pay them enough to keep them from starving and would give them time to eat and sleep. I would supplement their efforts by a vigorous course of study in the English language. I would foster the literary societies and make them bear the same relation to the "special" societies that the University does to technical schools. I would have chapel debates each morning—all the better if extemporaneous. I would have frequent entertainments in which declamations, essays, debates and orations should take a part. But no prizes or judges should be there to swell the heads of the victors and sour the stomachs of the victims; for with prizes and judges you must have victors and victims.
Let me tell you how the average prize oration is built and launched. First and foremost, the student starts to hunt a subject. He searches the newspapers, ransacks the library and bores all his friends to death in quest of a caption. He knows, of course, that in the title lies the secret of success! The chances are that he will select and scribble about a dozen before he'll settle definitely as to what is fittest. But we'll say that he lights on one that suits him, first pop. Then he writes, writes, writes, writes, a regular flux of words. His aim is to get as few ideas and as many big words as possible. When completed, he goes over it to "polish"; that is to remove the remaining ideas and add more big words. He calls as few things by their right names as possible and gets in all the rhetorical figures the law will allow.
Finally, the oration is built. Then he commences to rehearse. Did you ever hear a prize orator rehearse? He has all the pleasing qualities of a buzz-saw and Dutch wind-mill. I never want to be the trainer of an "orator." I'd rather be father of the boy who has a drum or brother to the fellow who thinks the gun isn't loaded. After several weeks of this rehearsing, the oration is ready for perpetration. It goes off at the scheduled time. It wins the prize; not so much because it happened to be worse than its competitors, but because it didn't combat any pet ideas of the judges.
The Oratorical Association began as an abortion and hasn't been a healthy child since. At various times in its short career has it caused bitter words in the family. It commenced pulling hair in its first year! and in its second, caused a spat between its father, K. S. University, on one side and its Uncle Washburn and Aunt Baker on the other. The poor quality of nourishment it is now receiving will take it to an early grave.
Let me suggest an epitaph:
Here lies an infant and an only son;
It's life a brief and yet a painful one.
Tread lightly as you guide your steps about.
Lest it may waken and begin to spout.
WHAT CAN HE DO?
The great test in life, says Gen. Thomas J. Morgan in a paper on "Training as an Element of Education," is rather what a man can do than what he knows. Can he use his eyes? Has he good judgement? Is he a man of common sense? Can he think? Does he reason correctly? Has he power of adaption? Can he organize? Has he executive force? Is he practical? These are the kind of test questions that are put to the graduates of our schools. Can the "sweet girl graduate" cook a dinner, sweep a room or superintend a house? Does she have an intelligent interest in passing events? Has she robust health, good habits, self reliance, energy and power of endurance? Can the young man lay aside his diploma
and keep his father's accounts, write an article for the newspaper, make a business trip to Chicago, give an intelligent account of the morning's news? Can he lend a hand at home, and turn to some good account in the daily duties of life some of the accumulated stores of knowledge amassed in years of study? Does his education render him more industrious, more skilful and efficient, more ingenious, more practically masterful in whatever he undertakes?
If he has been trained to use his senses, to acquaint himself with natural phenomena at first hand; if he has been taught to think, to make careful comparison, noting essential difference and significant similarities, making patient inductions and wise generalizations; if he has been led to form fixed habits of thoughtfulness, self reliance, moral earnestness, inflexibility of purpose, persistent industry, promptness, punctuality, fidelity, unswerving devotion to duty; if, in short, as a result of his school life, his training has produced a well rounded character, he will be able to meet all the reasonable demands that society can make upon one who lacks practical experience in actual business. He will readily acquire skill and efficiency in any calling for which his special talents have fitted him. Training gives potency to all the soul's possibilities.—Popular Science Monthly.
The attention of the State ought to be called to the analysis of the various presidential administrations now being perfected by the department of Political Science. The amount of work required for the preparation of this analysis is exhorbitant, but the value of the analysis as completed is not out of proportion to the work. It consists of a systematic analysis of each administration under various heads—bringing out all the chief points. Accurate references to magazines, cyclopaedias, histories, congressional records, biographies, and to the various other sources of information are given on each point. Nothing to compare with this in value to the student of the history of our constitution has ever been compiled, and if the consent of the professor of Political Economy can be obtained, the State ought, by all means, to print the analysis for students' use in the University.
One of the best, probably the very best opera that will be presented in Lawrence this season will be the Gypsy Baron by Conried's Opera Company, Friday, February 3rd. The opera is by Johann Strauss—his latest and his best. It was first produced in New York in February last and had a run of over 150 nights, and has been presented over 1,000 times in the principle theatres of Germany and Austria. The New York press have given it the most favorable criticisms of any comic opera for years, as the following from the Dramatic News shows. "By far the best thing ever produced by Mr. Conried, or indeed on any comic opera stage in New York." If you enjoy operas, by all means hear the Gypsy Baron. It is the latest and best thing on the road.
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