2
THE FORTNIGHT.
Now that the opera house has been refitted it is to be hoped that the managers will secure more good companies. Of musical entertainments we had last year perhaps enough, but of good plays a very large scarcity. We heartily believe in the theatre and think the student will lose nothing by seeing as many good dramas as he can.
Of course studies should not be neglected, but let us not try always to work under a full head of steam.
The Chicago Ideals played to only fair houses during their engagement. The company has no very remarkable voices, but presents an equality of talent that is more acceptable to the audience than the fine singing of one or two stars surrounded by the wretched shrieking of a company of sticks.
In Iolanthe the performance was embarassed by the enforced substitution of another for Mr. Clark in Strephon. The Sorcerer on the second night was the best rendered of all the performances. The music is all pretty and the patter song is certainly the funniest Gilbert and Sullivan have ever written. Mr. Cripps added much to the comicality of his part, the Sorcerer, John Wellington Wells, by making it up after Talmage. Pinafore was carelessly performed, the whole company seeming anxious to get through.
Messrs. Lovell have done the public a real service in issuing Stepniak's Underground Russia. The student of politics will find that this book throws considerable light on the intricate subject of Nihilism. The lover of sensation will find but very little to thrill him. There are no accounts of mysterious plots or secret meetings, only a general introduction on Nihilism, some "Revolutionary Profiles" as they are called-pensketches of various prominent Nihilists also a few sketches on the Moscow attempt on the Concealers, and on the Secret Press.
This is all; the style is plain, sometimes even bald, but the thoughtful man will find much food for reflection in this book. We recommend it to all students.
We wonder how much howling there will be in the next legislature over the infidelity in K. S. U. During the summer the writer heard with surprise, from a good old deacon in Wabaunsee county, that this school was a nest of infidelity, that the professors were atheists, and a good deal more nonsense to the same effect. From that same neighborhood one family sent a son back to a church school in Iowa rather than expose his faith to the attacks of this place. While we have a contempt for a belief which fears the slightest assault, yet this action would not have surprised us had there been any truth in the charges against this college.
Compared with Lane or Baker we are not surprisingly orthodox, and the writer is glad of it. But it does look as if a great deal of lying had been done by some one about the State University. Some of this proceeds from the religious press, but party strife is responsible for the most of it. It is a disgrace to the people of this Commonwealth that the University should feel the effects of political changes and local dissensions.
Last year this paper said somewhat on the advisability of teaching Spanish in K. S. U. We think the reasons then advanced are of equal or even greater force now. Mexico is rapidly opening up to American enterprise. The young man will find a knowledge of its language a material help to his advancement in that region. Some may say that it is only a makeshift, that the Mexican schools are already teaching English. Many of our business men find German a very convenient "make-shift," although we rarely find it spoken by the second generation. Mexico, however, is another country; never has been English speaking, and if it ever becomes so it will take not less than three generations to accomplish the change. We know the present regents can do little or nothing in this matter, but we mean to keep hammering away in hope that the next legislature will be a trifle more intelligent than the last.
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