UNIVERSITY COURIER.
5
makes ace the town
Chas. B. McDonald, of the Fort Scott National Bank, returned Tuesday; also Edmund Butler, who has been recuperating at Eastern watering places.
Wm. M. Thacher, ex-editor of Pastime, has been quartered at Bismarck during the various camp-meetings in the interest of the Lawrence Journal.
Ed. Melville, who was a student last year, returned from Texas in July, and has been very sick since, but we are glad to say he is now recovering.
Kate Thrasher and Dora Fast, of Iola, will not return to school this year. Miss Fast is assistant in the recorder's office, and Miss Thrasher in the public schools.
TWENTY YEARS IN WASHINGTON.
How few people stop to think in the anxieties and annoyances of a busy life of the importance of events that are happening around them every day. Mankind is prone to exaggerate occurrences of a former generation, and to regard with indifference events of the highest importance that occur during their own lives. But when we go back twenty years and note what has happened under our own eyes, the human mind can scarcely comprehend the changes time has wrought.
Mr. George W. Adams, twenty years ago, sent the Washington dispatches to the first number of the New York World, and in all its changing fortunes he has remained its correspondent until now. What an eventful period in our history! When Mr. Adams, who is yet a young man, being scarcely over forty years of age, began newspaper work here, slaves were bought, sold, whipped and killed in this city, and from the steps of the then domeless Capitol the slave pens of Washington could be pointed out. Now the most lucrative local office in the city is held by a negro (Fred Douglas), himself a former bondman, and another negro (Mr. Cook) collects the city taxes. Still another (Prof. Langston) is a United States minister to a foreign government. Other negroes have sat with credit in both branches of Congress.
Mr. Adams witnessed the inauguration of President Lincoln and described it in the World. He saw and described the withdrawal of the rebels from both branches of Congress and he heard and reported their speeches, and he has seen their return. Then came secession, the flight of secessionists South, the declaration of
war, the fall of Sumpter, the march of twenty thousand, fifty thousand, an hundred thousand men through Washington whose footsteps shook the hemisphere. Great battles followed. Mangled bodies flowed back with the tide of battle and great hospitals went up like magic. Other troops came tumbling in from the North, the ceaseless tramp, tramp of infantry, the clatter of the iron hoof of cavalry and the dull rumble of artillery filled the streets. All these things did Mr. Adams see and write about.
What a place was Washington then! A city of mud and mould, with not an hundred fine buildings in town, and not a dozen handsome private structures; no school-houses, no hospitals, no markets, poor churches, no pavements, a few shade trees, mud knee deep in every street! It is not too much to say that it was the most wretched city in the country. What is it to-day? The most beautiful city of the world, with finer parks, a greater variety of foliage, wider streets, better pavements, better school-houses, costlier markets and more fine residences than any city of its size at home or abroad. An hundred thousand shade trees were set out here in two years, and they now wrap the city in a mantle of green.
The battles went in front of Washington, and all the terrible news, terrible whether victory or defeat went with our banner, was filtered through this city. Adams got his share of it, believe me. What the country owes to the Washington correspondents of those days the people never will know and certainly never will pay. Finally came the surrender at Appomattox, and Adams was again ahead, his being the first press disputed that went North announcing Lee's surrender. Bender, now night manager of the Western Union Telegraph office in this city, testifies to this fact. Then came the grand review of Grant's and Sherman's armies in this city, and then, on that unhappy April night, the killing of Lincoln, at which the world trembled in awe. Here was Adams again. He was on the pavement in front of Ford's Theatre. He saw Miss Laura Keene, who told him that Wilkes Booth had done the deed, and Adams sent the first dispatch North announcing this event. What rivalry among the newspaper men for news of the conspiracy and conspirators and the murderer and his accomplices. What sleepless nights and anxious waking moments. The details of a great battle where thousands fell were not so eagerly sought as news of these few flying fugitives. Following close were the capture, the trial and the hanging of the conspirators. Stir-