Pupils of a Kansas School Quench Their Thirst After the Manner of Horses.
Topeka, Kan.-The manual training school is to be equipped with a newfangled drinking arrangement for the pupils, which Judge T. F. Garver, of the school board terms a "horse trough" arrangement.
The new drinking system is a cupless, dipperless affair, supposed to be highly sanitary and the latest thing in school drinking fountains. Instead of a cup or dipper, one who wishes to drink bends over the fountain and plunges his face, or part of it, in a bubbling stream of water forced upward through the fountain much like an artesian well.
It is really an adaptation of the old fashioned country school way of holding the cupped hand over the spout of the pump, while another pumps, and when the cupped hand is full of water, plunging the chin, nose, and forehead, if necessary, into the water, if the hand is big enough, while the thirsty one drinks.
These "horse trough" drinking fountains have been tried at the summer school and Supt. Whittemore reports that they are an excellent device. The special advantage is that the persons who drink do not use a common cup and there is no danger of communicating disease.
Minnetonka Record, February 3, 1905
Queer California Disease.
Which Causes "Natives" to View the Rest of the Country as of Little Consequence.
When my wife and I came to San Francisco from New York we expected to settle, if not permanently, at least for a long time, but we have since changed our plans; why, the public might be interested to know, as our case is a typical one. We discovered that this part of the country is infected with its own peculiar affliction, which is of endemic form-a "native-born" product of the state, writes a correspondent of the San Francisco Argonaut.
Californianitis is principally a defective sense of proportion. We have no doubt that California is a big state, and that Californians are called to big things, but the native sons of the golden west might do well to remember that there is something else besides their state, and that there are some other people, and good for something besides serving as trinkets in their hands.
It had never occurred to us that we were "easterners" until we found ourselves chained to the triumphal car of some native daughter of California as she passed to her drawing rooms showing us as the victor's spoils. We found ourselves declared foreigners, and called upon for daily largesse of dutiful homage.
We look in vain for justifications of distinctively American pride, or developed Californian originalities; in fact, the chief things held out to us as the glores of California are the missions (which are Spanish), the Chinese quarters (which are oriental), the Mexican restaurants (which are half-breed), the the kaleidoscopic scenery (which was here some years before Californians).
The Californian refuses for his state the modest place claimed for itself by every other in the union, abreast of its sister states, but, on the contrary, insists upon for it an isolation, golden-haloed, though at times he himself be conscious that the golden halo is only plated wire.
In a recent issue of a San Francisco daily paper we read an editorial on the yacht races for the American cup, in which the editor mildly suggested that San Francisco might be a better place for the races than New York-there is certainly wind enough to swamp the yachts, but what about the fog?
This is funny enough; but irresistible is the idea of the chief objection he foresaw New Yorkers would make, the loss of trade brought by visiting enthusiasts-which, by the way, might number 10,000. Isn't this sizing things too much by local units, when it takes a Dewey parade with 3,000,000 visitors actually to crowd New York, and an extra 100,000 is there a wonted influx of ordinary travelers?
Some time ago a California writer, describing the mission period of Californian history, declared that the Spanish monks had given to the world a new style of architecture and a new form of the art, the mission furniture. The facts are, the mission architecture is nothing but the "barocco" style of ecclesiastical constructions used widely in Spain and Italy in the seventeenth century; and the mission furniture is easily to be found in all the medieval castles of Europe, with only this difference, that the former is made uglier and the latter cruder because of the want of suitable materials and good artisans.
Living in San Francisco would be particularly pleasant if it were normal, but since there is a bacillus here, too, and we must choose between the pains of Californianitis and the pangs of New Yorkitis, we prefer the latter every time.
Minnetonka Record, January 6, 1905
The Decay Of Manners.
We rush through life in such a hurry these days, that there is little or no time or thought for the refinements and courtesies that in the good old days of our grandparents were considered necessary to good manners.
The man or woman who has really good manners, nowadays, we distinguish as being of the "old school."
Unfortunately, the old school is passing away, and there is no new school to take its place.
We seem to be drifting into the idea that good manners are a rather boresome and indefinable something in the way of an affectation which we may put on with our best clothes for weddings, parties and other such affairs, but not to be carried about with us on ordinary occasions.
We have come to regard common courtesy as a time consumer and a waste.
Rapid communications have corrupted good manners, for the speed with which we can travel or transmit news has aroused a nervous impatience of delay which is fatal to courtesy and manners both in spirit and form.
We no longer write the good, long, warm, soul-satisfying letters that were written in the old days.
Formerly letters were dignified and interesting, but now they are neither.
We imagine we have no time to write elegantly and in a spirit of impatience we scribble a few lines to some friend when there is no escape from the painful necessity.
And the letters of today show that their writing is a task, not a pleasure.
Once upon a time it was good manners to hold old age in reverence, but it is not so any more.
Whatever we may actually feel in the heart, our attitude toward the old indicates that instead of regarding them with reverence we consider age the synonym for incapacity and boredom.
It is an age of ill manners in both men and women.
Garish vulgarity taints what is regarded, commonly at least, as the best society.
So far we have sunk that the men of genuine courtesy and polish must balance it with some sort of coarseness or be damned as a "sissy."-St. Paul Daily News 1902
Hey! Ultrababy-X! does anyone remember him? Super-Newtie does! I wonder if Lexie is ready to pass her membership in the legion of super-babies on to her younger sibling? A year ago, we mentioned that this baby can dig holes at an incredible rate and is destined to lead us to an underground utopia and a new age of enlightenment. Perhaps that's why he is known to the children as Ultrababy X. I think he wants to recruit little Lexie into his legion of Superbabies.
