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| Ferdinand E. Smith. |
Cortland Evening Standard, Thursday, February 23, 1899.
VERY COMPLIMENTARY.
Work of the Cortland Schools Highly Commended.
Superintendent of Schools F. E. Smith has received from the Regents' department a letter which says that Inspector Clements who recently inspected the Central school speaks very favorably of the work done in the school, referring especially to physiology and physical geography.
Some time ago State Truant Officer Wright was here and so highly impressed was he with the attendance that he asked Supt. Smith to make him a report for the first half year, and the report follows: The smallpox scare affected the attendance somewhat but for all that, it has been very good, and shows that the public schools are being thoroughly supervised.
REGENTS OF EDUCATION.
A Change Suggested in Our Present School Laws.
ALBANY, Feb. 23.—Governor Roosevelt is in favor of some plan whereby the state university and state public instruction departments may be consolidated. The matter is under consideration. Professor Murray Butler of Columbia college suggests that a new department be created to be known as the regents of education—the members of the present state board of regents and eight additional persons appointed by the governor. The present regents shall serve until their deaths and the appointed members until they are 70 years of age.
The board is to ultimately consist of 15 members. It shall appoint a superintendent of public instruction, whose department shall have charge of all schools and high schools supported by public taxation. The regents' department shall control private colleges, schools and academies and shall have jurisdiction over the conduct of examinations,
A QUESTION OF LAW.
Controversy In Homer Over Time of Closing Polls at Town-Meeting.
Some question has been raised in Homer over the matter of the closing of the polls in Homer on Tuesday afternoon and threats have been made of an attempt to have the whole election declared illegal and compel it to be repeated. The [Homer] Republican states the question as follows:
The polls on town-meeting day were opened by the town board at 6 o'clock A. M., and closed at 5 o'clock P. M. The election code provides that "town-meetings shall be kept open for the purpose of voting, in the daytime only, between the rising and setting of the sun." Another section provides that the polls of every general election and unless otherwise provided by law, of every other election shall be open at 6 o'clock in the forenoon and shall be closed at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
Under the latter section a note says that "the statute is directory, not imperative, as to hours of opening and closing poll; election not necessarily void because of violation of statutory regulations, though inspectors might be liable to indictment therefor."
It is claimed that a number of voters were debarred from voting because the polls were closed at 5 o'clock instead of 5:38, the time of the setting of the sun on election day, but no one believes that the result would have been changed by the votes thus lost.
It is probable that the election is legal even though an irregularity in time of closing did occur. The town board acted in perfect good faith but had failed to find the section directing the closing of the polls at the setting of the sun and supposed they were following the requirements of the law in closing at the time required at general elections. The mistake was unfortunate but it is not generally believed that it vitiates the election in any way.
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| Cortland Opera House. |
Fanny Rice To-night.
Fanny Rice comes to the Cortland Opera House to-night in her very successful comedy "At the French Ball." She has the unusual gift of being genuinely, unmistakably funny. Without the aid of extravagant makeup, in fustian or in silks and satins, without a distorting grimace of an ungainly movement of her shapely body she creates laughter until it borders on hysteria. When she first appears, the spell is on, and it continues until the final curtain. She is the embodiment of all that is fascinating, spontaneous in comedy, and to see her is a sure cure for blues, insomnia or melancholia. "At the French Ball" is an odd conceit from the German, whence the greater number of the successful farces are drawn. It has a serious undercurrent but this is never allowed to crop up to the surface. It is the story of a shoe maker's wife, of humble surroundings who imagines that she is not getting her full share of the good things of life, and therefore decides to seek the bauble happiness as she has it pictured in her own way. Her experiences are immensely funny, but by the time she has tried the French ball she concludes that all that glitters is not gold, and that she was far better off in her humble home with the honest love and devotion of her husband. It is a salutary lesson, but that is but the moral and the play is one long continuous laugh.
BREVITIES.
—A special meeting of the hospital board is called to meet the hospital to-morrow afternoon at 3 o'clock.
—The mothers' meeting (east side) will be held at Mrs. Wilcox's, 95 Elm-st., Friday afternoon, Feb. 24, at 3 o'clock. All ladies are cordially invited to attend.
—A mothers' meeting (north) will be held at the home of Mrs. Hinman, 2 Carpenter's Lane, Friday afternoon, Feb. 24, at 3 o'clock. All ladies will be welcome.
—The Sons of Veterans will meet at 7:30 sharp to-morrow night for important business. New rituals have been adopted and received, and the improved order of work will be exemplified.
—New display advertisements to-day are—Walter Angell, Meats, page 5; A. S. Burgess, Hats, page 8; W. W. Bennett, Ranges, page 8; Model Clothing Co., Clothing, page 6: Opera House, French Folly Extravaganza, page 5.
PAGE TWO—EDITORIALS.
The Decline of the Cuspidor.
There is standard evidence in the observations of Mrs. Trollope and Charles Dickens that the Americans are an expectorating race. There has been for half a century what may be called standing proof of it in the presence and prevalence of the cuspidor, a utensil almost unknown to foreigners. It must be confessed, now that we have got over it, that for nearly a hundred years we "chawed." What else we did that was a consequence need not be dwelt upon. But a large part of our social history is marked—we had almost said stained—by expectoration. It is only within five years that a determined effort has been made by the sex, one of whose unexplained mysteries is that it does not expectorate, to abolish the habit. The women attacked it openly and persistently. They discountenanced it in religion, in society and in travel. They went so far as to make their social favor contingent on a man's superiority to that ugly accompaniment. The consequence is that it is slowly disappearing, like the American bison and the bowie knife.
But the history of woman's struggle against the cuspidor and her fiercer war against the inalienable right of every American of the male gender to expectorate when, how and where he pleased, both in public and private, utterly regardless of the demands of sanity and sanitation, will never be written. Man himself would probably blush to read it. It would not increase his self respect to learn that when the elevated railroads were put in operation in the large cities he had to be asked by placard not to expectorate on the heads of the people below. But having been girded and reformed, he wonders now that he could ever have needed such injunction. He would not like to be reminded that there was a time when in the politest society he had to remove his quid before drinking the health of the ladies. The gentleman who "chaws" now would run some risk of being mistaken for a longshoreman. People would suspect him of having been brought up in the fo'castle, and the lover who had to expectorate between sighs would probably be "turned down'' very promptly.
Man, deprived of his cuspidor at home, fought for a long time for his right to expectorate in public and insisted that the horse car should be turned into a cuspidor. But the women followed him ruthlessly into that retreat. They swept the board of health into their train, and finally got an ordinance passed. Under this pressure it is not astonishing that the once pernicious habit has been driven to its "mountain fastnesses."
We are really more considerate of other people than we once were. To revel in our pristine masculinity we must slink off to Bohemia, hunt for a bachelor's club or join the cowboys. Everywhere else the suppressive woman, trailing skirts that she will not shorten, is watching us. Driven to helplessness and desperation, man is becoming decent. He has relinquished the cuspidor along with other idols. One by one his cherished weaknesses have disappeared. He no longer asks the ladies to leave the dinner table when the wine comes on. He has grown tame enough to let them stay. Presently he will repress the desire to go out between the acts at the theater. All these vestiges of his unabated manhood were doomed as soon as the cuspidor tottered on its throne.
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