Is it not strange that a man will pay newspapers to say publicly about his wife or daughter things that he would knock his best friend down for saying to him privately; that he will deliberately set every scurrilous tongue wagging about the woman he loves and professes to honor; cause her form and features to be discussed in every dive? Should one of our American women overhear a male acquaintance commenting on the whiteness of her bosom, the size of her foot, the shape of her waist and the "latent passion in her dark eyes," she would want him horsewhipped or shot; yet she will pay a rank stranger a dollar a line to say these things in the public prints. Verily 'tis a strange world--and sadly in need of a few more industrious fool killers! * * * THE PUBLIC PEDAGOGUE. MAKING WISE MEN BY MACHINERY. If I might presume to tender a few words of advice to so high and mighty a personage as the president of the University of Texas, I should recommend that he carefully study the Solomonic proverb: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise; and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding." In other words, never pull your trigger until sure you're loaded; for while a fizzle causes the unskillful to laugh, it cannot but "make the judicious grieve." Every man capable of tracing effects to their efficient causes, who chanced to hear or read President George T. Winston's address before the Association of Superintendents and Principals of Public Schools, must have sighed in bitterness of soul, "Poor Old Texas!" These gentlemen, assembled for the ostensible purpose of enhancing their proficiency by the interchange of ideas, had a right to expect valuable instruction from the lips of a man who occupies the post of honor in the chief educational institute of the State; but were regaled with a cataclysm of misinformation, precipitated from an amorphous mind, which seemed to be a compromise between Milton's unimaginable chaos and that "land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness." That such an address could proceed from the president of a State University is most remarkable; that it should be received as an oracle by the men at whose feet sit the youth of Texas is simply astounding. I read the address in no unfriendly or hypercritic spirit, for none rejoice more than I in whatsoever contributes, even a little, to the luster of the Lone Star. Every laurel won by Texas in the forum or the field is worn by all her citizens; her every failure in the arena of the world is shame to all her sons. President Winston evidently appreciated the importance of the occasion but was unable to rise to it. Instead of an address at once philosophic and practical, conveying to his auditors a clear concept of duty and the best method of discharging it, he indulged in a rambling country lyceum discourse, wherein worthless conclusions were drawn by main strength and awkwardness from false premises,