St. Charles City Republican intelligencer. [volume] (St. Charles City [Charles City], Iowa) 1857-1861, 1859-11-10
A. Il. r. HlLDRETH, Editor.
st. Charles City, Iowa, Nov. 10, 1859.
An Initiative People.


called the laughing animal but he
shows this quality with the hyena,
and his laugh is not unfrequently as
heartless and as vicious as the quad
rupcd's. He has been spoken of as
the thinking animal but your kline,
chewing the cud, looks as profound
and as serencly meditative as e'er q
man Of us all. And who shall say
that thoughts are not present to the
comprehension of the kine since we
know that, in addition to the instincts
of their nature, they exercise certain
qualities of mind of which memory,
is, perhaps, the most important. Man
has been called the praying animal !;
but even here, a species of the feath-
cred tribe shares with man the atti
tude of prayer, which, from its suppli-
catory posture is known as the pray
ing bird. He has been called, with
| S'S"s iS"ooti, tIc ticdCllclOuS duiIIldl
but the fclinerace approach very near
ly to him in this respect. As the
hypocritical animal, man stands un-
approached and unapproachahlc.
We think, however, that that spc-
cies Of man known as the Yankee, is,
above all others, the initiative animal
He is prying and curious. He will
know everything that is going on .
business he sets to work to improve
it and if he cannot do that, he makes
some alterations in it and adopts tn"
whole thing as his own. Is there
new invcntion? The Yankee will
swear ho can beat it. Is there any
new thing presented to the public by
which money is to be made or honor
gained? The Yankee will have his
hand in it and will so contrive it, that
the original protector shall not, in nine
cases out Of ten, enjoy the fruits of
his plans.
When we speak of the Yankee, we
do not mean the Yankee in the re.
stricted sense, the native of New Eng
land, but the universal Yankee of the
United States, who is found wherever
genius, enterprise, daring and persc-
vcrance offer openings for him, or Gu.
riosity can bc gratified. This imita-
tive faculty of his, and his strong de.
sire and love Of competition does not
always yield him the results he looked
for. \ man opens a new path and
starts upon it. In a day scores of
others are after him, crowding upon
each other, toppling each other over,
in,errupting each other in their eager
pursuit, and finally turning each other
from the goal they had in prospect
Competition is truly the life Of bust
ness but there is competition with
out judgment which is the destruction
Of business. 1t is an avaricious and
all grasping competition which kills
the goose that lays the golden egg.
Let the new pursuit be what it may,
whether Of wisdom or Of folly wheth-
er beneficial to society or otherwise !;
whether it opens new sources of rich
es to the country or helps to drain it
Of it's wcalth-whatcver it may be
that is for the time uppermost. is sure
to have imitators by droves, and soon
the thing is run into the ground. The
Yankee is peculiarly susceptible to
attacks Of mania. They are constant
ly breaking out, and, in the course of
a year, he exhibits all the vagaries of
a moon-struck lunatic. If the attacks
do not last long, they are frequent and
very various in their diagnostics. At
the present time, there are several
manias into which our love of
imitation has led us, one or two of
which will expire with this moon.
Blondin performs the foolhardy feat
Of crossing a cataract upon rope.
Straightway in every section, uprise
professors who do the same thing over
less conspicuous cataracts, and the
multitude, greedy for novelties, flock
to see them. The terrible calamity
at Albion, N. Y, will prematurely
put stop to this kind of amusement.
Sam Patchism,-leaping from great
heights into the water,-bid fair to
become raging mania. But the sud-
den fate of the Canadian, who was
going to immortalize himself, has ef-
fectually stopped this sort of thing.
Balloonism RACES. This mania has
spread far and wide, but that will also
die out. There is too much risk in it
and too little profit. Besides, people
will soon want more exciting sensa-
tion than to be gazing into the sky to
see an inflated silken fabric.
The latest exhibition of our eager
pursuit of a new thing, a pursuit SO
fierce as to threaten destruction to