The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1866-08-14
WHEELING. WEST VA. TUESDAY MORNING, AUGUST

has would have broken into still sweet
er and more exquisite flower under the
enriching influence of letters. And,
moreover, life abounds in slight occa-
sions and small affairs which call for
the exercise of a certain largeness and
openness of nature that is never the
product of anything but culture in the
better order of minds. There is always
a bound to mere graciousnesS and kind
illness. No uncultivated person can be
tolerant and reasonable under every
circumstance, and to everybody. Preju-
dice Turks in hidden corners of all
minds over which knowledge has not
is the natural foe of magnanimity. It
is at this point that kind, dull people
break down even on the grounds OF
their own virtue. Like all dull people,
they are the rightful prey of prejudice,
and they are disposed to buoy them
selves up in narrow ungracious courses,
where prejudice is concerned, by a
consciousness of their usual gentleness
and kind design. Culture would have
left them all their natural virtue, and
1t would have had the merit of giving
room for its free and uncontrolled play.
There is no certainty and reliance about
stupidish persons, however we'll they
may behave in an ordinary way. Their
character conceals hundred sunken
rocks. You thought you could be sure
OF their aid or their sympathy in GER
tain set of circumstances, and you sud-
denly find their faces fixed as flint
against you. These stony caprices are
the kind of conduct against which cul-
ture protects both the individual and
those which are thrown into contact
with him. Women, for example, are
more capricious than men, because
they are less cultivated. And, though
often possessing q full -blooded sweet
SNf aI,a soI. T.,
great deal more than mere intellectual
qu1ckness, they are very rarely mag
unanimous. Magnanimity is not a fem
tnine virtue, nor, in the minor dealings
OF life, is it virtue characteristic of
nybody of whom it could be said with
shadow of meaning that he had moth
ing in him.
1t is plain enough that commonplace
people who possess no quality to dis
tingu1sh them from their neighbors are
bores to all but those of their own class
and position in the intellectual system.
There is no character for whom an in
telHgent person can feel so little sympa-
thy or even tolerance, if he be of an i'm
patient temper, as one of these truly
blessed souls, Incapable of an impulse,
unable to feel, unable to reason, and
filled with a perverse and stiff conVic-
ton that stereotyped opinions on all
subjects are the ouly opinions worth
acter is passive it is more than sufi-
GENTLY hard to endure. But when it
assumes aggressive forms, and attempts
the contumelious repression of what is
not commonplace, the limits of endu.
rance are passed. 1t is notorious that
people who have really nothing in them
except set of opinions and feelings
which they have, so to say, just picked
up in the streets without knowing why
or wherefore, should try to represent
their own favorless insipid natures as
the best type and color of character.
Still, it is worth noticing that the more
common meaning of the accusation
against woman, for example, that
she has nothing in her, is that She is not
brilliantly clever. The thousand ex-
cellences count for nothing, when it
would be nearer the truth to say that
she has everything in her.