The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-03-05

that Is, where woman is odd, we find IL
easier to see the reason oft. Perhaps she has
very early detected in herself more cleverness
than beauty, and she resolves to be independ-
ent, and to take line of her own. Under this
idea q slight mutual bias may become
q very decided characteristic. She has
only to encourage in herself strong
likes and dslikes about immsterial
things, matters not worthy of any strong feel
ing, 10 grow very quickly into ecoentrioity.
There may be policy in it, for credit for odd
ness brings great amount of liberation where
there is talent to support it. 1t amounts In
some cases even to sort of sanction or pro-
lection to course of life which might other
wise be open to criticism. good many wo-
men wander about the world alone, using odd
ness as panoply; and in one sense it is avery
complete one, for men do not fail in love with
odd women; though vein Of eccentricity may
add spice and raciness and q dash of humor
to natural cleverness. Some women, however,
fall into singularity by mistake, through
despising commonplace and seeking to be
original. They aim at intellectual distinction,
and have no design whatever to outrage Gus
tom or to adopt a manner; but effort at orgi-
nality can issue in nothing else than the odd
and bizarre, and that of the least attractive
kind. For Oddness, to be tolerable, must at
least be undersigned.
Yet few people who are odd have the excuse
of an irresistible bent. When we think over
the persons who incur the charge, we see that
1t need not have been so, and that some in
dulged vanity, Incidence, cowsrdice, low taste
or preference--something unamiable or infe-
rior-is at the bottom of it. There ia form
Of rabid self-oonceit which, onos INDUCED,
separates man once for all from his fell lows;
we can only survey its excesses in wonder; all
sympathy is stopped. The man is mere vic
tim to a passion: he Is monstrous in the
things he will believe about his deserts and
his elevation above the whole human race;
this is, however, rather a madness which has
all his life bided its time, than oddness or
eccentricity. Commonly what merits this
| name is the consequence of some weak spot,
intellectual or moral, which he has natural
acumen enough to be on his guard against,
only that some persuasive, insinuating temp
tation, some craze of prying curiosity,
perhaps or some subtle vanity, has proved
too much for him. His oddities are not wide
or general; he has only that one about his
nonsense verses"-that is, something he
especially values himself upon. IL may be
some possession, lifted out of its due import
ance because it is his, some speciality, some
distinction, some favorite or pet, or some pur-
suit. There are people eccentric simply on
the amount of business they have to transact,
which they will recapitulate and detail to
others without any thought Of the barrenness
of the subject as one of general interest, or
| any comparison OF their own state of mind
under similar infctons. II is undoubtedly an
| eccentricity for man to entertain strangers
with all that he has done in the course of
day, and yet good many people are oddities
| in this way whom nature never meant for
such. All forms of close occupation, of being
thrown upon oneself, tend to set man at
odds with his fellows, are against his under
standing them readily or moderating his tone
to theirs. We are aware that here we trench
upon the cognate subject Of bores; but are
not some bores emphatically eccentric, ..ac-
c0rding to any true definition of the term
and in so far as people are odd are we not
antipathetic towards them
It is true that fiction utilizes eccentricities
to its own purposes. We read and are
amused; but a vast many things are enter
tanning in fiction which we keep at arms
length in actual life, because they do not
amuse US at all. No person who has lost
sense, whom nature has left in permanent
eclipse on certain points, is actually better
company for the privation, though sometimes
there are equivalents which more than COM
| pensate. In fiction, however, the oddity is
always genuine, and so is the tolerable oddity
in real life; he has no idea that he is old, aud
is often oldest when he is most laboriousy
following what he thinks custom
and precedent. But the eccentricities
we have often to put up with
about them and are rather after the pattern
of the "Seoond Solomon" "whe when he
acted in the common concerns of life against
common sense or reason, valued himself
thereupon as If 1t were the mark of great
genius" and "yoH cannot make him a
greater compliment than by telling the COM
pany before his face how careless he was in
any affairs that related to his interest or for
tune" To be pleased at being odd, to aim at
oddity in things indifferent, is, In fact, an
insult to other people; and, whether we recog-
nize the sensation or not, is felt as such.
Some forms of oddness do no doubt belong
to men of great powers of abstraction aud
lOng-sustained thought. They can scarcely
help falling into some odd ways, nor do we
like them the less for lapses which in minutie
bring them below our level, and claim our
pity and forbearance. But in former age
such men alone were permitted the indulgence.
"No man." says one, "oHght to be tolerated
in habitual whim or particularly of bsha-
vior by any who do not wait upon him for
bread;' and Chesterfield recoils from all odd,
ness, from any departure from sedulous ac-
cordance with the temper of the company you
are in. He only allows, for example, two
men of his own century the privilege Of being
absent in company-Sir Isaac Newton and Mr..
Locke, and perhaps five or six more since the
creation of the world.
Even all studies were under a ban that
found few to pursue them, and taste for en-
tomology, and such minuter inquiries into the
secrets OF nature, placed man out of the pale
of the absolutely sane and reasonable. Not
to be amused with what amused other people,
and te like what the rest of the world was
indifferent to, were alike elements of distrust
and separation. OF oddities and orotohets,
however, that did not interfere with good fell
lowship, our forefathers were perhaps mora