Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1872-01-09
UNEQUAL CONTEST.


To render one efficient for good, it II
necessary to train him. We train law
yers, doctors, mechanics, ministers, pro
fessors-and even the farmer, who plods
from year to year over his fields, is in
constant process Of training. We build
colleges where the youth of the country
are instructed in all that their fathers
knew. We apprentice boys to masters
of the mechanic arts We print works
on grammar, mathematics, geography
etc, ETC., because, to be comprehended
they must be studied We have lessons,
essays, criticisms dissertations, on all
manner of subjects. 1t is the labor of a
life to know all that is worth knowing,
and about the time the student, blind
from study and bent from habits
of physical iuaction, accomplishes
the task he prescribed to himself in
youth, he stoops down to the grave
and disappears. Our fashionable peo-
pie know how much study is nee
essary to perfect themselves in the
art of dress. The maddest fellow we
ever saw was friend of ours who could
not get his collar to suit him. He had
spent years at the study of collars, and
had reduced cravats to a science. He
stood before the glass and cursed, and
then cursed and stood before the glass.
At last he triumphed, and, addressing
the refractory collar, exclaimed you
cant come that game. / have science.
| am the master Of all such picayune
affairs as you are" So you see
that good things, and innocent
things, and vain things, must be
learned. But in the organization
of humanity and matter, there are some
things that need not be studied. They
come as naturally as the art of swim
ming comes to young duck. They
Jump into the brain unbidden, and
though born in moment, cavort as II
they had been with NOAH the ark, and
with John Brown at Harper's Ferry. In
a word, it requires no previous training
to do wrong. 1t requires no acquired
skill to commit crime against God and
humanity. The art of stealing is not to
be studied, nor is the passion that COM
mits murder to be cultivated. They
spring from impulse; they are already
perfect. Now, it is not probable that
the carpet-baggers from the North, when
they came to the South, when it
lay PROSTATE at the foot of Fed
eral bayonets, had ever taken lessons
in private theft or public robbery. They
certainly had not studied the science of
good government. In all these they
were green. But mark you, what won
deriul proficiency they displayed in the
practice of wrong. Their laws were
models of ingenious outrage. Their
governments we're marvellous for the per
lection of their machinery. The devil,
with all his experience, gathered from
many worlds and from all time, could
not have surpassed them. Lock at the
swindlers, look at the armies Of them
scattered over the country They do
their work by the lights of no previous
training, but at the suggestions of
a devilish instinct that is more
effective for its purposes than
information derived from the study of
years. A man spends years in making
an invention or solving a problem, but a
thief steals a million dollars in five min
utes. These are some of the curiosities
of Nature. And so, the business of men
is to study to suppress wrong, which re-
quires no training but springs ful[grown
into the world wherever it discovers a
weak place in society.