New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-05-16
YEAST.

| told without Oflense, and which bears so Gu
riously close upon American character and so
cial life, and q great lack existing in both,
that we think it worth the telling. About
twenty years ago there was q large family OF
boys in q drowsy Western village. Their
father was that well-known incubus of hu-
mainly, a genius who had never been able to
turn his spark of inspiration into dollars and
cents. Long, land lank, and lazy, Ben. -
borrowed his way through life, good humored
and witty on an empty stomach, until now,
with all his gray hairs and brood Of hungry
children, he had still his loyal followers ready
to lend him q dollar on the faith that some
day the world would know what remarkable
man it had sheltered in its bosom.
Their mother was one Of the innumerable
tribe of depressed, lean, Woodworking little
women who shoulder through life the burden
of an incapable, shabby genteel family. The
boys were born lazy and good-humored like
their father; depressed like their mother.
Poverty may be a capital discipline for an
adult, but if there be any worse in its infiu-
ences for q child we do not know it, especially
the poverty Of shabby gentility. The problem
why ragged carpets and coarse clothes should
abase it below children who are only its
equals in education or birth, is one that never
is solved by the young soul without loss of
both health and strength These boys were
born into an atmosphere Of want, of mean
makeshifts, of perpetual sponging and sub
serviency. They went lazily through cheap
college course because it cost them nothing,
and lapsed drearily into this or that trade or
clerkship because there seemed to be nothing
better to do The inheritance Of contented
mediocrity and needy inactiOn belongs to their
class in country village.
Now one of the boys, John, happened to
fall in love with little school teacher from
Connecticut, who had Z none Of his sound
ability, culture, or even sense, but who was
alive from head TO foot with the most elastic,
indOmitable cheerfulness. She loved John, but
she measured him on all sides with her blue
eyes before she told him so. She would marry
him provided he came out of the deadening
atmosphere of his own home. Having mar
red him, she prepared to infuse her own tenn
per into the heavy, powerful fellow, as leaven
into lump of unraised dough. He was a
machnist-a poor one. They began to starve,
as his father had done before him. That was,
she said, because trade was his speciality. He
went into trade = was cheated Oh every hand,
began to grow sour and gloomy to croak
about the luck of his race having fallen upon
him. The little wOman's eyes grew brighter,
and her laugh more frequent; they would go out
of the fog of this drowsy village; take his
capabilities to a new State, where they would
have a chance of notice, and he could grow
with the country. In the West he tried
mining farming, real estate, the law, and
f.:1o oil IN, anti nf unH0uhtQd
a logged persistence in work, as soon as he
was put into any certain rut to work in. The
right rut had not yet been found. Poverty
came want, fever and ague, and at last their
one child died. His wife laid by the pain in
her heart out of sight, and rallied buoyantly.
Her "animal spirits" as the neighbors called
them, were so alien to the funeral temper OF
the ordinary American mind that they were
offensive to them, but for years they made
her husband man among men. Life became
a gallant game in her handling; pain and
want sharp edgings for joke.
She took stock of John with undaunted
courage. He had q sound practical insight
into ideas and actions, unlike other men; he
was an effective orator, genial, witty fellow,
with certain strong personal magnetism that
already had made him one of the most popu-
lar men in the State. You must go into
"politics,n she said, decisively. He went
into politics the rut was found at last. In
his own peculiar walk (Which is, it is true,
narrow one) he stands among the half-dozen
foremost men in the country. His brothers,
with equal ability, have become country shop
keepers briehess lawyers, and one or two have
dropped from the bench at the corner grocery
Vohn xxIfa Ia
only as a cheerful, sunny-tempered little
woman" to his friends; forgetting that Of
all wholesome qualities among Americans these
are the rarest. OF intellect, or pluck, or en-
dnrance. there is no lack among us. All that
is needed Is leaven to leaven the lump.
RLGHT YEARS. FOR ONE-FOUR FOR TIE