New-York tribune., 1874-09-12
SUPERIOR PEOPLE.

One word more to the teachers waiting for
scholars before they and their multitudinous
swarms disappear from view for another SIX
months-do MT Infict too many great men on
the next generation. There is not Bob OF
Joe who shoulders his scbool-bag this week
who has not been adjured from his cradle to
become a President, missionary, or a mil
lionaire, "a great and good man OF some
sort or other. AS soon as he could walk,
mother and father were on the watch to dis
cover peculiar talent in him. From the day
he enters school until he leaves it, the prizes
and honors are the objects at which they aim
for him. That he should jog on with the
hard working rank and file of boys, who
master just enough knowledge to enable them
TO Jog on afterward with the rank and file
outside, honest mechanics, tradesmen, profes-
sional men, agreeable fellows and good work.
ers who earn their bread and butter and make
no mark in the world what father or mother
imagines such fate possible for their prod
igy7 Yet in nine hundred and ninety-nlne
cases out of the thousand he does so jog on,
in school and in the world, and bears the gall
and bitterness of disappointment that he could
not reach the unattainable mark they set be-
fore him.
It is not only the schOol-bOy who shares in
this gasping race for greatness; the American
of any age scorns mediocrity, the level middle
place to which he rightfully belongs. If he is
in trade he must be Fisk. if he is in politics
a Butler (fOr these are our gods, oh Israel y
He is in reality ward politician or dry
goods clerk but why shall he not have i'm
L. lya1
and neuralgia and disagreeabe in consequence,
as the rest of the aspiring Smiths and JOneses
who are his neighborsf His wife and children
strain and work bIeathlessly for the Gordon bleu
of whatever sort it may be which bewilders
their fancy they dress and talk and actually
live after the fashion of some village aristO
crat who is their demigod, but whose habits
fit them as badly as their old clothes would
do. But worse woe befalls them if greatness
has really Overtaken them! Whether it be
money or position or the possession of little
more culture than their neighbors, how exag-
gerated is the glory in their own eyes! How
the sprig of broom in their caps turns into
royal crown Or if they cannot claim pre-
eminence on their own account with any hope
of success, they manage to know somebody
DuttOn's grandmother was friend of Mrs.
Dolly Madison's and aided that lady in her
stately receptions, and little Van Mott was
taken into Dickens's set in London, and has
dined and wined with Thackeray. Shall they
not look down atfably on all ignoble humanity
thereafter
Another phase of this morbid hankering for
superiority shows itself noticeably among
lonely unmarried women in inland villages
and country places, of finer tastes and in
stincts than their kinsfolk; women who inva-
riaby read THE TRIBUNE and best magazines,
and usually essay to write for them once
a year. The class is larger in this than in
any other country; they drag through their
routine of sewing, housework, ETC., with life
less exactitude, and spend their strength and
Missionary circles they regard as. snare, and
canning fruits is to them but fOolishness
They mold themselves on some lofty model
Eugene de Guerin, if religion is their hobby;
or if they are literary, pore over the brilliant
successes of this poetess or that lecturer with
bitter bewailing over their ewn baked chances.
Now. il these and all other aspirants for emf
nence would but consider the hordes Of COM
monplace people about them, what whole
some change society would experience. - The
yestal virgin who sighs over the "lack of in
"tellectuality in Smithville will never find
Mrs. Browning or John Stuart Mill there, but
the carpenter who is building her hen-roost
could give her ideas about the qualities of
woods, and the belts of timber through the
States, that would be new to her, and the
ostler in the stable belonged to menagerie
once and knows queer traits and stories about
the brute beasts more suggestive than any
idea in Casa Guidi windows. With our ever
lasting straining after high ideas we shut our
ewes to the mass of ordinary weighty facts
about us, which would give breadth and foun-
dstion to our minds, just as in our cropping for
refinement we see nothing of the sound sense,
the good feeling, the honesty of our grocer
or our milkman.
1t is high time that we knew, and taught
our children to know, that it is among the
common people, the decent unconspicuOus,
unpublished masses, not one of whose names
ever gave o headline to an Associated Press
report, that the sound faith in Christ Is to be
found. tho weight Of plain sotl sense. the