The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-05-15
VANITY IN NAMES.

vAN411 LIN NAA0O'
In Europe persons who are not in tn
slightest degree interested in the matter, AM
who are profoundly and peculiarly ignoran
upon the subject in all its branches, genera
&. and special complain with great bitterness
= that everything from the Eastern Continen
I transplanted on this side of the ocean at ono
= begins to degenerate and decline. Thi
lamentation is oftenest heard from Britons
= who have never learned to forgive their colo
nists for having prospered in spite Of thu
cruel mother who drove them out of thu
ancestral house and home. The complaint
or charge is without basis of fact, so far al
the strength and virtues Of the American
, people are concerned. Our vices, however,
may have fallen of, and to such extent as to
attract notice.
Yet in one particular we are still permitted
to boast that dominant British idiosyncrasy
dourishes quite as well on cis-Atlantic soil as
anywhere upon the water.walled maternal
island. We mean vanity. We hardly dare
call it vice, because it is something so COM
pletely American and so completely traceable
to British origin. If we call it vice it will
be equivalent to saying that all Americans are
vicious. We prefer to say that our American
citizens are given to egotism and inclined to
the exaggeration of their own importance
Perhaps there is no other way in which the
average American SO much shows forth the
national characteristic as in his desire to at
tach his name to something which is to sur
vive him or to be more widely known than
himself. If one takes up gazetteer of the
Western Continent, or directory of the Post
Office Department. he will find three. fourths
of all the names of towns in the Republic 10
be the names of men, attached through vanity
or prejudice. Snyder landed at Castle Gar
den in 1910, went to the far West, traded, ped. |
died and kept beer house, waxed in wealth |
and influence and heaped up very con-
siderable fortune. Now his descendants |
are nabobs, legislators, judges and generals. |
and their neighborhood is christened Snyder |
county. Cooper, the blacksmith, went into
the wilderness Of Ohio fifty years ago, and
planted his forge under q rude shelter in the |
woods. There grew up village and then
town, around him, to which the name of
Cooperstown will cling for centuries Nobody
ever knew who Bunker was. There is no
Bunker family known to American history
Bunker fought no battles, Bunker was not q
"frst family" in New England. There was
no Saint Bunker; there was no Lord Bunker;
there was no General Bunker; but there is,
there must be for all time, in prose and verse,
In song and history, Bunker's Hill The
Muse Of history will pronounce the solemn
query: "Who was Bunker" and from Echo will
come the solemn response, "Who whow
If a man gets into an American Office, poll
Lical vanityat once attaches his name to many
towns, counties, hotels, steamboats, and race
horses. He, who in needless war, at battle
begun by accident and concluded without !.
significant results, blunders into a position ,
when his command heroically suffers slaugh-
er, becomes the godfather Of half dozen
owns OF counties. The laundering brigadier :
Who stsggers into an engagement without =
moving whether his enemy was before or !,
'ehind him, is handed down in history by the :.
attachment of his name to beer saloon, q
teamboat or . village. A nimble-tongued =,
olitician of easy virtue mounts up to vice. J,
residential dignity when a free negro Legis- !
ature immortalizes county by fixing his :.
anne to their Court House. God made bays, !.
apes and headlands, but Yankee sailors =
laim them as their own, and brand them
18th their names even as a Texas grazier ::
larks his yearling bullocks ; and thus we
ave our Hilton's Head, our Smiths Island. =
ar Doby's Inlet, our Muggin's Bay, our -
acketts Harbor, our Johnson's Sound, >,
II Browns River, our Tones Bayou, and an a.
Vulnerable catalogue of creeks and rivers =.
hich bear the surnames of enterprising first y
ttlers. q
North American vanity is not willing to -,
rrender to creative power the praise and 49,
DRY Of having produced lakes, rivers and -
ountains, but must needs append to them -.
g names of men who were as absolutely un-
Town by their progenitors fifty years ago as -.
ey will be by their descendants hundred -
ars hence. The vanity of the village boy tn,
40 carves his name on the church door with
> jackknife grows into the vanity of the Pc
'ngressman who tries to have his name ap- LA
nded to the map of his State. The result tn,
this inconsiderate christening is that our fec
ates are shingled over with the names of
'diocrity which is soon to be forgotten, and
the lapse of a few generations the names of
Trs and counties will be no more than
igmas to those who may attempt to ascer- IL
a their origin He whose lot it may be to per
8 in Grant parish hundred years hence nes
i neither know nor care how, or when, or u
whose honor it was so named.