Morning appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1877-1906, 1877-09-26
MORNING APPEAL.
WEDNESDAY,. ...SEPTEMBER 2s. 1877
NOTES AND QUERIES.


posite virtues. 1t is loyalty which makes {
school bov take licking rather than tell who
it was that put the shoemakers-wax in the
masters chair; it is loyalty which makes
young men true to young women and induces
them to keep their promises with them even
after the occurrence of an inevitable mishap
it is LOYALTY which makes fellows stick to-
gether after getting out into the world and
finding out one another's good and bad parts.
1t was Grants loyalty that made him treat
Lee like brother West Pointer when the lat
ter was brought to surrender; it was loyalty
which made Thomas Huxley tell the students
at Aberdeen University that he was plebian
who stood by his order; and it is loyalty to
his fellows and himself which makes this No
tary like and enjoy the tone and temper Of a
recent article in the Cornhill Magazine emit
tied An Apology for Idlers. 1t is high time
that we whose dwelling place is upon the out
skirts of the region of Vagabondage had
champion We have been bullied and scowled
at and pointed out as dreadful examples by
the studious, the exemplary and the hard
workers quite long enough We had heard
of this splendid article before we actually
came upon it, and were prepared to like it.
See with what true courage and unshrinking
frankness it begins: Just now" says the
writer, when everyone is bound, under pain
of decree in absence convicting them of Iese
responsibility, to enter on some lucrative pro-
fession, and labor therein with something not
far short of enthusiasm, cry from the oppo
site party who are content when they have
enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the
meanwhile, savors a little of bravado and gas
conade. And yet this should not be. Idle
ness so called, which does not consist in doing
nothing, but in doing great deal not recog-
nized in the dogmatic formularies of the rul-
ing class, has as good a right to state its posi-
ton as industry itself" Now that is spoken
as by man after this Querist's own heart.
There is, moreover, something of the sweet,
rebellious tone of Charles Lamb about it, and
an intelligent sturdiness which reminds one
of Henry Thoreau We like this Apologist
when he tells US, with true heroism, that
fBooks are good enough in their own way,
but they are mighty bloodless substitute for
life" He sympathises with that greatest of
French reviewers, Sainte Beauve, in his dis
covery, made in the later years Of his life, |
that all experience is like unto single great
book in which to study a few years ere we go
hence "and it seemed all one to him whether
you should read in chapter Xxx, which is the
diferential calculus, or in chapter XXXIX.,
Whchis hearing the band play in the gardens.
At last, impatient of the unreasonableness of
the conditions which he finds insisted on on
all sides, this valorous insurgent from the
downtrodden Idlers exclaims, "And what, in
Gods name, is all this pother about} For what
cause do they Ghe incessant workers), emblt-
ter their own and other peoples lives! That
man should publish three or thirty articles
year, that he should finish or not finish his
great categorical picture, are questions of little
interest to the world. The ranks of life are
full; and although thousand fall, there are {
always some to 60 into the breach. When {
they told Joan of Arc she should be at home
minding women's work, she answered there
were plenty to spin and wash. And so, even
with your own rare gifts when nature is SO
careless of the single life, why should we cod
die ourselves into the fancy that our own is =
of exceptional Importance? Suppose Shaks- p
peare had been knocked in the head some ]
dark night in Sir Thomas Lucys preserves, +
the world would have wagged on, better or !;
worse, the pitcher have gone to the well, the :,
,cythe to the corn, and the student to his 6
book; and no one been any wiser for the loss. =
There are not many works extant, if you look =
he alternative all over, which are worth the
price of a pound of tobacco to man of imi =
ed means" Hurrah for champion As !.
,ataline is made to say, ~ held some slack :.
llegience till this hour, but now my swords I
nv own" There are " books in the running
brooks, sermons in stones and good in every "
hing" This bluff and hearty loyalty to :,
omething other than that which lies within
he sacred bounds of conventionality and Gus
ON; which dares to speak word for that
,enial side of life where one is found turning in
lis back on cankering care and money-mak- OF
ng and the mines of racking thought which ty
axes time to consider the lilies how they be
row. and takes note and receives assurance su
4 the fact that they neither toll nor spin nor in
re gathered into barns, this comes very near "a