Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1881-10-13

"Self-Made" Men and Women,
Col l. W. Higginson In the woman,s Journal
Self-made men of President Garfield's
style are often justly claimed as being
among the finest fruits Of our institu.
tlons. There is another class who also
deserve well our praise-those who
have had to overcome not SO
much their early disadvantages as
what many people would consider
their early advantages. They did not
have to surmount poverty, but to sur
mount wealth-not to rise out of ad.
versity, but above prosperity. They
have had to learn to sympathize with
those in need without ever having
shared their necessitous condition
TO espouse radicalism when they had
everything to lose by change. 1t is
hard, at any rate to get good work out
of those who are born to inherit what
others have earned by working, how
much harder when their career is des-
tined to involve not merely work, but
the loss of early friends and perhaps of
all the special delights of the society in
which they were born. To accept
these conditions, and to do it knowing
ly and cheerfully, is to be self-made
man or woman indeed.
A rich young lawyer was once told
by an older one that the way to sue
cess was this: To spend his fortune;
then to marry and spend his wife's
after which he could hope to su iced
at the bar. But to achieve a realh IN
dependent moral position-to be in.
deed a self-made man or true man =;
all Implies more than success at the
bar, for it needs not only intellect, but
the highest aims besides. To accom-
plish this in spite of early "advantag-
es," is In many respects harder than to
rise out of what is called obscurity.
To begin with, it wins far less sym-
pathy during the process. Everybody
is interested in "The Romances of a
Poor Young Man." Those of the
class from which he came, whatever il
be, are apt to cheer him on, and to re-
Joice. with almost tiresome repitition,
that he was once rail-splitter, or a
tanner, or a flat-boatman. After his
career of distinction is once begun. he
has every inducement to make the
most OF these circumstances in his ca
reer; they are counted to h1m for
merits, and he is tempted to exaggerate
them like the character in Dickens
Bleak House, "Hard Times ?" whose
main stock in trade lay in his early
struggles, and was put to shame at
last by the discovery that he came
of worthy and well to do parents.
But the man who tries to ele-
vqte himself into independence of
character out of fortunate" surround
ings is apt to find himself unfortunate.
Those of the class he is leaving do
not urge him on. but are more apt
to censure him or satirize him; and
where this is true of a man, it is twice
as true of the other sex. l remember
one occasion when a lecture was to be
delivered in Newport, by one of the
most accomplished women in New
England. .Ah! now 1 have named
her, which 1 did not mean to dor-as
Warrington" once said of the same
person, after applying to her a some
what similar epithet. "Only thinkp'
said one of the little queens of our lit
tie society, as she read the announce
ment, "that woman was lady oncer'
l well remember when boy to have
only heard of LIothrop Motley as the
handsomest fop and flaneur in Boston
the manager of fashionable assem-
blies, the leader of the dance. Wendell
Phillips in his Cambridge Grafton the
other day, described the process of
change which transformed Motley into
an author and then into a reformer;
and made his pen worth a dozen di-
plomatists to his country when the
opening of the war found the United
States almost without friend in Eu-
rope. OF Mr.. Phillips own career 1
need hardly speak; nor of that other
charming orator, who, with his new
Harvard honors upon him, praised
Phillips at the Phi Beta Kappa dinner
in words almost as eloquent as his own.
Whatever be their errors or shortcom-
iEgs, 1 never think of men and women
such as have named-and the list
might easily be made longer without
recalling that fine passage with which
George COlman, in his once famous
"LOOker on" describes Sir Phillip Sid
ney-putting the language, be it OBJ
served, into the mouth of a woman.
This is the closing paragraph:
"This bright and accomplished cava-
lier might, if he pleased, in his day,
have set the fashion of a shoe tie OF
altered the shape of any mans peruque
in the country; but he thought it more
becoming his manhood and his great.
ness of soul to hold out brave exam.
pie of virtue or religion. While all
were looking up to him as the sample
of courtesy, of elegance and gallantry
he was bethinking himself of his Para
phrase of the Psalms. He fell fighting
for his country, and died in an act Of
Christian charity"
Sweet simplicity: We hail a pass
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