Warren sheaf. [volume] (Warren, Marshall County, Minn.) 1880-current, 1881-06-15
OUIDA ON .ssOCIErY. :,

OUIDA ON SOCIETY
ga Plant That Must BE Fed and Watered
ScrupulOlisiy."
Believe me, society is plant that must
be fed and watered, and dug and matted
scrupulously," said Lady Cardiff, gravely,
as they rode homeward through the sun
set lightened streets. IT yon do not take
endless trouble with it, it will never blos-
som for you. Are there not dukes and
duchesses nearly as obscure as Jones and
Brown? Are there not millionares, aye,
billlonares, for that matter, who live hid
den under their gold as utterly as if it were
dust-heap? Why do we see marchioness
nonentity, whose name is barely known
off her estates, and new conner, whe has
nothing but her shrewd sense and her'pleas-
ant manner, pushed up into "a leader Of
fashion? It's all matter of trouble and
TACT my dear, nothing more. It's not what
you have, but how you spend it. It isn't
what you are, but what you appear to be.
It isn't rank, or brains, or riches, or con-
duct; you may have any one of them, or
you may have them all, and yet they may
avail you nothing. You may remain OBJ
scure. Look at Lady Kencarrow, in Lon
don now-not pretty, not clever, not witty,
a third-rate actress in the country, as any
body knows-and yet what success!
Princes of the blood to dine with her; her
house is the very temple of distinction, all
| matter of tact, my dear, and of attention.
She has devoted her life to getting posi-
ton. She has succeeded. Nothing succeeds
like success. You people who are very cley-
er, OF very proud, orvery careless, never
pardon me-succeed with society.
You make stir in it, perhaps, but that
! never lasts long. You won't take the pains
to please it, and it soon leaves you for'peo-
pie who do. A witty thing comes into your
head, and you say it, careless whom it may
hit You are bored by the vanity of other
folks and you show it, Indifferent where
you may offend. You wont, conciliate big
little people, and they, in their spite, set
the big, big people against you. So the
snow ball grows, and one day it gets large
enough and hard enough to knock you out
of society altogether. People must make
themselves agreeable to be agreeable to the
world; yes, and eat a good deal of dust, too,
that concede. If they are very high and
course they can be as disagreeable as they
choose, and make others eat the dust always;
but if not, there is nothing for it but to
toady. Believe me, nothing but to toady.
Dear Lady, Joan knows it. In her lit
tie way she succeeds thoroughly. It's y
very little way, grant; to be visited like
other people, and 60 to bankers balls and
clergymen's tea fights, and stand well in or
binary society generally. That's her am
bition. But see how she attains to what
she wants-just by smiling on women she
hates, and making believe that two penny
half-penny chaplain can send her to heav-
en- Oh earth. Oh, it all seems unutterably
small to you. know that, " she said with
some impotence, as Ettiole irreverently
laughed. "You clever poetic people have
sort of world of your own, rock among the
waves, like Chateaubriand's Tomb. But,
after all, my dear creature, society is not to
be despised. It is pleasant.
'Pleasantness is the soft note of this
generation, just as scientific assassination
| is the harsh note of it. The age is COM
pounded of the two. Half of it is chloro-
form: the other half is dynamite. We are
not brilliant, nor powerful nor original; we
shall never sparkle like the beau steele,
| nor leave heirs to immortality like the
| Cirque Cento. nor shape the world anew
like the early Christians, nor rapiate with
crystal clearness like the days of Pericles.
But when we are not murderers we are
pleasant, pre- eminently pleasant; we know
how to set chairs on wheels, and put spring
cushions in them; we are the age of AM
aesthetics. We have invented painless
dentistry and patent bedsteads; we have
| discovered chloral and conformation, and
though we have, to be sure. to bear uncom-
Portable things like the telephone, the
Commune, and Wagner, still we snooze
ourselves asleep, and decide that since we
must all die so soon we will be as comfort
o1>% 40 ,l,1 -
the doctrine of Horace, with the poetry left
out. We are like Tennyson's sLotuseaters: -
Let us alone; what is there worth row?
Isn't that the line?"
How French Reporter Distinguished Himself.
One of the most brilliant feats of French re-
porting is the following, as narrated by the
Partisan. It happened at the time when the
great TrOpmann murder case was agitating
Paris and France, and everybody was eager for
details. A reporter who had the matter in
hand left Paris for Cernay, where the father
of Tropmann resided. He arrived. called
saire de police, invited them to follow him to
the mairle, took his seat in the judges chair,
and there, with unparalleled audacity, ordered
the garde champetre to go and bring before
him the assassin's father The officers did not
~ word the reporter had conquered them
by his air and his demeanor. When the father
of Tropmann was brought before him, the re-
porter Intercepted him as though officially
commissioned to do So The result of the
cross-questioning was that the son had written
to his father on the eve of the day of the crime.
Monsieur lie Commissaire," says the reporter,
s'please to go to the Witnesses house and seize
those letters" The functionary obeved; the
letters were brought. the reporter read them,
found them full of evidence of Tropmann's
guilt, copied them carefully and with solemn
air. Then, with respect, he handed over the
originals to the justice of the peace, asked him
to seal them carefully and keep them for the