Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-11-03
The Fine English Gentleman.

In an incisive essay in the Century, on
the characteristics of London" w. j.
Stillman describes the English GENTLE
man, and contrasts him With the best
American type, as follows: s.And it is in
this very class which l have, in no dis
paraging sense, termed Centauric, the
a%ristocracy, where social independence
has reached its highest, that we find
here and there, cased like the flower of
this mighty growth, in extraneous and
deciduous LEAKAGE, that best type of hui
manity as the world knows it, the true
English gentleman-a being whose ex-
terror decorum may be co%unterfeited by
his emulator, whose inmost gentleness
and courtesy may be Swallowed forth in
peer or peasant-who loves his kind,
and feels the common bond of divine
birth, but whose most perfect union of
noble demeanor and large-heartedness
can only be found where the best type
of mind has been permitted the largest
and richest culture and the compleIest
freedom of hereditary development in
the most favorable external circum-
stances. There are mobiles and noble
men-men who seem to be conscious
only that surrounding men are lower
than they, and others whose illumina-
ton pervades every one near them and
brings all up into the same world of
light and sweetness. The prestige of
nobility is founded on a true human in
stinct; occasionally one finds an English
nobleman who j%ustifies its existence, and
makes us snobs in spite of our democ-
racy.
II could, 1 am certain, point to
Americans who, in every essential trait
of the gentleman, will stand comparison
with any aristocrat born-men in whom
gentlehood has grown to hereditary
ripeness; the third and fourth genera
tions of men who have cultivated on
American soil the virtues of honesty,
morality, sincerity, courtesy, self-abne-
CATION, humanity, b~enevolence; men and
women whose babyhood was Graded in
those influences which make what we
call good breeding and to whom the
various v%ulgarities Of our parvenu
princes are as foreign IS to the bluest-
blooded heir of Norman fortune; and
this is to me a more grateful and SYM
pathetic type of humanity than that of
its English congener. But to this will
always be lacking n grace which that
may possess-the majesty of the born
legislator and ruler; the air of habitual
command and control, hereditary as are
all generic traits, good or bad, and
which imposes itself on the conscious
ness of all men. This, be it for the bet
tering or the worsering of the type, is to
u democratic, ruled, leveled and
ballot-boxed civilization forbidden for
ever; and the fustian heredi-
ties of quickly and perhaps ill-made
millionaires, for ever SO many times
told, will never be other than a curious
c~aricature oft. Theoretically, we must
gainsay it; but when all is said, be it
Of u original-planting, or a devils
graft got among the thorns and thistles
Of our exile, the growth of a certain
reverence for a time-honored nobility
has become apart of every gentle nature,
which only time and assiduity can, but
which they certainly will, eradicate-but
not to-day, nor while the English nobil-
ity is what, as a whole, it is"