St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-07-13


to signify the kinship of nobility The real
meaning and original placing of it were the
very contrary.
Ulysses in Trolus and Cressida is speaking
to Achilles of the ingratItude of the Grecians
who forgot him for Ajax, and he says with
bitter consolation
o, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was,
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship charity, are subjects all
To enyious and eliminating time
one touch Of nature makes the a0hOle aoorld kin
That all with one consent praise newborn
gawds.
Surely the touch of nature here meant is
not complimentary but who ever knew the
line to be used in any derogatory senses
1t never will be applied now to intimate
aught save the innate goodness lurking
everywhere subject to this mysterious cue of
discovery. I heard it used in the most So
norous peryersion of its meaning yesterday
and by some curious association instantly
thought of Byron's electric chain wherewrith
we are darl1ly bound. Dark enough surely
in the brotherhood of badness, but was I GO
ing to say so and rob that confiding and
snowy gentleman of the beautiful initiation
of sentiment, that misunderstood quotation
gave him?
OF course not. am 40 such cold-blooded
stickler for correctness. The world is not
all radient and harmonious. When any
believer in sublimated human nature flys
this incongruous inspiration at me by
way of intrenching himself in the ennobllng
enhancement, how vain would it be to dis
turb him. You've known persons witha alb
normally developed bent for setting people
right. They are the settlers of conversations
on the scent for every stray, unguarded,
and inconsequent utterance. They always
know BEST and it is pleasanter to let them
think they do. 1t saves argument and hag-
Cling over non-essentials. The most sue
cessful persons in the social routine are said
to be those who listen with intermniable pa
tience and receptivitv.
There is record of an introductory letter
once given by Sir William Gel to a friend
in England announcing the bearer to be the
most ''disputatious brute in existence" and
asking him to find another to meet him
by way of civility.
The disputatious people are bad enough,
but the set with mission for righting the
crowd, who are born with a conviction of
their own omniscence are the worst disturb
ers of convers ational peace. Next to them
are the literalists to whom quip and crank
and fantastic personiication of things are so
many challenges which must be answered in
the strictest of matter-of-fact explanation.
Joke and illustration and story must be
made as plain as the nose on your face or
they'll none of it. No play of the magma
ton, and no airy investment of fun or fact
ever passes muster with them, until reduced
to pitiful badness of presentment which
impoverishes your well-meant attempt and
makes you rather ashamed of it after all
probably what these prosaic torturers meant
you should be. When they say, as they often
do, II really don't see the fun in
that" you have an impulse toward assault
ing them for their stupidity. Not long ago
Twas rash enough to mention the brilliant and
inimitable conciseness of the late Abraham
Hayward's wit which he carried to absolute
genius and celebrity in London society I
told his stage coach story to illustrate it, of
two young women travelling in one, when
sudden faintness overcomes one, and the
other says it's the heart" "Aneursm?''-
asks fellow-tr traveller. "No cornet of
hussars," is the reply. Now if you will be-
lieve me had to explain that word for word,
and by that time the fun was very dead.
But such episodes are curative of the ten
dency to repeat similar things indiscrimin-
ately. My mind to me kingdom is-and l
am not going to squander its revenues in
every idle expedition of my neigh
boris IMMERSED or unprepared in
telligence. Neither is any intimation of
misapplied quotation called for, when the
commonly accepted Interpretation gives so
much swelling satisfaction, and such visi-
bic sense of superiority to the speaker.
There is no more thankless task than this
setting of people right in anything, particu-
larry where tits a question of information,
and you put your mental competence against
their restitution.
Possibly their very destitution, as you re-
gard it, affords them more genuine pleasure
than you ever derived from your attain
ments, because the prophet was right when
he said, ''He who increases knowledge in
creases sorrow" They know nothing of the
dissatisfaction attendant upon the conscious
ness of ignorance, the more you know,
which is a paradoxical way of stating a de-
pressing truth, patent to every student.
But all this side of the matter is unknown
to the persons who are well up in natty
samples OF their reading and observation.
The display is well enough in talking. but it
is limited. There never will be much added
to the first outfit, because it answered so well
that continual additions were deemed un-
necessary.
There are people quite intelligent, too,
who cannot appreciate why any one reads
the great master pieces of fiction second or
third time.
1t isn't perceptible to them that each read
ing finds appreciation more keen, and the
judgment ripper to enjoy the perfect merit of
the work-that ore comes to it with a we'll
TeUISIu ObEeu Zcst anu l1l1PTS Over us pages
in spell of perennial thrall.
With them it would not count for so much
in the scale of personal satisfaction, as the
effect such extensive reading would have on
their "world'' 1t would be a matter of show
like their toilets. They do rushing bust
ness now on the slenderest reading capital
know one woman here who is the Phenom-
enon of shallowness, and yet Julia Ward
Howe never carried herself with such i'm
posing cleverness.
Ny Lady Katharine is i'll at ease in the
same room with her.
No wonder. : If you can imagine the fx-
ed. muggy, uncomfortable atmosphere of a