The Portland daily press., 1885-03-20
The Great Unknown.

Charles Dudley Warner in Harper's Magazine9
We would like to know, and would like to
have communication from the young man
who has just attained his majority who will,
at a date we need not now fix, be president
of the United States. The young man ex-
lists somewhere, and we hope be is training
for his high Office. On the Sth of January
last Prince Edward of Wales, who is predes-
tined, if all go well with him, 10 be king of
England, came of age. He is marked and
and set apart; he is under certain bonds of
behavior; his education to be king must
seriously begin, and all England is interest
ed in it; it will watch every action and
criticise every tendency. He is no longer a
free man, and he cannot be self-supporting
there is no occupation he can enter On for
gaining livelihood consistent with his
coming dignity. The government must vote
him an annual supply OF money, and he
must have an establishment, aud begin 10
play his role. If he is a lad of spirit, he
must chafe under this espionage, this re-
strsint, and the limitations of his derendent
condition. His subjects hold the purse
strings; his subjects demand that he shall be
this and he shall not be that; his subjects
have now the ballot, and can cut him off
with shilling, or put him one side altogeth-
er. Subjects? To what, alasl has the king
business come in this 10Th century?
Our American lad-who may be reading
this paragraph about himself, for we trust
that he can read, and has not, like Andrew
johnson, put off this elegant accomplishment
till after his majority-is under no such
limitations as his English brother, Edward
OF Wales. Bill of the United States-for we
have no fiction by which be woald be called
by some fictitious title, for instance Bill of
Nicaragua-is probably UNCONSCIOUS of his
high destiny. BY the time he takes the
chair at Washington, or wherever the chair
then stands, be will be the ruler, more po-
tent for four years than the king of England,
over 0,000,0 900 of people, and have to ex-
ecute the affairs of the most vigorous en-
pire in existence. If he now expects this
honor, it is safe to say he will be disappoint-
ed, for the voters nowadays never choose a
man who lays pipe for the place in advance.
1t is safe to say that he is Ignorant OF his
destiny.
If it were otherwise, if we all knew the
young fellow just come of age who is to be
president by and by, what Reimbursement
it would be for us and for him! What life
he would lead with the reporters of the
newspapers How could he escape the
snares laid for him by the mothers who
would like to be the mother-in-aW of pres
ident? Ii he is in college, how self-conscious
the tutors would be when they marked him,
and how impossible it would be for him to
acquit himself well at football with the eyes
of the nation on himl With what condition
could he humbly follow mule on canal
tow-path, which he may at this moment be
doing, with credit to himself and with an
eve 10 the appearance of this achievement in
his biography. Is the young man deputy
sheriff? is he waiting for clients with his
heels on the table in soma country law Office ?
Is he Just begiDning to concern himself with
ward politics with the idea that the "gente-
man IN politics. is 10 be the winning card in
the future? Is he teaching school with a
view OF discharging his college debts? or is
he running up college debts without any
view of teaching school to discharge them?
Or has he gone into farming ia the West, in
order to come forward as Cincinnatus at the