Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1886-12-30

Another "C6nteDnlhl QdJSf tntt Oi tHt
Federal Constitution. We have been a
nation one hundred years. 1t is pretty
date TO write; after the stiff IS the pen
flourishes so easily down the tail of the
Z. The Tears have somehow run away
very fast since 1860, going dowuhill TO
the end of the century In fourteen short
years more the Drawer will be trying in
its faithfulness to the twentieth century,
to keep out of its columns the faoetiae
of the nineteenth. The nineteenth cen
tury of which We are so proud now, will
be analysed and criticised and condemn
ed as we now condescend 10 talk about
the eighteenth. On tie dGy that 1901
cDmes in the same able writer's who the
day before, in the press, used the term
nineteenth century as il it were a kind
of final achievement in itself, viii turn on
it in patronizing manner. They seem
great many years, 1886, do they not?
They are really only little fragment OF
time, which has dignity only from the
fact that we are adding to it. 1t is an
odd conceit we have of it. Looked at
in one way, it is respectable date, but
how long shall we bo able to add to it
and keep it going in the worldY There
have been several attempts at continu-
Gus date, but they have all broken down.
How long shall we keep up oursg 1t is a
pity for scientific purposes that We could
not have had universally, as the Hebrews
have, continuous date. Our breaking
time in two in this way causes historical
confusion, leads to an unjust estimate
of the past, and adds to our conceit. 1t
gives the impression that the his
torical stream is not continuous; indeed,
we absurdly try to make it run
both ways from what we call the year l.,
Hence much of the theological difficulty
in making people thi,ik the New DISPENSE
tion is actually continuation OF the Old
Dispensation. We begin with our l and
run it up forward, with an increasing
sense of power. And we turn about and
cast it up backward for the ancient ma
tiOns, endeayoring to run the civilizations
of antiquity into the ground somewhere.
1t gives a false impression if we may
say it, "petering out" appearance to the
old nations. Take the Egyptians, for
example. They seem to be wasting away
in time toward us, losing year after year
instead of gaining. We know, indeed,
but we have to learn it painfully, that the
Egyptians did not live backward in this
way. II il, of course, absurd TO suppose
that Menes, when he came to his throne
in Memphis, dated his order to dig the
first canal 500f, according to Marietta, or
1928 according to Bunsen, or 2700 accord
ing to Wilkinson, or whatever 1t was, and
that every year thereafter he dropped
one year-5O03, 1922, 1893, and so on.
And yet this is the way it appears TO our
minds, with our queer chronology. Look
ed at it honestly, it is not much of date,
this 1887. Nor is il new. The Pharaoh
who use itand no one knows what
Pharaoh it was no doubt was conscious
that it had been used before him, ana he
regarded it as merely the beginning of
the years that Egypt would pile up in in
creasing glory. The Pharaoh who wrote
1887 may have had some conceit IN the
figures, but it was a cheap pride. The
vain attempt of the Pharaohs in this di-
rection ought 20 make rs modest of our
little achievement in the way of a date.
All the peoples before US have doubtless
hattCred themselves that their eras
would endure as long as the world lasts.
We are interested in this year 1887,
howeyer-as the court was about to say
when it interrupted itself-not because it
is a centeniel year, or to speculate wheth
er it will be year of war, or earthquakes
or prohibition, or droughts but 20 see
whether it is a good year for REALISM" in
felton, or whether the 'idealists" will be-
gin to get an inning. 1t is such seasaw
world that one can only keep his head by
taking a long historical perspectiqe,
through all the ages. We want to stick
to facts, but there are so many sorts of
4 ,.1 L.
man nature is double, and men are per-
verse. They are so unreasonably interest
ed, even in this scientific age, in the
Arabian Knights. 1t is absurd that a
camel-dfiver should rise to marry the
daughter of the Grand Vizier, and become
Grand Yizier himself, and rule over the
the kingdom. In order to be true TO life
he should have continued to be a camel
driver till his camel died, and everything
went wrong with him, and he married
woman who drank, and took the hasheesh
and ended as beggar 1t ia much better
For us to read about this sort Of camel
driver than the other; but somehow we
have a sneaking fondness for that unreal
stoay about Joseph in the Bible, who was
put into pit, and sold as a slave, and
came 60 rule over Egypt, and be
"a biggar man than old" Pharaoh.
If Joseph had lived in France, that
Potiphar incident would have been very
differently handled with more realty"
and we should have had misery all round.
1t was wholly unnatural, that career of
Joseph, almost as much as that of the boy
Abraham Lincoln, who started from a
much lower social position than that of
j Joseph, and came TO be President of the
United States. We ought to be thankful
that in the year 1887 he will have become
a legendary person. Nature has no
business to interfere with fiction in this
way.
After all, The philosophers are merely
quarreling about definition. 1t is as
Necessary to satisfy in fiction the higher
aspirations of the mind as It's lower ten
denotes; "hlEh life it as real, all admit,
as low life" Purity and virtue are just
as real as their opposites Though not
so common), and the steady contempla
ton of them in fiction Is more likely to
be enabling than the contemplation of
the inferior and the vulgar. II Is not a
new notion ia the world. but 1t is queer
one, that the base and unpleasant in life