St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1888-03-17
CRANKs.
Derivation Of the Word, and What
It Means.
Every Thing Memorable or of Value to the
World Has Been Done by Them-A
Few Notable Illustrations.


Much ingenuity has been wasted in
devising derivations for the term
.'crank," as used at the present day,
when its real derivation lies close at
hand and should be obvious to any one
who understands the American, not
the English, language. Every one
knows that cranky means queer,
whimsical, notional, fiighty, eccentric,
or any other of dozen words used to
express an unEkeness to the usual and
ordinary ways and customs of things
or people. Cranky then, must
mean .'like crank or "partaking of
the nature of crank and SO. by a
simple process, the substantive is
formed from the adjective instead of
the adjective from the substantive.
A crank. then, in the ordinary ;ac-
ceptation of the term, is one who acts
or thinks OF talks in a manner at vari-
ance with the common course OF hui
man action or conversation. 1t mat
terslittie nowadays whether the plane
in which he moves is above or below
the plane in which the mass of human
lily are moving; whether his thoughts
soar to the clouds or grovel in the
mire; whether he talks above the heads
of his hearers or suggests to them low
er depths than they had ever con-
ceived, it is all the same; as soon as he
gets out of their range of mental and
intellectual vision he is dubbed crank,
and they who bestow the epithet COM
fort themselves hugely with it, as if it
conclusively established their own SUI
periority and the consequent inferiority
fof every one who disagreed with, them.
i 1t must be remarked, too, that it is
not customary to call convention or
congress to determine upon whether
this or that person is a crank or not.
There is nothing corresponding to an
inqnisition of lunaey in the case of a
suspected crank, but every one at once
resolves himself into a court of last
resort from which no appeal can pos
sibly be taken, and renders judgment
against the accused with as much GER
tainty of its correctness as if the case
had been passed upon by the Lord
Chancellor of Great Britain or the Chief
Justice of the United States Supreme
Court. In the case of cranks. every
one insists not alone on the right of
individual opinion, but as well ON the
infallibility of the Judgment rendered,
and considers that when the fiat, has
gone fort the matter is settled forever.
Is One mi, It suggest. perhaps. that the
correctne' f the judgment depended
somewha n the ability of the per-
son rent the decision to discrim-
inate betr cranks and other per-
sons; busaa useless to advocate such
an idea. just as every human being
has an implicit belief in his ability to
run hotel or to conduct a newspaper,
so he would laugh to scorn any sugges-
tion even of his inability to detect a
crank and classify him We all believe
in certain intuitive capacities. and
among them our innate power to detect
cranks. 4 e.@a
This being SO, it is evident that no
general rule can be formulated by
which a crank can be accurately dis.
tinguished from other men. just as
the world has always been unable TO
accurately define such abstract notions
as beauty, goodness, happiness. evil
and the like, 50 it is impossible to lay
down universal rule for the determi-
nation Of, crank Our friend a may
be d crank to us. and yet may have a
circle of admirers who believe;in him
as Heaven1born genius, and who con-
fidcntly expect that he will yet startle
the world with his ideas or achieve
nlents. Our next-door neiehbor may
be willing to make an affidavit that our
mutual friend B isaa crank Of icranks,
andtyet we ourselves may knoM-that B
is an industrious, courteous, kindly and
honorable gentleman and that his
crankiness consists in his devotion to a
particular thing which he has told us
IA confidence, but has not seen fit to
isnpart to our next-door neighpor.
The fact is that every thing that has
ever been done in this world which is
memorable or valuable to the world
has been done by so-called cranks, and
that unless man is a crank to q
greater OF less degree he is Of very
little use to any one except those who
Aenend anon him to supply their ma
terial wants. If it be once conceded
that originality has any place in the
world: that genius has done or will
ever do any thing for humanity; that
enterprise and dash are Of any value,
81. shat there is any legitimate path in
life except the beaten highwaF in