St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1888-03-17

from the cradle to the grave-then the
case of the crank is complete, and he
stands, OF should stand, in public esti-
nation not as one degree removed
from lunatic, but as the flower of
humanity, the apex of the pyramid,
the GROWING glory Of the human
race.
If we take the history of the world,
whether related by sacred or profane
historians, we shall find that whenever
a notable parsonage has appeared and
done any thing out of the ordinary
course of things he was instantly dub
bed crank, or whatever correspondent
to it in the speech of olden times. John
the Baptist came, neither eating nor
drinking, but proclaiming the coming
of the Messiah, and the Scribes and
Pharisees, the ''uncoquid' of those
times, said: ''He hath a devil. y When
Paul stood before Festus and Agrippa
and defended himself against the accu-
sations of the chief priests and elders,
the most noble Festus, unable to find
any flaw in his defense, could only say
with loud voice: paul, thou art be-
side thyself; much learning doth make
thee mad!' And yet the civilized
world after nineteen centuries agrees
that John the Baptist was prophet,
if such ever existed. and that Paul, so
far from being mad, was a keen
logician, close and accurate thinker
and powerful advocate.
When Christopher Columbus haunt
ed the court of Spain for seven weary
years, trying to convert the King and
Queen to his belief in the existence of
Western world, who can doubt that
the courtiers and lords in attendance
upon Ferdinand and Isabella consider
ed the friendless Genoese as a crank of
the most pronounced type, and even
as not wholly sane? When Calico
dared to dispute the almost universally
accepted Ptolemaic theory, and to an
nounce that the earth revolved around
the sun and not the sun around the
earth, we all know that he was not
only crank, but that the drum eccles-
iastic was beaten against him, and that
he was compelled to make formal re-
cantation of his heresy. When Sir
Richard GrenviHe, in the days of Eliza
beth, fought his single ship against
some seventy Spanish men-of-war, and
when finally beaten insisted that his
gunner should blow up the vessel soon
er than allow her to fall into the hands
of the enemies of his country. he was
crank, pure and simple; and yet the
world will not willingly forget such ex-
amples of courage and determination,
however, unavailing they may have
been.
Among the literary men there have
been more cranks, perhaps, than
in any other one class Scarcely a
writer of genius, or even of the highest
order of talent, can be recalled who
had not some eccentricity or marked
popularity which placed him in the
first rank of cranks. Horace defined
the whole race of writers and authors
as the ge,sus irrata bile vat,sns, which
may be freely translated as "a tribe OF
cranks,'' and time has fully vindicated
the accuracy of his classification.
Every one is familiar with the pecu-
liarities of Samuel johnson, whose
eccentricities often seemed to border
upon insanity. We all know how he
used to touch every post which he pass
ed, going back if he found he had
omitted one; how he rolled and twist
ed in his walk, growing and muttering
continually to himself; how he ate
more like a hog than human being,
washing down his repast with as many
as twenty-seven cups of tea at a sitting;
how, in spite of all this, he possessed
one of the acutest and most original
| minds that the world has ever seen,
and has written things that will out
last the ages. But DR.. johnson was
most certainly a crank.
Byron, too, when heinsisted on leav-
ing England and casting in his fortunes
with struggling Greece, was doubtless
called crank. Shelly. with his queer
mixtureef ancient and modern thought.
his undisguised paganism and his con-
tempt for conyentionality and the
usages of society, must have come in
the same category. Burns, too, who
preferred his independence to aught
else, and who turned from towns and
cities to the freshly plowed fields and
rushing streams, was surely classed.
by the good people whom he would not
fatter, as crank. Even our own poet
of the Sierra, when he chose to wear
his tawny name on his shoulders and
to affect bright-hued cravats, was called
crank. though no one disputed his
title of poet.
But why attempt to extend the cate
goryP Illustrations without number
will at once suggest themselves, many,
doubtless, more nearly perfect than
the ones we have given. 1t is enough
to say that the multiplication of in
stances will only serve to add force to
the original proposition, that the debt
Of the, world to the so-called cranks is
one tat can never be paid; that the
term crank is generally synonymous
with man of genius or of invrptive
ability; that too often envy or spiea is
e., Al !. Z