The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1890-08-03
ABOUT PEOPLE AND THINGS.

The call of Yankee hotel manager for
dozen young men to come and be his guests
when they eat and sleep and amuse his young
lady patrons while awake is the latest method
OF solving problem which our American char
acteristics have resulted in presenting. The
scarcity of young men at the summer resorts,
mountain and sea-shore, is every year becom-
Ing an issue of greater and greater Importance
to our summer landlords, and this year it has
assumed really an alarming aspect. There is no
poetry for the young ladies in life by the ocean
wave unless In the company of one of the opposite
SEX and they all seem to look for the poetry
when so located. Climbing mountains becomes
very real and prosaic without helping hand
on which to depend, and missing these the de-
mand for suitable young men has become en-
phatic.
America is great country, and her youth in
order to keep pace with her progress must be-
gin life while they are young and full of enthu-
siasm. We have more young men in business
now than we had some years ago. and every
year the number Of serious workers among their
ranks grow larger. They look less to pleas
ure and more to the stern realities of success in
life and these facts largely account for the
necessity of such an offer as our Yankee land
lord has made.
All in all, our American young man is begin
ming to assume more and more the shape of a
man. Max O'Rell tells us that there is nothing
distinctive about our American dude except the
small amount of brains he possesses and his
wonderful initiative faculties, but we are all glad
to see that our dude is fast becoming conscious
OF his own despicableness and is working out
his self-effacement rapidly. Our young men are
beginning to learn to dress WELL but they are
also beginning to put premium on brains, and
America as nation is fast beginning to feel
proud of them
This reminds me of an anecdote heard the
other day of Col. Thomas P. Ochiltree. He was
sitting, as usual the centre of party in Cham
berin's not long ago, and was entertaining those
around him with some of his marvellous yarns,
when young man of the dude order spoke up
and said:
Colonel, wish l had your cheek, I'd get
along in this world''
"Young man." he replied, "if you had nv
cheek and your brains you'd get kicked out of
this hotel a dozen times dayr
There is moral in that reply, and it is one
pretty plainly expressed. Too many of our
young Americans try to get along on "cheel'
alone, forgetting the necessity of brains as their
Creator evidently did for them. But they must
soon find that no matter how well developed
Iuelr cneek may De IL is q bad thing to place
much dependence in, and that little brains to
hide its baroness would help them long way on
the road to success.
New ways of living crookedly are being dis
covered every day by people who do not like to
work, or whose bad impulses are stronger than
their moral nature, but it really would seem
that all possible ways of spelling s'crookedly''
had about been exhausted by the aspirants for
Office under Uncle Sam who were recently ex-
amined by the Civil Service Commission. 4
little list which until now Mai. Webster of the
civil Service Commission, has kept close in his
possession tells the story. In this examination
there were 147 papers; seventy-nine of this num-
Der indicated their acquaintance with the word
by spelling it correctly; the rest spelled it in
forty ways, which were divided up among the
following: Crookidly, crockedly, cruckedly,
crooitly, croockly, ,crockitly ,crocketely, ,crouck
city, croucy crookley, chrocodly, crocketly,
chookley, crooketly,, crucedly, cruckley,
chookly, crookly, cruckidly, crooxedly, cruck-
ety., crooked, crockett, curtely, crockiedly,
crookdley, crockly, cruckily, crowedly, cruckly,
crectually, crowkedly, crookingly, GROVE, croc-
edly, crookdly.
During the earlier days of b. Shepard Whites
career in Washington, probably before he began
to lead the merry life of a society pet, he grew
tired of his position as a tile seller and took the
civil service examination for the position of
copyist. This was in August, 1883. His quail
tcations for copying were evidently not as we'll
developed then as they became later, and, while
eligible, his mark was so low as to make him re-
lnquish expectations at that time of becoming
servant of the Government.