St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-01-01
GROVER CLEVELAND.

GROEER CLIGN ELAND.
There is very little in all this talk
about an aristocracy of achievement.
An aristocracy is like SHELLEY's def
milton of a pudding, matter of man
ners and preiudices. Men can be bred
and trained to act alike and think alike.
But great men are born so, and rules
and regulations have TO application.
Nobody ever expects very much of
great mans father, but their mothers
are said to be usually people of charac-
ter. This is invariably discovered, how
ever for the first time after the sons
have become famous. He is a rare stu
dent OF history who can tell one any
thing about the ancestors of the worlds
great generals, about CEsAR's, about
BoNAPARTE'S about MARLBoROUGH'S
about WELLINGTON about WASHING
Tons and no one Of these men left
son to bear his name.
In our own history the great apostle
of the cause of civil liberty, ABRAHAM
LINCOLN, was of an origin so obscure
that even his most partial biographers
hurry over the chapter, and those who
are more truthful suggest inquiries
which we who love HIM dare not follow
up. There is not an incident or an OPP
portunity in his boyhood-or, for that
matter, in his early or mature man
hood-whieh could would or promise
his future. A lazy, overgrown clerk,
given to hopeless lovemaking, full of
crude skepticism aud superstition, wont
TO lie in the sun for long hours idling,
OF to sit on the counter of a country
story and swap doubtful stories with
country louis. Afterwards an obscure
country lawyer with small and un-
lucrative practice, whose earnings he
supplemented by lecturing to light au-
diences at the neighboring crossroads,
winning his cases sometimes by one
sort of device and sometimes by an
other, full of strange melancholy, the
victim of a ShreWiSh wife. And yet
somehow in Gods providence, when the
trumpet note for freedom sounded, this
gauut, uncOuth man, with no past, was
transformed, and in the twinkling of an
eye became the alert, the skilIful, the
tireless, the all-powerful leader of the
hosts of freedom. The whole world
knows of his greatness, and the wonder
Of his achievement. The blue and the
gray alike honor his memory.
People sometimes sneer at GROVER
CLEVELAND because he was not a great
young man. When he has PASSED thirty
he is glad enough, although a lawyer, to
run for sheriff of Buffalo. Ambitious
lawyers of high grade are not usually
thought of in connection with such
offices; and even when they are offered
Them, they prefer the obScurity and
Self-denial of their profession to the
emolumentS which are purchased at its
expense. We do not know all about
GROVER CLEVELAND before he became
governor of New York, and it may be
that there is something in this criticism.
His law practice does not seem to have
been the most prominent in the city
where he lived. He appears to have
been man about town, on friendly
terms with very ordinary people, moi
much given to reading, not very refined
in his tastes, perhaps rather coarse il
his habits. All these things may be
ltNs oiiN PSihoPO u11llN OblltIS
which we need not stop to speak about
And yet somehow or other, in a way
we cannot explain, this man stands
before the world to-day as the captain
and leader in the warfare against the
modern slavery and as the apostle OF
the new emancipation. The whole in
telligent Northwest, regardless of party
believes that protection is wrong; thai
it takes from one man the fruit of his
labor and gives it to another as com
pletely as ever did the slave-driver's
lash, and that the struggle for industrial
freedom is as holy conflict as ever
made men stand close together in ser
ried ranks. We all believe this, anC
even those of us who would not. know
that GROVER CLEVELAND is the fore
most man in the battle.