The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1894-06-07
THIS is AN AGE o. BLUFF.
Even the Most Magnificent of Us Disguise
Our True Feelings.

AN lHlinSISe amount VI DlulllllS SOCo
on in the world. but only each indi-
vidual knows in the recesses of his own
heart how deep or how shallow is the
substance beneath the show. We all
have to make as good an appearance as
we can when in the fight with man and
circumstance. The very tits fluff out
their feathers to make themselves look
formidable to the adversary, and a lit
tie lamb stamps deiantly on the ground
when reused to that kind of wrath,
which is but another name for fear by
the presence of an intruder by whom
it is not awed into abject cowardice. 1t
would never do in this world, with all
its shams and make believes, if we con-
Quoted ourselves with no admixture Of
bluff in our behavior. We need not go
to the length of the painted cardboard
fortresses or the cardboard monsters of
the Chinese, nor think that we shall
win our way the more surely the more
insolent our demeanor and the more
extravaganza our assumptions But we
must do something toward that kind of
of self-magnifying which the Greeks
expressed by the tragic mask and the
heightened buskin.
Neither the poverty of the land nor
the weakness of the soul must be shown
to the prying eyes of the world. Spies
are all around us, anxious to know
whether those flowers have roots or are
only made of paper-whether those hot
pressed shining lengths are the satin
they pretend to be, or but the glazed
calico which some aver they are. We
have to make the best show we can
commands; and to blind the eyes of those
inquisitive spies comes into the cate
cory of self-respecting duties with us
all. None of us can live on the house
tops, prociaiming all we are, and all we
have to the world at large. None Of us
can show our soul naked as a new born
child-bare as was that of Tomlinson
when he stood before st. Peters gate,
''white as a rain washed bone" what
time the stars grinned overhead and
the good souls flocked like homing
doves. With the most transparent and
the most sincere of us all, some magnif-
cence of disguise is necessary: and what
human being ever attained the stature
of a god with whom no high-soled bus
kin was needed? How much of moral
blufing is there not in those councils of
perfection. which the teacher who gives
them forth as guides and rules for the
young know are practically impossible
and incapable of rational application?
Do we not confess this ourselves when
we say that, if we did not hold a higher
moral standard than was attainable, we
should get nothing done on the lower
levels?
And what is this but blufing, with
virtue ON one side and vice on the
other? AS for that vice, it puts for
ward its own bluff in its plea for the
unavoidable weakness of human ma
ture. Drunkenness bluffs under the
guise of universal instinct for stimu-
lants. The smoking woman bluffs
under the protection of the mans
habits, and says that because he finds
nicotine pleasant anodyne when he is
cross and worried, SO does she. and so
may she. The pleasure lover, who has
never thought for duty, and whose
sole aim and object in life is to have "a
good time bluffs on the axiom that
all work and no play" which the light
heeled Jacks of the world have found
so useful when they wanted an excuse
for frivolity and shield against CEN
sure. The restless and undomesticated
bluff under the finer appearance of use
fulness to the world at large-of mis-
sionary zeal-of the good done to man
kind by the exploration of unknown
countries, and the subsequent carrying
of the blessings of civilization, includ-
ing rum and smallpox, to savage races
barbarOusly indifferent to the beauties
Of fashionable attire or the delights of
twelve courses and a dessert. We bluff
all round; and we have not yet come to
that acre in Arcadia where we can
show ourselves in our native simplicity
and shame him who shall be nameless
by the undraped, undisguised and I'M
altered truth.-The Queen.
The Age of Wine.