The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1894-06-09
rHls IS AM AGE or eLuFF.
Even the Most Magnificent Of Us Dlsguls
Our True Feelings.

MO 10 AN RGG OF OIOFF'
Even the Most Magnificent Of Us Dlsguiss
Our True Feelings.
An immense amount OF bluffing goes
on in the world. but only each indi'
vidual knows in the recesscs of his own
heart how deep on 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 lit
tie lamb stamps defiantly on the ground
when reused to that kind of wrath.
which is but another name for fear by
the presence of I'm 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
extravagant 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 approximation 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
command: 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. proclaiming 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 rain washed bone," what
time the stars grinned overhead and
the good souls fioclSed like homing
doves. With the most transparent and
the most sincere of us all, some magniti-
cence of disguise is necessary; and what
human being ever attained the stature
of god with whom no high-soled bus
kin was needed? How much of moral
bluffing 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 higher
moral standard than was attainable, we
should get nothing done on the lower
levels?
And what is this but bluffing, with
virtue on one side and vice on the
other? AS for that vice, it puts for
ward its own bluff in it's 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 a pleasant anodyne when he is
cross and worried. SO does she, and sc
may she. The pleasure lover, who has
never a 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
i. for frivolity and Il shield against cen
sure. The restless and undomesticatet
: bluff under the finer appearance of use
fulness to the world at large-of mis-
I 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 race
J barbarously Indifferent to the beauties
of fashionable attire or the delights o
twelve courses and a dessert We bluf
all round; and we have not yet come t.
that acre in Arcadia where we cal
show ourselves in our native simplicit.
and shame him who shall be nameles
by the undraped. undisguised and un
3 altered truth.-The Queen.