The Wadsworth dispatch. [volume] (Wadsworth, Nev.) 1892-1899, 1896-03-11
Wednesday. MARCH II, 1895


Il it getting old: Did its Sunday
breakfast Of baked beans or its dinner of
pumpkin pie disagree with its little
stomach and put it out Of sorts? Was
that what made it go and write i'll The
Forum such IN awful screed against
everything American as that entitled
"Some Aspects of American Civiliza-
tion?" Really if it wasn't a college
professor, that, too, III great big Harvard
university itself. we should think from
the d~isgruntled outpour in The Forum
that it WA n disappointed politician.
1t is, however, Professor Charles
Eliot Norton. He sets in and abuses "up
hill and down dale" everything Ameri.
can that he has space for. 1t is Il rave
misfortune with us that we are such u
new people. so very new, and therefore
have to do without so many precious
legacies from the past, the beauty, the
grace and the appeal to the poetic imag'
ination" which belong to the old world.
Why. then, does not Mr.. Norton go TO the
old world and stay there If he feels so
bad about 1t? We would grieve. but We
could do without him. BY the way.
however, we arc getting big doses Of
"these precious legacies from the past"
every year, more than we know what
to do with, in the shape Of hordes of
ignorant. dirty, diseased, dangerous i'm
migrants from this same beautiful aud
poetic old world. They are the logical
product of it. How does Professor Nor
ton like them2
Furthermore, q people are proper
~tionally much more ignorant than they
were 100 years ago. declares the profess.
or. We have no schools enough, our
children do not attend them if we have,
and finally public schools don't educate
anyhow. We nre 10 infer that IA proper
education can only he got from high
toned American college professors who
think more highly Of England than they
do Of their own country. Professor Nor
ton says in so many words that any en-
couragement Of II spirit cf hostility to
England sis far more threatening TO the
United States than il is To Great Brit
ain. Take him home, Eng gland. do
take homo your foster SON and bring
him up by hand.
Flo has also his l;t;le whack at our
state politics-'the spectacle Of the con
troll Of public affairs III New York pass
ing from the hands of man like Goy-
arno Hill to another like Plat, and Of
Pennsylvania slowed away in the pocket
Of a man like Quay-all three Of them
men Of II low order of ability and with
ont u single trait that would justify
popular regard, not statesmen or ora
tors, not educated men or gentlemen.
But what would Professor Norton have:
We cant all be college professors, can
we?
Our athletic games fall little short Of
o national disgrace because Of their
lack Of fair play and common honesty.
American children are the most un-
whipped cubs in the world. for their
lack of good manner and for their i'm
pertinence-hoodlums on the street cor
ner and toughs in college. Tho whole
barbarian lot of us arc characterized by
bad manners. says Norton. 1t is true
we have not the high bred courtesy that
we shall have n little later. We arc be-
ginning to cultivate it now. however.
But what then? We do have u love for
our country, and a deep, intense Amer
icanism which may we'll he noted by
the d%yspeplic little Miss Nancys that sit
| up nights 10 howl at us-noted and i'm
itated as well.
Most OF all, however. the professor
whose baked beans have not agreed with
him vents his spleen OH that low down
engine Of wickedness. ''the common
American newspaper" They afford an
image of a people with few mental in
%teresrs. Of uncultivated tastes. of shall.
low disposition. Of dull lives and devoid
of intellectual or moral education of d
high orGer."