The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1898-04-04

not vouch for the figures, but they rep
resent very much plunder-is under
tWenty-four; and there is another
Spectator in New York who is said to
have done as much, and whose wis
dom-teeth are not all cut, There are
men among ourselves who are nearly
as successful, The great merchants
are usually grizzled, but you never see
South African who has made his
pile" but you recognize, despite the
anxious look in his eyes, that he Is still
well below forty-five. Mr.. Rhodes
must have made himself rich before he
was thirty-three, and through Mr.. Belt,
or Mr.. Wehrner, or Mr.. Robinson are
not privy councillors, and their ages are
therefore harder to ascertain, they
must have been astonishingly success
full before their acquaintance ceased to
regard them as young men. Mr.. Hoo
ley made his great fortune at home be-
fore he was thirty-five, Sir George
Newnes reached parliament at thirty
four, and Mr.. Harmsworth is still only
thirtythree. So frequent, indeed, is
the success of the young, or COMPARE
lively young, in business, and especial
~ adventurous business, that it looks
as if in that department the road were
clear and that the old furnished no
such obstacle to the young in getting
on" as they do in politics, and above
all in the professions, including, we
hear with some surprise, that of en-
cheering.
SO marked, indeed, is the change in
the race of money making, and so con-
siderable is the influence of success in
that race upon mems imaginations,
that we should not wonder if the world
RECONSTRUCTED one of it's settled opinions,
and began to doubt whether, after all,
the old were so much more capable
than the young 1t has been harden
ing itself to that opinion for the best
part of century A hundred years
ago youth was not much of a disquali-
fication-witness Pitt, Napoleon, Wei
lington and Clive-but at present no.
body is allowed to be young except a
king, and he is excused, on the ground
of youth-witness the German emperor
till he is very nearly forty. Even
France, where all things are possible,
would hardly accept a first consul of
thirty-one, while the English would be
! shocked at the bare idea Of a chancel-
lor of the exchequor of twenty-three
and would consider it a tempting of
Providence to place an army at the
disposal Of any general, even If royal,
who was less than thirty. When Lord
Dalhousie was made viceroy at thir-
| ty-five he said that he felt bound to be
solemn, or some Cabinet minister
would be asking where his hoop was;
and but that Lord Randolph Churchill
was a dukes son. he would at thirty
six have been considered indecorously
young for office. No man of that age
could the old would say, possess either
the required Judgment or the necessa-
ry experience for any of the great
posts of the world, the exception made
in favor of kings being a mere abuse
created by repeated experience of
what regents were like. A young pope
would now be regarded by the Catholic
church with Mortified amazement; and
| there is a Protestant bishop still alive
whose conservation was delayed for
months because he had not reached the
| age which tradition has made at once
customary and ''canonical." One Won
ders, reading the facts in the light of
| the successful careers of adventures
| in business, whether there is anything
| in the modern opinion, and begins to
suspect that there is not very much.
| AS regards experience there is clear
| ly nothing. A politician, or soldier,
or a lawyer, or an artist may, if cir
cumstances favor him, have crowded
| into the years between twenty and
thirty more experiences than most men
enjoy in their whole lives, and, indeed,
many of the old have very little expe-
Renee at all. They have lived in
grooves, or In mental seclusion, or in
work which cannot change, and know
at the end little more than they
| learned at the beginning. Nobody in
the world, as has often been said be-
fore, has had so much new experience
as child of ten. Indeed it may be
| doubted whether the ordinary concep-
ton of experience is not erroneous,
whether, as we once heard a young
| lady say, tmost of it is not intuition"
| for, after all, nothing is ever repeated,
and the combination of facts which has
| to be faced to-day Is never identical
with the combination which existed
only a week ago. Life is not an addi-
ton sum or all men bank clerks, that
mere repetition should give them any
abnormal facility. The claim of expe-
rience will be, we think, in part at all
events, surrendered by the reflective,
and is that of judgment entirely be-
| yond dispute? 1t is not to be dis
missed like the other one, for up to a
certain point, at all events, the refec-
tive powers should develop with age,
| and reflection is one constituent of
| judgment, but then it is not the only
into it, and that power of associating
means with ends, which arises more
| from perceptiveness than reflection,
and, above all, in actual life, the pow
| err of reading other men, which seems
| to result from intuition much more
than from thought belonging, in fact,
to children, servants, and even dogs in
a very marked degree.
Judgment must have belonged in
| high degree to Napoleon at twenty
seven, or, if he is thrust aside as phe-
| nomenal, to Frederick the Great at
| twentyseven, or to the younger Pitt
at thirty, the defect of the latter being
not want of judgment but a defect of
| imagination, which blinded him to the
terrific force which the French revolu-
ton, once armed, would display in war
We fancy that judgment, at all events
for action, may belong to the young,