Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1899-05-14
Ont of Our Elements.

Ont of Our Elements.
observations of Philosophical Friend)
'The air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses
Macbeth.
In the accounts of deep-sea soundngs
we are told that when the fish that live
away down I'm the depths of the ocean,
under tremendous pressure Of the water
that is over them, are drawn from their
dense element into the rarer. ilshter wa
ter, they swell and burst all to pieces.
OF course, when the uppertendom OF the
ocean are driven by their pursuers down
into the lower strata, they are squeezed
ard pressed to death. So it is in the
air-anmals passing from the lower and
denser air into the upper regions expert
ence extreme inconvenience. Whenever
anything or anybody gets out of its or
his element, II or he suffers great dis
comfort, often disaster
A great deal of malaise, embarrassment.
positive unhappiness, comes of people be-
ing out Of their elements-out of harmony
with their environments, out of sympathy
with their company
1t Is really touching, a pitiful thing
to see good, honest people, whose early
associations have been with good, plain
people, of Indifferent breeding and limit
ed knowledge and experience, by a play
Of fortune lifted out Of their spheres
and surroundings into a society alto
gether different from that TO which they
have been used. They are lucky If they
do not, like those fish, go all to pieces
But, if they hold their identity, they are
all the time embarrassed. The thoughts,
the feelings. the cares the manners, the
language, of the new society, is not what
they have been used to. They are like
strangers in strange land, and forget
all home feelings. 1t is very true that
high society life is horribly mixed; and
the verIest brute and vulgariau. male and
female. may find qualifications there for
its lowest tastes and sympathies with its
basest proclivities. But, until the com
moner hOnester sort has lmbibed
the atmosphere, and gotten drunk with
the drunken, il Is i'll at ease i'm society
life.
The pure and clearer air of high, gem
teel, and honorable life is less embarrass-
mig 10 its nouveaux gems. Its first prin-
ciple is, like that of wholesome air and
water, to revive, to invigOrate to purify.
10 make the stranger feel at home. and
be happy; to assimilate. The new one
Like the stained web that whltens in the
sun,
Grows pure by being purely shone upon"
Aesop's story of the pigeon among the
Ia oil h.. III
the aspirant. John Bunyan's account Of
the reception of the poor pilgrim at the
palace called Beautiful tells how the es.
sentally genteel treat the humber sort
But generally, it is a very important
thing for a man 10 have his standards and
tastes. and to be true To them, and to
keep the company Of those that use his
weights and measures Of value. and talh
his language. great poet advises:
"Distrust not Wisdom; she deserts thee
not
If thou dlstrust her not, by attributlng
over much
To things less excellent. as thou thyself
perceivest."
Another great one expresses It:
'To thine own self be true"
Solomon says that one of the arts of the
bad woman is to be variable, "lest thou
find the path of life" and be faithful.
Fashion, ambition. crowds of all sorts,
what is known as the world, rule, inebri-
ate, and confound their victims with di-
vers standards, divers ideas, divers
weights and measures, and babels The
invitation is: Cast in your lot with us;
all elements are the same; we must take
things as they are. and not be peculiar
So, many go in with the crowd, and claim
and maintain no element as their own.
They have nothing as Of standard value
And so the prophet says of them at last:
"They lie in hell in heaps"
1t is a pity If man has no standard Of
manhood, no ideal of excellence, 10 posi-
tive taste. no summum bonum. Such a
one is known ar chaff of the profanum
vulgus. If he has positive ideas of good
ness of right, Of decency OF truth. of pro-
priety of manhood. he had best keep the
company OF his like; he had best court
and keep those heights of character
that grazing ground-where the air Is
clear and wholesome, light and nimbie,
commencing itself TO his gentler senses
and feeding his higher aspirations and
nobler thoughts.