The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-05-09

distinct order of masculinity becomes
 apparent ill our streets, our government,
 and in our very kitchens, when power
 reverts to the magnates of this club A good-natured condonement of physical
 violence creeps through the community.
 The police provoke assualts by a mere
 excess of manliness. The judges pali-
 ate them and the juries stand up for
 the best man" What are known as
 masculine vices take down their shut
 ters. A swaggering tolerance of rough
 usage and muscular exhibits and anna
 zonian virtues shows that the primitive
 man is on deck. A shrewd observer on
 a visit to New York, landing in West street, can tell by the attitude and Ian guage of the truckmen who Is govern 1 ing the city. To make a study of the
 manners of the mayor or the bravado of the district attorney is a work of super | erogation Executive authority, 1t is | true, as of old, wears a new silk hat, but | it wears it little more on the side of it's | head, and there is a manly suggestion in | it's tilt that the Wearer has brass knuc- kles in his disposition or in his pocket What Is especially noticeable in the clansman grown social, is that the pres
 sure of an unseen atmosphere outside of his class, without being able to develop him, has nevertheless kalsomined him a little, very much as the seasons tone down the boulders with conforming lich ems. Time was when the Braves rioted in red flannel and called themselves "Short Hairs" in proud contrast to the
 "Swallowtails." The clansmen did not tn ho nd hpllnnetc
 and Jeffersonian menus. The succulent
 chowder on "old Long Islands sea -girt
 shore" or the barbecue in Jones' Wood
 satisfied the rudimental stomach, and
 shindy afterwards completed digestion.
 But now the insidious swalowtail has
 crept in upon them. The manifest of
 them buttons his shirt behind. In the
 apparreling of the clansmen nothing is
 immutable but the plug hat" That
 alone has shown no retiring ebb." It
 shines, "stll high advanced" over the
 black tie and the dress shirt as 1t once
 shone above the f1amboyant neglige of
 Nose and Sykesey
 Extrinscally the clansman is some
 what of a swell as compared with the
 days of the Empire club so that it can
 not be said that the forces which make
 for righteousness have left the integu-
 ments of him untouched. And it must also be said in justice to him that there is no other place in New York where one can so jauntily lay aside the exacting demands of modernity and bathe him self in the serene waters of the past, as at his club Here at least you are not expected to be smart or original or even conscientious. In fact 1t Is an under stood courtesy to the club that you will not try to be. You pass. as 1t were, out of the domain of free agency and become blessed animal under a benign law of necessity, content to wag your tail when the chief barks. One who has not tried it, can form no idea of what luxury it is lis not unlike that suspension of the will that takes place in semi-intoxication, or in sleeping fantasy, and it Is astonish- | ing what peris a man will escape while | in this political somnambulency, To | have an organization do your thinking l for you and guarantee you, and to settle l down passively upon your primitive loy- | atty, is as fascinating to the man of | sluggish brain as is the opium- pipe to | the man whose imagination is decrepit. | TO be freed from all the perplexing | questions of the right and wrong of | and sum up life in the immorta, words of Oakley Hall or Tommy Dodd. | Now, my boys. we'll all go in," is to hark back to primitive times indeed. | and, after all what matters whether you wear red shirt or a swallowtail, if | you can attain to this Arcadian smplci- ty without losing your plug hat?"
 Some haF hours spent in this social domain of the elemental brought with them the passing illusion of being again under the greenwood tree. Yeomanry | and vassalage welled up together in ones subconscious centers and twined. SO to speak, in the confraternty of con tractors and councillors. There were hagons in the conversation and foaming beakers in the various attitudes and possible pke-staves in the gestures. Even the reflective man, thus environed, felt in the freedom and generous loyalty of the place a primitive cussedness, an irresistible impulse to be "agln some hing" and to remark ."Oh. hell!" to somebody, when the tendency of the un- eashed animal was momentarily unre- stricted by the intrusion of thought J. P. M" in the New York Evening Post.