Brookings weekly register. (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1898-1903, 1899-03-02

10 the Sentimentality of Msslrity-A
Change In His storisa v
When he was boy he was like ether
boys-hard, physical, full Of action
says the New York Commercial Ad-
vertiser. He did and played and ex-
perimented, and didn't pause to reflec:
or feel about what he did or saw. He
noticed that the butterfly from which
be had torn the wing was crippled aud
soon died. He noti2ed that the mother
bird uttered piercing cries when he
stole away the eggs or the young birds.
But it never occurred to him that there
was any suffering there. Nothing suf.
tered, in his opinion, except occasion
ally himself, when his mother spanked
him. He was busy-brain, body, nerves
lin learning, in Investigating, in per-
fecting mis- powers Of action.
AS he grew older, as he came to the
age when most boys become senti-
mental; when an element of tender-
Eess. OF humane philosophy, of gentle
contemplation, comes to them, he re-
mained boy rs far az his emotions
were concerned. de learned more than
most boys. He was not led away By
the emotion o. love or of dissipation.
He felt such things as an instinct
merely, and al an instinct they passed
away without pinning him down cruel
ly by an emotional wound. He never
got bitten. His heart was unassail-
able, for the soul was not yet born Of
sympathy.
He became man-active. efficient,
clean, well-disciplined practically. He
could do well what there was before
him. His life threw him in with the
heart Of the big city. He learned to be
unusually effective in knowing what
there was there and IN handling it.
He saw, too. the thousand picturesque
things in the city, in external form,
and the internal structure of cbarac-
ter. He knew and appreciated the
characters OF tho different men and
women he met When he wrote or
talked he reproduced the vividness of
the externals of the city's life-a po-
liHcal situation, crowd on Broadway
or the characteristic, pointed traits
Of mental and moral life.
Much that moved he saw. When it
ceased moving he passed on, the boy,
impatient. He didn't sympathize, he
didn't pause to see the effect, the
pathos in the relations existing in the
crowded city. He retarded his fight
from surface TO surface; that interfered
with the picturesqueness Of the world,
for one doesn't see the picturesqueness,
sometimes, for what lies beneath.
"Pshaw" he said, what care l for
the beneath? 1t interferes with my
activity. Besides, these sentimentalists
with their tenderness and their tears
make me sick. Reformers ere tire
some. and so ere poets"
SO he didn't see the pathos Of the
world. Nor did he see the humor of
it, for pathos and humor both lie be-
meath the surface. He often saw, how
ever, the wit of a remark or the alb
surdity Of a situation, and he had a
keen eye for the shortcomings of peo-
pie. With good brain. a good body
and happy and innocent blindness to
the world Of motions. this man sue
ceeded. His nerves and his heart were
shielded until he had become a mature
man of 32. One part Of his nature, by
s1bsidence, had allowed the other part
to become effective. "a succeeded in
getting a good place In the complicated
machinery OF metropolitan life. But in
one respect, up to that time. he had
failed. He had tried to write stories,
among many other things occupying
his life. He succeeded in writing fairly
interesting things-quick stories. full
of pictures and movement, strange sit
uations and admirably vivacious. But
the characters were boys or puppets
They had never felt the melancholy
rhythm of life, nor the deep satisfac-
tion of its humor. There was no soul in
them, fact which at the time made
the author rejoice. Perhaps up to that
time, too, he had missed one other
thing desired by most human beings.
He had friends, but no one who needed
him. except in a material way, no one
whose emotional life would have dried
without him.
But this boy with the powers OF
man is now becoming sentimental.
Now that his full efficiency as prac-
tical man is developed, the emotions
are beginning to take hold of him in
a manner that often fills him with
alarm. Perhaps he has reason for
alarIs, for things that come late are
apt to come hard. His body has had
a slow growth and his nerves are noy
perhaps capable Of more than the aver
age amount of emotional intensity.'
With kind Of terror, as at the loss
of independence, this man, successful,
is noticing that he is becoming de-
pendent on some Others for kind Of
sentiment toward him which he feels
toward them. And there is one person
"a woman-who will be dependent on
him In the deepest sense IL he contin-
ues his present line Of development.