The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1901-10-28
What is a Gentleman

| In a discourse in a Philadelphia
I paper reviewing the rise of President
Roosevelt, Mr.. Owen Wister says:
THE thing is sorrowful to say, but
we Americans are jealous of any one
| who has ppofited by our great gift of
equality to earn distinction. And if
we can cast a slur upon him by calling
| him a gentleman, we do so on our first
| chance"
This observation and those that led
! up to it have been criticised as unjust;
and, indeed, though doubtless Mr.. Wis
| ter had a truth in mind, it seems dis
| putable whether he succeeded in ex-
pressing it. AS one looks back at the
panorama of Colonel Roosevelt's ac-
/ tivities for 20 years, it seems evident
| that he had, and felt that he had, not
| only a steep to climb, but a barrier
or series of barriers, to overcome. The
| steep was the steep that confronts
| every aspiring spirit. He must show
his quality by achievement; must DEM
onstrate that he is fit for what he hopes
to gain. But the barriers? Was 1t a
barrier to Colonel RooseVelt's political
| progress that it could be truthfully
said of him that he was born a gem
tleman?'
On the whole, it was. A gentleman,
in the crudest sense of the word, is
man who does not have to earn mis- liv-
crude sense, is one born to ease and
comfort, and to the absence of care,
present or prospective, about the
means of supporting life. Now the
chief concern of the great majority
of men from youth up is how to make
a living. A man freed from birth from
concern of that nature lives under con-
ditions so different from those that
surround ninety nine-hundredth of his
fellows that it is not surprising that
they should feel that his training has
been more or less artificial; that he
does not know life as they know it,
that he has never, in the unfettered
words of common speech, been up
against the real thing" In that SEN
timent seems to lie, in so far as it ex-
lists at all, the American distrust of a
gentleman in politics. 1t is not a dis
like of gentle manners, nor of a con-
slderate spirit, nor even of a seemly
appearance. 1t is a distrust of exper-
fence that seems necessarily incom-
plete.
One other thing it is-that is, a jeaI-
ousy Of eXclusiVeness. The condition
of being born gentleman naturally
tends to develop an over-nice discrin-
nation in ones choice of economy. 1t
is nature, or second nature, any way,
for birds of a feather to flock by them
selves. Nothing but the grace of God,
or intense innate human sympathies
enable man born to ease to realize
his brotherhood with all the sorts and
conditions of men. And if he does
realize 1t, the chances are against his
Feelings being demonstrated and rec
ogMzed, because a common trait of
gentlemen, and one more approved and
applauded than it deserves, is reserve.
To be reserved is next door to being
distinguished; and a gentleman who
does not hedge himself in a good part
of the time with some assumption of
aloofness is likely to seem eccentric to
his fellows Of his own flock. If he
goes out of his way to cultivate fell
lowship with the plain people," critics
Of his own social species viii be sure to
disparage him as a seeker after pop
ularity. And yet fellowship must be
cultivated if it is to be acquired.-E. s.
Martin, in Harper's Weekly,