The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1901-06-25
The MAN OF ABILITY.
In He Under a Handicap In the Bat
tie of Life2

| nc "a AAASs
With reference to ability, experience
hourly confirms two generalizations: A
man of ability will sooner or later make
his way. There never was so urgent and
so general a demand for every form Of
ability as there is now.
| !, Unfortunately the relations Of these
two facts to certain other facts are little
understood. 1t is generally assumed, for
instance, that ability is a distinct advan-
tage to man. Is it not, instead, a hand
leap?
Let it be stated again, and with en-
phasis, that ability is very much in de-
mand The market groans for it. But
| this does not mean that ability will be
recognized Capacity to discern ability
| In Others as distinguished from capacity
to discern ability in ourselves, is the rar-
est of all capacities. Unerring acumen,
exquisite discrimination, can alone meas
ure ability, sift it, choose one form and
adapt another. No one would value a
clodhopper's opinion Of Plato, but every
| Tom, Dick and Harry feels qualified to
sit in judgment upon ability. IF
| could only get hold of man with abil-
| typ cries the fatuous employer, to whom
it never occurs that capacity to distiR-
| guish ability from its semblance is the
most exquisite of the faculties.
| For over 1890 years one man has
stood pre-eminent as a judge of human
| ability. That man was Perieles. His
| gift in this direction was little less than
divine. 1t enabled him to lift the Athe-
mans to heights of achievement above
which the intellect has never reached.
| That was ability's golden age, for it then
had patron who not only sought it, but
| discemed it.
Washington possessed this heavenly
endowment At the risk OF seeming pa
triotically partial we may say that he
| equaled Pericles in his unerring percep-
ton. In those years of ordeal from 1T76
to 1875, and again from 1889 to 1897, we
never find Washington astray in his estt-
mate of ability. He could choose men-a
thing infinitely harder to do than to
choose pictures or pianos or potatoes
and in choosing them he was in very
truth a father to his country.
Abilty's first handicap, therefore, is
the rarity of capacity trained to discern
| it. The absence of this capacity in the
man who chooses men ruins great enter
prises every day. But the man who
makes botch of choosing men never
| dreams that the fault is his own. There
never was such demand for ability as
there is today" Say rather there never
was such a need of men capable OF esti-
mating ability.
There is no such thing as ordinary abil-
| ity. All ability is extraordinary; hence
when it discloses itself medioerity-always
in the majority-combines against it.
This is ability's most notifying handi-
cap. Mediocrity does not detest ability.
1t simply has no use for it. There is the
same natural antipathy between medi-
ocrity and ability that there is between
truth and vested interests or between a
dog and a cat.
Bourget keenly remarks that when sew
eral suitors WOO a maid he who loves her
most win lose her. The very excess of
true love throws the unfortunate into a
fever. He loses his self command in the
crisis of the game. A cooler rival, with
out sentiment, controls his faculties and
wins. The same phenomenon is witness
ed when ability completes for favor with
mediocrity. Ability loves to work and is
excited by a prospect. Mediocrity re-
| CARDS all prospects coldly. Ability per-
J fects itself in seclusion. Mediocrity pulls
wires. Ability breaks its heart In the
pride of conscious capacity and is not
even asked to the wedding when medi-
ocrity marries the only child of the head
of the firm Ability is compelled to Gre
ate its own environment. This means a
long obscurity of hunger and humiliation.
] Think of Columbus, obliged to pass a
! decade in teaching that the earth is
round before he could begin his life work
There is one sweet that mediocrity new
| er tastes. Soon or late ability comes by
| its own. Columbus climbs to the deck in
the gray dawn, and his heart leaps at the
| cry of "Landp' If mediocrity be without
tragedies, ii is also without ecstasies.
| Certainly. ability is too often a handi-
cap. The only consolation we can sug-
| gest is that it handicaps very, very few
Of us.-New York Journal