The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-10-21
WOMEN WITH FADS
THERE ARE WORSE THINGS THAN
CRANKS AND FADDiSTS
It Is Better to Be Earnest and Sincere
and a Crank, Than to Be Nothing
Young Men Are Indifferent, and In
difference Is Fatal to Ambition.

A man said the other day that he OBJ
jected decidedly to women who were
faddists; that they rode a hobby to
death and bored every one who came
in contact with them. This is unfor-
tunately too true, and we all know
women to whom this criticism applies.
We also know men to whom it applies
but that is another story. 1t is an
age for fads-that is, it was the age
of fads some little time ago, but we
seem to be growing out of faddism
little. However, many good and use
full things have grown out of some
man or woman having fad; indeed,
there are those who claim that nearly
everything of value was once a fad.
We all know the woman who runs
her particular hobby in the ground. The
writer remembers calling upon a friend
who had been taken hold of by the
genealogical fad; she had made book
of her ancestry and persisted in show
ing it to her friends when they called,
and explaining how her great great
grandfather was related to Elder
Brewster or some other worthy, and
just hoW it occurred, including charts of
collateral lines, etc., until her friends re-
GREETED that she had any ancestors and
wished she had just grown like Topsy.
But the ancestor craze is one that has
been much foStered by the formation
of patriotic societies, and one seldom
meets a woman nowadays who does
not know all about her forebears. How
ever, the judicious woman will not tell
you about them, because they are sell
dom interesting save to the descend
ants.
The faddist of any kind is a special
ist, and while she may bore persons to
the verge of extinction with her par
ticular hobby, still she may do some
i -sYa.r
facts of giving valuable information to
others. In the same way a man who
is regarded as a crank may be doing
a great work in some particular line
that does not interest the community
at large. For instance, temperance
crank may be good deal of bore
when he gets on the subject of drink,
but if by his persistence he redeems
one soul he can be forgiven every
thing. 1t is not such a bad thing to be
a crank. For, usually, crank is very
sincere, earnest, a hard-worker and
exceedingly persistent. Therefore his
crankism, if it is altruistic in intent,
makes for good. We all know cranks
and faddists and occasionally we fly
from them, but we should always re-
member that to be terribly in earnest
about some one thing is the way to
accomplish anything in this world
Indifferentism is IA curse. 1t is the
don't-care policy of the young men of
the day that is making the older gen.
Grafton tremble for the future. 1t is
better to be a crank and a faddist than
nothing. And there are thousands of
young men in this country today who
are nothing. They have no ambition
save to be amused-they are not in
earnest, care very much about nothing,
and spend their waking hours in de-
vising ways and means to make money
without working. They are full Of
schemes. Schemes in a polite term
which means living by ones wits.
A crank or a faddist is infinitely
more valuable to the community than
these Indifferent young men.