The San Francisco call., 1904-04-24

never grum pied at the dinner Of hashed
mutton twice a week, as though any
woman would not be only too pleased
to provide you with ten-course din
ner every night, cooked by a French
chef" If only you could afford to give
her sufficient money for housekeeping
on such a scale? Are you never
Mt times unreasonable, bad-tempered.
quarreIsome? Yes, know you are not
Carlyle. That is what 1 am coming to-
Because you very often-well. let us
say now and again, make an ass OF
yourself, do you regard yourself as in
capable of ever behaving sensibly?
Because you are, generally speaking,
poor thing, are you hopeless Of ever
being great Under any circumstances
whatsoever? What I want you to say
to yourself is this; These great men
Of whom we read, these men we are told
and rightly told to admire, these men
who have done heroic deeds. who have
served well their kind, they were men
as you and /, compounded OF much
littleness together with little great
ness.
am not thinking Of the little-mind-
ed, scandaI-loving reader, who, feeling
himself hopeIessly contemplate, hugs
to himself the consolation that all men
are equally contemplate. He Is not
worth considering one way or the
other We/wiIl let him gloat over
stories. screditable-shamefu to the
great-if he will. He is beyond the
reach of further harm. But to the
sympathetic reader, the portrait of
great man as he lived and not as he
posed is helpful. Let us see them as
they were-struggling, failing, conquer
ing men like ourselves with whom we
can feel kinship. The laudatory biog-
raphy presents it's hero always as a
Pharisee The charm Of Bunyan's
Christian was that he occasionally
skipped backward. The place for the
consistently heroic figure is the opera
and stage. Not that all this has much
to do with the Creevey Papers. They
were not a very heroic group, the men
that Creevey draws for US But the
book is useful in helping to reveal the
littleness of people that the world does
i'll in regarding as great. Creevey
washes the paint from many of these
gaudy figures, strips them of the fine
clothes to which they never had any
right, and presents them to US, the
commonplace and often vulgar people
that hidden behind their titles they ex-
isted Snobbery, fairly well paid for
the job, finds it to its interest to paint
its masters with halo Of all the vir-
tues round their head. 1t is well when
a frank chatterer. of the Creevey type
presents them as they really were, say
ing unconsciously to the world: Be
hold the little tin gods you have been
worshiping!"
To some it evidently appears rank
blasphemy that men and women con-
nected with the House Of Lords should
ever be spoken of except in tones of
reverential awe. On the appearance Of
the Creevey Papers an amusing cor
respondence was published in a London
daily paper. One lady wrote indig-
nantly, demanding that the book
should be suppressed. 1t was disgrace
full, said the correspondent, that stories
should be told rejecting on the great
grandfather of our beloved King Ed
ward. Even the great-uncle Of Queen
Victoria, it appeared had not been
spared. What was the world coming
to? Loyalty seems to be growing apace
in this country. 1t Is perhaps fortun-
ate for themselves that most of our
historians are dead. Mr.. Justin Nc
Carthy, if he be spared to US much
longer, will find himself, one fears, in
the stocks. before many years. His
book THE History Of the Four
Georges must surely make the blood
of every loyal Britisher boil in his
veins. Thackeray, this lady would have
had whipped at the carts tail. I am
waiting for some affectionate subject
to protest against the shameful stories
dealing with the domestic life Of bluff
King Hal. Where are we to stop?
There are reigning monarchs who. I
believe, trace their ancestry back to
Noah. Some loyal subject will be writ
Ing to the papers demanding that all
reference to that vineyard shall be
suppressed in future editions Of the
Bible Then, there is Adam. I am
given to understand that Adam was
ancestor of our beloved King Edward.
It has been calculated as possible, ac-
cording to dates furnished by history,
fiat Adam could be King Edwards
grandfather only one hundred and
eighty times removed. 1t is not for the
children of loyal British subjects to
be taught that their beloved monarch's
great grandfather, only hundred and
eighty times removed, was made out Of
mere garden mold. Cain likewise was
a sort CT great-uncle to our royal fam
lily. Surely the first few chapters of
Genesis might with advantage be now
allowed to drop out.