The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-09-24

mouOneu violently LOT tHe car "
stop:
''That is the Governors mansion;
the place we just passed is the Bap-
fist Female University"
AS the big family unloaded at the
corner. the smallest son insinuated
his hand around his fathers seal ring
finger:
pa said he in his high voice,
when I'm President. will l have a
house as big as that?"
Looking back we saw the fat citizen
come into his own again. His neck
was still brighter red. But he
stood straight and his chest was be-
ginning to puff out once more. Clum-
silly he patted the boys head and
though his reply was inaudible we
knew it to be one that held a big as
Surance.
After all, the President is only the
best man. Why not his boy? Was
he not his son?
And to the receding car came the
shout of the second son: Hi, vi!
We're goin' to the Museum instid of
the Cemetery"
Not so many years ago it was inc
vitable that the small boy should be
either the Governor or the President
of the United States. No we'll regu
lated family but what nourished under
the disguise of tangled head of hair,
a pair of sunburned legs and a freck-
led nose surrounding mouth only
half full of teeth a future Webster,
hot-blooded Clay or Robert E.
Lee waging a warfare more desper-
ate than the last-but also more sue
cessful. And the Vances. the Hokes,
the Pettigrews, the Stonewall Jack
~, To- Tnb, he Itch IN
Marvins. the Henry Ward Beechers
and occasionally the Horace GreeklA
visible in the embryo in the humble
homes of the poor or the modest resi-
dences of the Well-to-do constituted
ninety-five per cent of the generation
now in transit. We ran to statecraft
and epaulets in those days. Only oc-
casionally a faddish family would dis
cover that it had unwittingly given
harbor to a Shakespeare, or that the
long, gangling boy who would not
mares in the small hours was the re-
incarnation of the sad-visaged Poe.
But these and sundry dwarfs With big
heads and round bellys who early
learned to meet Destiny halfway
through the cultivation of rakish,
snaky lock of hair across the fore
heads howsoever their careers were
gloated over in secret were, as it We're,
held in leash for growth before they
should dazzle a world that was i'll
prepared to receive them.
Those We're great old times for both
youngsters and fathers, when the
cherry tree tale was still current as an
incentive to veracity and the boy who
had incontinently fled from the red
bull in the pasture by day lay awake
at night with wide eyes staring at the
ceiling through the darkness the
Whlles he waved a sword of incredi-
BILE length at the line that wavered
In his bloody wake and charged to the
very mouths of cannon which, ex-
ploding in his face, his sense of non
esty told him would undoubtedly be
fatal-but then, how could he be
President afterwards $50 somehow
this portion of the program was blur
red over and he came out of the smoke
on the other side cutting and slash
ing and striking an attitude on TOP
of one of the captured cannon while
he directed the pursuit of the enemy
strung out along the skyline like bits
of ragged cloud-and waited for the
that Congress was in
such hurry for him to come and
rule over the country that it couldn't
wait for the ordinary elections and
the President had voluntarily resign
ed in his favor.
What has come over the days thar
such ambitions and such dreams are
either non existent or have become a
species of indelicacv along with SC
many other of the primitive emotions
which, glorying in them with the old
passion as individuals, society as 4
whole processes hypocritically to be-
lieve obsolete?
Strangely enough the President
idea for the offspring of the people
has suffered in proportion as the
presidents themselves become the
better known. Time was when the
President dWelt in a cloud through
which could be seen but vague, al
most miraculous. shape. Then it
was easy to be President. One had
only to sit down and suppose. After
all the ultimate toga was thing un-
explainable, kind of divinity that,
hedging a man about, fell upon him
from the clouds when he did not ex-
pect it at all. The matter of quail
fication for the job was a secondary
consideration with the people in the
mass. 1t was not the man who made
the President but the President who
made the man. The office was so big,
it's encumbent SO rarely seen, so con-
fused with the current mythology OF
great powers and more than human
attributes. that there was no dispo.
sition to credit the man himself with
anything more than being the lucky
depository of Fate. Once President,
one could be anything because he had
been selected by the strange powers
that move the world since anybody
could be president on whom the job
dropped from the air like covering
mist. it was easy to aspire. Who
knew where the lightning would
strike next what uncanny powers lay