The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1906-01-21

hero mounts his prancing horse he dis
appears from the Wallets view. When /
the valet sees him is when he is pull 1
ing OIL his socks If one wishes to un-
derstand mankind it is necessary to /
know not only the hero but the man.
To act the hero on the stage with the
limelight turned upon one. is compare
lively easy The same actor can be a i
hero off the stage also. But it does
not follow of necessity; the two things
are distinct. A man can be brave on .
the battlefield and yet be a poor thing
at two o'clock in the morning. Phil
Mays henpecked lion tanner, crouch
ing behind the king of the forests,
while his termagant wife outside the
cage exclains Come out, you cow
ardt is quite natural character
Belisarius and the Duke of Marlbor-
ough in their own homes carried
meekneSs to the verge of imbecility.
Statesmen excellent at teaching firm
ness to a nation, have proved them
selves mere fretful children when face
to face with personal disappointment I
IF the proper study of mankind be /
man, the study must be complete. We
want to know how our philosophers
behaved when suffering from the
toothache.
OF course there is a certain class of /
reader who should never attempt biog- |
raphy. Il would not learn anatomy |
an art student once told me. know |
ing what firm flesh was made of-the /
structure of the shapely' limbs-the /
/
white upon a young girls face-would |
rob me of all delight in my work. =" !
For such knowledge is harmful. But
the scientist demands it. If history is /
to be of any service to US the wart /
must be painted as well as the flashing /
/ eye. 1t is useful to know that Car /
lyle once threw the bacon at his wife. !
After hearing that, says my irrita- |
Bile city friend, II take no more inter
est in Carlyle. Who is he to teach me
/ philosophy? The bad tenn
pered old gentleman. of what use is he
4 to the WOrld2" My dear
friend, have you never thrown the ba-
con at your Wife2 Have
you never grumbled at the dinner of
hashed mutton twice a week, as
I though any woman would not be only
/ too pleased to provide you with a ten
4 course dinner every night cooked by
| a French chef" if only you could at
ford to give her sufficient money for
/ housekeeping on such d scale.
Are you never at times unreasOnable
bad tempered, quarrelsome. Yes, /
know you are not Carlyle. That is
| what I am coming to. Because you
very often-weu, let US say now and
again, make an ass of yourself, do you
! regard yourself as incapable of ever
! behaving sensibly2 Because you are,
/ generally speaking, a poor thing are
| you hopeless of ever being great under
/ any circumstances whatsoever? What
/ 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
I, compounded of much IittleneSs to-
4 gether with a little greatness. Study
| their lives and learn that because a
1 man had faults and failings such as
you and I have that it no reason why
he should despair of ever acting no.
bly, Lives of great men," sweetly
sang old LongfelloW, tall remind US
we can make our lives sublime" But
not if we imagine them exalted crea-
lures of different clay entirely to our
selves, too far removed from us to be
of any use to us as examples.
I am not thinking of the iittle-mind-
ed. scandal-lOVing reader, who, feel
ing himself hOpelessly contemplate,
hugs to himself the consolation that all
men are equally contemplate. He is
not worth considering one way or the
other. We will let him gloat over stor-
les, ble,-shameful 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, con-
quering men like ourselves with whom
we can feel kinship. The laudatory BIZ
ography presents its hero always as a
+ Pharisee. The charm of Bunyans
Christian was that he occasionally
4 skipped backward. The place for the
consistently heroic figure is the opera
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-
listed. Snobbery, fairly well paid for
the job. finds it to its interest to paint
its masters with a 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,
saying unconsciously to the world. BE
4 hold the little tin gods you have been
worshipping"
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 Lon
don daily paper One lady wrote in
{ dignantly, demanding that the book