New-York tribune., 1906-10-24
THE AGE OF EGOISM.

not Elijah, but something just
am Percles, with an Aristophanes twist and
a Socratic mental bias gotten from my cosmic
sleep OF twenty-four centuries close by the dust
of the gentlemen just referred to-
know more than Plato. Pliny, Paul. Socrates.
Seneca or Shakespeare.
These words were said with a humorous In
tent and a serious mental reservation. They
We're said because their author believed them
to be true and believed that they would be
taken as a jest The joke, far as we can
detect 1t, seems TO be the public that it
should not know true greatness even when self
proclaimed 1t is akin, according to the con-
sanguinity Of JestS to that ancient one which
consists in offering a $40 bill free, to have it
rejected on suspicion Of being only green paper.
The authors sense of humor does not prevent
his taking himself for Pericles and the rest of
mortal greatness, stored through the ages for
the instruction and delectation of humanity to-
day, but it enables him to divine or msleads
him into thinking that the public will be di-
verted by his sef-exposure We do not care to
mention the authors name; we refrain from
proving our I'D hominen.
We give this person some Of our valuable
space because he is not alone IN the world.
There is another Of his kind over in London who
finds himself a dlverting spectacle because of
the difference between his own and the public
greater poet than Shakespeare, and the people
think he Is a worse poet than Pye. Great
joke! Ha! Ha! Ha He leads the laugh
himself, and the man caught with an unds-
turbed countenance convicts himself of dense
ness. THE Man Who Laughs"-and that is all
Of us-laughs with an uneasy conscience. Some
one will catch him straghtfaced when he should
be chortling; some one will catch him laughing
when he should not be. We live our lives con-
vtnced Of the Importance of being in jest and
are from our uneasy consciences ever on the
alert for laughter, and fall thus easy vic
Tins of the charlatan comic tricking US into
cachinnation at nothing. Mondays cable brought
us the London mans proposal to abolish the
Ten Commandments, and yesterdays his relega-
ton Of religion into disuse. He protests that
be is greater prophet than Buddha or Mahomet
or other more sacred persons. and he proposes
TO have every man his own moralist and every
man his own god. The possibilities of his sec
ond precept he has in his own person exempli-
fed, he has also exempliied in his own
works the possibilities that lie in every man
his own dramatist. We mention these two per-
sons as types types of self-conscious humor.
But there Is another type which a1flicts this
age, the type of self-conscious seriousness II
proclatms things about itself as preposterous
as these two peoples testers do, and 1t pro-
claims them with all the gravity Of the Supreme
COuIL Oh Tue united sL6leB la0Q1ng down q de-
ctsion upon some tremendous question Of con-
stitutionalfty. We are oppressed with a guilty
sense that here is nothing to laugh at The
gaysty Of the nations is stilled and solemnity
pervades the earth when self-conscOus serious
ness opes its earnest mouth. Our best example
Of self-conscious seriousness takes himself to
be Lincoln and Jefferson, not to mention Jack
son and Hamilton, Washington and Franklin,
Madison and Grant, utilized over again by the
kindly hand Of fate for the benefit of this neces-
sitous age. He would say of himself the things
printed at the beginning of this article, with the
requisite change Of names.
The other night this Lincoln, or something
| just good" told US in Madison Square Garden
| OF his yalorous deeds. He is a very JACK the
| Giant Killer. by his own boast. He has slain
| more men In buckram than the valiant Falstaff
| The Beef Trust and the Ice Trust and the Fuel
| Trust and the Milk Trust and the Shipyards
| Trust and the Coal Trust and the Railroad
| Trust seven men In buckram. he smote them
| hip and thigh. He may run them through
| again after election. He himself investigated
l The Sss companies and passed the sO-Cent Gas