The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-28
THE WEEKLY JOURNAL. Issued Thursdays, one Dollar Year.
THEODORE HILTON.

IS the principle which teaches that only good is to be spoken of the dead. Mems Judgments are not so infallible that they are to be lightly entered upon when the person under criticism is beyond the power to respond. We pretend to no personal knowledge of the real Theodore Hilton, but in com mon with thousands of others we have an impression which is by no means the impression of some of those who have rendered an opinion of his char acter since his death.
 We make the following extract from7 an editorial review of MT. Tilton's life which appeared in the Sunday issue of the Brooklyn Eagle, commanding newspaper printed near the scene of the tragedy of his life, in order that we may make comment upon it: Tt will be well to analyze without acrimony the career and character of a man, whose life was a posture, which inc cluded imposture, and whose death was a pose for paragraphers that were not afar off. His abilities were imita- tive, and were not infused with the earnestness or with the sincerity, or with the courage for causes, or with the indifference to consequences with
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 which great men, with great charact- CTS, are replete. He began as an irni- tator. He progressed to an under study. He mal-developed to rival and hater, and he collapsed as an envious, shattered and forgotten per sonality, the memory of whom man. kind disrelished and the revival of whom on attention, even by death, though necessary to journalism and to chronicle, is the reverse of agreea- ble to the race. What he needed was conscientiousness he neither inher-. tied nor acquired. What he missed, was a discipline and control which he never received. What he resented were friendships to which he was false, and measurements which he re- garded as reduction of his estimate of himself There was no obligation of life, as life is presented to experi- ence or to view, to which he was faithful, except as inclination or inter- est counseled."
 We will admit that it is good writing and we feel safe in crediting it to the pen of St. Clair McKelway who was partisan of Henry Ward Beecher. But good writing is not sufficient ex- clse for so scathng an analysis of a dead mans character. We are strongly inclined, on the contrary, to take the view expressed by MT. Hop- son in another column, that man who could write the creed Mr. Triton wrote possessed manly and convincing traits of character. It is a very rare student of mankind who is justified in declaring that any mans life was a posture" There is not one of us who has not time and time again been deceived as to the manners and personality of friend, to say nothing of the manners and personality of a nan with whom we have enjoyed no measure of intimacy whatever. Nor does 1t mean much except from lit erary point of view, to assert that a mans abilities are initiative" Very few of us can escape the charge that our advance, if advance it be, or retro- gression 1t be, is in definite measure to be accounted for on the ground of the initiative faculty which governs the strongest of us. Equally elusive is the characterization of Mir Triton as one who progressed to an understudyr It is given few to be the masters of their vacations or the sure architects of their own fortunes. More than one RSl Soih oL eASSttSlib JuuSHlGHl Has T6- turned from Paris, after an acquaint- ance with the Theodore Triton of the past fifteen years. and pronounced his influence uplifting and mellow.
 His was a sad and stormy life, which one should approach the consideration of with a full and complete realization of one's own weakness. What made foI the tragedy of his life, and the traged! in the lives of those who were associat cd with his suspicious. fears and con victionss has no place in the literatur, of the obituary. It is sad enough by it self Whatever his omissions were ht paid the full penalty for them. If it i now necessary to undertake an esti
 mate of his life and its consequences which we by no means believe, should be undertaken from an unpreju diced point of view, not from one o condemnation. It is altogether likel
 that with him, as with most men, tn