The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-11-07

crew during all of his earlier college
life. Best fitted of his class for any
athletic exhibition, he was barred out
| of all such honors by the strict COM
mand of his father, and the result was
that one of the greatest athletes and
one of the strongest men ever known
in the history of Yale was also one of
the best scholars.
/ Sana Mems in Sano Corpora.
Endowed by nature with great
strength and extraordinary capacity
for physical endurance, and pushed
| to the limit of studious application by
a stern but wise father, William How
ard Taft was forced to become the
best possible exemplif1ca ton of the old
Yale ideal of the sound mind in the
sound body.
This is important as bearing upon
the claim of this man upon the presi-
dency. The habit of studious appli-
cation. the physical endurance, the
ability to blend the two things, have
followed the career of this man from
his college days up to the present
time.
1t is a combination rarely seen in
public life. The biggest and the clev-
crest men are frequently irritable, dys-
peptic, and pessimistic. They are apt
to see the hole instead of the dough
nut, and the greatest orators have
generally been the least inclined to
prolonged physical exertion. Many a
public man has trained himself to en-
dure a period of incessapt campaign
ing which would break down a prize
fighter, and yet he finds himself un-
able to endure the severe strain of
| continuous executive work.
Many man with abundant physi-
cal capacity is deficient in the power
of application and the studious hab-
its which are absolutely Indispensable
is the combination of the two, the
physical capacity to endure. and the
mental furniture to digest which
makes this man Taft so singularly fit
ted for the gravest and most engross-
ing political duties.
Early Earnest of Greatness.
Whether the child is actually father
| of the man or not it is easy to see
that in the formative years of a col
lege life, especially in the case of a
serious youngster, who has no wild
oats to sow and no dark pictures to
first steps in the growth toward the
/ full stature of one of the really great
men of the times.
In the first place. no idler can Sc
cure the coveted honor of the saluta-
tory in a Yale class. 1t means that
he graduates second in rank among
several hundred active young men,
great majority of whom are striving
for every possible honor that can
come to them.
| Such attainment is not reached ex-
/
cept by hard grinding work, continu-
| ed far into the night and persisted in
when the boy would surely prefer to
! be with his fellows on the athletic
field or engaged in wild celebration
upon the college campus. The mere
/ fact that a man graduates from a
great university with the highest hon.
ors is sufficient demonstration of his
intellectual capacity.
Popular Ideal of Scholarship.
1
| cessful student IS pale, hollow eyed,
| anemic, and the very antithesis of the
| ideal athlete. 1t Is too often the case
| that much burning of the midnight oil
builds up the brain at the expense of
| the rest of the body, but this certainly
| was not true of Taft. In the years he
| spent at Yale, from 1874 to 1878, there
| never was a time when his classmates
| could not point to him as their strong
| est man on the athletic field and about
| the most studious in the classroom.
| There were others all about him who
| were probably more brilliant, who
| learned more easily, who were more
/ snowy in their Intellectual successes.
/ Taft had to dig out great deal of
what he got by the hardest kind of
/ hard work but when he learned thing
/ he had learned 1t for good and all. He
was infinitely painstaking in his studies,
| and there is scarcely any doubt that
| the habits he formed in his college days
and nights have been the foundation
| stone of his success in life.
| 1t was no accident which enabled him
| to solve the mysterious problem of the
Philippines, and he did not arrive at
/ comprehension of the engineering diff
fieulties of the Panama canal by any
| intellectual inspiration. He studied the.
| problem set before him as he did his
| Euclid, and the results achieved were
| honestly earned in every case by his
/ own painstaking and minute investiga-
1 ton.
joys on the Sunny Side.
/ A man may smile and smile and be
a villain still, so that it is hardly an
/ argument for the elevation of this man
in the presidency that he has laughed
/ his way through life. and that he sees
the heavenly humorous side of every
thing At the same time one can rapid
| ly understand that personal populari-
| ty, tact, courtesy. and similar social
qualities are absolutely indispensable to
| success in any great office.
No general can inspire enthusiasm in
his troops merely by discipline. No or
i ator can sway a great multitude by
/ mere logic There is always the ele-