Daily Arizona silver belt., 1909-06-25
ON ADAPTABILITY

In every city of rapid growth the process O1 adjustment is at work The kinds of adapta- bility that are necessary are multiple. The people, coming as they do, from different and remote parts of the country, must, in the nature of things, so remold their ways of life that some general degree of congenality may be attained Aside from this kind of adjustment there are others. Each newcomer has the task not always easy, of adapting himself to local business methods, and to the needs prescribed by the climate and tradition of a new country To some people this mild ordeal of becoming orented in new environment is in no way difficult. These people may be said to hold allegiance to no single race or group of in dividuals. Their natures, by heritage, tran scend the bounds of race prejudice and eccen- tricity. They belong properly to the great commonwealth which is the dream of reform CTS, the brotherhood of man. Fate may set them down in drawing room or cowcamp, but their appreciation of the vastness of the uni verse the bond of natural sympathy that unites all men, and the insignificance of the human unit in the scheme of things causes them, invol- untarily, to become a part of the environment into which they are thrown. The word, 'invol- untariIy,' is used advisedly, for all things that thwart ones efforts toward adaptability, the manifest and conscious desire to attain 1t is most defeating. The unfortunate who adopts this method is at once Haunted as resorting to gallery play, as assuming pose as playing a part, or as currying favor, all of which are al- most synomOus expressions used by different people to express their disdain and contempt
 Some people, to be sure, have the dramatic instinct so strongly developed that they can as- sume any role imposed upon them and deceive their audience for the time being. But, just as the impression of reality induced by any drama or pageant is rudely dispelled if someone in the audience shouts, 'Fire,' so the kind of adapta- bility assumed by people who strive to play their part cannot be depended upon to serve its author in each stress of circumstance en- countered in everyday life Many crisis pre- senting imminent danger has proven superf cially dependable people to reveal themselves arrant towards, and how often have these same occasions proven the moral and physical cour- age and inherent good breeding of men ex- formally crude.
 It is always to the advantage of an individual to be naturally so constituted that he does not render himself unpeasantly conspicuous among his fellows. The callow youth, and not always youth in years either, that invades a cattle ranch arrayed in Beau Brummel costume, and with all the atfectaton of manner commonly reputed to a French court, invites disaster sim ply because his audience is so schooled in the reading of human nature that 1t can detect something radically wrong and lacking in the nature of the man who makes himself thus con- spcuous and bizarre in, natures scheme. And yet, no one is more surprised than the individ- nal, himself, when calamity camps on his trail. No degree of surprise and expostulation, how ever has ever been known to rescue such man from the penalty of his lack of perception and self-centredom. Neither inanimate or human nature ever forgives man for disregarding the mandate of adaptabilty. A non-scientifc college education is of no use whatever to a man in the practical work of the ranch or mine, unless it is to teach him how little he knows. And if he has the discernment to realize that fact, he will have the good fortune to escape many hard knocks and otherwise disagreeable experiences Just as the richest mineral de- posits are not generally found in surface out crops, so any. startling degree of knowledge is usually concealed beneath several strata of modesty and self -abnegaton