Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1913-11-21
PEOPLE,.
II Takes Many Kinds to Fill This Big
World,


1t is a commonplace Of prophecy
that English is one day to become the
universal language. For the tongue
and the ear there may be a universal
language, but not for the spirit and
the heart. People differ too widely in
the circumstances Of their upbringing.
You have to think of what they are
and whence they came if you would
have your appeal go home to them.
The dwellers upon earth are not run
in mold. Some have very rudimen-
tary thinking capacity, which they
have taken no pains to develop. Some
are all for fun and some are all for
work. Those coddled in luxury have
a different outlook upon life from
those Injured to the austerities Of Pc
nury. Those who have always had
servitors or fond parents asking them
what they wanted will be unlike those
who have had to fetch and carry for
themselves. You cannot expect the
viewpoint Of the lumberjack to be ex-
actly that of a violinist or q lapidary.
or a prelate, or a militant suffragette.
A great deal Of what we think Is her
itage, not only from parents but from
ancestors further back than we can
reckon. We were brought up to be-
ieve certain things, and We go on be-
lieving them because that is easier
than to do battle for an idea. Those
philosophers who maintain that we
are all Of us mildly insane are merely
expressing in their own way the for
tunate fact Of mental diversity paral-
leling the physical differentiation,
which makes one mans meat another
mans poison, and your orthodoxy my
heterodoxy.
The fact that we are unlike brings
us revivifying change with the mere
entrance of a person into room. We
are transported out Of ourselves, by
Identifying ourselves for the time with
new sphere Of interests, sharply
contrasting way Of looking on the IA
miliar face of creation, or an intro
duction to phases Of feeling and think
ing foreign and strange to us. From
time there has been pleas
ure in listening to a travellers story
cleverly narrated. Genius can follow
the beaten track, where the dullard
has nothing to say, having seen moth
ing and felt nothing through his thick
tv,tA u n1 aI, IN,
wanting to be told a story, and the
appetite for fiction grows by what 1t
feeds on. If truth is stranger than fic-
ton, then the popularity Of truth is
assured, at the public library or in the
lecture hail. Woe be to him who in
writing or speaking confuses the two,
for the world is crowded with accu-
rate and sapient critics nowadays.
A teacher is always face to face with
a temptation, as with her class-and
the very word "class" indicates what
that temptation is. 1t is, to regard
boys and girls in the aggregate-"en
masse"-and not one by one. 1t is very
hard when the minutes are few and
the children are SO many to take
thought for each Of them. That is
the genius. and the exhaustion, of
teaching-not so much to teach a class
as to declassify. The modern school
tries its hardest to consider individual
needs. 1t holds that as the Sabbath
was made for man so the school exists
for the scholar, not the scholar for
the school. Its pride is not in the uni
formity Of the finished product but in
the enrichment of each life with its
own chance to make the best of itself.
Frivolous fashionable society wants
all its devotees to live as it does. and
therefore fashionable society has not
much to say to those whose purpose is
serious. The frivolous folk hold that
the serious are eccentric. The minute
you begin to think for yourself, you
are crank. There is a penalty, in
stead of a premium, upon originality
among those who fear to suffer if they
should dare to think. They are sus-
picious of any one who strikes out
boldly amid new ideas. He is a So
cial hereto, he is disloyal to his
class; and they hold this to be the
sinfullest of treacheries that a man
shall forget for a moment that he was
born a Brahmin.
Is it not the joy of life. to one who
wishes to progress. and who calls his
soul his own, that there are all sorts
and conditions Of men and women?
How refreshing is the contact with an
other point of view, held in sincerity
and not for the mere sake Of quar-
rel! But If we want to meet Inter
esting" people we must meet them on