The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1919-02-27
The Mouse And
The Steam Roller

X
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
ic, pulling the throttle, letting in the
steam, which is the power of all the
people, and making the big machine
move in that way.
Gray, carefully writing and rewrit-
ing over and over again his Elegy of
a Country Churchyard, thought he
saw many things beneath the sod.
For instance:
Some village Hampton that with
dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his field with.
stood;
Some mute, inglorious Milton here
may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his
country's blood.
There may be in village church
yards all over the world Millions,
Cromwells and Hampdens. There
probably are many that never had a
chance If Milton as a boy had been
starved, as children were starved in
England, to keep his body small and
thin enough to 60 through narrow
chimneys; if he had been sent out
with grown chimney sweep, and
sent down the chimneys to clean
them, filing his lungs with SCOT, in.
stead of being sent to the great uni.
versity to fill his mind with knowl.
edge, Milton might have died blind
old chimney sweep and been buried
in potter's field.
If John Hampden, to whom the Earl
of Warwick granted lands in Connec.
ticut, had come to this country and
brought with him, as he Is alleged to
have planned doing, Oliver Cromwell
his first cousin, the story of England
might have been different. Great
Britain might be Catholic instead OF
Protestant in government. German
royalties might never have gone ia
England to rule. And Hampden and
Cromwell might have been buried in
some Connecticut village churchyard
after spending their lives and ener
gies fighting red Indians in the neigh
borhood, denouncing the village SUI
perstitions.
There are buried and Wondering
away in potter's field and fashionable
cemeteries innumerable Hampdens
and Cromwells, Millions that never
had a chance to write, Napoleons that
never had chance to fight, because
they never had a Rousseau to create
revolution and Bonaparte opportun
ity.
Some did nothing because they
HAD nothing, did not even know how
to read, could not know what the
world wanted or what human brain
could do-they were starved in mind
and body.
Others did nothing because they
had TOO much. The success of the
father left money to ruin them, and
they lie in fine mausoleums, as did
King Mausolus himself, after lives
useful to no one, because conditions
made it unnecessary for them to work
or think, and they were not SELF
WINDERS.
But return to our picture, the
mouse, the steam roller, and Folly
trying to drive.
The driver, because he is fool
thinks that if he whips hard enough
'hS hiouSC VIII pun tuS 6Icdt uld
lchine. The mouse, because he is &
mouse, doesn't think at all, or per.
haps believes that if he had his
brother there to help him, the two
could pull. You who look On pity the
mouse and blame the fool, who in this
picture represents pitiful conceit SO
often mistaken for real ambition
The office of a newspaper editor is
the best place to study the mouse and
steam roller problem.
This is true, first, because the
mouse editor frequently imagines
that HIS power pulls and moves that
great engine, public opinion In real
ity he has only power to point out
(which way public opinion is going, as