THE HESPERIAN STUDENT.
N-
good, but it is the class of men in them that dctermine.4
this result. But go about over the country and look
at the laborers as'a class, whether they are intelligent,
provident men, capaple to be intrusted with such an
organization, and you will see that there is much
reason for the author's position.
the U. S. does to the eastern, the contrast would
cease to be a contrast.
Students perhaps imitate more than any class of
men. Being thrown on their own resources they feel
as if they were afloat and catch at every straw within
reach. Ambitious of distinction, they seize on every
semblance of greatness. If they hear that a great
man gets up early in the morning, they do likewise,
imagining this is a step toward the goal. Of course
this is a plesant delusion, but a clam cannot become
a whale however much it may imitate. The ques
tion of greatness sifts down to this, is or is not brain
there? We hear fine talk about perseverance making
up for brains, but suppose perseverance is not there?
Perhaps it does not occur to some that this is a gift
as well as brains. Everyone has his own work which
he is elected for and he can do no other. If the el
ements of greatness are in us, we will become great,
not by imitating other men, but of ourselves. To
use an illustration, there is a niche for each one of us
which no one else can fit into, nor can we fit into
any other. Let other men and their customs alone,
do as your genius commands you. The only benefit
we can get from great men is inspiration to work out
our own destiny.
In speaking of the Cincinnati riots the "Spectator"
comments at length on the popular indifference to
murder to be found in the United States and quotes
figures to show that there are more than three times
as many deaths from violence in proportion to popu
lation here as in England. It is not possible to justly
compare two countries, one of which has long been
occupied in all its parts, and of which the other con
sists very largely of new settlements. Experience
has shown that each country must pass through a
period of anarchy in which human life is to a great
extent disregarded, and we cannot expect the west
ern half of our country to be an exception. A small
number of bravoes with private grave yards for their
friend's accomodation should not be allowed to put
a stigma upon the respectable part of the nation, es
pecially if they confine their operations to those of
their own class. The inhabitants of the older parts
of the U. S. have no more pleasure in being cut off
before their lime than the most "cultured" of the
"Spectator's" constituency. Murder statistics of this
country should not be taken in a lump when com
pared with those of England. We think if the latter
country would include Australia, which bears about
the same relation to her that the western portion of
There in something irresistably comic in the posi
tion of a presidential candidate of the paesent day.
For most of the other offices m the gift of the people
the proper way of the aspirant is to allow his friends
to announce his willingness to take up the burden of
public service and then keep it before the people.
With the office of president however every thing is
different; each man who thinks of the White House
as a residence must ostentatiously occupy himself
with some business entirely unconnected with poli
tics and devote all of his spare hours to keeping his
name out of the papers. If by any chance he should
be mentioned as the right man for the place he must
rush into print with denials and explanations that
other and more pressing duties prevent any
possibility of his candidacy. Now that the cam
paign is practically begun we see Blaine
seizing the pen and plunging deep into authorship,
Arthur longing for private life, Grant with an oppor
tune sprained ancle, Tilden sick or well as necessity
may point, and a general air of preoccupation or di
lapidation. Now why is this thus? Why should a
man destroy his chances of having an official head
simply by announcing that he wants one. Evidently
there is something rotten in the state of public mor
als when only men who are supposed not to want
office are looked upon as fit to have it.
Modern tendencies indicate that if Gulliver had
lived in the next generation or at the latest, in the
twentieth century, he would not have been obliged
to seek a country in the air for a people whose sages
were all mathematicians. Readers of Swift will re
member that in Laputa a man's standing in society
was determined by his ability in unraveling tangled
problems. Each success in transforming the un
known into theknown,(points this satire moredirectly
at the science of to-day. It becomes more and more
true each year that none but mathematicians can at
tain the greatest success in any department of science.
It would seem that "figgers" are the only things,
with the possible exception of the father of his coun
try that "never lie," and can therefore be wholly de
pended on. Every branch of knowledge began with
a mere clasification of observed phenomena In time
facts are united into principles or laws and with the
exact sciences these are finally deduced from mathe
matics. Astronomy when it first appears is no more
than a record of the movements of heavenly bodies;
later comes the period of theories finally ending in a
time when the motions of stars and planets are mat
ters, not of observation but of prediction. The his
. ories of Chemistry, Physics and Mechanics are essen-