Mind Over Matter

1895

The Poor Reader of the Astor Library and His Luxurious Feast.

His coat had the olive tint of age and exposure, the edge of the sleeves wore as frayed as a decrepit toothbrush, and the bottoms of his shiny black trousers might have been exhibited as a piece of rare old tapestry. The hat which he laid on the table of the Astor library reading room was a picturesque ruin, and his linen was clean, but starchless, and had evidently been rough laundered at home. The man within these clothes was tall and lank, and the top story of the man was a fine patriarchal head, with a high, narrow forehead, from which the gray hair had long ago fallen out in the march of years, and his eyes were those of a thinker.

As he sat down he was all aglow with the mild excitement of the book man, for there had been handed out to him an uncut magazine, that cheerful and airy periodical, The International Journal of Ethics, and as he slid the broad ivory paper knife between its leaves there was a twinkle of satisfaction in his eyes that would not have come if he had just been bowed to by the richest man in New York. With him the opening of those pages was a work of literary sensuality, and when at last it was finished he laid the knife down with a sigh. But in another moment he was all aglow again, and settling himself back in his chair he propped the magazine against his poor old hat and plunged into a ten page article on "Luxury."

It was a triumph of mind over matter which would have made old Plato pop off his pedestal in the lobby below for very joy could he but have seen it. — New York Sun.

Longfellow's "Hiawatha"

1896

The Indian epic of "Hiawatha" took the world by surprise, writes Hezekiah Butterworth in an article "How Longfellow Wrote His Best-Known Poems" in Ladies' Home Journal.

Its form and its matter were for a long time mysteries. How could a Cambridge literary recluse produce such an epic? Certain critics claimed that the idea, form and magic treatment of the poem had been borrowed from a Scandinavian sage, and the implication greatly disturbed his publishers, and must have caused his sensitive spirit great pain. It partly eclipsed for a time the new star in the literary horizon on which all eyes were fixed.

The criticism was disarmed; the wonder grew; a fixed star had appeared. But the mystery of the poem is simply solved. Longfellow desired to produce an epic that should be in sympathy with all that was most beautiful and noble in the vanishing Indian race. Abraham Le Fort, an Onondaga chieftain, had furnished Schoolcraft, the historian, much Indian lore and many mystic traditions, with certain Indian vocabularies, in which the musical and unmusical sounds of many words indicated their meaning.

These traditions and vocabularies made the work of the poet easy. One only needs to read Schoolcraft, to whom the poet acknowledged his indebtedness, to see how this monument to the Indian race, their only great literary memorial, was builded.

Meaning Changed in Translation

1899

It is difficult for those who understand but one language to realize that a translation of a work in an alien tongue is not equal to the original.

An odd experiment was made not long ago by an English writer, the result of which will be read with interest, and by many with surprise.

He wrote a four-line epigram, asked a friend to translate it into Latin, and sent the Latin to another friend with the request that he turn it back into English. This English version was turned by another into French. The process went on until the lines had passed through Greek, English, German, English, Persian, English. The first English version may be compared with the final translation:

I.
I heard that S. would write my "Life"
When I gave up my breath.
I felt that this indeed would add
A new delight to death. — G.S.L.

VI.
He — "Dear, in my song you still shall live,
Though under earth you lie!"
She — "Ah! had you now that grace to give
I should not need to die." — O.S.

—Youth's Companion.

Little Classics — Literary Quotations

1900

To the pure all things are pure. — Shelley.

Self-trust is the essence of heroism. — Emerson.

A good laugh is sunshine in a house. — Thackeray.

Christianity is a battle, not a dream. — Wendell Phillips.

Children have more need of models than of critics. — Joubert.

The mind will quote whether the tongue does or not. — Emerson.

He who believes in nobody knows that he himself is not to be trusted. — Auberbach.

Nature has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of man's own making. — Addison.

Show me a thoroughly contented person and I will show you a useless one. — H. W. Shaw.

Drive prejudices out by the door, they will re-enter by the window. — Frederick the Great.

Minorities lead and save the world, and the world knows them not till long afterwards. — John Burroughs.

Teach thy necessity to reason thus: There is no virtue like necessity. — Richard II.

But faithfulness can feed on suffering, and knows no disappointment. — George Eliot.

Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen. — Lowell.

But, in spite of all the criticizing elves, those who would make us feel, must feel themselves. — Churchill.

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one and forget and pass over the other. — Bacon.

Women have a smile for every joy, a tear for every sorrow, a consolation for every grief, an excuse for every fault, a prayer for every misfortune, and encouragement for every hope. — Saint-Foix.

Deep Breathing Helped One Sufferer With Insomnia

1908

Troubled All His Life

"I have been troubled with insomnia all my life," remarked the nervous man, "and like most people similarly afflicted I have tried all the familiar dodges to induce sleep. The results were never particularly satisfactory in the way of producing the desired effect until one night I thought I had actually found a sleep-inducer when I chanced to grasp one of the rods at the head of my bed with both hands and practically hung the weight of my body on them. That sent me to sleep and it did the same thing for a few times, when to my extreme disappointment, I found it had ceased to work.

"I was as badly off as recently, until one night, when I had a bad cough, as well as an attack of sleeplessness. I tried the well-known remedy of trying to send myself off into the land of nod by taking long deep breaths. What it did to me, and has done several times since, was not to only send me to sleep, but to stop my cough. Just why it did so is not of much consequence. That it did so is the thing that concerns me most."


Poetry Wins Bandit's Heart

Prof. Bliss Perry tells a story to illustrate the advantages of literary wisdom. A friend, he says, was traveling in French mountains when on a lonely road he was stopped by highwaymen, his life threatened, and his valuables demanded. His literary instincts were to the fore, even in his extremity and half unconsciously he burst forth with an appropriate couplet, quoted from some obscure French poet.

"Hold!" cried the leader of the highwaymen. "My comrades, this gentleman is acquainted with the works of our friend, M. So-and-So! He is, then, our brother."

The purse was returned, courtesies extended, and the traveler and three bandits adjourned to an inn near by and spent a pleasant evening. — Boston Herald.

The Girl and Her Reading

1902

By W. D. Howells

What, then, is a good rule for a girl in her reading? Pleasure in it, as I have already said; pleasure, first, last and all the time. But as one star differs from another, so the pleasures differ. With the high natures they will be fine, and with the low natures they will be coarse. It is idle to commend a fine pleasure to the low natures, for to these it will be a disgust, as surely as a coarse pleasure to the high. But without pleasure in a thing read it will not nourish, or even fill, the mind; it will be worse provender than the husks which the swine did eat, and which the prodigal found so unpalatable.

Thence follows a conclusion that I am not going to blink. It may be asked, then, if we are to purvey a coarse literary pleasure to the low natures, seeing that they have no relish for a fine one. I should say yes, so long as it is not a vicious one. But here I should distinguish, and say farther that I think there is no special merit in reading as an occupation, or even as a pastime. I should very much doubt whether a low nature would get any good of its pleasure in reading; and without going back to the old question whether women should be taught the alphabet, I should feel sure that some girls could be better employed in cooking, sewing, knitting, rowing, fishing, playing basket ball or ping-pong than in reading the kind of books they like; just as some men could be better employed in the toils and sports that befit their sex.

I am aware that this is not quite continuing to answer the question as to what girls should read; and I will revert to that for a moment without relinquishing my position that the cult of reading is largely a superstition, more or less baleful. The common notion is that books are the right sort of reading for girls, who are allowed also the modified form of books which we know as magazines, but are not expected to read newspapers. This notion is so prevalent and so penetrant that I detected it in my own moral and mental substance, the other day, when I saw a pretty and prettily dressed girl in the elevated train, reading a daily newspaper quite as if she were a man. It gave me a little shock which I was promptly ashamed of for when I considered, I realized that she was possibly employed as usefully and nobly as if she were reading a book, certainly the sort of book she might have chosen. — Harper's Bazar.

Oriental Politeness — 'Your Arrival Drives Away Somber Night'

1888

Some curious notes on the etiquette of the East are published in a recent issue of the Gazette de France. For instance a Turkish Effendi, when speaking to another about himself, always says: "your servant," "your valet," or "your slave;" and to the other he says "your high" or "your eminent personality." Instead of saying "I saw you at the theater the other night," he would always say: "At the theater the other night I saw the dust of your shoes;" after all, a rather doubtful sort of compliment.

But here is the Turkish form of an invitation to dinner: "My Generous Master, My Respected Lord: This evening if it pleases Allah, when the great king of the army of stars, the sun of worlds, approaching the kingdom of shades, shall put his foot into the stirrup of speed, you are invited to enlighten us with the luminous rays of your face, which rivals the sun. Your arrival, like the zephyr of spring, will drive away from us the somber night of solitude and isolation."



Personal and Literary

1888

—A granddaughter of Charles Dickens is now a type-writer, and copies MSS. for a living.

—Rev. Dr. Bartol says of the late A. Bronson Alcott: "Were it possible, he was courteous to excess. He would have been polite to Satan."

—Of the literary men who died during 1887, the ages of one hundred and twenty are recorded in the Literary World. Taking them as a basis the average age of literary men is found to be seventy years.

—The youngest woman in the newspaper business heard from up to date is Miss Agnes McMellan, the local editor of the Seward Democrat of Nebraska. She is but fifteen years old, and an excellent news gatherer.

—D. W. C. Throop, editor of the Mount Pleasant (Iowa) Free Press, was writing a few days ago an article on the lesson of Tom Potter's death from overwork. Suddenly he paused, put his hand to his heart, and fell to the floor a corpse.

—"Buffalo Bill" is to try his luck as an author. He will write a book which treats of the reclamation from the Indians of the vast domain which lies west of the Alleghenies. The volume will recount the exploits of many famous frontiersmen.

A Poet's Treasures – What Was Found in Eugene Field's Room

1896

A Poet's Treasures

Eugene Field's Queer Room and Its Strange Contents

Before we go upstairs to Eugene Field's room, the one which holds his choicest treasures, it is necessary to remind you again that he has a child's love of grotesque toys and of barbaric colors and effects. He was especially fond of red. The room in which he died is papered with a fantastic, swirling pattern on a red ground, which is absolutely exasperating to those people who prefer soft browns and dull reds. Few persons understand what his idea was in selecting this red paper with its grotesque yet conventional swirl. In Henry B. Fuller's "With the Procession" that author tells about a Chicago woman named Susan Bates, who furnished her whole house magnificently except one little room.

Upon this room she spent a great deal of money, and visited many old-fashioned stores, in order to furnish it like a primitive one she had occupied when a girl in her father's house. Now this was partly Eugene Field's idea in furnishing his own room. He was fond of grotesque effects, he loved red passionately, and he wanted a reminder of the furnishings of a century ago. Where he found that gorgeous red paper, or the old-fashioned calico for the red curtain, would be difficult to tell, but he had a knack for discovering quaint things which other people pass by without notice. When it is added that the rugs on the floor are also red, perhaps it may be imagined that this room in hideous. But it is not. The long bookcase on one side, the white column in the middle around which are arranged shelves holding Mr. Field's treasures, and a gray screen repeating with a slight variation the same singular swirl that is upon the walls relieve the eye to such an extent that the effect is harmonious.

As you enter the room, you are confronted with two hideous figures. An outlandish Japanese figure is suspended from the wall by one arm. In the other it holds three Japanese gongs fastened together so as to make a loud sound when struck with the red stick. The other is the face of a hobgoblin attached to the headboard of his bedstead. Field pretended that he bought it to frighten away his babies when they insisted upon interrupting him while he was writing; but, like their father, they were so fond of the ludicrous that the strange faces the monster would make when certain strings were pulled only made them laugh; so the intended bugaboo but added to the attractions of the room.

On the shelves one may find a strange collection of quaint bottles of every conceivable shape and size, and Mr. Field hunted many shops for those candelabra which our grandmothers loved — those with glass pendants through which a child may distinguish the seven colors of the rainbow. He also had a queer collection of canes, candlesticks and baby shoes. Not alone the first shows of his own babies wore, with the toes and heels worn out, but wood shoes, and even glass shoes, reminding one of Cinderella's glass slipper. There are also two strange wooden horses, one used by Mr. Toole, the English actor, when he played "The Cricket on the Hearth," and the other, daubed with a few spots of paint, used by Mr. Jefferson in the same play. Neither must one forget Mrs. Hawthorne's ginger-jar, nor the ax Mr. Gladstone gave Eugene Field. The ax is suspended above the window. — St. Nicholas.

An Odd Genius: Mortimer

1874

An Odd Genius

An Irishman died, a few weeks ago, in London, whose career and attainments entitle him to a niche in the annals of literature. The deceased was about fifty years of age, and was as odd a figure as one could meet in a day's ride. He was small, but firmly knit, generally wore a white hat and a dress coat, and always had an old volume under his arm. He was a confirmed book-worm. Mezzofanti was hardly a more accomplished linguist. Mortimer was a graduate of the University of Dublin, and deeply versed in classic lore, but he added a polish to his erudition by his intimacy with at least a dozen modern tongues. He spoke French, German, Russian, Polish, Spanish, Italian, Modern Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Irish, and Danish with fluency. In his youth he had been cabin-boy in an American bark, and subsequently became a medical student in Paris, but had to leave it on account of his connection with the June insurrection of '48.

He was a very strong man, and utilized his strength by taking an engagement as a Hercules in a circus in Australia. By turns he gave lectures on Shakespeare through Germany, was a Greek professor at Hamburg, had a troupe of Spanish ballet-dancers in Holland, and was a companion of Sir William Don, the baronet actor, in his wildest continental frolics. In his time he had been tutor to Charles Lever's children at Florence. He came to the surface one day in the employment of Tom Thumb; another in the company of Murphy the Irish giant, who was a distant cousin. He had been in London since the Franco-Prussian war, which ruined him in fortune. His learning was of little profit to him, for he died very poor in a ward of a hospital, and is buried in a nameless grave.

The Poet Robert Southey — A Look At His Character

1874

Character of Southey

Southey went rarely into society; scarcely knew by sight any of the country-people living near him; never rode on horseback; took no outdoor exercise save that of walking, and this often from a mere sense of duty, and with a book in his hand; and, although living in one of the loveliest spots in England, and not insensible to charms, preferred the shelves of his library to the finest prospect in the world. He found his relaxation where he found his daily labor, within the walls of his study. "I can't afford," wrote, "to do one thing at a time; no, nor two neither; and it is only by doing many things that I contrive to do much; for I cannot work long at any thing without hurting myself, and I do every thing by heats; then, by the time I am tired of one, my inclination for another is at hand."

Southey was an affectionate husband and a fond father; and whenever, in his correspondence, he alludes to his home happiness, it is with a tenderness and warmth of feeling that are eminently beautiful. Moreover, he was a constant, and, at all times, noble friend, ready even when in straits himself to help with money or with his pen those who were more straitened. No one ever acted better the part of the good Samaritan, and while he never forgot a benefit received, it would seem as if his own magnanimous charity had no place in his memory. The story of his life abounds in instances of the most generous self-denial, and of a steadfast goodness of heart which never shrunk from the demands made upon it. Heavily burdened as he was with work, he was continually accepting fresh literary labor in order to benefit others; nor was this all, for he received, under his own roof, his wife's widowed sister, Mrs. Lovell; and when Coleridge, in that strange waywardness of mood which his vice of opium-eating can alone explain, deserted his wife and children, it was with Southey that they found home. There is a beautiful anecdote given by Lockhart of a poor music-master offering Scott all his savings in the hour of his adversity; a similar story may be told of Southey, who, when his friend May, an early benefactor of the poet, fell into difficulties, sent him more than six hundred pounds, which was all the money he possessed.

If the poet had strong and generous affections he was also a good hater, but this feeling was shown to principles rather than to persons, and if, which was not seldom, political animosity led him to write bitterly against his antagonists, there was not one of them for whom, after the moment of writing, he retained an unkindly feeling. It is said that he seldom spoke harshly of any man with whom he had once conversed; he had too large a heart for petty animosities, and he was wholly free from envy. At the time when a whole year's sale of a ponderous epic failed to produce the poet five pounds, Scott was gaining his thousands, but not a word of bitterness falls from Southey on this score; and the praise he bestowed on his contemporaries, a few of them more distinguished than himself, but the larger number men of far inferior power, is frequently more generous than just.

Although not, as we have said, a sociable man, he had the good fortune to know intimately most of the illustrious authors who made the early part of this century so famous, and, long before Wordsworth had received the public recognition which was his due as the greatest poet of the age, Southey, like Coleridge, expressed his admiration of his friend and neighbor in no niggard terms. This noble triumvirate, by-the-way, reminds us that probably not since Shakespeare's day have three men of equal mark lived together on terms of intimacy and affection. Landor called them "three towers of one castle," and, as all the world knows, they have been absurdly classed together as forming a school of poetry.

Southey had but little ear for harmony, and it was therefore all the more unfortunate for his fame that he elected to write his "Thalaba" in a novel metre, which is without the dignity of heroic blank verse, or the soothing, satisfying charm of rhyme. Landor saw his friend's mistake in this respect, and observed, very justly: "Are we not a little too fond of novelty and experiment, and is it not reasonable to prefer those kinds of versification which the best poets have adopted and the best judges have cherished for the longest time?" But Southey, on the contrary, was well pleased with his experiment, thinking that, while it gave the poet a wider range of expression, it satisfied the ear of the reader. So far is this from being the case, that no one familiar with the lovely harmony of Shelley's verse, or with the delicate music of Coleridge, to say nothing of earlier and later poets, is likely to gain delight from the strange and fitful, and sometimes jarring notes of Southey. But there is strength in his verse, if not harmony, and "Thalaba," while it has its wildernesses and arid deserts, can also boast, as indeed all Southey's epics may, many a fair scene of richness and beauty. Splendor of diction and felicity of description occur frequently, but frequently also the action halts, the verse drags, and the reader feels inclined to resign himself to slumber. On the whole, perhaps, the erudition lavished on the poem is more striking than its poetical wealth, and it is sometimes a relief to turn aside from the text to the curious and highly-entertaining notes which serve to illustrate it.

Southey himself judged "Roderick" to be the finest of all his poems, and Landor, in writing to him, said: "There is no poem in existence that I shall read so often." Charles Lamb, however, an admirable judge, and Wordsworth also, preferred "The Curse of Kehama," and, without endeavoring to compare the value of the two works, there can be no doubt that they are the poet's greatest and least wearisome efforts. It is singular that in none of Southey's epics are there passages which lay hold of the memory, and become, as it were, a part of one's life. No doubt, the first consideration of the poet should be to have a worthy action, and the more he strives after this object, the less will he concern himself with the beauty of particular passages, but the lack of what may be called "beauties" in Southey's poetry is due, we think, less to the severity of his taste than to the diffusiveness of his style, which has, as it were, no points for the memory to lay hold of. With all their deficiencies, however, the student of English poetry can never pass by with indifference these elaborate productions but he is not likely to agree with Macaulay that Southey's poems, taken in the mass, rank far higher than his prose works. — Cornhill Magazine.

The Looks of Literary Women

1874

Some one having revived the lamentable truism that literary women are seldom beautiful; that their features, and especially their foreheads, are more or less masculine, a recent writer points out some exceptions, among them Miss Landon, whose forehead was essentially feminine, and who was exceedingly pretty. Mrs. Stanton, likewise, is a pretty woman, but Miss Anthony and Mrs. Livermore are both plain. Maria and Jane Porter were women of high brows and irregular features, as was also Miss Sedgwick. Anna Dickinson has a strong masculine face; Kate Fields has a good looking, though by no means a pretty one, and Mrs. Stowe is thought to be positively homely. Alice and Phoebe Gary are both plain in features, though their sweetness in disposition added greatly to their personal appearance. Margaret Fuller had a splendid head, but her features were irregular. Charlotte Bronte had wondrously beautiful dark brown eyes and a perfectly-shaped head. Julia Ward Howe is a fine-looking woman. Laura Holloway resembles Charlotte Bronte. Neither Mary Booth nor Marion Harland can lay claim to handsome faces, while Mary Clemmer Ames is just as pleasing in features as her writings are graceful.


Man as a Leaf

Man is no better than a leaf driven by the wind until he has completely mastered his great, lonely duties. If he has no habit of retiring from all that is worldly, and of conversing face to face with his inner man, if he does not draw down upon his soul "the powers of the world to come," then he is no man yet; he has not found the life of man, nor the strength of man; he is a poor, unhappy man, sporting only with shadows, and affrighted before the real and the eternal. He owns a great house, a wonderful house, but it is shut up, and he lives outside with his fellow-cattle; the inside is wholly unknown to him, and he has lived outside so long that he is afraid of the inside. Think, my good brothers and sisters, of the great, high serene world, in which you might live and move and have your being.

Unity Club Discusses Six Poets, Studying "Cranks" Next Week

Newport, Rhode Island, 1896

Unity Club.

The miscellaneous literary evening last Tuesday proved to be a very pleasant one, at which the six New England poets, now dead, were discussed. Miss Emily B. Chace read a short paper on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Miss Maude Harrington on John G. Whittier, Miss Emily Bradley on H. W. Longfellow, Miss Ada Crandall on James Russell Lowell, and Miss Grace Brazier on William Cullen Bryant. Extracts were read from their most celebrated poems. Miss Maude Harrington displayed considerable elocutionary power in her reading of Whittier's soul stirring poem entitled "Barbara Frietchie." The idea of having one evening devoted to the study of six New England poets was an excellent and very successful one. The next study evening is on the 5th of March and the two subjects to be treated on will be "Galileo" and "Cranks."

—Newport Mercury, Newport, Rhode Island, March 2, 1895, page 1.




A. O'D. Taylor's Paper On "Cranks," at Unity Club, March 5, 1895

Newport, Rhode Island, 1895.

On "Cranks."

At a Study meeting of the Unity Club held on Tuesday evening the 5th instant, Mr. A. O'D. Taylor read a short essay on "Cranks," of which we have the pleasure in giving a summary. He treated the subject in a thoroughly original way, and it created considerable merriment amongst his audience.

He began by saying that the oft-quoted recipe of Mrs. Glasse for making hare soup, "First catch your hare!" might well be quoted as an introduction. That saying was really one of the humorous Tom Hood's brilliancies, and originally ran "Ahem! Hare! First catch your hare then do him till he's done." Mr. Taylor went on to remark, I would therefore say "Crank! Ahem, first catch your crank, then do him till he's done." With this view, I invited three specimens here tonight, in an apparently guileless way, but they all refused to come, having evidently some furtive idea that they were wanted for illustrations. We must, therefore, do without them. It is all well enough to begin in this jocular way, but before we are "done" you will probably feel uncomfortably warm, and say this essay is no laughable matter at all.

What is a "crank?" He then explained the mechanical crank, the bit of machinery; then the application of the idea of a twist therein involved, to topography, to speech, and to the mind. But, like all words which first have an objective and clearly defined meaning of some material thing the word "crank" has, by colloquial use, come to be applied to human character, to individuals, and in the sense of meaning a person given to impracticable schemes, one who has a twist in his mental perceptions, one whose judgment is perverted on some one particular subject. The use of the word as a noun in this sense is much more general in the United States than in Great Britain and Ireland. Yet it is not what is sometimes called an Americanism, except in the usage of being applied to people. As a word applied to caprice, whim or crotchet, or even a fit of temper, it is a provincial and truly English word — while its application to a human being is American, and apparently originated in New England. May there not be a good side as well as a bad one, in cranks? May not the crank of 1605 become the sage of 1845? We are censorious. There is no harm in forming a judgment; that arises automatically by the exercise of our reason, but the golden rule "Judge not that ye be not judged" means, and would be better translated "Condemn not, that ye be not condemned." He then spoke of the murderous crank like Guiteau, the economic crank like the absurd Coxey — the religious crank, the political crank, the domestic crank, the literary crank, and the scientific crank. Or it might actually be some Unity Club crank, who tells you that he has long noticed with alarm the steadily increasing influx of female members into the club, and that, if the men do not stand shoulder to shoulder, every office of honor, those of President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer &c., will be snatched from them by triumphant women, and that the only evening on which men will be allowed to open their mouths, will be on a "Miscellaneous Literary Evening." Then, perhaps half a dozen of the tamest and best behaved males will be allowed to read extracts from the works of approved and strictly moral authors selected for them by the female directorate.

Mr. Taylor then outlined the characteristics of enthusiasts, oddities, devotees, visionaries and fanatics. Without enthusiasts the world would stand still. Fanatics are not mere cranks; they are more dangerous, more united in action, less individual — a herd of wild animals instead of one. He then discussed psychologically the boundary lines between sanity and insanity showing how feelings can arise outside the sphere of sensation. It is when emotions are not controlled by the will, but are allowed to develop into passions, that the process of mental disintegration begins, that the bounds of sanity are overstepped. But in the good natured sense of the word "crank" we often include all those who differ a little bit from the ordinary hum-drum people of the world. We have a sort of affection for such "cranks," in fact nearly every family will privately confess to you that it has one in its own domestic fold, quietly packed away, either sitting reading in the parlor, or just gone to bed.

The grandmother who is "crank" enough to tell Carrie that it would be better for her to be mending her little brother's stockings, than sitting up past midnight in a twilight room with her lover Harry — is probably both a sensible and loveable old lady, despite her alleged "crankiness." The father who is so "cranky" as positively to prevent his growing son from joining some young men's club where billiards and cards are played every evening, and where just a glass of beer or a little claret and water, can be had by any one who is thirsty — may be regarded by his young hopeful as a "crank" about drink, but the boy will probably live to bless the day, when his old "dad" showed that cranky turn. And our young lady — who sulked when advised to mend the stockings — will probably, when a grown-up woman feel that her dear old "crank" of a grandmother had given her an excellent lesson in pointing out that domestic duty ranged above a personal gratification.

In the working world of men, we all know some other wise good fellow, who is simply a terror on a committee. A man whom no argument can convince, who is as set in his opinion and hard as a rock, when he has taken up some position opposed to the majority. He is a "crank" for the time being, of the first rank; for he has espoused some crotchet which all his peers agree to be impracticable, yet he holds on to it like a bulldog. Yet may it not be that such men — in the first place — are sent as a sort of test of our good temper, as a trial for our forbearance? and in the second place, is it not possible, that as this whirligig of time goes on, we are amazed to discover that the one obstinate man, the so-called "crank" on the jury was right — and that the other eleven men in the box were wrong?

This has many a time happened; and the lesson I draw from it is this. There is a good side to the apparent "crank." As I said in the early part of this paper the supposed "crank" of today, may be the admitted sage of tomorrow.

The records of science and literature bear ample testimony to this view, Galileo furnishes a notable instance. Socrates was regarded as a dangerous "crank" — and had to die – why? because he was the noblest and best man of his age.

Cornelius Agrippa, a philosopher and chemist, was regarded by the people as an object of horror, and sometimes found the streets empty at his approach, why? Because he had displayed a few philosophical experiments which any school boy can now perform but which was then supposed to be magical. He was a terrible "crank."

Roger Bacon, said to have been the inventor of gunpowder was equally hated as a "crank" and worse, because he knew more about the constituents of matter, and what their combinations effected than his neighbors did.

Petrarch the poet, was supposed to hold counsel with some demon, as the inspirer of his poems; and Descartes the materialistic philosopher, was horribly persecuted in Holland for his opinions on scientific subjects. There is no doubt that the idea which we now associate with the word "crank" was in some degree applied in those bygone days to the famous men whom I mention.

Religious, political, social erudities — novelties whose superstructure attracts, but which have no real foundation — are pre-eminently the hobbies of "cranks." Let us bear in mind that present conditions have grown, by the unfaltering process of evolution, out of the past; and that all innovations are very far from being reforms. A new thing is not necessary a true thing, and this is what the dangerous "crank" cannot be made to believe. As a rule when a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it, the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. As Edmund Burke wrote when treating of the French Revolution — "Every fear, every hope, will forward any mighty change and then, they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself than the mere designs of men."

Strange it is, yet true, that those who are quick to perceive faults and defects, do not make the best reformers. "By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little." So it is in certain well-meant efforts to set wrong habits right. The measures adopted omit human nature. And, as regards theories of government, we will find, in looking quietly round, that much as we have been led to believe that fanaticism about some dogma in religion is the worst sort of fanaticism — fanaticism about some form of government really excites men as much, and that political fanaticism is nearly as bad as religious rancor. In these two great regions the "crank" is always pre-eminent. Of late years the economic "crank" is also becoming dangerous, with all sorts of absurd nostrums for reforming the social fabric, ignoring the human texture of which that fabric is made.

What, finally, is the outcome of all these random reflections which I have jotted down?

It seems as if what the old divine, Bishop Hall, wrote, nearly 260 years ago, strikes the true key for us in our investigation. "Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues."

Even though enthusiasts on any subject, we can be moderate with those who differ from us. We can avoid ever being "cranks." Each of us can so control his will, so weigh his conclusions, as not to be betrayed into morbid habits of thought or act, can so guide himself, by nurturing a regard for others and the feelings of others, as never to become an abnormal excrescence on society — never be a "crank." Each of us should study to be

"Rich in saving common sense,
And — as the greatest only are —
In his simplicity, sublime."

—Newport Mercury, Newport, Rhode Island, March 9, 1895, page 1.


In our issue of today we give our readers a tolerably full report of a paper read this week before the Unity Club on "Cranks," by a well-known literary gentleman of our city, who is the president and managing director of the Newport Herald. As it is an unusually interesting paper, and as neither the Herald nor the Daily News published any outline of it, we feel glad in being enabled to furnish our readers and the public with a summary. "Cranks" can be found even in Newport.

—Newport Mercury, Newport, Rhode Island, March 9, 1895, page 4, editorial page.