Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1881 — Our Mental Armory. [ARTICLE]

Our Mental Armory.

What capital things we might say, if we had our wits always about us I When we are alone we invent the happiest of retorts; the most unanswerable arguments flash upon us without any effort on our part; we feel that we have more weapons in our mental armory than “Brown” ever dreamed of; yet, somehow, when Brown attacks us suddenly, we cannot bring our twelve-pounder to bear upon him before he has shot us through and through with his revolver. We, of the superior metal, find ourselves spiked, so to speak. The fact is, we lack readiness. It is a pertinent and timely remark of the Ban Francisco merchant that we should laugh at the French if thev neglected the languages of their neighbors, the Germans and English, and taught their children Turkish ana Syriac; yet we, as a people, neglect the Spanish language, the tongue of 42,000,000 inhabitants of the American continent, our close neighbors and future pusinesa customers, to a vast extent.