Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1883 — A Quiet Life. [ARTICLE]

A Quiet Life.

About fifteen years ago, a young man whom we shall call John X was the chief favorite of the most exclusive and refined social circle in one of our Atlantic seaboard cities. The reasons for his prominent position were obvious. He was descended from an old English family that had borne a foremost part in the Revolution ; he was the heir to large wealth; he lived alone in the stately old homestead which he had inherited, filled with treasures of costly books, pictures, the innumerable rare belongings which accumulate, generation after generation, in an affluent and cultured family. John X held the position of a prince Of the blood among the fashionable nouveaux riches of his native city. He danced well, he was known to have a singularly-sweet and powerful voice, though he seldom sang. He talked little, but he was the best of listeners. Whenever his slight, erect figure and quiet, swarthy face appeared in a ballroom, there was sure to be a crowd of the foremost men and most beautiful women. But-apart from all these outward advantages, there was a peculiar charm in the man which no one could define. It lay, probably, in the total absence of sham, pretense or of self-conscious-ness in him. He annoyed you neither with vanity nor modesty; he simply did not think of John X at all. He thought of you, your interest, your pleasure; of the duty that lay before him, of the thing to be done at the moment. , There was no underlying thought of “I” or “me.” This lack of self-consciousness may seem an ordinary virtue, but it is as rare as the Kohinoor among diamonds. His fashionable associates knew that he was a member of tie Christian church; but he was not a man who could boast of the relations between himself and God before strangers. One evening there was a dinner where he was expected; his chair remained vacant, and before it was over word came that he was dead. “John X ,” said some one who knew him well, “answered death as quietly and promptly as he did every other call to duty.” After he was in his grave it became known for the first time to his family and friends that he had been for years a constant visitor to the hospitals and prisons of the city; and one-third of his income was spent in trying to reform and help discharged prisoners.- Indeed, it was from a fever taken in one of these jails that he died. Emerson, who knew him well, said of him: “He had one of the largest, sweetest moral natures I ever encountered, and the most singular lack of selfesteem. After he died, happening to pick up an English paper, I saw a notice that ‘John X , one of the four greatest chess-players in the World, was dead.’ Now, I had known him intimately for years, yet never suspected that he could make a move upon the board. ” The outline of such a character cannot but be useful in an age and among a people where pretentious display and self-esteem are but too common. It offers the same contrast as does a fine cartoon in black and white hung in the midst of gaudy chromos. We do not give the real name of this man, for it would please him better, we are sure, that the good he did should live while he himself should sleep in an unknown grave.— Youth's Companion.