Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 107, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1910 — SCARCITY OF COMMON SENSE. [ARTICLE]

SCARCITY OF COMMON SENSE.

X* In, In Reality, About the Meet Uncommon quality on Earth. The only thing that has never become common Is common sense, it

remains rare when all other qualities can be picked up by the wayside. the dictionaries do not attempt to define It, so elusive is the trait, the New York Evening Sun says. Persons hazily say: "Common sense Is horse sense,” and vaguely feel that they have somehow failed to state fully its exact characteristics. A number of Instances can be cited where common sense was displayed, and quite a lot of persons claim distant relatives who were gqj> erally supposed to possess the quality. But this Is about as near to It as It Is possible to get. Geniuses are all over everything; one is obliged to step caretu 11 y to- avoid treadlag on them. Poets, politicians, reformers! men of mark —they block traffic; and as for playwrights and novelists and singers, it is as much as one can do to breathe, they so v clog the atmosphere. Only common sense is unusual, and by its skittishness prompts us to find it. It may have been killed out in ths large centers by the reigning passion for phraseology. A certain homeliness and succlntness Is a necessary accompaniment of common sense; a hdms truth crudely—a little rudely—expressed, with crumbs of Bubsoll cling ing to it A touch of nature, bluntly applied to artificial complications) sending them hurrying about theii business. This type of speech, which Is to say type of mind, perhaps exists In the quiet corners of the earth, parts where they nasally ejaculate, “No tomfoollshness around here.” Yel common sense is not a mental dialect. It is a rudimentary mode oi thought a simple vision, and we in ths big cities are barely acquainted with it because we find simplicity woefully dull. To speak simply, one must have something to say; and if one.depends upon the matter there are apt to be tiresomely long pauses betweemtalks. Consequently we console oursel^swith method, and though we' have nothing to say, we make a point of saying it excessively well. We adorn it until one cannot he quite sure that it does not under its charm of phrase mean something. At any rate, the form is too good to ever break it and brutally search its kernel. So common sense retains its rarity, and though one knows so little about it one has a strong feeling that there is a very slight possibility of its ever becoming really common.