Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 101, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1918 — GREAT, BUT NOT SO CREDITED [ARTICLE]

GREAT, BUT NOT SO CREDITED

Many of the Most Illustrious Men Have Not Been Given This Honor Title. Many of the most illustrious men whom all the world knows as “great” have not obtained the honor of having the adjective affixed to their names, says Janies Bryce in the Youth’s Companion. The easiest way of showing this is to set down a list of 20 of the most famous men of action. I give the list following, not as better than others that might be framed, but merely as sufficient for the purposes of Illustration : Pericles, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Emperor Augustus, Emperor Trajan, Pope Gregory VII, William the Conqueror, Sultan Saladin, Emperor Frederick 11, Dr. Martin Luther, Ignatius Loyola, Emperor Charles V, Cardinal Richelieu, Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Mazzinl, Cavour, Bismarck. Several of the above, notably Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte, stand at least as high as any in the list of those to whom the epithet of “great” has become attached in common speech—perhaps higher. Taken as a whole, these 20 show a higher average. There are none of these 20 of whom we do not feel that If we had known them they would have strilck us as rising far above common humanity either in width of mind or intensity of feeling or in energy of will, or in all these things combined.

Mark Twain on Hawaiian Islands. No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me but that one; no other land could so longingly and beseechingly haunt me sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done-. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but It remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, Its summer sens flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf beat is in my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, Its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore; its remote summits floating like islands above the cloudrack; I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes; I can hear the plash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished 20 years ago.