Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1880 — A Real Man in Society. [ARTICLE]

A Real Man in Society.

“Suppose I went with you to this lady’s house”—Ferd touched with the stem of his pipe a letter which lay on the table pulled near him—“and visited among your friends, the nobility and gentry? I should be reminded by a thousand things every day that I was a sham and a pretender. That kind of people always take it for granted that you feeland think with them; and I don’t keep telling them so, however. And suppose I tried to conform; I should be an amateur among professionals. They have the habit of breeding and of elegance, as they understand it. I may have a loftier kind, but I haven’t discipline; I can’t realise my ideal; and they do realize souls f That makes me tueir inferiors; that makes rpe hate them.” Foid took up his pipe. *Oh,” said Phillips, “you can put an ironical face on it but I suspect what you say is really your mind.” “Of course it is. At heart Jam a Prince in disguise; but your friends won’t know it if I sit with my coat off. That would vex me.” He took up the letter from the the Üble, and holding it at arm’s-length admired it “Such a hand alope is enough; the smallest letter? half an inch high, and all of them shurgging their shoulders. I can’t come up to that If I went up to this lady’s house, to be like her Other friends and acquaintances J should have to be just vriyed frqm Europe, or just going; my talk should he of London and Paris and Rome, of the Saturday Review and the Revue dee Deux Monde*, of English politics and society; my own country should exist for me on sufferance through a compassionate curiosity, halt repulsion I I ought to have recently dined at Newport with poor Lord and Lady Scramperton, who are finding the climate sq terrible; and I should be expected to speak of persons of the highest social distinction by their first names, os the first syllables of their first names. Ton see that’s quite beyond me. ‘And do bring your friend, Mr Ford,*” he read from the letter mincingly and he laughed. “I leavp U to yourTferto excuse me, Phillips." He kindled his pipe, and Phillips presently went await It was partof hUrountine not to fix himself in any Summer resort, but to keep acceasihlo to ihe Invitations which did not fall to find him. He found his account in this socially, and it did not remain unsaid that he alsq gratified a passion for ecopoqiy in it; bfit the people yybo skid this continued among his hosts. Late in the summer, or almost when the leaves began to turn, he went away to the hills for a fortnight or three weeks, providing himself with quarters in some small hotel, *nd making a point of returning to the simplicity of nature. In the performance of this rite he wore a straw hat with a wide brim, and a flannel shirt, and he took walks in the woods sSfcsprujsg l “ l “ ““ m< *s P*Mic~ittwa«me* •re the utterances of men who with the farthest and rabtilett reach of thought grasp only negatives. A man can no more live on negatives than he oanliveon •tones; a negative creed is the creed of death. A Parisian scribe say that Gambetta is ???{?* * r *pld, vigorous, jjrilHaat writer, a delightful person to A year of pleasure peases like a floating breeze, but a moment of misfortune in age of pain.