Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1883 — The Decay di1 Passion and Thought in Ont Own Times. [ARTICLE]

The Decay di 1 Passion and Thought in Ont Own Times.

It is a condition of mind afid an attitude of the moral powers which there is much iit our modern atmosphere that combined to reproduce. I may hot undertake litre to draw the portrait of the times in which we xtf to-day are living. But as a traveler n.ify note the features of a landscape which he Jjs passing, though he e:nlnot describe with accuracy its geological formation, sty may any serious observer detect tlie atmosphere of tlie generation through which 'he is living, lot* one I venture to aflirm that it is an atinosphere singularly discharged of |iigh enthusiasms. With What a strange ami puzzled feeling otic reads, for instance, of the English and American ardor sixty years ago In the struggle of the Greeks for liberty. Nobody flies to Tunis, to Egypt, to spo rescue of the Jews in Russia in our e'wn generation. There is almost no great ardor, in fact, about anything anv more. It is not “good form'’ to be ardent or enthusiastic in any interest. however serious or lofty. The first aim of lift* is to get the glint of fire dht of your eye, and .the ring of deeper i feeling odt of your voice. The only ■ place where vehemence and impassioned eXfffrssioß ini' permissible any longer is iit* connection with purely dramatic ropre. c dntati<>n.%an<l onlythere because it Is perfectly wqll understood that nothing. serious js meant by it. Thfe first thing that many young persons' nrr taught in our days is to stifle all earnest exhibitions of feeling. and to affect a languid and critical indifference. And the next is. on :dl occasions nnd in all corqpanies. ami eifheerning all subjects, no matter how far above them, to cultivate a mannerism of opinion which is aH. like Mr. Whistler’s pictures, in low .tone —without one flash of warmth or genuineness in it all—dry. pert, meager (Oh,'how unalterably thin and shallow and.meager’.), hut carefully disparaging and utterly faithless.— ll. roller: