Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1885 — The Commonplace Young Man. [ARTICLE]

The Commonplace Young Man.

If the commonplace young man is nobody’s ideal, neither does he disappoint anybody, for nothing in particular is expected of him. But there is no nonsense about him, or only such as “is relished by the best of men.” He cracks his joke as ruthlessly over the aesthetic humbug as over the corrupt politician; he is aa fait in lawn tennis, in croquet, in euchre, or whist, or billiards, in the deux temps or the country dance, in base-ball or boating, which make him popular at picnic, or party, or country house: he has views on all the questions of the, day, and does not hesitate to express them Without the least diffidence, and apparently without the least suspicion but that they are as sound as Plato’s and flawless as the Kohinoor. In fact he has a great deal of conversation of one kind and another; he can give you any number of “inexact thoughts,” as Landor calls witticisms, either original or culled; if you are a. blue stocking, he discourses of books; if a scientist, he quotes Darwin or Tyndall, gleaned from the daily journals ; if a sentimentalist, he retorts J in lines from “familiar quotations;” he is not deeply read, or he would not be the commonplace young man, perhaps; but he knows a little of a great many subjects, and has a happy faculty, as some people have in spending money, of making a little go a great way; he adapts his conversation to his company, and gossips with those who gossip. He has some notorious good qualities; he is an excellent son and brother, generous with his loose change, particular about his tailor, fastidious about his sweethearts and his company, not ashamed of his poor relations, nor boastful to them, nor ashamed to be seen on the promenade with a shabby friend or a plain woman. He has no special conceit, but he knows his own value in a society where the feminine element predominates, and acts accordingly. If he is more or less frivolous withal, it is possible because the world seems to put a premium upon frivolity, and discounts earnestness. He is essentially the creature of the period, and reflects its spirit and nervous energy : he is the normal human being, not too good for human nature’s daily mood, with a hearty appetite and a correct digestion, made for domestic, homely life, for every day wear and tear, not forhblidays alone; and if he does not dazzle like “the blue and white young man,” neither does he aggravate us with the whims, the hobbies, and oddities of genius ; he does not affect Anglomania, nor drawl, nor bang his hair, nor adopt eccentricities. To be sure, he will not write the coming novel, he does not “breathe in numbers,” nor compose ns symphonies, nor paint us pictures, nor carve us statues; his atoms may not be those of which heroes are made,, or arctic discoverers; he will not weigh the stars or calculate eclipses, or fight microbes; yet he fills his niche; he is a companionable soul, and the world could ill afford to jog on without him. —Harper’s Bazar.