natural philosophy, you have risen by your gravity, while I have sunk by my levity!" (Text.)—Croake James, "Curiosities of Law and Lawyers."
(1298)
GREAT MEN SHOULD BE PROVIDED
FOR
We can not secure the great man's arrival,
but when he has come we can show that we
know him and appreciate him, as the bees
know and appreciate the one who is, of all
others, most valuable to the hive. When
"Dexter," the famous race-horse owned by
Robert Bonner, was found drawing a clay-cart,
and the signs of speed in him were unmistakable,
what a world of excitement
there was! No harness was too fine, no
stable too good for him. He had valets to
attend his most delicate wants—watchers by
night and by day. I do not say there was
the slightest unappropriateness in this. I
merely ask if the man of wonderful possibilities
is not of as much account and deserving
of as much care as the wonderful horse.
The great man, or man of genius, will forego
yachts and palaces and the muniments of
wealth, tho he could enjoy them. What he
needs at once is that sure provision which
shall give him subsistence and leave him
free from worldly toil and worry, as a prerequisite
to prosecuting his work.—Joel Benton, Lippincott's.
(1299)
GREAT MEN'S BEGINNINGS The parents of Isaac Barrow, the celebrated English divine, conceived so mean an opinion of his temper and parts when he was a boy at the Charterhouse School, that his father used to say, if it pleased God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, the least promising. Adam Clarke's father was equally uncomplimentary to his own flesh and blood when he proclaimed his son to be "a grievous dunce." Poe, at West Point, was a laughing-stock to his schoolmates. Sheridan's mother presented him to a new tutor as "an incorrigible dunce." Byron, at Harrow, was in no wise distinguished above his fellows. Napoleon and Wellington in their schooldays were distinguished only for dulness.—Lippincott's Magazine.
(1300)
Great, The, and Little Contrasted—See Sins, Accumulated.
Greater, The, Controlling the Lesser—See
Master-mind, The.
GREATNESS
Homer makes his hero, like Saul, a head
and shoulders taller than the soldiers around
him. And Egyptian artists paint their conquering
monarch twenty times as tall as the
pigmy enemy whom he is destroying at a
single blow.
True greatness is more than stature.
(1301)
Upon his return to Washington, Grant made preparations to leave immediately for the West, but at the close of a consultation with the President and the Secretary of War, he was informed that Mrs. Lincoln expected his presence the same evening at a military dinner to be given in his honor, at which twelve distinguished officers, then in the city, were to be present. Frank B. Carpenter, who was then at the White House, working on his celebrated painting, "Lincoln and His Cabinet," says Grant turned to the President and said that it would be impossible for him to remain over as he must be in Tennessee at a given time. The President insisted that he could not be excused, and here we have another manifestation of Grant's independence and willpower. He said to Lincoln: "But the time is very precious just now, and really, Mr. President, I believe I have had enough of this show business."
So, while the man of deeds—indifferent to blandishments and caring nothing for receptions—was speeding on his way to Nashville to meet Sherman and talk over the momentous business of trying to end the war, the twelve "distinguished" officers were banqueted without a guest of honor. But perhaps in the feasting and the merrymaking of the night, they could not but ponder over the strange things which had come to pass that day—a general so devoted to his duties in the field as to have no time or desire to be received by Congress or banqueted by the wife of a President; a man who had been out of the position of a common store-clerk hardly three years, given command of all the Union forces on land and sea; a great load lifted from the long-burdened heart of Lincoln; the bells of time ringing in a better day for the cause of the Union.—Col. Nicholas Smith, "Grant, the Man of Mystery."
(1302)
