GREATNESS APPRECIATED
Mr. Moore, writing in The Congregationalist on "The Benediction of a Statue," says:
The man was only one of the thousands
that have stopt for a moment or two at
least in front of the Phillips Brooks statue
during the past week. He was a working
man of about fifty, with a strong, square-jawed,
bronzed face. He had evidently come
over to look at the statue during the noon
hour, for he had on his blue flannel shirt and
carpenter's overalls. He gazed a moment
and then brushed his eyes rather furtively.
"How do you like the statue?" he was asked.
"It's fine, but isn't quite Phillips Brooks. It's a strong face like his, but I sort of miss the light in the eyes. It isn't as kind-looking as Phillips Brooks."
"You knew him, then?"
"Yes, I knew him well. I have talked with him many times. He always spoke to me on the street. He used to always ask about the wife and baby, and now—the wife has gone on beyond, too."
He took a last look at the statue and then hurried away, for it was almost one o'clock. Just then a colored man of about forty joined the group.
"Know him? Why, I knew him as well as I know my wife. I used to be charman of a house just a few doors away from his on Clarendon Street. He always said, 'Good-morning, John,' to me when he met me, as he was going over to the church in the morning. Of course, when I knew him he was older than the statue shows him. He never spoke to you like he was saying, 'I'm the rich Mr. Brooks.' He treated you just like you was as good as him."
Two messenger-boys stopt for a moment. "Who's that man?" one asked the other.
"Why, that's a great preacher that used to preach in that church. They say he was an awfully good man. They say he could preach like anything, and yet he was just as common with folks as anybody."
An intelligent, rather elderly Hebrew was criticizing the statue very severely to several people, but he said: "I used to go to school with him. He was certainly a wonderful preacher and a very, very good man. He surely deserved the best statue Boston could ever put up for him. But I dislike the background and the other figure in this very much."
(1303)
GREATNESS CALLED FORTH
At every great call for great deeds the right man comes out of the common crowd to do it, this is the truth Sam. Walter Foss enforces in these verses:
Men seem as alike as the leaves on the trees,
As alike as the bees in the swarming of bees;
And we look at the millions that make up the state,
All equally little and equally great,
And the pride of our courage is cowed.
Then fate calls for a man who is larger than men,
There is a surge in the crowd—there's a movement—and then
There arises the man who is larger than men—
And the man comes up from the crowd.
The chasers of trifles run hither and yon,
And the mean little days of small trifles go on,
And the world seems no better at sunset than dawn,
And the race still increases its plentiful spawn,
And the voice of our wailing is loud.
Then the great deed calls out for the great man to come,
And the crowd unbelieving, sits sullen and dumb—
But the great deed is done, for the great man is come—
Ay, the man comes up from the crowd. (Text.)
(1304)
GREATNESS DISCOUNTED
Daniel Webster in the very height of his
fame, just after his famous Bunker Hill
speech, took a run down to his native village
which he had not visited in so many years
that he found himself quite unrecognized
by his former cronies. Accosting an old
friend of the Websters, he gradually, after
due discussion of the weather and the crops,
turned the conversation upon his own
family. Thereupon his companion burst out
into enthusiastic encomiums upon the virtues
and abilities of Daniel's elder brother Ebenezer,
who had died young and whose early
death he fittingly deplored. Daniel slipt
in a modest query as to whether there was
not a brother named Dan. "He never was
