Public Spirit

We take the following from a paper by Dr. Hollanü in The Century Magazine i'or November (reeently Scribner's): ïhere is no point at which personal meanness betrays itself so strongly and surely as it does when brought into relation to scheines of public improvement. Set a subscriptioa paper going through a coinmunity, to raise nioney f or some public object, an it will usually aift out the mean men as cerfcainly as a screen will sift the dust from a bushei of coal. We have a great many men who are not stiugy with their families, who are by no means parsimonious, yet who have insuperable objections to giving away anything that does not minister directly to their personal comfort or gratiñcation. A church is wanted, or a public library, or a park, or semething else for the cominon benefit, and the want and the effort to meet to furnish a very reliable test of the cliaracter of those appealed to. We have rich men in every community so notoriously stingy, and so unfriendly toall schenies of public improvement, that they are not even approached for a contribution. On Ihe other hand, we have men in every community who have what we cali "public spirit." Xothing that can minister to the general good ever receives a cold welcome from them, or a niggardly response to its appeal. Very few men are so stolidly selfish that they cannet see that membership in a í'amily involves certain duties toward the family - support, protection, mutual assistance. The head of a family - no matter how selflsh and stingy he may be - recognizes the fact that he owes to that family shelter, sustenance, clotuing, education, etc. Very few, too, fail to see that, as citizecs, they owe certain duties to the town they live in, to the state, to the nation. They pay their taxes, and expect to pay them. It cannot be said that they always do this willingly or honestly, but they know that they must pay something for the laws that protect them, for the roads that give them passago across the country, and for the support of the Government. As heads of families and citizens of the state, they apprehend the fact that they owe duties whose fulfillment costs money. What is necessary beyond this is that they should see that membership in a social community involves duties just as really and distinctly as family ties or citizenship. No man can belong to a social community- as all men do who are not herrnitö - with out having iiuposed upon him a great many duties. He owes it to that coramunily to muke it, so far as he can, intelligent, comfortable, respectable. There is no wise scherne of improvement to which he does not owe his support and encouragement; and he cannot turn his back upon any such schemo without a fallaré in the offices of good neighborhood, or without couvicting himself of a mean selflshness that is disgraceful to him, and to the family and town to which he belongs. Everywhere and ahvays it is the good, not the evil, that should be emphasized and portrayed. In all out poetry and art, in all our literatura, let the best and highest tboughts and imaginations be brought to the front and the inferior be dropped out of sight. In all our business, in all our social intercourse, in all our ainusements, let the good be made prominent, let heroic deeds and generous lives be known and admired, and those of au opposite kind be buried in the silence they deserve. It is the sun which chases away the clouds, it is the truth which dissolves error, it is goodness which extinguishes evil.