|COLONEL INGERSOLL said, at Omaha the other day, that he hated a
dignified man and that he never knew one who had a particle of sense;
that such men never learned, and were constantly forgetting something.
Josh Billings says that gravity is no more the sign of mental strength
than a paper collar is the evidence of a shirt.
This leads us to say that the man who ranks as a dignified snoozer, and
banks on winning wealth and a deathless name through this one source of
strength, is in the most unenviable position of any one we know. Dignity
does not draw. It answers in place of intellectual tone for twenty
minutes, but after awhile it fails to get there. Dignity works all right
in a wooden Indian or a drum major, but the man who desires to draw a
salary through life and to be sure of a visible means of support, will
do well to make some other provision than a haughty look and the air
of patronage. Colonel Ingersoll may be wrong in the matter of future
punishment, but his head is pretty level on the dignity question.
Dignity works all right with a man who is worth a million dollars and
has some doubts about his suspenders; but the man who is to get a large
sum of money before he dies, and get married and accomplish some good,
must place himself before his fellow men in the attitude of one who has
ideas that are not too lonely and isolated.
Let us therefore aim higher than simply to appear cold and austere. Let
us study to aid in the advancement of humanity and the increase of baled
information. Let us struggle to advance and improve the world, even
though in doing so we may get into ungraceful positions and at times
look otherwise than pretty. Thus shall we get over the ground, and
though we may do it in the eccentric style of the camel, we will get
there, as we said before, and we will have camped and eaten our supper
while the graceful and dignified pedestrian lingers along the trail.
Works, not good clothes and dignity, are the grand hailing sign, and he
who halts and refuses to jump over an obstacle because he may not do
it so as to appear as graceful as a gazelle, will not arrive until the
festivities are over.