Produced by David Widger
By Charles Dudley Warner
CONTENTS: (28 short studies)
We are so much accustomed to kings and queens and other privilegedpersons of that sort in this world that it is only on reflection that wewonder how they became so. The mystery is not their continuance, but howdid they get a start? We take little help from studying the bees—originally no one could have been born a queen. There must have beennot only a selection, but an election, not by ballot, but by consent someway expressed, and the privileged persons got their positions becausethey were the strongest, or the wisest, or the most cunning. But thedescendants of these privileged persons hold the same positions when theyare neither strong, nor wise, nor very cunning. This also is a mystery.The persistence of privilege is an unexplained thing in human affairs,and the consent of mankind to be led in government and in fashion bythose to whom none of the original conditions of leadership attach is aphilosophical anomaly. How many of the living occupants of thrones,dukedoms, earldoms, and such high places are in position on their ownmerits, or would be put there by common consent? Referring their originto some sort of an election, their continuance seems to rest simply onforbearance. Here in America we are trying a new experiment; we haveadopted the principle of election, but we have supplemented it with theequally authoritative right of deposition. And it is interesting to seehow it has worked for a hundred years, for it is human nature to like tobe set up, but not to like to be set down. If in our elections we do notalways get the best—perhaps few elections ever did—we at least do notperpetuate forever in privilege our mistakes or our good hits.
The celebration in New York, in 1889, of the inauguration of Washingtonwas an instructive spectacle. How much of privilege had been gathered andperpetuated in a century? Was it not an occasion that emphasized ourrepublican democracy? Two things were conspicuous. One was that we didnot honor a family, or a dynasty, or a title, but a character; and theother was that we did not exalt any living man, but simply the office ofPresident. It was a demonstration of the power of the people to createtheir own royalty, and then to put it aside when they have done with it.It was difficult to see how greater honors could have been paid to anyman than were given to the President when he embarked at Elizabethportand advanced, through a harbor crowded with decorated vessels, to thegreat city, the wharves and roofs of which were black with human beings—a holiday city which shook with the tumult of the popular welcome.Wherever he went he drew the swarms in the streets as the moon draws thetide. Republican simplicity need not fear comparison with any royalpageant when the President was received at the Metropolitan, and, in ascene of beauty and opulence that might be the flowering of a thousandyears instead of a century, stood upon the steps of the "dais" to greetthe devoted Centennial Quadrille, which pas