For, when a crisis comes, or anything like a crisis, the world has a hopeless fashion of jamming its old stout felt hat over its ears, tying a stout scarf above it, and going out to battle in the storm, and forgets, in the fight, the lath-and-plaster hat which has dragged the street yesterday. It trusts a proved friend, though his felt be a little rough, and his braid a little frayed. And while Mr. John Sapp's portfolio of recommendations grew larger and larger, and showed he was good for everything, from a post on the Board of Health round to the janitorship of the public library, the public, when it was on its mettle, had a brutal way of appointing what he called "new men," who had made no application, or what he called "old fogies," who had been trained by experience to understand their duties. And it must be confessed that Mr. Sapp held back very modestly from the places which involved danger to-day, or which required preparation in years bygone. When the war came, he made no offer of service in the field, but was quite sure there must be some place as storekeeper that he should like. When Kansas was to be settled of a sudden, he did not think of emigrating; but he thought there might be some place for him in the office that sent the emigrants. I happen to remember that forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine other men of his age thought much the same thing. Having, indeed, been educated for nothing in particular, Mr. Sapp was always on the front list of applicants for places where there was nothing in particular to do. I have had a great many such men to examine, sooner or later. If Mr. Sapp had come before me, sitting as county commissioner, or inspector of prisons, the question I would have put him first would have been, "What can you do best in this world? What do you think you are most good for? What do you like to do?" It is pathetic to see how disappointed men break down under that question. I once asked a foreign missionary what he would do if he had _carte-blanche_,--had a hundred thousand dollars to expend in the next year? "I--I--I think, ah, ah--you had better ask the advisory board," he said.