Something of Men I Have Known: With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and RetrospectiveStevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing)
History
Something of Men I Have Known: With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective
Stevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing)
United States -- Biography; United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933
"Duluth, Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with peculiar and
indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a brook stealing
forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accent of an angel's
whisper in the bright joyous dream of sleeping innocence. Duluth!
'T was the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart
panteth for the water brooks. I was convinced that the greatest
calamity that ever befell the benighted nations of the ancient
world was their having passed away without a knowledge of the actual
existence of Duluth; that their fabled Atlantis, never seen save
by the hallowed vision of inspired poesy, was in fact but another name
for Duluth; that the golden orchard of the Hesperides was but a
poetical synonym for the beer-gardens in the vicinity of Duluth. As
that name first fell upon my ear, a resplendent scene of ineffable
glory opened before me, such as I imagine burst upon the enraptured
visions of the wandering Peri through the opening gates of
Paradise."
Mr. Knott was often the sad and silent man. His real intimacies
were few, and to strangers he was reserved. But to those who came
within the circle of his personal friendship he was one of the most
delightful of companions. No man was ever given less to a
parade either of his friendships or of his animosities. His enemies
--and it would have been strange if, passing through the eventful scenes
he did, he had had none--knew just where to find him. He was,
in very truth,
"Lofty and sour to them that loved him not;
But, to those men that sought him, sweet as summer."
The cause often of mirth in others, he was at times far from being
joyous himself. Few men have been the possessors in so rare degree
of the gift of humor, the sure indication of the humane and
sympathetic in our nature; that "which blends the pathetic with
the ludicrous, and by the same stroke moves to laughter and to
tears." As Emerson says, "Both an ornament and a safeguard--genius
itself." The line of separation between wit and humor is shadowy,
not easily defined. There may be in the same individual, in
some measure, a blending of the two. As has been said: "While
wit is a purely intellectual thing, into every act of the humorous
mind there is an influx of the moral nature. Humor springs up
exuberantly, as from a fountain, and runs on, its perpetual game
to look with considerate good-nature at every object in existence,
and dismiss it with a benison." While wit, the purely intellectual
quality, sparkles and stings, humor, "touched with a feeling of
our infirmity," would "gently scan thy brother man," remembering
ever that
"What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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