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After this discovery of a gold mine, Grassou de Fougeres obtained his benefit of the fatal principle to which society owes the wretched mediocrities to whom are intrusted in these days the election of leaders in all social classes; who proceed, naturally, to elect themselves and who wage a bitter war against all true talent.
And oh, what hopeless efforts of mediocrities and inferiorities, believing in themselves as superiorities, and stumbling on through limping disappointments to prostrate failure! Poverty comes pleading, not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares.
I hope you perceive the irony of that. But contrariwise, take a family that goes on for centuries producing mediocrities, and suddenly ends with the production of a genius. Take my family, just for a case in point. Here I come of a chain of progenitors reaching straight back to Adam; and of not one of them save Adam and myself, has the world ever heard.
For average people, who are not specially gifted, there is but one good guide to excellence a good example; and a guiding example was not to be found in the path chosen by the host of mediocrities. Unfortunately, they entirely occupy this path or pass, at present, without a guide or leader and any other person who might, perchance, be capable of setting up a proper example, has no room left.
She looked clean and slight and attractive, and conspicuously well-bred. Her abundant hair showed to advantage under her blue hat, while her teeth and her eyes seemed to Freddy remarkably beautiful. A V.A.D. uniform is not becoming, but if a girl is striking-looking, it accentuates her good points; frumps and mediocrities it extinguishes altogether. "Come and have some tea," Freddy said.
And this, although uncontrollably driven by her desire to please, to please even a roomful of such mediocrities, she bore to the outward eyes the most gracious aspect of friendly, smiling courtesy. Professor Marshall looked at her several times, as she moved with her slim young grace among his students and friends, and thought how fortunate he was in his children.
These vermin invariably belong to a class of industrious mediocrities who have been born with a mental kink, and their treachery, falsehood, and cowardice are incurable. They are merely hurtful creatures who spoil the earth, and are to be found dolefully chattering about what they conceive to be other men's and women's lapses from the paths of stern virtue.
His sisters have been caricatured as having the manners of the kitchen, and loose morals, and his brothers as mediocrities. A great deal of the same stuff is now written about other people who have occupied and do occupy high stations in life. Here is Napoleon's own version of each of his brothers and sisters and of his mother. It was given in course of conversation to Las Cases at St. Helena.
The time would fail me if I were to recite all the big names in history whose exploits are perfectly irrational and even shocking to the business mind. The incongruity is speaking; and I imagine it must engender among the mediocrities a very peculiar attitude, towards the nobler and showier sides of national life.
There seems a certain tendency among the middle classes and the mediocrities of mind in Ireland to class, ever since the days of Jim Larkin, the whole Labour Movement in Ireland as a species of hooliganism, though, strange to say, no one ever appealed more successfully or was received with more genuine enthusiasm in England than the socialist leader when he was pleading the cause of the children of the Dublin slums.
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