Concerning the Man in the Street

Southland Times, Issue 13429, 15 April 1896, Page 4

Concerning the Man in the Street

(By " F. M.," Hobart Mercury.)

It is an honour for a man to cease from strife but every fool will be meddling.— Solomon.

IF one miy venture an opinion on such a matter, iv the absence of any such precise criteria as an intelligent opinion may properly be based upon, it may be siid that this globe is a very remarkable speck in Space. la'any case (and here, happily, we have better bases of comparison) this is a very remarkable age, an age distinguished at once by such tremendous ,power and such pitiful weakness, such estimable desire for knowledge and such absurd limitations of the areas in which knowledge may properly be sought, such wonderful inert ase of light and such a marvellous tendency to sit in dark places — as surely have noc gone together at any time since the disputed birthperiod of the speck. For some reason (no intelligent man can venture to say why) we have come to attach a quite unwarrantable and absurd significance to •• fin de siecle," " end-of-the-centary," " decadent," and other catch-worda and phrases of the New Journalism and its off-shoots. We parcel out our time, reckoning by hours and days and weeks and years and centuries ; and nun is so far a ureature of habit, that we have come to regard our methods as the unalfc Table methods by which the nniverae of God is kept from crumbling, and have forgotten that Nature knows no auch thing as arbitrary time-division. And according to the compU-xion of our peculiarly absurd caprices the mad world wags. A man born in the 'nineties is, apparently, an infinitely shrewder and better informed unit than a man born in the 'twenties simply because he is born seventy years later in the century's growth. It is very absurd. We have alleged artists who defile clean canvas with iniquities of weirdly unnatural colour combinations, and who, taking to themselves the name of Impressionists, excuse their senseless slobbering by a reference to the date; or, rather still pointing to the almanac, hug the fond delusion that they are the brilliant fin dt siecle persons born in due time to lead the century by the nose during its last days. To this same preposterous shibboleth we owe the fact that we allow the New Woman (surely the most awful product of irresponsible end-of-the-centurydom) to shrill her wofal wail in unclean "sexnovels" and generally to "play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven," as make saner mortals laugh consumedly, whatever the effect on the angels. But if the New Woman is the most ludicrous product of this day (and it should be remembered again in this connection that all that is admirable in the New Woman's propaganda has been more or less earnestly insisted upon, at intervals,Bince the eyes of Cleopatra set the world awry) the Man in the Street is the most deplorable, if only because he is the most dangerous. Of all the influences which go to make or , mar the history which evolves from the wear and whirl of our latter day living he is rapidly becoming the most powerful — the most powerful for evil, in ninetynine cases out of an average hundred. He has little brain, and (if that be possible) even less conscience. It is difficult to regard him as an individual, for he only differs occasionally from his fellows of the Street, in trifling matters born of his own small

idiosyncrasy. Generally, he holds that whatever i 3 is right, and that whatever has been for twenty years is as unquestionable as the wisdom of the Highest. And yet he is supremely inconsistent and changeable ; for he never originates an idea and frequently changes the tnan or system which forms the centre of admiration from which or from whom he draws his ephemeral principles. He is (we are still concerned with him in the abstract : one star differs from another in magnitude : you have degrees of venom even in the Man in Ihe Street) — he is, then, a most earnest and enthusiastic liar; and when he has repeated the same lie six tims he is so constituted that the falsehood is burned into his email soul, and thenceforward passes with himself, and even to himself, for truth. He is a fervent bigot^ and, in common with most bigots, is prone to malicious over-statement of whatever may happen to be his case for the moment. He has a trained taste for scandal, and an insatiable appetite ; the more injurious and unprovoked the scandal the better he likes it. Concerning -the alleged tendency of some women to scandal-mongering he is apt to be bitter in bi3 denunciations; for he resents all encroachment on his own domain. He does not read ; such thought as he is capable of is centred in the hatching and uttering of the fatuous balderdash which passes with him for conversation. Nor is he educated, except in the hollowest rudiments ; for proper education makes a man distrust himself, and kills in|him'maßywf the gross er forms of contumacy and conceit. But the Man in the Street is blind to hie own limitations. He holds that all wisdom dwells with him. He is willing and always anxious to correct the theology of a bishop, to ridicule the carefully-thought-out contentions of a scientist or a philosopher, and he likes nothing better than teaching a practised journalist hi 3 business. He lives in a state of wriggling meddlefomeness, tinged with prurient curiosity and an itching nore for other people's business ; which questionable qualities he culls, collectively, public spirit. He writes eleven out of twelve of the "ieltc-ri to the papers," and thereby keeps a host of reputable newspaper editors ceaselessly trembling on the verg; of profanity, with occasional lapses in the direction of suicide. " I should like," said an after-dinner speaker at a Press club dinner a while ago — "I should enjoy above all things to witness a horde of cannibals fraating on stewed 'Constant Reader,' rr fricassed 'Pio Bono Publico' with brainsauce." "The trouble is," said a thoughtful fellow-editor sitting near by, "that the cannibals would have to slay a decent person of theit own number in order to get the brains.' The man in the street is cruel by instinct. If the conduct of any man, or section of men, almita of two interpretations, a good and a tad one, the Man in the Street will arrive at the bad one every time. Let the good name of a man — or, better, of a woman -be assailed, and you shall find no in tolerance so bitter, no condemnation so easily provoked on such slender grounds, as that of the Man in the Street. You may see him craning forward his neck, listening with eager maw whila sentence is pronounced in a criminal court. If a man is discharged as ionoeent he regards it as a tame conclusion. For him there is a rich, rare flavour in a hanging. Occasion, ally, indeed, he will applaud a merciful action, lookirg mighty virtuous the while ; but his applause is generally semi-apologetic and without zest. The Man in the Street rarely drinks to excess ; he leans publicly to no form of vice. In the fashion of the devil in the parable, he only sows his lares by night. He has a soul too acrid and anaemic to he touched into sympathy by any evidence' of weakness in a warmer-blooded and more human fe'low. In his dealings with his fellow-men he is utterly contemptible. None so willing to scatter the eeeis of dissension as he ; none who finds in profitlees tale .bearing and gratuitous dirtiness of method a joy co savoury and full-bodied. For these things the Man in the Street shall one day answer at a Great Tribunal. But, in the meantime, what is the world to j do with him? Already he is mighty in I numbers and intett'y given over to the I manners of his kind. He is above all things j respectable, and frequently has a large ) family, whom he trains assiduously to follow ( in his footsteps. Tho time of his extinction i is apparently not yet. Viewed generally, j the Man in the Street is a peculiarly ob- j noxious person. I