TO BE POPULAR.

Waikato Independent, Volume V, Issue 327, 22 January 1907, Page 3

TO BE POPULAR.

,eana Inflncmce with Other*, a«d Hence Responsibility—No Room for 9elf-Conip,laceiicy.

There are few persons so independent of the good opinion of others as not to be pleased at receiving p;\ ; ...e for their work. Jf we are in any degree •'popular," the discovery a satisfaction that is by no means unwholesome. The social instincts are so deeply rooted in us that we are often encouraged by learning that some little section of the world outside thinks well of what we have done.

But Ave do not make the most of our opportunities if we treat this popularity as an excuse for self-com-placency, says Wellspring. The highest value of any success is as a stimulus in attempt to raise our work to a still higher level. A notable example of the right interpretation of such an experience is afforded by a letter of Robert Louis Stevenson's or reading a eulogistic comment on lm "Inland Voyage." "The effect it has produced in me," he said, "is one of shame. If they liked that so much, I ought to have given them something better, that's all." In other words, Stevenson felt I'nat his popularity was not so much a, personal gain as a responsibility. The fact that people were eager to read Iris books put a compulsion upon him to be at his best. For to say that a man is popular is always Equivalent to saying that he has an influence, and influence is always a trust. It is not eminent writers or public speakers alone to whom this law applies. The popular boy in a school ir the popular clerk in an office has lecomc by that very fact a leader of lis fellows, and has an even greater iced than before to be careful of his iwn path. If what he is and does ileases them, the stronger is the reason why he should make himself, in ill "points, fit to be their example.' WOMEN TEACHERS NERVOUS. German Physiologists Find Large Proportion Seriously AffectedFour Deterioration of Race. Two eminent German physiologists, Dr. Rolf Wlchmann and Dr. Adolf Birham, have arrived at some instructive results from inquiries concerning the prevalence of bad sight and nervous disorders among women students and teachers. Forty-two per cent, of the women teachers have to wear glasses, as against ten among women not so employed, and 24 among male teachers. Again, 40 per cent, of the female teachers are affected with nervous disorders, while among men similarly employed only 17 per cent, have nervous complaints. Long hours and illventilated rooms are held to be the leading causes of these complaints among women, but the result of these investigations has given considerable encouragement to the growing opinion in Germany that general deterioration of the race must follow if women's employment be not carefully chosen.

1 SEE JOB SLIPPING AWAY. ▲lplne Gwides Declare Their Profesiion Will Soon Be Supplanted | by Electric Railways. Th© guides of the Alps are looking to the future with misgivings. They fear that, like Othello, their occupation will soon be gone. On the Wetterhorn, the grim Alpine giant that has been the scene of so many awful accidents, which is to be conquered for good by the inevitable electric mountain railway, German experts and surveyors are busy marking out the best and safest route. The guides say that soon, with railroads up the Jungfrau, Mont Blanc and Wetterhorn, their most remunerative occupation will be a thing of the past. CAUSE OF KENTUCKY FEUDS. President of Derea Collage, In a Re••nt Address, Says Ednoai tlon la Wanting, " Dr. W. G. Frost, president of Berea college, in the mountains of Kentucky, recently made the following remark at the Chautauqua assembly at Buffalo, N. Y., on the mountain feuds: "The absence of restraint," said he, "is the sole cause of the feud. The mountaineers of Appalachian America are the descendants of colonials, not to be confused with poor whites. They are southerners who owned land, but not slaves, and who were loyal to the flag in the civil war. "T*e feud area has greatly contracted in recent times. Many killings caused by whisky or sudden anger are classed by newspapers with feud murders. Such is not true. "The case in Breathitt county is a political one—an outbreak unusual, and not to be classed with ordinary feuds. As the death of Hamilton was the occasion of a great sermon by Dr. Knott, which practically ended the duel in America, so we may hope the storm of opposition aroused by the death of Marcutn may bring us nearer the end of political assassinations in Kentucky." The cure for the feud, said Dr. Frost, is educational.