The Project Gutenberg EBook of As We Go, by Charles Dudley Warner

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Title: As We Go

Author: Charles Dudley Warner

Release Date: August 22, 2006 [EBook #3107]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AS WE GO ***

Produced by David Widger

AS WE GO

By Charles Dudley Warner

CONTENTS: (28 short studies)

OUR PRESIDENT
THE NEWSPAPER-MADE MAN
INTERESTING GIRLS
GIVE THE MEN A CHANCE
THE ADVENT OF CANDOR
THE AMERICAN MAN
THE ELECTRIC WAY
CAN A HUSBAND OPEN HIS WIFE'S LETTERS?
A LEISURE CLASS
WEATHER AND CHARACTER
BORN WITH AN "EGO"
JUVENTUS MUNDI
A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE
THE ATTRACTION OF THE REPULSIVE
GIVING AS A LUXURY
CLIMATE AND HAPPINESS
THE NEW FEMININE RESERVE
REPOSE IN ACTIVITY
WOMEN--IDEAL AND REAL
THE ART OF IDLENESS
IS THERE ANY CONVERSATION
THE TALL GIRL
THE DEADLY DIARY
THE WHISTLING GIRL
BORN OLD AND RICH
THE "OLD SOLDIER"
THE ISLAND OF BIMINI
JUNE

OUR PRESIDENT

We are so much accustomed to kings and queens and other privileged
persons of that sort in this world that it is only on reflection that we
wonder how they became so. The mystery is not their continuance, but how
did they get a start? We take little help from studying the bees
--originally no one could have been born a queen. There must have been
not only a selection, but an election, not by ballot, but by consent some
way expressed, and the privileged persons got their positions because
they were the strongest, or the wisest, or the most cunning. But the
descendants of these privileged persons hold the same positions when they
are neither strong, nor wise, nor very cunning. This also is a mystery.
The persistence of privilege is an unexplained thing in human affairs,
and the consent of mankind to be led in government and in fashion by
those to whom none of the original conditions of leadership attach is a
philosophical anomaly. How many of the living occupants of thrones,
dukedoms, earldoms, and such high places are in position on their own
merits, or would be put there by common consent? Referring their origin
to some sort of an election, their continuance seems to rest simply on
forbearance. H