It is our duty to sympathize; it is our privilege and
pleasure to admire. No man lives to himself alone; no man can; no man
ought. It is right that we should know about our neighbors all which will
help us to help them, to be just to them, to avoid them, if need be; in
short, all which we need to know for their or our reasonable and fair
advantage. It is right, also, that we should know about men who are or
have been great all which can enable us to understand their greatness; to
profit, to imitate, to revere; all that will help us to remember whatever
is worth remembering. There is education in this; it is experience, it is
history.
But how much of what is written, printed, and read to-day about the men
and women of to-day comes under these heads? It is unnecessary to do more
than ask the question. It is still more unnecessary to do more than ask
how many of the men and women of to-day, whose names have become almost as
stereotyped a part of public journals as the very titles of the journals
themselves, have any claim to such prominence.
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