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Show ABOl'T CRAMsN. B'nlcfrM :s ' m n is si Oaiilt Sic Km of Little lse. " For Thk DifPATcn: M:ich ingenuity has been "wasted in tlevisiny derivations for the term "crank," as used at the present dny. when its ical derivation lies close at hand, and should he obvious to any one who understands the nierian," not Endish, lanjruage. Every one knows that, "cranky" means queer, whimsical, notional, flighty, eccentric, or any other of a dozen words used to express an unlikeness to the usual anl ordinary i wajs and customs of things or people. ! 'Cranky,'' then, must mean "like a crank" or "partaking of the nature of a crunk,' and so by a simple process, the substantive is formed from the adjective instead of the adjective from the substantive. sub-stantive. A crank, then, in the ordinary acceptation ac-ceptation of the term, is one who acts, or thinks, or talks in a manner at variance vari-ance with the common course of human action or thought or conversation. It matters little nowadays whether the plane in which he moves is above or below the plane in which the mass of humanity are moving; whether his thoughts soar to the cloud or grovel in the mire; whether ho talks above the heads of his hearers or suggests to them lower depths than they had ever conceived, con-ceived, it is all the same; as soon as he gets out of their range of mental and intellectual vision he is dubbed a crank and they who bestow the epithet comfort com-fort themselves hugely with it, as if it conclusively established their own superiority su-periority and the consequent inferiority of every one who disagreed with them. It must be remarked, too, that it is not customary to call a convention or congress to determine upon whether this or that person is a crank or not There is nothing corresponding to inquisition of lunacy in the case oi' a suspected crank, but every one at mce resolves himself into a court i last restrt. from which no appeal can possibly pos-sibly be taken, and renders judgment against the accused with as much certainty cer-tainty of its correctness as if the case had "been passed upon by the Lord Chancellor of Great Rritain or the Chief Justice of ho United States Supreme Court. Ill the case of cranks, every one insists niit alone on the right '" 1 iSTouHIs well on I Ithe judgment ren- j ""fri V1' that when the t S V fcalr1'6 ,flatter is settled One miTiT s.,rst. perhaps, that the correctness of the judgment depended somewhat upon the ability of the person per-son rendering the decision to discriminate discrim-inate between cranks and oilier persons; per-sons; but it is useless to advocate such mi idea. Just as every human bcin lias an implicit belief in his ability to run a hot.-I or to conduct a newspaper so lie would laugh to scorn any suggestion sugges-tion even of his inability t detect, a crank and classify him. ATe all believe be-lieve in certain intuitive capacities, and among them in our innate power to detect cranks. This being so, it is evident that no general rule can bo formulated by which u crank can be accurately distinguished dis-tinguished from other men. Just as the world has always been unable to accurately deline such abstract notions as beauty, goodness, happiness, evil, and the like," so it is impossible to lay down a universal rule lor the determination determ-ination of a crank. Our friend A may be a crank to us, and yet may have a circle of admirers who believe in him as a heaven-born genius, and who confidently con-fidently expect that he will vet startle the world with his ?deas or achievements. achieve-ments. Our next-door neighbor may be willing to make an affidavit that our mutual friend JJ is a crank of cranks, and yet we ourselves may know that li is an industrious, courteous, kindly and honorable gentleman, ami that his crankiness consists in his devotion to a particular thing which he has told us in confidence, out has not seen fit to impart to our next-door neighbor. The fact is that everything that has ever been done in this world which is memorable or of value to the world has been done by so-called cranks, and that unless a man is a crank to a greater or less degree he is of very little use to any one except those who depend upon him to supply their material wants, if ii be ai once conceded that originality has any place iu the world; that goniiu has done or will ever do anything for humanity; that enterprise and das:i are of any value, or mat there is any legitimate path in life except the beaten Highway in which the mass o! mankind toil along from the cradle to the grave then the case of the crank is complete, and he stands, or should stand, in public estimation not as one degree removed from a lunatic, but as a tiower of humanity. 1 he apex of the pyramid, the crowning glory of the human race. If we take thtj history of the world, whether related by sacred or profane historians, wc shall find that whenever a notable personage has appeared and done anything out of the ordinary-course ordinary-course of. things he was instantly dubbed a crank, or whatever corresponded corre-sponded to it in the speech of other times. John the Jhiptist came, neither e:iting nor drinking, but proclaiming the coming of the Messiah, and the Scribtm and Pharisees, the "uucoguid"' of those times, said, "ile hath a devil."' When Taul stood before Festus and Agrippa and defended himself against the accusations of the chief priests and elders, the most noblo .Festus, unable , to find any flaw in his defense, could only say with a loud voice: "Faul, thou art beside thyself, much learning doth make thee mad'' And yet the civilized world after nineteen centuries t agrees that John the Baptist; was a prophet, if such ever existed, and that 1 Faul, so far Irom bt-ing mad. was a ; keeu logician, a close and accurate 1 thinker and a powerful advocate. When Christopher Coiumbus haunt-t haunt-t ed the court of fcpaiu lor seven weary years, trying to convert the King and . .. , . ... , .- .. . Queen to his belief in the existence of a Western world, who can doubt that the courtiers and lords in attendance upon Ferdinand and Isabella considered consider-ed the friendless Genoese as a crank of the most pronounced type, and even as not wholly sane? When Galileo dared to dispute the almost universally accepted Ptolemaic theory, and lo announce an-nounce that the earth revolved around the sun and not the sun around the earth, we all know that he was not only called a crank, but that the drum ecclesiastic was beaten against him, and that he Vi as compelled to m ke a formal recanlat ion of his heresy. When Sir Richard Grenvbie. iu She das of Elizabeth, fought his single ship against, some seventy Spanish men-of war. and when finally bea'en insisted that his gnnnersi.oiii.i blow up the vessel ves-sel sooner than a'lo.v her to fall into the hands of the enemies of his country, coun-try, lie was a crank, pure and s mple; and jet the world will KOt willingh forget such examples of courage and determination, however unavailing they may have been. Among literary men there have been more cranks, perhaps, than in any other one class. Scarcely a writer of genius, or even of the highest order of talent, can be recalled who had not some eccentricity or marked peculiarity peculiar-ity which placed him in the first rank of ranks. Horace defined the whole race'of writers and authors as the genus irratubilc vatum, which may be freely translated as "a tribe of cranks," and time lias fully vindicated the accuracy of his classification. Every one is familiar with the peculiarities of Samuel Johnson, whose eccentricities often seemed to border upon insanity. We all know how he used to touch every post which ht passed, going back if he" found he had omitted one; how he roiled and twisted in his walk, growling and muttering continually to himself; how he ate more like a hog than a human being, washing down his repast with as many as twenty-seven twenty-seven cups of tea at a setting; how, in spite of all this, he posses.sed one of the acutest and raost original minds that the world has ever seen, and has written things that will outlast the ages. But lr. Johnson was most certainly cer-tainly a crank. IJyrois, too, when he insisted on leaving England and casting in his fortunes with &t niggling Greece, was doubtless called a crank. Shelley, with his queer mix two of ancient and modern thought, his undisguised paganism and his contempt for conventionality con-ventionality and the usages of society, must have come in the same category. Burns, too, who preferred his independence inde-pendence to aught else, and who turned turn-ed from towns and cities to the freshly ploughed fields and rushing streams, was surely classed, by the good people whom he would not Hatter, as a crank. Even cur own poet of the Sierra, when he chose to wear his tawny mane on his shoulders and to alfect bright-hued cravats, was called a crank, though no one disputed his title of poet. But why attempt to extend the category V Illustrators without number num-ber will rtt oikv suggest themselves. nv'-iT. doubtless, more nearly perfect than the ones we have given. It is enough to say that the .'Multiplication of instances will only serve to add force to the original proposition, that the debt of the world to the so-called cranks is one that can never be paid; that the term crank is generally synonymous syn-onymous with aien of genius or "of inventive in-ventive ability; that too often envy or ! spite is the moving cause for the indignation; indig-nation; and that as between fools and I cranks the world could better dispense 1 with the former than with tbo ImHi.t- Puovo, Utah, Jan. 20, ISiil. |