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Show HOW DOES HE KNOW T It beioa to look aa though President-elect Wilson waa a little too energetie these days. Ila ia just now running the state of New Jersey; at the tame time he ia proclaiming that he believes his election aa president waa for a purpose. An old fashioned, devout man would call it foreordina-tion. foreordina-tion. The eountry must be saved; everything i that is good and progressive must be pursued; and he ia to be the instrument. It ia a good way off ; maybe he is right. But the prudent man would naturally assume that he would go alow until he got in the president's hair and then got to see things from the point of chief executive, and to begin to realize that this ia not a one man 'a country; that while he represents repre-sents one branch of the government of the United St a tea, it ia not the lawmaking branch. He has right to recommend whatever he pleases to con-' con-' greas, but it ia coiigrchs' right to make the atat-1 atat-1 utes; and after congress gets through with a bill ! and it becomea a law, then the supreme court is , ' still behind all to decide whether the new law violates some inhibition of the constitution, i The fathers who framed that constitution were a long headed old crowd. They sought to provide everything needed for a government of liberty , under the law; they were not imaginative men at all; they did not believe much in inspiration; ; but inasmuch aa law, were intended to be in- violable, they roust be founded oa absolute facta, - and meet absolute certaintiea. . .. . And to when t presitlont-clect before reacliing bfs office begin to try to take the people into hit v0ufide1.ee aud to tell them in effect that he has - tieeu called to certain duties, all in their interest, the first thought in the mind of the average . American is, "How doea Mr.' Wilson knowt" Ho rerainda us sometime of the dull boy In ! school to whom -the teacher was trying to teach punctuation point,. At latit ahe put her pencil on a emicolon aud asked the boy what it was. lie did not know, but he turned to her and asked brr how she knew, that it was a semicolon, after hhe had (old him? Her reply wan, "Why, that ws the wy my teschrrs taunht me." Then the I. ij, still firhtiii(f for time, suid, "How do you knoAr but your tetvhers lied!" And now when every morning we get a new " erop of ideas from Mr. Wilson of what must and shall.be done when he gels to be president, we are like the dull boy and feel like asking him how he knows. It is truo that habit at last controls a man, and it has been Mr. Vilsou", habit for a.reat paJ-t of his life to be a schoolmaster. The.efTect of loug teaching gem-rally is to niak a man less clear of mind than when he began, because while he is drawing the students up to him they arc drawing him down to their level; and hence . Snyone when he reads a speech esn determine whether that ia schoolmaster talk or not. ' V!t believe Mr. VTilsou is a good man, that he dreams of an administration that will eause the .world to say, "There has never been anything like it sinee Wanhingtoii set the first example . and sines Mr. Lincoln died in emphasizing his patriotism for the nation'a good." We do not know how versatile Mr. Wilson ia or now profound. pro-found. Ve would like to have some palmist read hla hand and aee if the report would not be, "This man was a natural meddler, one who alwaya al-waya wanted bia own way, who roeaut right but who in bia ambition at lost became iucapable of logical reasoning." |