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Show INDIVIDUALITY. J In a recent issue of the San Francisco Chronicle the importance import-ance of individuality received the following' comment: ''In the younger days, when there were fewer people in the world, it was not so hard for eccentric persons to attract attention to themselves simply by their eccentricities. Nowadays it is more difficult. Vagaries of speech or action or costume may draw pass-ing pass-ing notice, but as a means of self-advertisement they are generally failures. "One must be something else than merely unconventional now to lay claim to individuality. There must be something clear cut and positive about one, something which makes others either strongly strong-ly like or heartily dislike. . "The day's news is filled with such figures. There is Colonel Roosevelt, whose distinctive individuality it is which makes him bo interesting a factor in the politics and statecraft of the nation. There is Speaker Cannon, whose cordial enemies and devoted friends are about equally numerous. The controversies which have raged around Secretary of the Interior Ballinger have thrown into the limelight many strongly individualized characters. And in private life the names of many whose individuality is distinct recur easily to the mind. "The greatest works are done by the single individuals, not by the many. It has not been the armies, not the nations, which have advanced tho human race; but here and there, as the ages have progressed, an individual has stood up and cast his shadow over the world. "Somebody has said that we "live too much in platoons; we march by sections." This is true. Most of us do not live enough in our individuality. We are slaves to fashion in mind and heart, if not in our passions and appetites. "The various strata of society seem to run in much the same mold. Their ideas are largely hose of the set in which they move. All that they know they share with a group of persons, and what they do and the things they utter represent the composite idea of all. They aro 'conventional,' lacking individuality. "And yet the desire to be distinctive is inherent in most individuals. indi-viduals. The troublo is that thi3 desire is not given a proper outlet. Instead of giving their attention to the cultivation of whatever personal per-sonal gifts they possess, the majority of persons seek by personal adornment or in other trivial ways to attract to themselves the notice each in a measure craves. "Women who spend "more money than they can afford in fine feathers and fashionable attire do so because they like to think it will make them the cynosure of admiring gaze, But hobble-skirt individuality individ-uality is not considered important by sensible persons. Great intellects in-tellects have little time for indulgence in the follies of fashion. 'It is, of course, not possible for all of us, by the cultivation of our individuality, to become great figures in the world's affairs. But at least we can live our lives according to our lights and the judgment judg-ment of our reason without blindly copying the ideas and the manners man-ners of those about us. , "By doing this we shall be individual, and will derive a satisfaction satis-faction from things which neither being convention nor eccentric can lfford." i |