Life — August 24, 1911 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there is Life there's Hope.” No, 1508 VOL. LVILL AUGUST 24, 1911 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY JA MITCHRIL. Prete A MILLEK, Sey and Treats 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York, A this wee! Lire pre- pares for the print- er, society items for the moment have crowded politics and crime out of the first page headlines in the news- papers. A Divorced Millionaire plans a new marriage amid a considerable din of protesting clergy; a Newport young lady has rua away with the young man at the garage, and the en- gagement of the Eminent Young Lady Sportswoman of Boston to the younger son of the Millionaire Suffragette is confidently predicted with a large pro- fusion of newspaper pictures. Well, well; these are all exciting, hot-weather items. We were going to talk of terminals at Controller Bay, and of that great gob of muck that Mr. Bryan hurled clear from Ne- braska—or was it Chicago—at Chi man Underwood at Washington, or of the peace treaties, or the expulsion of General Simon from Hayti, or the probings of the Steel Investigating Committee, but let those concerns wait ‘The elopement of the young lady with the automobilist makes one sigh be- cause the parties are so young and seem to have so uncertain a prospect of being happy in the long run in their choices..Of course, they may. But to marry out of one’s plane is a serious er that can hardly be successfully adventured, except by superior indi- viduals, with sober mental purposes nd resources in the backs of their heads. A rich, young, fashionably-bred wife is apt to embarrass a young work- ing mechanic. But it all depends upon what sort of stuff the young people are made of, It is nothing to a girl's dis- credit that she should prefer a life rad- ically different from what Newport fashion aims at, and there is nothing “LIFE: in being a demonstrator of automobiles that is necessarily a hindrance to profitable and honorable living. Happily, in the case of the divorced millionaire, there is no danger of dam- age to the gentleman at least. His life was shaped long ago, and a marriage more or less should hardly make more than a ripple in it. That the clergy should be scandalized is interesting and very proper, but the Colonel will hard- ly be much concerned, and his affianced may very well say: In for a penny, in for a pound! and send word to the newsman that he need not leave the papers. The trouble with our church restrictions of the remarriage of di- vorced persons is that they only re- strain the decent people, and not al- ways them. The real usefulness of the churches in the business is in helping so to shape character that divorces do not befall. Where they have failed in that, and the smash has come, their dealings with the remnants are apt not to be effectual. As for the suffragette’s son and the Boston sportswoman, they deny that they are engaged. But engaged or not, they are interesting young people, who have no known ailment except adver- tisement, and scem not to suffer from that, and in so far as life is sport, and feats and prodigious entertainment, they have it down against the ropes and the count proceeding. But dear, dear, let us be thankful that there is so much modest and pro- gressive life going on in this country that never gets into the headlines of the papers. All these occurrences, please observe, get their advertisement from their abnormality. It is because they belong to the unusual that they are spread-headed in the papers. ND so, no doubt, it was with John Gates, who occupied the papers the day before the young lady eloped with the chauffeur; it was his abnor- malities that made him interesting, and the same, perhaps, that prevented him from being more important. With his energies and abilities and good nature he might perhaps have been important, but as it was, he was Bet-a-Million Gates, a hero of race track and paper and stock speculation stories, who found his pleasure in games and gam- bles, and was hardly to be trusted with the scrious responsibilities that a man of his size and weight might have car- ried. He was large and likeable and democratic, and free apparently from various odious vices that are apt to at- tach to men of his type, but on the large speculation of life it can hardly be said that he came out a considerable winner. Perhaps he mistook his voca- tion and dwarfed his considerable tal- ents by aiming to be a millionaire. He was too vital and joyous and ebullient to be a money-spider, and there seemed to be nothing in particular for him to do with money after he got it. If he had only been consecrated to art like Oscar Hammerstein he might have been magnificent in the show business. O considerable failure of the men- tal powers appeared in Colonel Roosevelt's voluntary testimony before the Steel Inquisition as to his part in the proceedings by which the Tennessee Coal & Iron Company came into pos- session of the Steel Trust. It was one of those cases where, if he had done anything he ought to be sorry for, he was glad of it, but he was convinced that it was not an action he should be sorry for. “As the Attorney-General had not arrived from Baltimore,” said the Colonel in his narrative, “I sent a messenger, asking the Secretary of State, Mr. Root, who was also a law- yer, to join us.” It is a long time since Mr. Root has been classified among the “also lawyers,” but one of the charms of the Colonel's testimony was its unexpectedness. Mr. Stanley, chairman of the Inqui- sition into Steel, seems never to have been present at a panic. He ought to attend the next one that opens. The testimony before his commission will doubtless inform him somewhat, but actual experience takes hold harder. It is important that gentlemen in his posi- tion should get over the notion that nobody gets hurt in panics except gam- Dlers and malefactors. comicbooks.com