THE UNWRITTEN SIDE OF GREAT MEN.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 321, 23 June 1875, Page 3

THE UNWRITTEN SIDE OF GREAT MEN.

We always think of great men as in the act of performing deeds which give them renown, or else in stately repose, grand, silent, and majestic. And yet this is hardly fair, because the most gracious and magnificent of human beings have to bother themselves with the little things of life which engage the attention of us smaller people. No doubt Moses snarled and got angry when he had a severe cold in his head, and if a fly bit his leg while he was in the desert, why should we suppose he did not jump and use violent language, and rub the sore place ? And Caesar—isn’t it tolerably certain he used to become furious when he went upstairs to get his slippers in the dark and found that Calphurnia had stowed them under the bed so that he had to sweep around them wildly with a broom handle? And when Solomon cracked his crazybone is it unreasonable to suppose that he ran around the room and felt as if he wanted to cry ? Imagine George Washington sitting on the edge of the bed and putting on a clean shirt, and growling at Martha because the buttons were off; or St Augustine with an apron round his neck, having his hair cut; or Joan of Arc holding her front hair in her mouth, as women do, while she fixed up her back hair ; Napoleon jumping out of bed in a frenzy to chase a mosquito around the room with a pillow ; or Martin Luther, in a night shirt, trying to put the baby to sleep at two o’clock in the morning; or Alexander the Great with the hiccoughs; or Thomas Jefferson, getting suddenly over a fence to avoid a dog; or the Duke of Wellington with the mumps; or Daniel Webster, abusing his wife because she hadn’t tucked the covers at the foot of the bed; or Benjamin Franklin, paring his corns with a razor; or Jonathan Edwards, at the dinner table, wanting to sneeze just as he had got his mouth full of hot beef ; or Noah standing at his window at night throwing bricks at a cat. —(Max Adder.)