We admire its commonly splendid clothes, its drums and cymbals and braying brass, but it is the impartial spirit with which it lends itself to our varying wants that distinguishes it.  It will not do to say that it has no principles, for nobody has so many, or is so impartial in exercising them.  It is equally ready to play at a festival or a funeral, a picnic or an encampment, for the sons of war or the sons of temperance, and it is equally willing to express the feeling of a Democratic meeting or a Republican gathering, and impartially blows out “Dixie” or “Marching through Georgia,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me” or “My Country, ’tis of Thee.”  It is equally piercing and exciting for St. Patrick or the Fourth of July.

There are cynics who think it strange that men are willing to dress up in fantastic uniform and regalia and march about in sun and rain to make a holiday for their countrymen, but the cynics are ungrateful, and fail to credit human nature with its trait of self-sacrifice, and they do not at all comprehend our civilization.  It was doubted at one time whether the freedman and the colored man generally in the republic was capable of the higher civilization.  This doubt has all been removed.  No other race takes more kindly to martial and civic display than it.  No one has a greater passion for societies and uniforms and regalias and banners, and the pomp of marchings and processions and peaceful war.  The negro naturally inclines to the picturesque, to the flamboyant, to vivid colors and the trappings of office that give a man distinction.  He delights in the drum and the trumpet, and so willing is he to add to what is spectacular and pleasing in life that he would spend half his time in parading.  His capacity for a holiday is practically unlimited.  He has not yet the means to indulge his taste, and perhaps his taste is not yet equal to his means, but there is no question of his adaptability to the sort of display which is so pleasing to the greater part of the human race, and which contributes so much to the brightness and cheerfulness of this world.  We cannot all have decorations, and cannot all wear uniforms, or even regalia, and some of us have little time for going about in military or civic processions, but we all like to have our streets put on a holiday appearance; and we cannot express in words our gratitude to those who so cheerfully spend their time and money in glittering apparel and in parades for our entertainment.

VALUE OF THE COMMONPLACE

The vitality of a fallacy is incalculable.  Although the Drawer has been going many years, there are still remaining people who believe that “things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.”  This mathematical axiom, which is well enough in its place, has been extended into the field of morals and social life, confused the perception of human relations, and raised “hob,” as the saying