3S2 AMONG- THE MINERS.
communities, with happy homes and virtuous environ- ment.
Their reading was mostly of the Enghsh Reynolds type, and the French Faublas' Liaisons dangereuses order, "where," as Lamartine says, "vice parodied virtue, and riotous liberty, love." Their books were not always as full of charming villainy even as Rous- seau's Confessions.
Alexander the Great, manslayer, was a small man; Alexander Small, miner, was a great man. Anyone with men enough could conquer any nation or kill any number ; it requires no quality of greatness to do this, and surely no one but a fool would drink himself to death ; but I do not know that any great man pre- tends- to deny that he is a fool. On the other hand, he who* accomplishes much with little ; he who can deny himself, rule himself, is greater than he who can only rule others. Alexander the Great had ambition of which no medicine on earth could physic him; but force was greater than ambition, greater than all glory and all gods. Alexander the Great, dram-drinker, man-killer, and gambler in ordinary to his Satanic majesty, the world has known these two or three thousand years; Alexander Small, gold-digger to the gods, and the greater of the two, the world has never known at all.
Many great men have been underrated during their lives, many small men have been overrated; many small in some things and great in others have been rated small or great in everything. Ralston, as the California bank's president, sitting behind other men's millions, was great, as Croesus was great; Ralston, a week later, dead, self-drowned, out of all his troubles, was a small man indeed.
Evil results sometimes flow from good qualities ; some are generous because they are weak, and some are weak because they are generous. The sweep- ing winds of passion palsy the heart, jaundice the eye, and dry of its freshness all the gentler qualiti
