"I court not the votes of the fickle mob." Horace.

Public favor is fickle fancy. It is as capricious, uncertain and unreliable as the weather; and, while we may at times predict where it will bestow its alleged blessings, we can never with certainty tell how long it will remain there. Those who crave popularity should remember that it begins by making a man its tool, and usually ends in making him an object of contempt. A very trifling circumstance often creates popularity, and a single circumstance just as trifling usually destroys it. Was there ever a more popular man than Dewey after the Manila victory? Yet the trifling circumstance of transferring his gift-house to his new wife almost destroyed it. Hobson was equally popular after the Merrimac episode, but he forfeited it by numerous kissing exhibitions. Bird S. Coler was extremely popular while comptroller of New York and lost the governorship by an inch, but his popularity was as quickly forfeited as it was acquired. Louis XVI was extremely popular, but he died at the guillotine a despised and hated monarch. Marie Antoinette was equally popular, until she told the mob, who were crying for bread, to eat cake. Napoleon was universally popular until he divorced Josephine, and again popular at the cradle of the King of Rome. The memory of Cromwell was infamous for more than a century, but now he is a world hero. Robespierre was popular until he attempted to check the effusion of bloodshed.

Popularity knows no law and no precedent. It sometimes attaches to tyrants, for were not Caligula and Nero more popular than Germanicus? It sometimes attaches to ignorance, for who is today more popular than our champion batter or prize fighter? It sometimes attaches to immorality, for did it not adopt the infamous Pompadour and du Barry? It sometimes attaches to trifles, for was there ever such a fuss made over anything as the Teddybear? It sometimes delights in the downfall of royal favorites, and then exults in their reinstatements. It attaches to the great, at times, and then hails with shouts of exultation those who overthrow the great.

He who delights in popularity must be prepared to submit to the veriest subjugation, for he must obey the very ones whom he desires to command.

True merit heeds not the fulsome acclamations of capricious popularity, but goes on its way regardless. It asks itself "What is right?" not "What will the public applaud?" Merit as well as folly, loves appreciation, but the one hopes for it as a just reward, while the other seeks it as a theft.

There are two kinds of popularity: the popularity of men and the popularity of their productions, the latter being the more reliable and constant. The popularity of Roosevelt was mainly of the former kind, for it was his pleasing and picturesque personality that made him one of the most popular men of the last hundred years. As he recedes into history, we can tell better whether his name will remain a household word like Napoleon, Jackson, Lincoln, Webster, Grant, Bismarck and Gladstone's. It may be that certain popularity is ephemeral, for public opinion resembles a mind obeying by turns two directly opposite impulses, lauding a man to the skies one day, and, on the next, as it discovers him deficient in the merit it gratuitously ascribed to him, avenging itself by deprecating that which it had capriciously over-rated.

Popularity is the keystone of modern politics. Alas, too few men have we, who think, say, or act, without weighing the probabilities of its popularity. Our statesmen care more for what is popular than for what is right, and popularity is generally the sole consideration. To attain the honors of posterity and of history, a more solid merit is required than the ephemeral smile of popularity.

Popularity is a delusion.

It is an easy matter to become popular if one wants to, for all it requires is passive tolerance, and active commendation. Taking the individual, listen to his stories attentively, applaud his hobbies, rave over his phonograph, his pianola, or his pictures, or books, or his dog. A good listener is always popular. Taking the individual collectively, the public, the same rule holds good. Place your ear to the ground, study the whims of the people, learn how they worship, how they play and how they work, then preach their doctrines, pat them on the back, applaud their errors, and you can be popular. Rub the fur the right way and the cat won't scratch. Pioneers of thought seldom attain popularity. The man with a new idea, or who dares to preach something different, is usually put in jail while he is alive, and put in marble after he is dead. As Goethe says, "The public must be treated like women: they must be told absolutely nothing but what they like to hear."