Elbert Hubbard - The Man. A Story of To-day

Thus did The Man speak in a low but most beautiful voice, and the music of that voice lingers with me still and will as long as life shall last. I seemed to have lost my will in that of The Man. I neither decided I would stay or go, but I simply remained. I am not what is called religious – far from it – for I have been a stumbling-block for every pastor and revivalist at both Grace Church and Delaware avenue. Neither have I any special liking for metaphysics, but I hung like a drowning person to every word The Man said; and after all it was not what he said, although I felt the sublime truth of his words, but it was what there was back. I knew, down deep in my soul, that this man possessed a power and was in direct communication with a Something of which other men knew not.

I have traveled much, and studied mankind in every clime, for before my father’s failure we went abroad every year. I know well the sleek satisfied look of success which marks the prosperous merchant; I know the easy confidence of the man satisfied with his clothes; I have seen the serenity of the orator secure in his position through the plaudits of his hearers; I know the actor who has never heard a hiss; the look of beauty on the face of the philanthropist, who can minister to his own happiness by relieving from his bountiful store the sore needs of others; the lawyer, sure of his fee, or the husband who knows he is king of one loving heart and therefore is able to defy the world; – but here was a man alone seemingly, without friends, in the wilderness, in a house devoid of ornament and almost destitute of furniture, whose raiment was of the coarsest; yet here in the face of this man I saw the look that told not of earthly success dependent on men or things, but of riches laid up “where moth and rust cannot corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal.”

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For fear that some may imagine that the character of Mr. Straight, superintendent of schools, is untrue to life, and that such a man could not hold the position, it must be explained that in the city of Buffalo this office is an elective one, and is held by the person able to control the caucus and secure the votes; so very naturally the gentleman has an eye on next year’s election, and when he appoints new teachers he accepts those (provided of course they are competent) who are best backed up by influential friends. It must be said, however, that the present incumbent of the office alluded to is a most worthy and competent man, and also that the school-teachers of Buffalo outrank in fitness those of most other cities; but these two facts do not in the least condone the dangerous principle of having the office of Superintendent of Schools a political one.