Sense.
Can there be such a thing as a radical conservative? John Temple Graves thinks Col. Pleasant Stovall, of the Savannah Press, fits that kind of a job. We believe that a trimmer—if that is what Col. Graves means to call Col. Stovall—is the most decent citizen that afflicts human society. He stops rushing things when a sense of the proprieties tells him that a thing has been rushed far enough to make it coarse or common (use which word you prefer), and the result is that his hair does not grow too long, nor his ears too puritanically short.
Yes, sir, the medium grade takes the cake. Except in an occasional storm, the radicals may overrun all opposition; but it don’t last, and the fellow that wins on an extravagant moral issue may be found in the ditch dead drunk as soon as public sentiment gets normal and resorts for a season to common sense arrangements of its ethics and politics.
Yes, the men who make an over-display of honesty for the season always get left as soon as the folks get back to their normal qualities. Common sense controls when the excitement has passed.—Cordele Rambler.