EXAMPLE, POWER OF
A footman stole a casket containing ten thousand francs’ worth of jewels and concealed it in a hole in the ground in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. When finally forced to confess, he declared that he had been so much imprest by the cunning of Sherlock Holmes and the skill of Moriarty as a criminal that he wished to imitate them.
(978)
Some laborers were working in a lime-kiln in the Pyrenees. One of them, descending into the kiln to look after something which had gone wrong, fell down suffocated. A second man, hurrying to his assistance, also fell. A third, fourth and fifth man followed, meeting the same fate. Only one remained. When he was about to jump, a woman who stood watching the tragedy, clutched him by the clothes and held him back. Later, to a magistrate who was holding an inquest, when asked why he attempted to make the self-sacrifice, the lone survivor replied: “My comrades were dying; I felt driven to go.”
(979)
Excellence—See [Character].
EXCELLENCE IS COMPARATIVE
“What a world this would be,” says Christopher North, “were all its inhabitants to fiddle like Paganini, ride like Ducrow, discourse like Coleridge, and do everything else in a style of equal perfection!” Nay, good Christopher, the world would remain the same old dull commonplace world. Our standard would be raised, that is all. If every one rode like Ducrow, no one would stop a moment to look at Ducrow; if every one fiddled like Paganini, Paganini’s fiddle would be complained of by the neighbors as a nuisance; if every one discoursed like Coleridge, Coleridge would be voted an intolerable bore. We give our admiration to intellectual performances that are rare and difficult. The moment the rarity and the difficulty disappear our admiration also disappears, we seek fresh idols to worship,—Lippincott’s Magazine.
(980)