The name
conveys nothing to us, the face is the habitual face. He duly becomes
Lord Mayor and loses his identity. We can still only think of Dick
Whittington.
One cannot help wondering if it is worth it. He has his crowded year
of glorious life, but it is a year without a name. He is never
himself, he is just the Lord Mayor. He meets all the great people of
the day, soldiers, sailors, statesmen, even artists, but they would
never recognize him again. He cannot say that he knows them, even
though he has given them the freedom of the City or a jewelled sword.
He can do nothing to make his year of office memorable; nothing that
is, which his predecessor did not do before, or his successor will not
do again. If he raises a Mansion House Fund for the survivors of a
flood, his predecessor had an earthquake, and his successor is safe
for a famine. And nobody will remember whether it was in this year or
in Sir Joshua Potts' that the record was beaten.
For this one year of anonymous greatness the aspiring Lord Mayor has
to sacrifice his whole personality.
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