The Golden Censer Part 32

is to feed and clothe her individuals. This burden is just beginning to sit on her shoulders without galling weight. The next effort is to protect the more industrious against the forays of the wicked and the mistakes of the unwise. This is the problem with which the past century has had most to deal. It is an immeasurably greater question than is that of drunkenness, and it is immeasurably far from solution. For instance, a foolish statesman can to-day plunge fifty millions of people into

WAR

--a thing represented among words by three letters, but which among events entirely fails to find complete expression, from the lack of any other misfortune worthy of comparison. An angry statesman, acting like a boy, may stop, not a game of marbles, but ten thousand grain-laden s.h.i.+ps. But, notwithstanding, as an attendant in the betterment of her condition, Society is advancing rightly toward the rum-bottle. She does not hearken always to the voice of

THE PROFESSIONAL TEMPERANCE "WORKER"

because a betterment in Society is naturally and rightly the result of self-interest. The man who spends his time altogether in the bettering of others does not establish reforms on the surest basis. Society usually has to do his work after him, with considerable delay and additional cost. He is all right in the abstract, but he delays matters.

What I would ill.u.s.trate is this: The place for the reformer to deal with drink on a fair battle field is in the city. The place where the professional reformer finds it profitable to go is in the country, where the youth wear

THE BADGE OF TEMPERANCE

in their cheeks--not in the b.u.t.ton-hole of their coats. In the country, surrounded by circles of persons as free from stimulants or the need of them as is their snow from the s.m.u.t of soft-coal, they swear eternal "conversion" to the views of a man--usually a former victim of intoxication,--often a subsequent wallower in his same old gutters.

Society sometimes looks upon this Peter the Hermit with little pleasure.

The excitements, the pa.s.sions and the commotions which he sometimes foments are pitiable from the very fact that

NO RUM CAN BE BLAMED

as having fired the unhappy brains that rush into the vortex of public confusion, like s.h.i.+ps into the whirlpool. All the practical laws would be pa.s.sed (and at a date earlier than that at which the public finally accept them in reality) without the sacrifices of the man who proudly calls himself a "horrible example" of the power of strong drink. How does Society do it? I am sure I do not know. All I know is this:

ON THE REAL BATTLE-GROUND,

in the city, where stimulant is often needed--whisky, iron, quinine, coffee, tobacco, opium, or tea--the men who waste the most nerve-tissue are more rigidly required to abstain from the abuse of stimulants than was the case fifteen years ago. To put it plainer, fifteen years ago, a smart man would be employed on a newspaper to "write" or "report". If he were brilliant, he was ent.i.tled almost by custom to "go on the war-path"

once a week--that is, to be drunk that often, and to be totally unable or unwilling to do the current day's work.

NOW-A-DAYS,

if a man in the same position were to get drunk once a year he would be superseded. No matter how brilliant he may be, the drunkard at once sinks to the bottom. The "fat jobs" are filled by men as steady as clock-work. How has Society done this wonderful thing? Hard to tell. She has constantly tempted the steady man. In fact, she inclines to treat him a shade the better if he can drink some stimulant each day without unbalancing himself--some alcohol, some coffee or some tea--but

WOE TO HIM

if he transgress her limits. In the country it is asked "Does he drink?"

In the city it is asked "Does he get drunk?" The two methods are essentially the results of two conditions. The mistake of the one locality is to apply its own preliminary to the other. Now, again, to this frightful question of woman-torture: Society knows all about woman.

It knows that the wife must be the arbiter of her own sufferings. Her brother, being less wise than Society, separates the wife from

THE OCCASIONAL BRUTE

who married her, takes her ills and her children to his house, kicks the brute on the street, and, for all his pains, is eventually either a.s.sa.s.sinated by the wretch or anathematized by the wife. Having made matters much worse (by unanimous opinion), he abandons his reform, and then, with his valuable experience, joins Society and becomes a wave in the tide of events, instead of a presumptuous pebble rolling in small opposition on the beach of time. How will Society approach the wife-beater? n.o.body knows. Probably she will exterminate the breed. The woman, like the newspaper proprietor, will at last awake. The man who gets drunk will not gain her affections--above all, he will not keep them. The "old soak" will be wifeless. Monsters will cease to propagate their species. When once the strong hand of Bread-and-b.u.t.ter gets hold of Whisky, then whisky will be as useful for good as it now is powerful in evil. Society however deals with the affections cautiously, and wisely, because her experience is inconceivably great.

TRY PLAYING ON HEARTSTRINGS YOURSELF

to hear the music you make! Let us then pray for the day when the "drop too much" with the bottle will be as nefarious as a cut too much with the razor or a blaze too much with the torch.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A GOOD NAME.

Virtue maketh men on the earth famous, in their graves ill.u.s.trious, in the heavens immortal.--Chilo.

Perhaps there is no man so well known and yet so little thought about in any one community as he who, in the universal opinion, bears a good name. Upon his brow he wears the modern laurel, the highest emblem of his worth, yet the simplest tribute of his fellow citizens.

There are certain exigencies in the histories of all groups of people when the ordinary machinery of life will not operate. The citizens require the utmost letter of the bond; they look with suspicion on all who have usually given satisfaction by their services. A great man is needed. It is then that the people, with one voice, cry out for succor from him of of whom, in days of greater prosperity, they had no imploring need; and it is then astonis.h.i.+ng to what a degree the voice of the people at once becomes the voice of G.o.d.

A bank which, owing to its high-sounding t.i.tle, had attracted the savings of the people, fell into the hands of a clique of scoundrels and was compelled to suddenly suspend, the President flying to a distant land to escape the penalties of his crimes. When thirteen thousand depositors were thus confronted with total or partial ruin, there was but one man in a great city whom they would trust to enter the desecrated temple of their hopes and set to rights the treasure yet unstolen. This man came

LIKE CINCINNATUS FROM HIS FARM--

like a father to his children--and from the hearts of plundered widows and orphans there breathed relief in every sigh. In peaceful times this great man was seldom heard of; rogues could be elected over him to places of usual trust; but, in a crisis, his whole biography seemed embossed upon the people's hearts, rising forth like muscles in an agony.

Again a city--itself an exhalation, rising like Milton's hall of Pandemonium--perished in a night. Where, in one week, there had been one hundred "leading candidates" for Mayor, in the next week there was none so rash as to offer himself. A stricken city--the pity of a Christlike world--cast its eyes upon one citizen; and he, as an act of supreme duty, took the perilous post of helmsman through a storm that unsettled the deeps of credit and prosperity all over the earth.

In each of these ill.u.s.trations party politics played no part. Tall masts were needed for the great s.h.i.+ps, and these two men, like red wood patriarchs, touched hard against the zenith of the people's vision.

Admirable tributes! Magnificent rewards of life-times of virtue and high character!

THE SILENT GROWTH OF REPUTATION.

How does a man become so great that malice and envy and utter hatred cannot by their constant stings infect his blood? How can a man silently ama.s.s a capital of virtuous renown which, when the clear vision of adversity is given to the people, will show with unerring certainty his a.s.sets and liabilities of character? It is hard to say. Accidents and circ.u.mstances so surround us all that we are the clay, baked either in fair moulds or foul. When the mould is made we have the least judgment; yet when the clay is baked we must abide.

Josh Billings has said that, "after the age of forty, a man cannot form new habits; the best he can do is to learn to steer the old ones." Yoke, therefore, the ox you call Firmness with the one you call Contentment.

When you come to drive them down the road the neighbors may laugh at the hawing and jeeing, and jee-hawing, but keep on until you break your oxen in. No man ever got so he could handle that team but had

A HIGH STANDING ON THE ROAD OF LIFE.

Never discuss other folks' affairs except with the common-sense view of doing the folks good. Never start out to do a thing which is impossible of execution. Never start back after you have started out. Never pay the slightest attention to the criticism of persons who are trying to do what you are trying to do. When he who has ever done you a kindness gets angry and addresses you angrily, ponder on every word he says. Pearls then drop from his mouth. Live in no great regard of the pa.s.sing fas.h.i.+on; it may be a very foolish one, and people who are foolish have a surprising power of perception in pointing to folly in others. Owe no man other than your good office. Have no pride above your fellow mortal; he is essentially like you.

THE BAG OF THINGS

in which ye are alike (if each thing were a grain of wheat) would freight a s.h.i.+p; the things in which you are better than he could be put into your vest-pocket. Gold does not tarnish, and good names do not soil easily, though herein custom has something to do with the affair. "The soul's calm suns.h.i.+ne" however, should spread abroad. It often reflects hidden beauty in other faces. "Be just, and fear not." You may stand apparently without honor when you have it most. If you are the man of good name in your community, you are on the high hill where your people will gather in time of need, as did the ancients to the rocky acropolis.