Brann the Iconoclast Volume 10 Part 11

The committee sent to Europe by McKinley to talk a little twaddle about international bi-metallism has completed its alleged labors, and the net product is nothing--just as the people knew it would be when saddled with the expense of this high-fly junketing trip to enable the administration to make a pretense of redeeming the kangaroo promise of the Republican platform. The silver problem is not at present the burthen of my song--I simply rise to remark that the American people have been buncoed by this commission business. It was sent abroad at great outlay of boodle to ascertain what is perfectly well-known to every man outside the insane asylum, viz.: that England, being a creditor nation, would not consent to the remonetization of silver. Now let us send a commission to Europe to see if the water over there is wet. O Lord! how long will Uncle Sam consent to enact the role of a long-eared, pie-bald a.s.s?

I wonder, O I wonder who that "prominent lawyer and sound money Democrat" was who got drunk at Charlie Cortizio's in Austin the other day and toasted Chollie Boy Culberson as "Texas' most distinguished son, the man who has done most to distinguish his state abroad"--just a b.u.mmy little boost for Chollie Boy's anaemic senatorial boom? I cannot imagine who he may be, but I was pleased to see his toast followed in my pet daily by an "ad"

for a tansy compound warranted to "give relief from painful and irregular periods regardless of cause." I hope that the "sound money Democrat" aforesaid did not overlook the "ad," as he was evidently having a painful period and much in need of relief. I sincerely hope that he doesn't get that way often. It is a trifle difficult to determine whether he was pregnant with a great idea or full o' prunes--whether he needed a tansy compound or a cathartic. Poor Chollie Boy! His senatorial boom must indeed be in a bad way when he must fill old boozers with beer to induce them to boost it. But it is quite true he has been heard of outside the state--the ICONOCLAST has mentioned him several times.

I noticed in one of the local papers that "Dallas wants Baylor,"

$50,000 to $75,000 worth. Doubtless I'm a hopeless heretic, but I don't believe a d--n word of it. If anybody thinks that Dallas will put up $25,000 cash to secure the removal thither of Baylor, he can find a man about these premises who will make him a 2 to 1 game that his believer is 'way of his base. Dallas doesn't want Baylor even a little bit. There isn't a town in this world that wants it except Waco. It is simply another Frankenstein monster that has destroyed its architect. Baylor spends no money here worth mentioning. Its students are chiefly forks-of-the-creek yaps who curry horses or run errands for their board and wear the same unders.h.i.+rt the year round. They take but two baths during their lifetime--one when they are born, the other when they are baptized. The inst.i.tution is worth less than nothing to any town.

It is what Ingersoll would call a storm-center of misinformation.

It is the Alma Mater of mob violence. It is a chronic breeder of bigotry and bile. As a small Waco property owner, I will give it $1,000 any time to move to Dallas, and double that amount if it will go to Honolulu or h.e.l.l. There is no bitterness in this, no desire to offend; it is simply a business proposition by a business man who realizes that Baylor is a disgrace to the community, is playing Old Man of the Sea to Waco's Sinbad. The town could well afford to give it $100,000 to "pull its freight."

SOME ECONOMIC IDIOCY.

A correspondent calls my attention to the recommendation of a commission appointed by the governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, to the effect that "all taxes on intangible property be abolished." He adds that, "as much of the wealth of Ma.s.sachusetts is in stocks, bonds and mortgages this would relieve the rich at the expense of the poor." I could recommend that my correspondent be placed in a well-padded cell in a lunatic asylum and fed on Ladies Home Journal literature. The idea that what he calls "intangible property" should be taxed is quite prevalent among the ignorant and a perfect hobby with the half-educated. No writer distinguished for economic erudition recommends laying a tax on notes, stocks, bonds and other such evidence of wealth. Such a tax should never be laid by a government guaranteeing equal right. It is cla.s.s legislation--it is DOUBLE TAXATION. This statement may not be at all palatable to the West and South, but the proposition is impregnable. It taxes both the lender and the borrower on the same property and the latter has to pay for both.

It must be remembered that such securities are not wealth per se, any more than a cook-book is a square meal--they are merely evidences of owners.h.i.+p. Let us say that I hold $10,000 worth of stock in the Illinois Central railroad: The road is my property to the extent of my stock--I am a small partner in the enterprise. It pays taxes to the State of Illinois and to every county and munic.i.p.ality through which it pa.s.ses. Having paid taxes upon my property in Illinois, where it is located, must I pay taxes upon it again in Texas, where it has no existence? If I must pay taxes upon my railway property, then pay it again upon the certificate that I own it and am ent.i.tled to its usufruct, why not compel me to pay taxes on my business block, then pay it again on the deed thereto in my possession. My certificate of railway owners.h.i.+p and my certificate of realty owners.h.i.+p are on an exact parity from an economic standpoint. Each is evidence that I possess tangible property upon which I am paying taxes, and I emphatically object to a double dose. Exactly the same principle applies to promissory notes and bonds. A bond is nothing more nor less than a note. Suppose that I hold Illinois Central bonds to the extent of $10,000 instead of stock: The corporation has borrowed the money of me and invested it. It is paying taxes as well as interest on my property in consideration of use. As the corporation is using the property it must earn all the taxes, by whosoever directly paid, for I can earn nothing with property not in my possession. If I am taxed on my bonds, I must "put it in the bill," just as the merchant puts rent, interest and insurance. If Ma.s.sachusetts owns ten million dollars of Texas securities she has simply transferred that much tangible wealth to this state for us to tax. If the paper evidence that this property is located here be taxed in Ma.s.sachusetts, Texas must pay the piper. Let it never be forgotten that a tax is but a toll and can only be taken of something tangible. You cannot get blood out of a ghost or wealth out of a paper evidence of property. The blood must come from real veins and the tax must be drawn from something tangible. It is a contravention of justice and a violation of economic law to tax this man's property once and that man's twice. That the one is rich and the other poor does not mitigate the infamy--it is a fundamental principle of this republic that all men shall be equal before the law. Some years ago a howl was raised that reached high heaven that Jay Gould was worth 50 millions and paid taxes on but 75 thousand.

Economic idiots gnawed a file because the ex-house-trap maker objected to paying his taxes twice, and charging his patrons on both the amount and the cost of collection. There are many abnormal fortunes in this country, but confiscation through taxation is not the proper remedy. If the government toll be an ounce in the pound let it BE an ounce in the pound, whether the citizen possess ten pounds or ten million. Let every citizen contribute to the support of government in exact proportion to his means. To exempt the man who makes $500 a year and place the entire burden upon the man who earns $1,000 a year and upwards is to make of the first a political pauper. The graduated income tax, so-called is wrong to one cla.s.s of citizens and an insult to the other. Let us tax all property once and only once; but let us see to it that unctuous old hypocrites like Rockefeller are not permitted to rob the public--that they do not build collegiate monuments to their own memory with other people's money.

AN EPISCOPALIAN MISTAKE.

Sometime ago a correspondent sent the ICONOCLAST a newspaper report of the "jubilee sermon" of a Rev. Mr. Reed, rector of a Protestant Episcopal church, and inquired if the statements contained therein were true. The clipping has been mislaid, and I do not now remember where Rector Reed is located; but I do know that his statements, so far as I have investigated them, are arrant falsehoods. He affirms that the American Republic is the handiwork of Episcopalian patriots; that more than two-thirds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and an equal proportion of our generals, statesmen and presidents have been members of that denomination. As the sources of information regarding the religious views of most prominent Americans are shamefully meagre, I was inclined to regard Rector Reed's sermon as a historical doc.u.ment of inestimable value. Being p.r.o.ne, however, to act upon the advice of St. Paul and "prove all things," I began a cursory investigation. Rector Reed neglected to give the source of his information, and to save me I could find but seven presidents, including Was.h.i.+ngton, who were Episcopalians, and now Col. Patrick Ford, of the Irish World calls my attention to Jared Spark's statement that the Father of his country "withdrew himself from the communion service."

Jefferson, whom Rector Reed claims as an Episcopalian, was, as every school-boy knows, an avowed free-thinker. The Adamses were Unitarians, Garfield was a Campbellite, Jackson, Buchanan, Cleveland and Ben Harrison were Presbyterians, Lincoln was non-sectrian, Grant and Hayes were Methodists, as is McKinley, while the religion of several others is unknown. Rector Reed's other statements stand examination as poorly as that relating to the presidents. It is pretty safe to judge a church by its clergy, and the clergy of the Anglo-American or Episcopal church were tory almost to a man. As I have made this statement before, and it has been flatly denied in the Chicago press by an Episcopalian bishop, it may be well to quote a few paragraphs from an article by Rev. Chas. Inglis, ent.i.tled "State of the Anglo-American Church in 1776." Inglish was at the time Rector of Trinity Church, New York, and afterwards bishop of Nova Scotia.

His article may be found in Vol. 3, O'Callaghan's "Doc.u.mentary History of the State of New York." Inglis says under date of October 31st, 1776:

Reverend Sir: The confusions which have prevailed in North America for some time past must have necessarily interrupted the correspondence of the missionaries with the society. A short authentic account of them, and of the Church of England in general, in this and the adjacent colonies, may be acceptable to the society at this most critical period. The success of his majesty's arms in reducing the city, and driving out the rebels, the 15th of last month, affords me an opportunity of doing this, as packets are now again established between this port and England. I have the pleasure to a.s.sure you that all the society's missionaries, without excepting one, in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and, so far as I can learn, in the other New England colonies, have proved themselves faithful, loyal subjects in these trying times; and have to the uttermost of their power opposed the spirit of disaffection and rebellion which has involved this continent in the greatest calamities. I must add that all the other clergy of our church in the above colonies, though not in the society's service, have observed the same line of conduct; and although their joint endeavors could not wholly prevent the rebellion, yet they checked it considerably for some time, and prevented many thousands from plunging into it who otherwise would certainly have done so. . . . The present rebellion is certainly one of the most causeless, unprovoked and unnatural that ever disgraced any country; a rebellion marked with peculiarly aggravated circ.u.mstances of guilt and ingrat.i.tude. . . . About the middle of April, Mr.

Was.h.i.+ngton--commander-in-chief of the rebel forces, came to town with a large reinforcement. Animated by his presences, and I suppose, encouraged by him, the rebel committees very much hara.s.sed the loyal inhabitants here on Long Island. Soon after Was.h.i.+ngton's arrival he attended our church; but on the Sunday morning, before divine services began, one of the rebel generals called at the rector's house (supposing the latter was in town) and, not finding him, left word that he came to inform the rector that "General Was.h.i.+ngton would be at church, and would be glad if the violent prayers for the king and royal family were omitted."

This message was brought to me, and, as you may suppose, I paid no regard to it. Things being thus situated, I shut up the churches. Even this was attended with great hazard; for it was declaring, in the strongest manner, our disapprobation of independency, and that under the eye of Was.h.i.+ngton and his army.

I have not a doubt but, with the blessing of Providence, his majesty's arms will be successful and finally crush this unnatural rebellion."

The ICONOCLAST is indebted to Col. Patrick Ford for a transcript of Rev. Inglis' ebulition. It fully substantiates the statement made by this journal some time ago that the Episcopal churches were, during the revolution, "nests of tories and traitors."

GLORY OF THE NEW GARTER.

BY JOHN A. MORRIS.

A few seasons ago when Audrey Beardsleyism was the rage and Oscar Wilde a lion in "sa.s.siety" gay plaid stockings in Persian or Audrey Beardsley designs sold as high as $7.50 a pair, enough I should say to enable a poor devil like me to live a week. But this is not all. For spring or June brides of the "swell London sa.s.siety set," fine white silk stockings cost $22.50 a pair must go with a wedding gown and trousseau equally as extravagant, the climax of fas.h.i.+on's freakish ways being the rose-made garter worn over said stockings. Parisian society which smells to heaven in fas.h.i.+onable odors has now originated garters made of primroses, harebells, narcissus, violets and lillies, the same being worn by the ladies at b.a.l.l.s and receptions in Paris. Knots of blossoms are caught among the thick flouncings and ruches of the petticoats; and even the embroidered corset has its little bouquet attachment. The inside flounce of the most delicate evening gowns is made entirely of flowers, and the newest garter is simply made to conform to the general harmony of fragrance and color.

The appropriateness of a flower for garter-wearing purposes is considered according to the degree and strength of its perfume, the most highly perfumed being the most highly appropriate.

Violets are in great favor, and are used for garters worn with lilac, lavander, delicate green or white costumes. Again, as American women love to ape the fas.h.i.+onable society of gay Paris it may not be very long before in the great cities of the country we may not only have the American morphine fiend and cologne-drinker, but also the perfume faddist. Not long ago a Paris druggist communicated to a few French "sa.s.siety" women the plan of perfuming the skin by means of hypodermic injections. The favorite distilled odors are violet and lavender. I know not how true it is, but I heard that this fas.h.i.+on is already being taken up by some of New York city's fas.h.i.+onable freaks of "sa.s.siety"

women.

I have recently been engaged in reading two very interesting histories, the one of the rose, the other of perfume, in reading which I was deeply impressed with the fact that all the civilizations of the past, previous to their downfall, had their rose fetes, their festivals of flowers where luxury and license ruled, where effeminacy ruled supreme, their perfumed halls and extravagant b.a.l.l.s and soirees. Before the fall of the Roman Empire, the wealthy abandoned themselves to pleasure, luxury and licentiousness and such expressions as "living in the midst of roses," and "sleeping on roses" had a deep and tragic meaning.

Seneca speaks of Smyndiride who could not sleep if one of the rose petals with which his bed was spread happened to be curled.

Cicero alludes to the then prevailing custom among the Romans of reclining at the table on couches covered with roses. Ah, my jeweled buddies, there were Adonises in those days!

When Cleopatra, the perfumed serpent of the Nile, went into Cilicia to meet Mark Antony, she gave him for several days a festival such as the G.o.ds themselves would not blush to partic.i.p.ate in. She had placed in the banqueting hall twelve couches large enough to hold three guests. Purple tapestry interwoven with gold covered the walls, golden vases admirably executed and enriched with precious stones stood on a magnificent gold floor. On the fourth day the queen carried her sumptuousness so far as to pay a talent ($600.00 in our money) for a quant.i.ty of roses, with which she caused the floor of the hall to be covered to a depth of eighteen inches. These flowers were retained in a very fine net, to allow the guests to walk over them. According to Suetonius, Nero (the fiddler of burning Rome and the tyrant par excellence of the ancient day) gave a fete at one time on the Gulf of Baiae when inns were established on the banks, and ladies of n.o.ble blood played hostesses to the occasion, the roses alone costing more than four million of sesterces, or $100,000. As the hag Tofana was the inventor of a new and deadly poison, so Lucius Aurelius Verus was the inventor of a new species of luxury. He had a most magnificent couch made, on which four raised cus.h.i.+ons closed in on all sides by a very thin net, and made of leaves of roses. Heliogabalus, celebrated for every kind of vice and luxury, caused roses to be crushed with the kernels of the pine (pinus maritima) in order to increase the perfume. Roses were, by the order of this same emperor, scattered over the couches, halls and even the portierres of the palaces were decorated with the same. A profusion of flowers of every kind, lilies, violets, hyacinths, narcissus, etc., filled great quant.i.ties of s.p.a.ce. Gallien, another cruel and luxurious princeling, lay under arbors of roses sometimes varying the performance by reclining on beds of roses.

Before her downfall Rome could spend millions on her royal tables, support the dignity of a single senator at $80,000 a year, employ courts of sycophants and flatterers, impose taxes at the pleasure of her ruler, declare any complaint treason, marry her daughters for money and t.i.tle, employ notaries to attest the fatness of her banquet fowls, punish a servant for disobedience and trivial offenses with death, while letting the monied thief and murderer go free with a mild reprimand, and making slaves and menials of the profoundest philosophers. The dancer and the buffoon received the homage and the adoration which in the golden age of Greece under the reign of Pericles only scholars, philosophers and artists received. Poverty in those days was crime, so in ours! Augustine of Rome was utterly ignored. "In exact proportion to the sum of money a man keeps in his chest,"

says Juvenal, "is the credit given to his oath." Verily, reader, these days at the end of the nineteenth century are greatly similar to those last days of Rome. Yvette Gilbert, the songstress of the vile, the recitationist of the vulgar, and Le Loie Fuller, the dancer of the serpentine, live off the fat of the land every day. The songstress and the kickeress get their thousands of dollars per week, while "the poor devil of a workingman" must be satisfied with a dollar a day cash and barrels of unlimited confidence. Caligula's horse wore a collar of pearls and drank from an ivory trough. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. Cleveland when president drank his morning coffee from a cup worth $100 at least, and went fis.h.i.+ng at Buzzard's Bay while the s.h.i.+p of state was plunging among the rocks and breakers of bonded indebtedness. Conde spent three thousand crowns to deck his palace at Chantilly. The Duke of Albuquerque had forty silver ladders. The expression then, as now, was often heard, "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer." San Pedro, Cal., November 11.

TWO OF A KIND.

BY H. S. C.

The McKinley administration has been in power long enough to show that the only material distinction between it and the Cleveland administration lies in the fact that it is slightly more extravagant. That is the characteristic of the Republican party and no one is surprised. In addition to being the party of violence, bigotry and fraud, it is also the party of gay liberality with other people's money. In the matter of directing the destinies of this country towards a higher and better national existence, there is really nothing to choose between Republicanism and Democracy. Both are equally unwilling and incompetent, both, despite the prating of civil service sn.o.bs and snivellers are dominated by spoils, and the managers of both regard a campaign not as a battle for the betterment of America but as a battle for boodle. The McKinley administration has appointed some Negro postmasters in the South. This the Democratic administration would not have done. The McKinley administration has played openly into the hands of the trust.

This the Democratic administration would have done secretly. The McKinley administration enacted a tariff law which robs the people openly for the benefit of a few. This the Democratic administration would have done in sly paragraphs here and there, in the meanwhile declaiming loudly against the unrighteousness of tariff barons. The McKinley administration has based its contracted currency solely upon the gold product. This the Democratic administration would have based, with almost equal fatuity, upon the silver product. McKinleyism and the Democracy with which the country has been cursed on two occasions since the war, are six of one and half a dozen of the other. Practically considered, the main difference between Republicanism and Democracy, is the difference between the highwayman and the sneak thief. This being so, the question naturally arises: What are we going to do about it? Nothing. That is, not yet. The time may come when the people will choose public servants for fitness, and will demand that they keep the pledges made as a condition precedent to election, but it is far from us. In many of the years to come we will continue to build up an office- holding cla.s.s that is now so utterly idle, incompetent, impudent and corrupt that the history of the world can show nothing like it.

This will be always so with universal suffrage. A government which permits the ballot of a man who has not a dollar's interest in the good conduct of the government, who can neither read nor write, who cannot speak the English language, who is permitted to vote merely upon the declaration that he intends at some time to become a citizen, will continue to be a rotten government. The wonder is not that the United States has had war internecine and otherwise, but that it has existed at all. It carries within itself the elements of its own d.a.m.nation. It has within itself the seeds of decay. Unless they are dug out, that which is now one of the worst governments under the sun will be no government at all.

THE SAW-MILL CHECK SYSTEM.

The ICONOCLAST receives frequent complaints from laboring people in the lumber districts of Texas and Louisiana, that their employers are robbing them by compelling them to accept orders on mill stores, where they are charged exorbitant prices for all they purchase. I have been unable to visit the lumber districts and make personal investigation of these complaints, while letters of inquiry have elicited conflicted evidence. The following statement by a disinterested party, a gentleman of unusual intelligence who has traveled extensively in the lumber districts of the two states, is doubtless a fairly correct account:

The system of issuing checks to saw-mill employees, as practiced in some places, is, in my opinion, an advantage to the laborer.

Each mill has a pay-day, monthly, and the checks issued at intervals between pay-days, redeemable in merchandise, pa.s.s current among merchants at par. You can buy a big gla.s.s of beer for a 5-cent check as you can for a nickel, and buy it anywhere it is sold. You can, in fact, buy anything at any place in these towns for mill checks. The merchants either use them in trading at the mill stores, which are large and complete, or sell them, at a discount of 5 per cent. to parties who engage in building and who use them in paying for lumber, which is sold at the same price for checks as for cash. No one is required to take these checks, which are merely in the nature of an advance payment on wages. Each employee can wait until pay-day and get all that is due him in cash. Many of the mills are large concerns with A1 credit, and being able to buy as cheaply as anybody, can, and I believe do, sell as cheaply. Such is the case with the Beaumont mills and the mills on the Sabine and East Texas road owned by Beaumont parties; but as much cannot be said for saw-mills at some other points. There are some saw-mills in Texas that never have a pay-day; they issue checks on the commissary and charge enormous profits, so that the people who work at these mills are virtually peons. A party told me some time ago that on the H. E.

& W. T. railway mill checks of reputable inst.i.tutions can be bought for 20 cents, 30 cents and 40 cents on the dollar. I do not know that this is so, but I believe it. As for the mills at Orange and Lake Charles, they have no commissaries attached, but I have been told that certain merchants in those towns pay the mill owners 10 per cent. on all orders sent them, and the mills go so far as to turn in each evening to the merchant the time made by each employee to govern them in giving credit. This looks like a fraud on the employee and it is wrong for the employer to pocket money which should rightfully go to his employee. But he reasons that he has an established pay-day, and if his employees will insist on demanding money or its equivalent every evening, and thus force him to retain an extra man to attend to the check-issuing business it is right that the employees should bear that expense. I believe the mills at Westlake have commissaries, but I know the mill-owners and do not believe they practice any extortion. They pay off in checks. They have a monthly pay-day, and if, like railway employees, these should wait until the first Sat.u.r.day after the 5th or 10th of each month they could draw their wages in cash. No mill at either place mentioned pays off in checks. You might roast such mills as those on the H. E. & W.

T. referred to, as they rob not only their employees, but, by thus being able to manufacture lumber cheaper than those who pay wages, force down the price in the open market and compel the honest manufacturer to meet it."

LOVE AS AN INTOXICANT?

Seymour, Texas, Nov. 4, 1897.

MR. BRANN: Will you please answer the following question and thereby settle a dispute in Seymour: Is love intoxicating? CHAS.

E. RUPE.

My correspondent neglects to state whether Seymour is a Prohibition town. Of course if it is and love is listed as an intoxicant, the blind G.o.d will be expatriated for the benefit of the makers of Peruna, Hostetter's Bitters and and other palate ticklers, popular only at blind tigers. Why the deuce didn't the Seymourites set to work and settle this vexatious problem for themselves? Must I undertake a system of scientific experiments in order to obtain this information for the citizens of Seymour?

Suppose that I do so, find that love makes drunk come, and am run in by the patrol wagon while supercharged with the tender pa.s.sion: don't you see that this would militate against my usefulness as a Baptist minister? How the h.e.l.l could I explain to my congregation that I was full of love instead of licker?

Clearly I cannot afford to offer myself as a sacrifice upon the altar of science. Should I proceed to fall in love just to see if it would go to my head, and should it do so, my Dulcina del Toboso might marry me before I recovered my mental equipoise, and I would awaken to find my liberty a has-been and my night-key non est. Of course I should mind it ever so little, but it would be awfully hard on the lady. I have been baptized just to see if it would soak out any original sin; I've gone up in a balloon and down in a coal mine in the interest of science; I've ridden on the pilot of a locomotive for the sake of the sensation; I've permitted myself to be inoculated with the virus of Christian charity just to see if it would "take"; I've tampered with almost every known intoxicant, from the insidious mescal of the erstwhile Montezumas to the mountain nectar of Eastern Tennessee, but I draw the line at love. Will it intoxicate? Prithee, good sirs, I positively decline to experiment. However, if hearsay evidence be admissible I'm willing to take the stand. To the best of my knowledge and belief love will pick a man up quicker and throw him down harder than even the double-distilled brand of prohibition busthead. Like champagne at 2 a.m., it is good to look upon and pleasant to the palate; but at last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an able-bodied b.u.mble-bee in a pair of blue-jean pants. Like alcoholism, love lies in wait for the young and unwary--approaches the victim so insidiously that ere he is aware of danger he's a gone sucker. The young man goeth forth in the early evening and his patent leathers. His coat-tail pockets bulge with caramels and his one silk handkerchief, perfumed with attar of roses, reposeth with studied negligence in his bosom. He saith unto himself, "I will sip the nectar of the blind deity but I will not become drunken, for verily I know when to ring myself down." He calleth upon the innocent damosel with soft eyes and lips like unto a cleft cherry when purple with its own sweetness, and she singeth unto him with a voice that hath the low sweet melody of an aeolian harp, and squozeth his hand in the gloaming, sigheth just a wee sigh that endeth in a blush. And behold it cometh to pa.s.s that when the gay young man doth stagger down the door-steps of her dear father's domicile he knoweth not whether he is hoofing it to Klond.y.k.e or riding an erratic mustang into Mexico. He is drunken with the sweetness of it all and glad of it. And she? Oh she lets him down easy--sends him an engraved invitation to her marriage with some guy with oodles of the long green whom her parent on her mother's side has corraled at the matrimonial bargain counter. Then the young man has a case of what we Chermans call Katzenjammer, and swears an almighty swore never to do so any more. But he does. When a man once contracts the habit of being in love there's no help for him. It is a strange stimulant which acts upon the blood like the oenanthic of old wine, upon the soul like the perfume of jasmine buds. He has felt its mighty spell, more potent than the poppy's juice or the distillation of yellow corn that has waved its golden bannerets on Kentucky's sun-kissed hills--more strangely sweet than music heard at minight across a moonlit lake or the soul-sensuous dream of the lotus eaters' land. For the spell of the poppy's dreamy drug and the charm of the yellow corn whose spirit breeds dangerous lightnings in the blood, the skill of man has provided a panacea; but "love is strong as death," says David's wisest son. Will love intoxicate? Rather! I should say that Solomon was drunk with love when he wrote the Canticles:

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine."

When a man is drunken he sees strange varieties of serpents.

That's what ailed Adam and Eve. They kept intoxicated with their own primordial sweetness until they got the jimmies and saw a talking snake prancing around the evergreen aisles of Eden with legs like unto a prima donna. At least I suppose the Edenic serpent was built that way, for the Lord cursed it and compelled it to go on its belly all the days of its life. Hence the Lord must have pulled its leg. So to speak, or words to that effect.

As an intoxicant love affects one differently from liquor. A man drunk on bourbon wants to trail his coat-tails down the middle of the plank turnpike and advise the natives that he is in town. The man drunk on love yearns to hide away from the busy haunts of men and write poetry for the magazines. The one is sentenced to ten days in the bat-cave and the other to pay some woman's board.

Verily the way of the transgressor is hard. Some people manage to worry through life without ever becoming drunken on either liquor or love. They marry for money, or to secure housekeepers, and drink pink lemonade and iced b.u.t.termilk until there's clabber in their blood. They "like" their mates, but do not love them, and their watery babes grow up and become Baptists. Their affections are to the real article what dengue is to yellow fever.

Temperance is a good thing in its way; but the man who is temperate in love is not to be trusted. The true man or woman can no more love moderately than a powder magazine can explode on the installment plan. When the cup once touches their lips it is drained to the very dregs. The chalice is not pa.s.sed by human hands--the G.o.ds give and the G.o.ds withhold. Hence it is that we ever find Love's baccha.n.a.ls beating against the social bars. We laugh at the man who flushed with wine disregards the peace and dignity of the state; but we frown upon the woman who drunk with love sins against our social laws. Man's brewed enchantments may be set aside by acts of human will; but the wine of love creeps like a subtle perfume through all the senses whether we will or no, filling the brain with madness, the heart with fire.

THE SWORD AND THE CROSS.

A correspondent asks "whether the great nations owe most to the sword or the cross." That were much like asking whether the usefulness of a watch be due most to the case or the works.

Religion has ever been the heart of the body social, the dynamics of civilization. A great nation of Atheists is a practical impossibility, because the basic principle of such a society must needs be selfishness, and from such a foundation no mighty superstructure can ever rise. "Ye cannot gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles." War is but an incident in the history of a nation, while religion is its very life. In the latter it moves and breathes and has its being. From the standpoint of a statesman it makes little difference what the religion of a people may be so long as most of them believe it. History abundantly demonstrates that when a nation begins to doubt its G.o.ds, it begins to lose its glory. Without religion the contract social is simply a rope of sand. "No union of church and state"

is simply a protest against the union of body and soul. The greatest rulers of ancient and modern times regarded religion as the palladium of national power. True it is that religion has time and again strengthened the hands of the tyrant and stoned the prophets of progress; but every good gift bequeathed to man has been at times abused. The sword has been wielded by the a.s.sa.s.sin; it has been employed to enslave and despoil the people; yet we dare not break the blade. Men of narrow minds, seeing many warring cults, imagine them to be disturbing factors in the human brotherhood--that if they could be eliminated, the body politic would have peace. They cannot understand that the discords of the finite make the harmony of the infinite. They fail to see that these warring creeds are but the necessary differentiations of a common faith. Lay the winds, still the tides, and old ocean, that perennial fount of health, becomes a stagnant pool of putrefaction--a malodorous "mother of dead dogs." Force presupposes friction. Let the sectaries fight, each doing valiant battle for his own dogma, for when they all agree religion will be dead and progress at an end. It is not necessary that you and I should stand close enough to be stifled with the dust of conflict, to taste all the bitterness of sectarian controversy--we may mount above it all and watch it beat like the convolutions of a mighty brain. We may take refuge in the philosophy of religion and say that all are right in conception and wrong in expression; we may call it blind superst.i.tion if we will; but if we mount high enough to obtain a clear vision we must confess that religion has ever been the dominant factor in the forging of mighty peoples. Were I required to give a reason for this fact I would say it is because man is not altogether a machine--because he is not content to eat and sleep and propagate his kind like the lower animals. Despite his thick veneer of selfishness, man is at heart a creature of sentiment, and religion is the poetry of the common people. Crude it may be, but its tendency is toward the stars, while all else in man is animalistic and of the earth. Strike the religion, the poetry, out of a people, and you reduce them to the level of educated animals. Annul the power that draws them upward and they must sink back to primordial savagery. The individual may accept logic as a subst.i.tute for sentiment, but a nation cannot do so. The ma.s.ses are not swayed through the head, but through the heart.

Sentiment is the divine perfume of the soul. Of sentiment was born the dream of immortality. It is the efficient cause of every sacrifice which man makes for his fellow man. It is the parent duty, and duty pre-supposes the Divine. Could the materialists inaugurate their belauded age of reason, sentiment would perish utterly in that pitiless atmosphere, and the world be reduced to a basis of brute selfishness. The word duty would disappear, for why should man die for man in a world whose one sole G.o.d was the dollar. Why should a Damien sacrifice himself if selfish ease be the only divinity? If there be no Fatherhood of G.o.d there can be no Brotherhood of Man--we are but accidents, sp.a.w.n of the sun and slime, each an Ishmel considering only himself. Atheism means universal anarchy. It means a kingdom without a king, laws without a legislator, a machine without a master. An Atheist is a public enemy. He would not only destroy the state but wreck society. He would render life not worth the living. He would rob us of our garden roses and fill our hands with artificial flowers. And why? Because, forsooth, he finds that some articles of religious faith are impossible fables. He sits down with a microscope to examine the tables of the law for tracks of the finger of him whose sentences are astral fire. He finds a foolish contradiction in some so-called sacred book and imagines that he has proven either that man's a fool or G.o.d's a fraud. "By geometric scale he takes the measure of pots of ale." He calls himself a "liberal," while fanatically intolerant of the honest opinions of others. He is forever mistaking shadow for substance, the accidental for the essential. He "disproves" religion without in the least comprehending it. He hammers away at the Immaculate Conception and the miracles with a vigor that amuses those who realize that cults and creeds are but ephemeral, while faith in the Almighty endures forever. And of all the Atheists and Agnostics Bob Ingersoll is the most insupportable. He is but a mouthful of sweetened wind, a painted echo, an oratorical hurdy-gurdy that plays the music of others. He's as innocent of original ideas as a Mexican fice of feathers. He gets down on the muddy pave and wrangles with the "locus" preachers. He's a theological shyster lawyer who takes advantage of technicalities.

He is not a philosopher--he's emphatically "a critic fly." He examines the Christian cult inch by inch, just as Gulliver did the cuticle of the Brobdingnagian maid who sat him astride her nipple. He never contemplates the tout ensemble. He learns absolutely nothing from the c.u.mulative wisdom of the world. He doesn't even appreciate the fact that the dominant religions of the world to-day are couched in the language of oriental poetry.