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AA MESSAGE
TO GARCIA
and Thirteen
Other Things

¥tvend _

AS WRITTEN BY FRAIE

ELBERTUS AND DONE

INTO A BOOK BY THE|#

        
   
   
     
      

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Copyright 1898, 1899, 1900, 1901, by Elbert Hubb

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INDEX

A Message to Garcia :
The Ex-Libris Collector .
The Social Exodus .

As to the Country

Old Zeke Crosby : 3
The Brotherhood of Jiners
About Advertising Books
Consecrated Lives .
The Beecham Habit a
The Bishop’s Voice

The Kindergarten of God

Advantages and Disadvantages

The Better Part :
The Crying Need

°

ai
33
43
55
67
77

101
111
11g
127
147
161
A MESSAGE
TO GARCIA
i SO

KGS USES

 

N all this Cuban business 4 MESSAGE’
there is one man stands to GARCIA
out on my memory like
\(¢| Mars at perihelion & ,
e ‘When war broke out be-
Z q| tween Spain & the United
States, it was very nec-
——— essary to communicate
quickly with the leader of the Insurgents.
Garcia was somewhere in the mountain
| fastnesses of Cuba—no one knew where.
No mail nor telegraph messagecould reach
° him. The President must secure his co-
operation, and quickly #» What to do!
/| Some one said to the President, “There
is a fellow by the name of Rowan will find
\\\ Garcia for you, if anybody can.’
M Rowan was sent for and given a letter to

Fe

   
   
   

 

 

 

\\ How “the fellow by the name of Rowan ”’
took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin
pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four
days landed by night off the coast of Cuba
from an open boat, disappeared into the
, jungle, and in three weeks came out on

the other side of the Island, having trav-

ersed a hostile country on foot, and deliv-
ered his letter to Garcia, are things I have
9
A MESSAGE no special desire now to tell in detail. The

TO GARCIA point I wish to make is this: McKinley
gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to
Garcia ; Rowan took the letter and did not
ask “Where is he at?”’
By the Eternal! there is a man whose
form should be cast in deathless bronze
and the statue placed in every college of
the land. It is not book-learning young
men need, nor instruction about this and
that, but a stiffening of the vertebrze which
will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to
act promptly, concentrate their energies:
do the thing—“ Carry a message to Gar-
cia.’’.@ General Garcia is dead now, but
.there are other Garcias.
No man who has endeavored to carry out
an enterprise where many hands were
needed but has been well-nigh appalled at
times by the imbecility of the average man
—the inability or unwillingness to concen-
trate on a thing and do it. Slip-shod assist-
ance, foolish inattention, dowdy indiffer-
ence, & half-hearted work seem the rule;
and no man succeeds, unless by hook or
crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other
men to assist him ; or mayhap, God in his
goodness performs a miracle, and sends

Io
him an Angel of Light for an assistant. A MESSAGE

You, reader, put this matter to a test: You TO GARCIA

are sitting now in your office—six clerks

are within call. Summon any one and

make this request: “ Please look in the

encyclopedia and make a brief memoran-

dum for me concerning the life of Cor-

reggio.”’

Will the clerk quietly say, “ Yes sir,’’ and

go do the task ?

On your life he will not. He will look at

you out of a fishy eye and ask one or

more of the following questions:

Who was he?

Which encyclopedia ?

Where is the encyclopedia ?

Was I hired for that ?

Don’t you mean Bismarck ?

What ’s the matter with Charlie doing it?

Is he dead ?

Is there any hurry?

Shan’t I bring you the book and let you

look it up yourself ?

What do you want to know for?

And I will lay you ten to one that after you

have answered the questions, & explained

how to find the information, and why you

want it, the clerk will go off and get one
II
A MESSAGE of the other clerks to help him try to find —

TO GARCIA Garcia—and then come back and tell you
there~is no such man. Of course I may
lose my bet, but according to the Law of
Average I will not..
Now, if you are wise, you will not bother
to explain to your “assistant’’ that Cor-
reggio is indexed under the C’s, not in the
K’s, but you will smile sweetly and say,
“Never mind,” and go look it up yourself.
@ And this incapacity for independent ac-
tion, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of
the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully
catch hold and lift, are the things that put
pure Socialism so far into the future. If men
will not act for themselves, what will they ©
do when the benefit of their effort is for all-?
A first-mate with knotted club seems nec-
essary; and the dread of getting “the
bounce”’ Saturday night, holds many:a
worker to his place. Advertise for a ste-
nographer, and nine out of ten who apply
can neither spell nor punctuate—and do
not think it necessary to.
Can such a one write a letter to Garcia ?
“ You see that book-keeper,”’ said the fore-
man to me in a large factory.
“Yes, what about him ?”

12
“Well, he ’s a fine accountant, but if I’d 4 MESSAGE
send him up town on an errand, he might TO GARCIA
accomplish the errand all right, and on the
other hand, might stop at four saloons on
the way, and when he got to Main Street,
would forget what he had been sent for.”’
® Can such a man be entrusted to carry a
message to Garcia ?
We have recently been hearing much
maudlin sympathy expressed for the
“down-trodden denizen of the sweat-
shop’”’ & the “ homeless wanderer search-
ing for honest employment,’’ and with it
all often go many hard words for the men
in power.
Nothing is said about the employer who
grows old before his time in a vain at-
tempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do
intelligent work; and his long, patient
striving with “help’’ that does nothing
but loaf when his back is turned. In every
store and factory there is a.constant weed-
ing-out process going on. The employer is
constantly sending away “help”’ that
have shown their incapacity to further the
interests of the business, and others are
being taken on. No matter how good times -
are, this sorting continues, only if times
13
A MESSAGE are hard and work is scarce, the sorting

TO GARCIA is done finer—but out and forever out the
incompetent and unworthy go. It is the
survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts
every employer to keep the best—those
who can carry a message to Garcia.
I know one man of really brilliant parts
who has not the ability to manage a busi-
ness of his own, and yet who is absolute-
ly worthless to any one else, because he
carries with him constantly the insane
suspicion that his employer is oppressing,
or intending to oppress him. He cannot
give orders; and he will not receive them.
Should a message be given him to take to
Garcia, he would probably at once refer to
you as a greedy, grasping Shylock, and tell
you to “Take it yourself!’’ He regards
all business men as rogues, and constantly
uses the term ‘“‘commercial’”’ as an epithet.
To-night this man walks the streets look-
ing for work, the wind whistling through
his thread-bare coat. No one who knows
him dare employ him, for he is a regular
fire-brand of discontent. He is impervious
to reason, and the only thing that can im-
press him is the toe of a thick-soled No. 9

boot TF
14
Of course I know that one so morally de- a MESSAGE
formed is no less to be pitied than a phys- TO GARCIA
ical cripple: but in our pitying, let us drop
a tear, too, for the men who are striving
to carry on a great enterprise, whose work-
ing hours are not limited by the whistle,
and whose hair is fast turning white
through the struggle to hold in line dowdy
indifference, slip-shod imbecility, and the
heartless ingratitude, which, but for their
enterprise, would be both hungry and
homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly ? Pos-
sibly I have; but when all the world has
gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word
of sympathy for the man who succeeds—
the man who, against great odds, has
directed the efforts of others, and having
succeeded, finds there ’s nothing in it:
nothing but bare board and clothes. I have
carried a dinner pail and worked for day’s
wages, and I have also been an employer
of labor, and I know there is something to
be said on both sides. There is no excel-
lence, per se, in poverty; rags are no rec-
ommendation; and all employers are not
rapacious and high handed, any more than
all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes

15
A MESSAGE

out to the man who does his work when

TO GARCIA the “boss’’ is away, as well as when he

is at home. And the man, who, when
given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the
missive, without asking any idiotic ques-
tions, and with no lurking intention of
chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of
doing aught else but deliver it, never gets
“laid off,’ nor has to go on a strike for
higher wages. Civilization is one long anx-
ious search for just such individuals. Any-
thing such a man asks shall be granted.
He is wanted in every city, town and
village—in every office, shop, store and
factory. The world cries out for such:
he is needed, and is needed badly—the
man aoe can mae a ee to Garcia.

SAE LGN Dre A ee er

< \Z50
as ARS ae
é NCE
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16
THE EX-LIBRIS
COLLECTOR
 

gIFE in this world is a A MESSAGE

YA| collecting, & all the men TO GARCIA
| & women in it are collec-

tors. The only question

is, what will you collect?

2]; Most men are intent on

collecting dollars .36<¢

Their waking hours are

 

 

 

 

and schemes whereby they may secure
dollars from other men. To gather as

as few is the desideratum. But when you
collect one thing you always incidentally

his net for shad always secures a few
other fish, and once in a while a turtle,
which enlarges the mesh to suit and gives
sweet liberty to the shad. To focus ex-

fear, vanity and a vaulting ambition that
may claw its way through the mesh and

ew Ragged Haggard collects bacteria ;
while the fashionable young men of the

 

ar
A MESSAGE (I ’ll admit that), and further, we may bea

TO GARCIA long time dead (I ’ll admit that), and fur-
ther, we may be going through the world
for the last time—as to that I do not know
—but while we are here it seems the part
of reason to devote our energies to that
which brings as few heart-pangs to our-
selves and others as possible. We are here,
and some day we must go, and surely we
would like to depart gracefully.
Now, I do not know exactly why men col-
lect book-plates. But I think I have traced
out a very little of the psychology of col-
lecting. And first I would call your atten-
tion to the fact that no one ever went off,
secretly and by stealth, and collected
book-plates, as a miser hoards and gloats
over his gold.
The collector’s cast of mind is totally dif-
ferent from that of the miser. The miser
loves the gold for its own sake—the col-
lector loves a book-plate for what it sug-
gests. In other words, he does not love a
book-plate at all. He may think he does,
but he does n’t; he holds it in solution and
when the time is ripe he sheds it as a
snake sheds its skin; whereas the miser
hoards till he dies, and dying, clutches «

22
Witness, if you please, Mr. James Fraser A MESSAGE
Gluck collecting autographs and such tri- TO GARCIA
fles industriously and intensely for years,
paying out thousands of dollars and then
one fine day presenting the whole collec-
tion to the Buffalo Library. And this while
he was a young man.
Dozens of such cases could be cited to
prove that the mania sits lightly, and like
the whole material world is of small ac-
count to the man who can get off ata
distance and take a good look at it.
No collector ever evolved the craze alone;
he is exposed and catches it. Where you
see one man collecting, around the corner
you ’1l find another. The psychic basis of
collecting ishuman sympathy, and not a
mere lust for possession 2% You collect
because someone you admire collects,
although I do not ask you to confess this
before men. You exchange plates and at
the same time you exchange courtesy,
kindliness and mutual good will. Having
the book-plate of a collector you are
pledged to that man by a tie which is very
gentle, yet very strong. He does not dic-
tate to you, nor rob you of your time, nor
intrude his personality upon you, but from
23
A MESSAGE out of the unseen now and again comes a

TO GARCIA cheery message (and a book-plate) and
you send back good cheer and kindly
greetings (and a book-plate, for some one
has sent you duplicates).
And thus the circle grows until all ’round
the world you count your friends and
brothers, held together by the mystic
bond, which binds men who love the same
things and are engaged in like pursuits.
Then beyond this you are linked to the
past by the plates you own of men now
dust, and you know, too, all the men who
have wrought & traced in lines of beauty,
and thought and felt and suffered and en-
joyed. You know them all—you know
their successes and defeats, their hopes
and sorrows.
You do not say that Holbein and Hogarth
were, you say they are, for you have their
work—they are immortal. And so you
confuse the dead and living in one fairy
company, and although you detect vary-
ing degrees of excellence, for none do you
hold contempt, of none are you jealous—
none do you envy.
From them you ask nothing, upon you
they make no demands, save that their

24
friendship shall be frank, free, unselfish & A MESSAGE
unsullied @, TO GARCIA
It is not at all necessary to meet a col-
lector face to face in order to hold sweet
converse. By their plates ye shall know
them. And so I have avoided meeting my
dear friends, more than once, that the
delicacy of the relationship should not be
disturbed. But sometimes I break the rule,
and being in New Haven not long ago I
called on Mr. W. F. Hopson. In the yard
back of his house Hopson has a pretty
little studio, made of matched pine, and
the whole thing must have cost him fifty
dollars. The light comes in from the roof,
as it does in the Church of the Madeleine
and the Chapel of Pere la Chaise, save for
a beautiful north window which was evi-
dently pinched by Hopson from some
Italian chapel, although he swears differ-
ently W

Together we called on Mr. George Dud-
ley Seymour and Mr. Everett E. Lord.
Seymour has posters and china and book-
plates and brocades, all representing the
beautiful handiwork of men long dead.
Lord has a collection of prints which cost
him ten thousand dollars, gathered over

25
4 MESSAGE the space of twenty years. But the point I

TO GARCIA wish to make is that as the treasures
were brought forth and shown, the com-
ments revealed the names of Woodbury,
Bolles, Allen, Dodge, Shir-Cliff, Wood-
worth, Ellsworth, Gobeille, Humphreys,
Mack, French, Rhead, and all those other
choice spirits, who are my friends, and
whose presence in my thoughts takes the
bitterness out of life and gives a solace
when all my hopes seem gone. The
friends of these men are my friends, too;
sO we were as brothers.
Then the next day I went up to Hartford
and saw Mr. Charles Dexter Allen, who
has an absurd head of hair and many
book-plates ; and then on to Boston where
I called on Mr. John P. Woodbury, who
has a long white beard and a grace and
dignity which make you think of Michael
Angelo’s Moses. Mr. Woodbury has a
great collection of French’s book-plates,
and others galore, the most valuable col-
lection of ‘The Compleat Angler” in the
world, and extra-illustrated books & first
editions until ’t would make you dizzy to
tell you of them. And whom did we talk
about as we looked at the treasures? I ’Il

26
tell you—we talked of Bolles, Stone, Shir- 4 MESSAGE
Cliff, Dering, Allen, Dodge, Woodworth, TO GARCIA
Ellsworth, Gobeille, Rhead, Humphreys,

French, and all those other friends who

are both his and mine. Mr. Woodbury is

nearly the Ideal Collector :—he has lived

his three score and ten, but his eye is as

bright as a boy’s, his complexion as fair as

a baby’s, and he carries with him the per-

fume of the morning and the lavish heart

of youth &

And so a fad which gives joy without

headache, peace without stupor, & friends

who are not rivals, is worth cultivating ;

at least I think so. Its basis is human sym-

pathy, & its excuse for being—book-plates.

 

27
THE SOCIAL
EXODUS
 
  
 
 
     

 

7|N all of the many grow- A MESSAGE
Ajj ing cities of America TO GARCIA
there is taking place an

‘(| eager exodus over a cer-

44| tain social dead line, that

q| marks the rich from the

poor. When a business

man attains a certain in-

come, a speculator “strikes it rich,” a
manufacturer secures a monopoly or any
impecunious son of earth is struck by light-

ning and receives a legacy, straightway he

2 moves his household to The Other Side of

Town =9

And as for this man’s family, when they go,

the scenes that knew them once know them

\ no more forever. They do not say good-bye

 

 

 

   

w —the friends they once had are no longer
4 ° theirs ; the neighbors with whom they used

\ to chat over the gate read of them in the
\\9 | Society Events Column, but they never see

wy |, them. The grocer who once was so friendly

rGyA\ to them is dead; the jolly butcher is for-
4 gotten—all are gone—faded and swallowed
, up in the misty past, that past so full of

work and struggle and difficulty, that past
Y of youth and hope; and the end for which
\\ they toiled and longed has come. St. Peter’s

33

   
& MESSAGE golden gates have opened: they have
TO GARCIA moved to the Other Side.
Men who have incomes of four thousand
dollars or more, in Buffalo, make hot haste
to live on Delaware Avenue; in Pittsburg
it is the East End; in Cincinnati, Walnut
Hills; in Cleveland, Euclid Avenue; in
Chicago, Hyde Park; in Boston, Common-
wealth Avenue; in New York, Up-Town.
# And in these social migrations there is
something pitiful, wondrous pitiful ; for the
man who goes can never return of his own
free will; and to be forced back by fate is
to suffer a humiliation that is worse than
disgrace that comes through crime. When
a rich man, say in Albany, Syracuse or
Toledo, loses his money and his family has
to ‘come down,’ the sympathetic souls of
earth shed tears for the glory that is gone.
We tell how he has had to give up all—he
gave up his horses, his billiard tables, his
solid plate : he discharged his gardener, his
coachman, his butler. He is now keeping
books for twenty dollars a week and his
wife is doing her own work: and we relate
how his children are now compelled to
attend the public school @ Ah, me! Life is
grievous, and our days are full of trouble!

34
# On questioning a good many men who 4 meSSAGE
have taken part in the Social Exodus, I +o Garcia
find that, Adam-like, the responsibility of
the change is thrown entirely on the wom-
an: ‘“‘ My wife was dissatisfied and we had
to go.’”’ Not once could I ever get a man to
acknowledge that the question of pride, the
desire to parade his success, or the hope of
a better social position for his daughters
ever weighed in the scale. But then a man
is seldom aware of the motives that move
him : we deceive ourselves and hide behind
specious pleas of many hues.

$e The women of the Exodus tell me that
the reason they moved to Commonwealth
Avenue was because the sewerage was
imperfect in the old home, the water was
bad, the air full of smoke, or the neighbors’
children rude @ And in various instances
these worthy mothers following the exam-
ple of their husbands, unloaded the respon-
sibility on the children. “When Mayme
came home from Wellesley she could not
stand it here,’’ or “‘ When George got back
from Harvard he found the society so
awfully dull.’’ 9

And right here let us note this prevalent
fact: the first effect of College life is often

35
A MESSAGE a desire to separate from the old compan-

TO GARCIA ions—a drawing away from the plain and
simple; a separation from the mass and a
making of cliques; an unfitting for life’s
commonplace duties and the forming of a
condition that makes riches a necessity
and their loss a calamity.
That much of our so-called “culture ”’ has
been bought at the price of manhood, no
one who knows men can deny. But when
matters go far enough in any one direction
the pendulum swings back and they cure
themselves: and now behold the College
Settlement! That the men and women of
wealth and culture who are deliberately
making their homes among the poor are as
one to ten thousand, compared with the ©
“sudden rich’? who are making frantic
efforts to get away from all smirching con-
tact with plain people, there is no doubt;
but the claim that money gives the right to
monopolize beautiful things of earth, and
the gentle qualities of heart, no longer goes
unchallenged. The culture that is kept close
smells to high heaven: only running water
is pure «Ss
And it is a pleasing fact that although the
men of the Social Exodus lay the blame

36
all on woman, yet the credit of the return 4 MESSAGE
move must be given to her. Hull House is TO GARCIA
primarily woman’s work.

“Where is your home?’ I asked Miss
Jane Addams a short time ago.

“My home is at Three Hundred Thirty-
five South Halsted Street—my work is
there, and there I expect to live and die,”’
was the quiet answer.

@& The number of earnest women, highly
cultured in the best sense, who are deeply
interested in sdcial questions, is most en-
couraging. And when that strong & gentle
woman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, delib-
erately casts her lot with the lowly & tells
us that poor people often have a deal more
culture and true charity than we who con-
sider ourselves rich, she voices a truth
that should be passed down the line.

Have your beautiful things, of course—
why not? encourage the workers in art, &
use your money to decorate and beautify,
but do not think that these things will ben-
efit you if you join the Social Exodus and
make hot haste to put distance between
yourself and those who are less fortunate.
Owners of art must build no spite fence!
Show the marbles that fill your niches and

37
A MESSAGE the canvases that glorify your walls to
TO GARCIA those who seldom see such sights; give
your education to those who need it,
your culture to those who have
less, & you double your treas-
ure by giving it away.

 

38
AS £O THE
COUNTRY
     

 

$5 |HERE is an idea in the 4 MESSAGE
a | minds of many to the ef- TO GARCIA

4| fect that the country is
ej an idyllic place to bring:
N43, up children. Far away
o1| from the busy haunts of
4; men, out of the mad rush
and tumult, clear of the
dust and din of factories, and beyond the
reach of vice and depravity—there will-we
let the little souls fresh from God develop
and expand. The singing birds and nodding
wild flowers shall be their companions and
into their hearts shall be absorbed the sun-
shine and the sounds that make melody
through the branches 4% Oho!

I do not wish to appear boastful of our
town, but I ’ll hazard the challenge that
there are a dozen boys hanging around the
Railroad Station in East Aurora who can
give pointers in depravity and general cus-
sedness to any set of city youngsters you

 

 

 

that they might rusticate for a month on
© the Old Farm and get a healthful glimpse

43
A MESSAGE into pastoral life and bucolic ways & They
TO GARCIA got it.

One of these boys was ten and the other
twelve years of age. They were not espe-
cially brilliant boys, but evidently had re-
ceptive minds, for when they got home
their mother soon discovered that they had
mastered the entire Underground Vocabu-
lary of the Rural Deestrick.
The first burst of disillusionment came
when the younger boy, in a proud wish to
show his accomplishments, designated cer-
tain necessary functions of life with a pict-
uresque realism that made his mother gasp
for breath, and caused his father to throw
a Double Arab.
In the meantime the elder lad had busied
himself decorating the bath-room after a
hay-mow pattern devised and suggested by
his erstwhile friend, the Hired Man.
This proficiency in art and language caused
the mother to make investigations, and the
result was that she called the laundress and
they stripped those two boys to the buff.
They scrubbed them outside with Pearline,
doped them inside with sulphur, soaped
out their mouths, rubbed Red Precipitate
ointment into their scalps, and burned every

44
vestige of clothing they had worn on their 4 MESSAGE
vacation to the innocent environment of TO GARCIA
Th’ Old Homestead.

East Aurora is not a peculiar place—it is
just a plain representative New York State
village. New England villages with their
libraries & varied industries rank higher,
but as you go West, say through Indiana &
Illinois, you will find art and letters culti-
vated around the railroad stations more
assiduously, and vocabularies a trifle more
intense

We have the Hoodlum with us, but not
quite so well rounded as the representatives
to be seen in the villages of, say, five hun-
dred inhabitants, in Ohio.

At present, a stranger arriving here wear-
ing a high silk hat would be comparatively
safe from mud balls, but a few years ago
.when an artist came out here sketching,
and set up his White Umbrella from Mex-
ico in a pasture lot, we pelted his stuck-up
circus tent arrangement with stones and
set the dogs on him.

This would probably be the fate of any
similar presumptuous person in any of the
small towns about here, save where the
owner of the White Umbrella was a very

45
A MESSAG large man and muscular. The other way to

TO GARCIA do would be to secure the friendship of
some influential citizen in the place who
would act as sponsor and body-guard.
Hoodlumism springs naturally into being,
like everything else, when the conditions.
are ripe. The right conditions are idleness
and a lack of incentive toward the higher
life x34
They say people talk gossip in the country,
but gossip is only lack of a worthy theme.
Having nothing else to talk about, folks
turn and talk of each other; and if they
rend characters and rip reputations up the
back, it is only a sign of mental poverty.
Get a man interested in poetry, art, sociol-
ogy, and he talks of these. Set him to work
at some useful employment that calls into
being his higher faculties—the love of har-
mony, proportion, color—and his mind will
revolve around these things, and of these
will he converse.
Hoodlumism betokens the vacant mind and
idle hands. The boy may have glimmering
desires to do something useful and be
somebody, but he lacks direction—there is
none to take lead. He craves excitement,
and as the railroad station is the busy cen-

46
ter he gravitates there “to see the train a MESSAGE
come in.” TO GARCIA
He gets acquainted with the tramps who
hang around the water tank and pumping
engine room.

Soon he times the Way Freight and cur-
ries favor with conductor and brakeman by
helping unload boxes, bales and barrels. He
learns to climb over freight cars, to set the
brake, to board a train in motion.

He is allowed to ride up the road to the
next station. He gets off there, and while
waiting for a train to take him back, goes
over to a farm house & strikes the farmer’s
wife for a hand-me-out, as he has seen the
tramps do & He gets it.

And lo! it is an epoch in his life—he has
learned that he can travel free, and get food
without work. At heart he is a tramp anda
criminal—he takes something without
thought of giving an equivalent.

The next move is by hook, crook and stealth
to take the thing without going through the
formality of asking for it. If the farmer’s
wife refuses the food, why just locate the
chickens that roost in the trees, and at night
go get them!

“The world owes every man a living.”

47
A MESSAGE In the commodity of manhood, the villages

TO GARCIA Supply the best and worst. Those with am-
bition and aspiration seek a field where
their powers can find play ; the rest for the
most part hang upon the fringe of hood-
lumism 2%
Governor Rollins of New Hampshire, has
recently lamented the absence of religion in
our rural communities—he says, ‘“ the
country towns are drifting into savagery
and hoodlumism for the lack of religion.”
Governor Rollins has mental strabismus or
he would know that excitation of the emo-
tional nature is no cure for the disease
which he specifies.
Every hoodlum in East Aurora “ comes to
Jesus”’ every winter. When there is more
excitement at the Baptist Church than there
is at the Railroad Station, the Baptist
Church catches him. And when for a few
weeks his emotions are played upon he
swings off so far in one direction that when
he goes back, as back he must, the mo-
mentum carries him a long way to ’t other
side @&
The cure for hoodlumism is manual train-
ing, and an industrial condition that will
give the boy or girl work—congenial work

48
—a fair wage, and a share in the honors of A MESSAGE
making things. Salvation lies inthe Froebel TO GARCIA
methods carried into manhood. You en-

courage the man in well doing by taking

the things he makes, the product of hand

and brain, and pay him for them, supply a

practical, worthy ideal and your hoodlum

spirit is gone and gone forever. You have

awakened the man to a Higher Life—the

life of art and usefulness—you have bound

him to his race and made .\him brother to

his kind. The world is larger for him—he is

doing something—doing something useful :

making things that people want.

All success consists in this: you are doing

something for somebody—benefiting hu-

manity; and the feeling of success comes

from the consciousness of this.

Interest a person in useful employment
and you are transforming Chaos into
Cosmos «® Blessed is the man
Oar nas found his work.

ak

\

6

7.

49
OLD ZEKE
CROSBY
  

 

     
  
  

LD ZEKE CROSBY A MESSAGE
who, as every one knows, TO GARCIA
lives out on the Mile-
4| Strip, three miles north-
west of East Aurora, was
down to see me yester-
4| day
<3) Zeke often drops in to
make me a friendly call, but the particular
thing that brought him this time was my
little item about lawyers in a late number
o of the PHILISTINE. It pleased the old
) man immensely, and his approval pleased
me, for Zeke has a son who is a lawyer—
o and a good one. The young man, who lives
in Chicago, has made a decided success of
his profession, and has the confidence of
> all who know him.
It would have been a very natural pro-
_o ceeding on the part of old Zeke to have
\\°)) denounced my screed on lawyers as libel-
.v/ ous—and all that. But he did not. On the
ew contrary he had anticipated that my item
a ‘i would bring down on my head a torrent of
“Xy)) abuse, not only from the local bar, but
J :
from adjacent towns as well.
“/, And so that I might be properly fortified,
my friend had, with much labor and great

55

 

 

 

 
  
A MESSAGE pains, written out his experience with two

TO GARCIA Buffalo lawyers.
Old Zeke expects me to print his statement
entire with names and dates, times and
places. And when he reads this I trust he
will pardon me for not doing so, for even
to print the truth is regarded under certain
conditions as libelous. Very briefly stated,
Zeke’s complaint No. 1 is that in 1897 he
sold two loads of hay to a Buffalo lawyer,
who is also very well known in East Au-
rora. Hay was low, only $7.50 a ton, but
he had to sell it in order to get money to
pay taxes ~~
After the hay was delivered the bill was
presented, and the lawyer said he would
mail a check. He has n’t mailed the check
yet. Since the hay was sold, hay has been
up to $14.00 a ton.
The lawyer now laughs at Zeke when the
old man asks him for the money, and de-
clares his coachman paid for the hay when
it was delivered.
Case No. 2 is a matter of butter, eggs,
chickens and vegetables supplied to a law-
yer’s family during a space of two years.
The footings are over three hundred dol-
lars, with seventy-five dollars paid on

56
account. Old Zeke knew the people were a MESSAGE
rich, and had delayed putting in a bill be- ro GARCIA
cause he wanted the money all at one time
to lift a mortgage. He fully expected it
would be paid upon request, but now the
bill is repudiated.

They declare the eggs he supplied were
bad, the turnips woody, the potatoes rotten
& that all of his spring chickens were hens
old enough to vote. When the old man at-
tempted to defend his good name he was
ordered from the premises, and soundly
abused by the lawyer’s wife. On refusing
to go the woman rang for a stable-man and
ordered the man-servant to kick Old Zeke
into the street. The hostler took Zeke by the
arm and induced him to go, and when in
the alley, he gave the old man a dollar out
of his own pocket, apologizing for his share
in the matter, and declared by way of ex-
tenuation, that he just had to make a show
of pulling Old Zeke out or lose his job.
Well, what does all this prove? Nothing
at all, save that two men, who are acci-
dentally lawyers, have treated a generous
and kindly old man with gross injustice.
Lawyers are not all bad and all dead-beats
are not lawyers, but some lawyers are

57
A MESSAGE rogues and all lawyers are officers of the

TO GARCIA Court—servants of the Goddess, who,
being blind, never sees anything of their
rascality =@
To us who are young and tough and mix-
ing in the world, Old Zeke’s troubles all
seem slight and trivial.
If I should print the names and pedigree of
that family on Delaware Avenue, Buffalo,
N. Y., who were fed by this old farmer for
two years, and who then turned upon him
and abused him cruelly, it would not secure
his money. And should I go with St. Ge-
rome-Roycroft and play rough-house with
their kitchen, do up the servants, black the
eyes of the Honest Lawyer, and scare the
Lady of the House into hysterics, it would
do no good, & the Saint & I might be mis-
taken for sinners, and get six months each
for attending to the business of other folks.
Well, it does n’t make much difference !
Let the great lawyer who owes Zeke for
two loads of hay laugh the old man into
babbling embarrassment; and let the proud
Lady of the House who has taken on un-
due adipose at his expense screech at him
thus, “You are a Nasty Old Thing.”” Who
cares !

58
The old man has passed his three score & A MESSAGE
ten—he is living only by God’s grace. His TO GARCIA
children are all grown up and gone—his

work is done. Let him go home to his
weed-covered farm and tell his old wife

his troubles, and together let them cry salt

tears down their wrinkled cheeks—it won’t

help their failing eyesight any, I tell you

that. Who cares? The neighbors will

come in before long, and then go down

town and send telegrams to Chicago, Des

Moines and Cleveland, and in three days

they will form a procession and head for

the cemetery.

 

I’m not sure just what the unpardonable
sin is, but I believe it is the disposition to
evade the payment of small bills.

The folks who abused Old Zeke Crosby
are not “bad’’ people. On the contrary
they move in the best circles of society,
belong to a very Orthodox Church, and
are eminently respectable. They lack im-
agination, for if they could understand
the misery, the worry and the pain they
cause, it is not at all probable they would
inflict it. They fire the farmer out—& for-
get him. To them, that is all there is of it.

59
A MESSAGE Now if they are unjust to a helpless old

TO GARCIA farmer, they are also unjust to others.
Doubtless dressmakers, grocers, butchers
and other plain people suffer at their hands
in the same way. Their lives are so full
looking after the mere machinery of life—
so filled with selfishness, that they ride
right over other folks, and no matter how
many are crushed beneath the wheels of
their chariots, they know nothing of it. Yet
they go “slumming,’”’ belong to mission-
ary societies and contribute to College
Settlements 23436
Does not “Society’’ in its society sense
breed just this dead, cruel, thoughtless
indifference ? It does seem so, for even in
our little town the only dead-beats are those
who are in the “set.’’ Ask the grocer, the
livery-man, or the butcher who are the
folks that contract bills and never pay, or
pay whenever they please, and he will tell
you they are the aristocrats. The carpen-
ters, stone-masons, blacksmiths & farmers
look you squarely in the eye, speak to you
frankly face to face, and if they promise to
pay you Saturday night, and cannot, they
come around and tell you why. I have been
despoiled of hard-earned dollars, and had

60
my reputation ripped up the back when 4 MESSAGE
I ventured to ask for my own, but never TO GARCIA
excepting by those who have a Thursday.
é If you wish to lessen the worries of the
world and scatter sunshine as you go, dogs
bother to go a-slumming, or lift the fallef,”
or trouble to reclaim the erring—simply
pay your debts cheerfully and promptly. It
lubricates the wheels of trade, breaks up
party ice, gives tone to the social system
and liberates good-will.
Pay as you go.
Especially pay the people who work by the
day and toil with their hands. A dollar
means much to the man who spades your
garden—never humiliate the man by mak-
ing him ask for his dollar @ Give it to him
immediately the work is done, and if he
did well, tell him so. When the woman
who crouches over a sewing machine for
you, all day long, brings the garment home,
pay her all you owe, and do not add to her
troubles by exercising the prerogative of
the one who is paying over money, to
flaunt out either insulting remarks or in-
sulting manners.
The Gentle Man shows his true nature in
his treatment of social-inferiors ; and of all
61
A MESSAGE damning sins, the withholding of money
TO GARCIA due a working man is the worst. Let us
pay as we go. And the cheerfulness and
good-will we give out with our money
will in turn be given out by those
we pay it to. Pay as you go.

  

62
THE BROTHERHOOD
OF JINERS
Ca 20O oO
(EO? SEG )
10, I do not belong to a A MESSAGE
Church nor to any Secret TO GARCIA
h| Society.

I do not belong to any-

thing, except the East

: v4 %J| Aurora Hook and Lad-

Q) MMI AAKLYN| der Company.

ew“) Why should any one who
(ON, is free, belong ? 4 Of course I am a mem-
S ber of the Society of the Philistines, but
) as I can resign at any time if there appears
aww, an item in the Magazine I do not like, it
(G cannot be said that I really belong. To
TZ) belong implies that some one has a rope
QYy/ fastened to your foot. And furthermore, I
Sl do not want any one to “belong”’ to me.

LY* I would hold my friend only by the virtue
that is in me—by the attraction of the
worth that is in my soul.

Still, I might belong to a Secret Society if
there was wisdom to be gained thereby that
could not be gotten in any other way.

But mark you this, Dearie, there is no Se-
, cret Society that has corralled truth. Truth
is in the air, and when your head gets into
the right stratum you know it. No one can
impart it to you until the time is ripe, and
when the time is ripe for you to know, you
67

 

 

 

 

  
 
A MESSAGE do not have to ride a Goat in order to

TO GARCIA understand. God’s Eternal Truth is not to
be secured that way.
Darwin says the herding instinct in ani-
mals has its base in fear.
Sheep and cattle go in droves, while a lion
simply flocks with his mate—and lets it go
at that. Frederick Nietzsche writes in his
Third Essay on the “Genealogy of Mor-
als,” “Prompted by a desire to cast off
depression and impotence, the sickly and
weak instinctively strive for gregarious
organization. Those who wish to lead have
always fostered fear, encouraging this ten-
dency to herd, promising protection and
offering to impart valuable knowledge in
return for a luxurious livelihood.”’
The Jiner instinct in man is a manifestation
of weakness, not strength. It is a clutch to
get something for nothing, a grab at good
which you have not earned.
By going with a gang you hope to grow
wise & But while wisdom has sometimes
come to men in solitude, it is not to be
found in the crowd. I am opposed on prin-
ciple to secrets. Is truth a thing to hide in
a ginger jar on a high shelf? You are wel-
come to all the good I can impart, and if

68
you are in possession of truth that the 4 MESSAGE
world needs and you keep it back, you are TO GARCIA
not my kind 9s
But the fact is, you can’t. In years agone,
when every man’s hand was against his
neighbor, it was proper and right for men
to unite with other men in order to stand
against a common foe. Clan fought clan
with tooth and nail, and to despoil and rob
and kill was the right of him who could—
and to further this sort of thing, Secret
Societies with their shibboleths and pass-
words and signs and grips came into being.
Secret Societies are a product of savagery,
and the fact that they exist is proof of our
origin. All men are my brothers, not just
those who belong.
Of course I do not claim that Secret Soci-
eties are savage institutions now. On*‘the
contrary they are quite toothless, innocent
affairs where men meet for frolic and good
fellowship. As social institutions they are
all right; but bless your soul! they have
no “secrets.”
The answer to that last remark, I know full
well is, ‘How do you know, since you do
not belong?’’ ~~
And so I will say, well, I know the men
69
A MESSAGE who do. They are pretty good fellows, too.

TO GARCIA One of them who has attained the 48th
Degree in Something owns the farm next
to mine, and insummer we often go swim-
ming together in the creek. When we stand
upon the bank, stripped, ready to dive off
into th’ ole swimmin’ hole, I ll defy Herr.
Tuefelsdroch, or any of his Disciples, to
tell which biped holds in his epidermis the
Great Secret Doctrine,
Does my neighbor possess Spiritual Truth
that I do not ?
No, Dearie « He is a nice man, but he is
not in possession of any great South African
Spiritual gems. If he were it would make
him round-shouldered to carry them. And
the virtue of my neighbor lies in the fact
that when we are alone together, he con-
fesses that all his jining has given him no
insight into the Mystery of Things. He
jines out of pure sociability.
Then there are various other worthy men
in town who belong to Lodges. I know two
dozen of them or more. I have known some
of them for twenty years, and have been
with them under every vicissitude of life.
I buy oats and hay of them ; and when they
bring me potatoes the scrubby ones are

70
often in the bottom of the bag. I meet these A MESSAGE
Jiners at the Grocery, or the Station when TO GARCIA
we go down to see the four-o’clock train
come in; I often pitch horse shoes with
them, and surely I would be base to insin-
uate that anything was wrong in their
Secret Society doin’s.

All the point I wish to make is that they
are not much beyond me in esoteric truth,
for I usually turn the bag of tubers out on
the barn floor before I make a price on them.
One reason why I criticise Secret Societies
is that they, for the most part, exclude
women. If a thing is good, the man who
would hide it away from the woman he
loves is only a 2 x 4; and if a thing is no
good and he pretends to Her it is, & keeps
it on a high shelf, he is still a 2 x 4—and
both are aware of it.

Very much has been said by the Funny
Press about attending Lodge and the con-
sequent marital infelicity that sometimes
follows; but the joke is founded on a very
grim and lamentable fact. Secret Societies
tend to separate the sexes in their mental
occupations, and this is the most grievous
count that can be brought against them.
Men and women should commune intel-

71
A MESSAGE lectually: to lovey-dovey is not enough.

TO GARCIA Only to lovey-dovey is to hate afterwards.
Where men & women meet only to lovey-
dovey, society is essentially barbaric; and
where the males monopolize, or think, or
pretend to think, that they monopolize
wisdom, there is small hope for progress.
Man cannot advance and leave woman be-
hind. And the one point of congratulation
in this whole Secret Society business is that
Secret Societies have no secrets that are
worth a tuppenny dam. The wisdom that is
among them is free to any man or woman
who can absorb it ww
I have met a few men and women in my
lifetime who were in possession of valuable
Spiritual Truth. And I knew it, not from
what they said, but because there shone
from their faces a light, and from their per-
sons there went a radiance, and in all their
actions was a dignity that gave their words
weight ¢% But these rare beings did not
“belong’’—they were themselves, and they
were great because they were. Into their
souls there had been absorbed-a goodly
meed of the Divine Spirit 2% Let ’s keep
the windows open to the East, be worthy,
and sometime we shall know.

72
ABOUT ADVERTISING
BOOKS
 

a|INE of the mysteries of A MESSAGE
this world is why one TO GARCIA
book will reach a sale ofa

\) oA 66 Cy 4] hundred thousand copies
AES. Ai and another one equally
ye ; good falls flat. There was
| f ve 4| ‘Ships that pass in the
\ book of its day—gone now, like ships that

)
)

 

 

 

“) Night ’’ that out-sold any

 

pass in the night. It was n’t a bad book, nor
so very good; just such as five hundred
h girls who have had their souls quickened,
and wits sharpened, and hearts bruised by

) a little Experience, write every year. Books

IS
(i like that are written hot off the bat, as my

5 friend Mr. Dooley would say. And all good
\) things are so written, although, of course,
it would be a mistake to assume that all

things so written are good. Yet the presses

of a dozen publishers ran overtime and
could not supply the demand for Beatrice

  
 

Well, what sold it? Newspaper advertising?
\}} No, dearie, newspaper advertising does not
/ sell books; newspaper advertising sells
some things, but not books. To simply an-
nounce that you have Soulheaver’s poems
may be good policy, for possibly some one

7d

co
A MESSAGE is looking for Soulheaver’s works, but no

TO GARCIA amount of praise added to your advertise-
ment will cause a stranger to invest in
Soulheaver. Columns of puffery by paid
“‘reviewers”’ do not sell books. I ’ve had
a paper with a hundred thousand circula-
tion give one of my books a lavish write-up
of a full column, and the stuff did not fetch
a single order.
On the other hand, a few weeks ago I
received six orders in one day for a book
from the comparatively obscure town of
Humboldt, Iowa, and all were traceable to
a certain young woman who read from the
volume at a teacher’s convention.
It seems this young woman had the con-
fidence and respect and affection of her
auditors & Her recommendation carried
weight. When she said, “I hold in my
hand a book; it is so good that I want you
to enjoy it with me,’”’ immediately there
was a desire in the hearts of several in that
little audience to own a copy of that iden-
tical book; for that which could minister to
the wants of this strong, discriminating,
yet gentle girl, they felt must be worth
while. These kind folk who bought my
book, because a Discerning young woman

78
recommended it, in their turn sold a hun- A MESSAGE
dred copies. They possibly were not aware TO GARCIA
of it—but they did.

There is a fellow by the name of William
Hawley Smith, who could play Cyrano de
Bergerac without an artificial beak, but
whose generous heart is so big that his nose
is an insignificant pug in proportion. He,
too, could fight & compose a ballad at the
same time, pinking you at the I’ envoi.
When Hawley Smith and Zangwill met in
Chicago, the Dreamer of the Ghetto fell on
the neck of Smith, cried for joy, and
exclaimed, “At last! Thank God, I ’ve
found a man as homely as myself!”’
Hawley Smith has analyzed the problem
of education as thoroughly as did Jean
Jacques Rousseau and practiced it a deal
better; and if he had not allowed his com-
pass to go off ten points in deference to the
Methodist Church, would have written as
deathlessly. But had he written as well as
he could, like Jean Jacques, he might have
asked for bread and been given a pile of
stone—after he was dead.

Hawley, he once read from one of my
books and simply told the audience that in
his opinion the work was not so bad as it

79
A MESSAGE might be, and the next day every book-

TO GARCIA dealer in that town was wiring Putnam’s
Sons to “Send by first Express,’”’ etc. This
shows how some folks regard Hawley
Smith’s opinions.
The Sons wrote to me asking if I had been
out blowing my Horn. I replied, “No, and
even if I had it would have made no spec-
ial difference in sales—it ’s all the fault of
de Bergerac Smith.”’
The Sons replied by wire, ‘‘Engage Berg-
erac ten years contract his own terms.”’ &
By the way, Hawley Smith wrote a book
that has sold well over a hundred thousand
copies, and has done more to evolve edu-
cation in America into common-sense lines
than anything Pestalozzi ever printed. This
little book has been a world-mover—I will
not tell you its title—you are to be pitied if
you do not know it—and yet the author
never got a dollar out of it. When he wrote
it, publishers sniffed at it, others mocked,
one took it as a gift and told the author he
was welcome to look in the show windows
whenever he passed by, and all the icicles
on the cornice were his if he cared to climb
up and get them «sm
But let us go back, ere we stray, and say,

80
Bergerac could not be hired to boom books; A MESSAGE
and if he could, his recommendation would TO GARCIA
be worthless ¢* His word is only valuable
because it is not for sale. The advertisement
that secures recognition and really sells the
book cannot be purchased—it cannot even
be asked for—but must spring spontaneous
from the sympathetic heart. To request it
would be to lose it, for like love, it goes to
him who does not ask for it, and passes in
silence all those who plot, scheme and lie
in wait. It goes only to the worthy: but
alas! the worthy sometimes—aye, often,
pine away of heart-hunger, and there is no
hand to caress, nor gentle voice to soothe;
and youth flies fast, and recognition comes
only when it is no'more desired, and when
the presence of cool, all-enfolding death—
strong deliveress—is more grateful than
the applause of men.
2% Good horseshoe nails are always good
nails, but what is good in literature is alla
matter of taste. There is no standard. You
like it because you like it, and if certain
other people praise a thing it is a good rea-
son why you should let it severely alone—
or buy it. It all depends upon who this
person is =@7

81
A MESSAGE When you read a column of unsigned

TO GARCIA puffery in the “Tribune’’ about Jingle’s
latest novel, you are not influenced in Jin-
gle’s favor even in the estimation of a hair,
for you do not know the writer 2% If the
reviewer's style is bad, or you think it is,
you probably inwardly vow you will never
read Jingle under any conditions, because
Jingle has pleased a man of bad taste, and
this is a fit excuse for eschewing Jingle @
In advertising a book I would rather quote
the reviewers who damned it, than those
who were lavish in their praise. Books well
damned often boom, but books merely
praised in print—bah! Who wants ’em ?
When a book is damned in print the dam-
nation is sincere, but fulsome flattery is
usually the work of some fellow who never
read the volume—and all prospective buy-
ers know it. Unscathing criticism of a work
indicates that itis a Bible to some, and thus
are averages held good.
My own ambition is to write a book that
will be excluded from the mails; and then
my fortune will be made. If John Wana-
maker again comes into power, I think I
can fetch it 2566
A book booms in the market, usually be-

82
cause one friend recommends it to another. A MESSAGE
No person can read a book secretly and by TO GARCIA
stealth, and then gloat over it alone #@ A
woman may discover the only pure baking
powder and chuckle over her rich find—
keeping the secret to herself so as to make
other housewives envious of her biscuit,
but she can never read a book and like it
(or dislike it) and keep the fact to herself.
All book lovers have chums, and the pleas-
ure of reading is to pass this joy along to
another. Lovers always read together, and
the chief joy of loving a woman is to read
to her, or have her read to you. To mix it
mentally with a good woman who has
phosphorous, is paradise enow.

Books that have boomed have usually been
those that have been spurned by publishers
and gone a-begging, and yet publishers are
often very shrewd men. The sale started,
nobody knows just how. The only book
I have mentioned by name in this article
was thought so little of by publisher and
author that it was n’t even copyrighted,
and to name others that have boomed
in spite of publishers would be merely to
deal in the tritest kind of truism. Cast
about in your mind and recall incidents

83
A MESSAGE to suit « No advertiser has ever had the
TO GARCIA talent to force a thoroughly bad book upon
the market and make it sell. Ten thousand
dollars invested in newspaper advertising
will start an inquiry for any nostrum or
brand of goods, but a moribund book can

never be galvanized into life.
What men call “luck’’ or “chance”’ is the
result of law not understood. And the luck
that makes a book “go”’ is regulated by a
law that no advertising expert has yet been
able to control. Mystery enshrouds it all.

The man who by his genius can blow
this mist away and place his hand
upon the law that controls the
popularity of a good book,
shall have riches and
honor and undy-
ing renown.

ve

84
CONSECRATED
LIVES
   

 

I have n’t a very firm
{| grasp upon it myself. In
74| order to clarify my mind
I explain to you # And
thus, probably, do I give
you something which is
already yours. Grateful ? of course you are
—there! %9f
The thought is this :—but before I explain
it let me tell of what a man saw in a cer-
tain cottage in Denmark. And it was such
a little white-washed cottage, too, with a
single, solitary rose bush clambering over
the door! An Artist, his Wife and their
Little Girl lived there. There were four
rooms, only, in this cottage—a kitchen, a
bedroom, a workroom & the Other Room.
The kitchen was for cooking, the bedroom
for sleeping, the workroom for work, and
the Other Room was where the occupants
of the cottage received their few visitors.
When the visitors remained for tea or lunch
the table was spread in the Other Room,
[ but usually the Artist, his Wife and their
Little Girl ate their meals in the kitchen,
or in summer on the porch at the back of
89

 

 

 

4|ERE’sathought, Dearie, A MESSAGE
¥| that I give to you because TO GARCIA
A MESSAGE the house ssf Now the Artist painted pic-
TO GARCIA tures, and his Wife carved beautiful shapes
in wood; but they did n’t make much
money—in fact no one seemed to know
them, at all. They did n’t have funds to
accumulate a library, and perhaps would
not if they had. But still they owned all
the books written by Georg Brandes.
These books were kept in a curious little
case, which the Artist and his Wife, them-
selves, had made.
vf And before the case of books was an
ancient Roman lamp, suspended from the
ceiling by a chain.
And the lamp was kept always lighted,
night and day.
Each morning, before they tasted food, the
man & his Wife read from Georg Brandes,
and then they silently refilled, trimmed &
made the lamp all clean and tidy.
Oho! why, your eyes are filling with tears
—how absurd—& you want to hear more
about the Artist and his Wife and the
Little Girl!
But, bless me! that is all I know about
them #7
However, I do know that Georg Brandes
is one of the Apostles of the Better Day.

go
His message is a plea for beauty—that is A MESSAGE
to say, harmony 9” He would have us TO GARCIA
live lives of simplicity, truth, honesty and
gentleness. He would have us work for
harmony and love, instead of for place and
power. Georg Brandes is an individualist
and a symbolist. He thinks all of our be-
longings should mean much to us, and that
great care should be exercised in selection.
We need only a few things, but each of
these things should suggest utility, strength,
harmony and truth # All of our actions
must be suggestive of peace and right. Not
only must we speak truth, but we must
live it. Our lives should be consecrated to
the good—lives consecrated to Truth and
Beauty. Consecrated Lives!

And so this Artist and his Wife, I told you
of were priests of Beauty, and their little
girl was a neophyte; and the room where
the Roman lamp burned was filled with
the holiness of beauty, and no unkind
thought or wrong intent could exist there.
xf Consecrated Lives! that is the subject.
There is a brotherhood of such, and you
can reach out and touch finger tips with
the members the round world over sf ¥
Beauty is an Unseen Reality—an attempt

gi
A MESSAGE to reveal a spiritual condition. Members of

TO GARCIA this Brotherhood of Consecrated Lives do
not take much interest in Salisbury’s Po-
litical Policy, and all the blatant blowing
of brass horns that are used on ’Change,
in pulpits, or by Fourth of July speakers
are to them trivial and childish. They dis-
tinguish at once the note of affectation,
hypocrisy & pretense in it all. They know
its shallowness, its selfishness and its ex-
tremely transient quality.
Yet your man of the Consecrated Life may
mix with the world, and do the world’s
business, but for him it is not the true
world, for hidden away in his heart he
keeps burning a lamp before a shrine ded-
icated to Love & Beauty. The Adept only
converses at his best with Adept, and he
does this through self-protection. To hear
the world’s coarse laugh in his Holy of
Holies—no! and so around him is a sacred
circle, and within it only the Elect are
allowed to enter.
To join this brotherhood of Consecrated
Lives requires no particular rites of initia-
tion—no ceremonial—no recommenda-
tions. You belong when you are worthy.
sf But do not for a moment imagine you

92
have solved the difficulty when you have A MESSAGE
once entered. To pride yourself on your TO GARCIA
entrance is to run the danger of finding
yourself outside the pale with password
hopelessly forgotten. Within the esoteric
lines are circles and inner circles, and no
man yet has entered the inmost circle
where the Ark of the Covenant is secreted.
All is relative 99

But you know you belong to the Brother-
hood when you feel the absolute nothing-
ness of this world of society, churches,
fashion, politics and business; and realize
strongly the consciousness of the Unseen
World of Truth, Love and Beauty. The
first emotion on coming into the Brother-
hood is one of loneliness & isolation. You
pray for comradeship, & empty arms reach
out into the darkness. But gradually you
awaken to the thought that you are one of
many who hope and pray alike; and that
slowly this oneness of thought and feeling
is making its impress felt.

Then occasionally you meet one of your
own. This one may be socially high or
low, rich or poor, young or old, man or
woman—but you recognize each other on
sight and hold sweet converse. Then you

93
A MESSAGE part, mayhap, never to meet again, but you

TO GARCIA are each better, stronger, nobler for the
meeting 79%
Consecrated Lives! You meet & you part,
but you each feel a firmer impulse to keep
the light burning—the altar light to Truth,
Simplicity and Beauty. No other bond is
required than that of devotion to Truth,
the passion of listening in the Silence, the
prayer for Wholeness and Harmony, the
earnest desire to have your life reflect the
Good #4
All man-made organization would be fatal
to the sweet, subtle and spiritual qualities
of the Brotherhood # For organization
means officers, judicial robes, livery, arbi-
trary differentiation, and all the vile and
foolish clap-trap of place and power. It
means the wish to dictate, select & exclude,
and this means jealousy, prejudice and
bitterness—fifteen candidates for a vacant
bishopric with heart-aches to match! ¥
No organization ever contained within its
ranks the best. Organization is arbitrary
and artificial! itis born of selfishness; and
at the best is a mere matter of expediency.
sf The Brotherhood of Consecrated Lives
admits all who are worthy, and all who

94
are excluded, exclude themselves. If your A MESSAGE
Life is to be a genuine consecration, you TO GARCIA
must be free. Only the free man is truthful ;
only the heart that is free is pure. How
many compose this Brotherhood—who
shall say ? There are no braggart statisti-
cians, no paid proselytes with their noisy
boastings. Two constitute a congregation
and where they commune is a temple.
Many belong who do not know it; others
there be who think they belong, and are so
sure of it that they do not.
But the Brotherhood is extending its lines;
and what think you the earth will be like
when the majority of men and women
in it learn that to be simple and
honest and true, is the part of
wisdom, & that to work
for Love & Beauty is
est good?

     

ss)
THE BEECHAM
HABIT
OMETIME ago it be- A MESSAGE
1 came necessary forme to TO GARCIA
i}enter a protest in these
\" Z| pages on the subject of
sat | Art and Underwear. The
4] Ypsilanti Yagerites, with
unblushing foreheads,
as4} encouraged by the High
Class Monthlies, carried matters so far
that as a man of family, with growing
sons and daughters, I could not longer
admit the Family Press to my home. For-
tunately I succeeded in checking the

ly exhibition without calling in the aid of
Cs Antonius Comstock.
~{ The eczema has, however, broken out in

\ a new place. In the last number of Mc-~
)

   
 

 

0

)

| Clure’s, Lim., I see portrayed, with all the
ve ° seductive skill of the expert illustrator,'a
beautiful young woman with hair neatly
o) braided down her back. She is arrayed in
cy fa night gown that is a dream. Like the
ay Goddess of Liberty in New York harbor,
fa she holds aloft a lighted candle in one

; , hand and in the other—a pill. —
(7 If the scale of the drawing is correct this
Y pill is about the size of a baseball. The
-\A\\ import of the picture is that the lissome

IOI
A MESSAGE beauty is about to swallow the baseball.
TO GARCIA Beneath the picture is the legend: “My
complexion is perfect because I take one
of Billson’s Bully Bilious Boluses every
night on retiring.’’__
Now, not only do I solemnly protest
against this realistic tendency in art on the
part of Billson, but I call attention to some
¥ truths brought to my notice by the ship’s
doctor on the “ Lucania.’’ This doctor,
who seems to Understand Himself, de-
clares the Beecham Habit is very much on
the increase. He says that the]people who
insist on irritating their Erie Canal by
doses of the invention of Colonel Carter,
of Cartersville, as soon as they come on
board are sure to pay speedy tribute to
Neptune in a surprising and unexpected
way, & that those addicted to the Beecham
Habit are the ones that suffer most when
traveling on the sad sea waves.
|The Family Papers teem with warnings
that we must invest good money in Fig
Syrup, Early Risers, Little Liver Pills and
Base Ball Boluses in order to have good
complexions and sweet thoughts. Very
many people believe this.;The habit be-
gins by gentle dallyings with the Lady
102
Webster Dinner Pill. It grows and grows. A MESSAGE
One pill is enough at first, but two are TO GARCIA
soon required where only one grew before,
then three are demanded, and soon a
change is required from Pills to Fig Syrup,
then Mother Shipley’s Tea and back to
Pills— from Carter’s to Pierce’s, then
Ayer’s, Beecham’s, Billson’s, and at last a
frantic dash is made for Ripum’s Tablets.
2% The man’s hold has been stored with
such a miscellaneous cargo that Nature
stops perplexed; Carter is consulted, and
she starts, she moves, she seems to feel
the thrill of life along her keel. Then come
cold chills, hot bearings, a hawser has
surely befouled the screw. Stomach pro-
tests—mal de mer comes ashore—liver
lags, kidneys kick,lee scuppers are clogged,
bilge accumulates and Nature pipes all
hands to pump ship.

‘!The patient goes into dry dock and spec-
ialists being consulted tell him he has can-
cer of the stomach, fistula, appendicitis,
tape worm, tuberculosis of the bowels and
Bright’s disease, and he has, or thinks he
has—which is just as bad.,

And all this as a result of the Beecham
Habit. It is very plain to every unpreju-
103
A MESSAGL diced reader that the prime motive of the

TO GARCIA fin de siecle Religious Press is to prove
that man has liver trouble and salvation
can only be found by patronizing Dr.
Pierce’s Pungent, Pugnacious, Pollywog
Perquisites 2
Whether these things be dictated by Bish-
op, Presbytery, or Ecumenical Council, I
cannot say. But Colonel George Batten,
Expert in Advertising, advises me that the
proper cathartic is usually dictated by the
Committee of Seventy. However this is, I
find that the “Outlook” gives prominence
and publicity to Tarrant’s Seltzer, the
“Churchman ”’ to Fig Syrup, the “ Chris-
tian Register’? to Acid Phosphate, while
strong leanings are shown by the “ Chris-
tian Leader ’’ for the wares of Dr. Pierce.
“The Christian at Work’’ works Pierce
and Ayer, the “ Presbyterian ’’ likes Prune
Juice, while the “ Christian Advocate ’”’
lustily advocates Early Risers and Ri-
pum’s Tablets. The “ Baptist Standard ”’
goes off on a new track and favors Dr.
Hall’s Water Cure Self-Treatment, while
the “ Examiner”’ falls back to Fig Syrup
and Prunes. The “Christian Herald,’
edited by Rev. Dr. Talmage, seems to

104
conduct itself rather loosely, for it co- A MESSAGE
quettes its favors between Hood, Beecham TO GARCIA
_and Dr. Hall. As one goes south of the
Ohio River, matters grow worse, for the
“Southern Pulpit ’’ of Louisville not only
favors Pierce, Carter and Beecham, but
introduces “a sure cure for flatulence,”’ in
the presence of one Doctor Jingle, whose
wares are vouched for by seven clergymen,
three of them D. D.’s. fe
The opinion is well grounded among our”
agrarian population that the chief claim
of our late martyred President upon the
gratitude of a loving public lies in the fact
that he invented Garfield Tea. -
Not long since in a court of law Fig Syrup
was acknowledged to be innocent of Figs.
And gentlemen having purchased Prune
Extract and congratulating themselves
that they are full of prunes have only taken
a drastic dose of aloes. =
It seems the part of wisdom for those on
sea (and land) to monkey with their in’ards
as little as possible. One’s motto in this
respect should be, ‘“‘ Place not your trust in
prophylactics.”’ It is difficult to improve on
the plans of God. Many men have tried it,
but to their sorrowsf He has made all
I0o5
A MESSAGE out-of-doors full of fresh air. He gives us
TO GARCIA pleasure in moderate exercise, the night
for sleep, and fruit drops from the trees at
our feet. All these He made and I hardly
think He ever intended that we should
put an enemy into our mouths to steal
away our digestion—still, I may be wrong.

°
Vx

 

106
THE BISHOP’S
VOICE
’

 

BOLE BIS
SCE SOND
KSA WIG
le: mayen |LERGYMEN’S Sore A MESSAGE
: Throat or Tonsilitis is TO GARCIA
caused by speaking in an
]| unnatural tone of voice.
¥A| God gave each of us a
]| certain voice, and to ex-

1] ercise it wisely and cul-
tivate it is good.

   

 

 

 

of the soul.

But you must cultivate your own voice
and not merely imitate some other voice
that you admire. Men who speak in an
unnatural tone express things they do not
believe #9

Not one clergyman in ten uses his own
voice—he uses only an imitation. He never
hears his own voice and so becomes af-
flicted with the microbe of delusion and
imagines some one else’s voice is better.
Pouf!

So common is this affection that the
Bishop’s Voice is heard on every hand, if
you go to church or conventions. Very
many preachers—especially young preach-
ers—expect to become bishops, and in
order to be fully prepared when the call

°
comes, they cultivate a Bishop’s Voice.

IIrI

 
A MESSAGE All bishops are supposed to be powerful

TO GARCIA and lusty, also full of besum. Therefore it
is imagined that they have voices like
bulls of Bashan. When they pray they
shake the rafters of Heaven.
Beware of the Bishop’s Voice—your own
is better 99
Actors who cultivate the Brutus, Virgin-
ius and Sardanapalus voice and preachers
who use the Bishop’s Voice are fit candi-
dates for vegetables. Worse than that—
they are candidates for tonsilitis, simply
because they are abusing the physical
organs of speech.
Worse than that—they are candidates for
Nervous Prostration, because they have
ceased to be themselves and are trying to
pass for someone else.
Worse than that—they are losing their
own souls, because they are not allowing
a true exercise and expression of their
Inner Spirit.
Americanitis, Nervous Exhaustion and
Mental Prostration—one and the same
thing—is the result of trying to pass for
something different from what you are.
Men who try to conceal their own voice
and praise God with the Bishop’s Bazoo

112
are in danger 3 Concealment 15°.
A secret gnaws.
To religiously observe the Twelfth. Com-
mandment, “Thou shalt not be found
out,’’ leads to loss of manhood, cold feet,
that tired feeling, premature decay and the
surgeon’s knife.
To love is very beautiful—but to feel you
must conceal and hide and refute and deny
your Saviour before men is terrible. If you
use language to conceal your thought
you better begin taking hypophosphites,
for you are breaking down tissue faster
than Nature can build it up. God only cal-
culates on each man being himself, and
the presumption originally was that he
would be honest. You see it is like this—
the Universe is not planned for duplicity.
vf To carry a live fox around under your
bellyband will interfere sooner or later
with your digestive apparatus.
The Roberts plan is a thousand times
better than the Breckinridge—ask Breck-
inridge ! Long, long years ago God blessed
the Roberts copyright, although I am told
He has since changed His mind, but He
placed his curse upon the Mr. Hyde and
Dr. Jekyll business right from the start,
113
embargo has never been removed.

_.e@ Double-Life does not go. Don’t be a
fool, Jambert of Indiana—the sin is in
affectation, concealment, subterfuge, cry-
ing, sneaking, cringing, denying. Don’t
you know that ?

Be yourself. Have nothing to conceal.
To hell with the Bishop’s Voice.
Carry the fox no longer—he wants liberty
as much as you.

 

You shall know the worst about me. It is
not all sweet and savory, but if you want
to know I’1l tell you. I used to have head-
ache, bad breath, sore throat, watery eyes,
night sweats and buzzing sounds in the
ears; but since I took the pledge that I
would just simply be myself, live my own
life, one day at a time, I have gained
twenty pounds in weight; sleep eight
hours without waking; eat anything in
sight; and have the limit to my credit in
four Savings Banks.

P. S. I cheerfully recommend God’s Rem-
edies, and will send my picture, before
and after using, to all the afflicted who
may apply

114
THE KINDERGARTEN
OF GOD
 

   
   

Kindergarten of God: TO GARCIA
f4| Please do not take life
4| quite so seriously—you
¥| surely will never get out
YAS}| of it alive. And as for
4| your buying and selling,
your churches & banks,
your newspapers and books, they are really
at the last of no more importance than the
child’s paper houses, red and blue wafers
and funny scissors things. Why you
grown-ups! all your possessions are only
just to keep you out of mischief, until
Death, the good old nurse, comes & rocks
you to sleep. Am I not right?
The child’s paper doll lasts a day and a

 

 

 

day or until the next edition appears ; and
as for a church edifice it only endures for
two days, if made of wood, and three if of

stone temples, and no one really knows
what god these temples were dedicated to,

serve is as dead as the folks who invented

him

Take my word for it, Dear Playmate, this
119
A MESSAGE life is only a big joke. But we are here,
TO GARCIA and so let’s have all the fun we can. And
in order to get along best we should cut
our scissors things as well as we can, and
model only pretty toys out of the mud that
is given us. It ’s all Kindergarten business
though : the object is to teach us. I really
believe we are learning things, and if we
are ever called to a Higher Grade we
shall be prepared to manage more diffi-
cult lessons than when we began here.
We are all children in the Kindergarten of
God. Take my word for it, Playmate, and
I know as much about God and his plans
as any man who ever trod this green
earth. I know as much as you, and you
know as much as I, and we are both Sons
of God and it doth not yet appear what
we shall be ¥
Systems of Guesswork, facetiously called
“ Theology,’”’ do not introduce us to God.
Theologians are absurd men with high-
cut vests and bishop’s voices. Learned
men—professors of Christology, praters
on Homiletics, writers of Syllogistic essays
and such, have confounded and confused
men and covered truth with their brush-
piles of words. These men with many .-
120
sharked up reasons are bad angels, and A MESSAGE
the wind of their wings withers as it TO GARCIA
passes. Their efforts have all tended to be-
fog and blind, while the Seers and Proph-
ets and Poets and Doers have endeavored
to simplify 7
“Do unto others as you would be done
by ’’—you understand that, do you not?
But what does a man mean when he talks
of Predestination, Vicarious Atonement,
Redemption by Faith and Hell and
Damnation ?
Please take my word for it when I say
these schemes of salvation are as idle
vapors ; for I am a Son of God, and most
of the preachers who preach their little
‘“schemes’’ are children of the Devil,
born in sin, and admit it.
I am a thought of God; I was loved into
being, therefore my life in the beginning
was holy. Of course I am slightly be-
smirched by contact with fools, but in the
main my life and deeds are right, for be-
ing a Child of God I could not stray very
far afield, even if I wished ; God, who is
my mother, would call me back, for has
He not protected me, sustained me and
cared for me all these years? Take my
121
A MESSAGE word for it, we are in the Kindergarten of
TO GARCIA God, and all there is of life is to do our
work (which is only play) as well as we
can and be kind. That’s all there is of
wisdom—do your work as well as you can
and be kind #
I know as much about it as any man who
ever lived, for I am a Child of God, and
the best man who ever lived was nothing
more. Do your work as well as you can
and be kind—that’s the best way to get
along here, and it is the best preparation
for a Life to Come, if there is one. This is
no new Truth, for there is no such thing
as a new Truth. Truth is as old as Fate.
There is no plural Truth—there is only the
one Truth, and this is very old and very
simple. All wise men have known it. No
one knows any more about Absolute
Truth than I do, and I know as
much about it as anyone who
ever lived, and I know
nothing sf Do your
work as well as you
can and be kind.

oe

I22
ADVANTAGES AND
DISADVANTAGES
 

Spy |HE so-called “disad- A MESSAGE
4; vantages ’’ in the life of TO GARCIA
4| a child are often its ad-
mij Vantages. And on the
G4; other hand “advan-
Oy | tages” are very often
»4| disadvantages of a most
——J serious sort. To be born
e 9 in the country, of poor parents, is no dis-
7) advantage. The strong men in every
American city—the men who can do
xX o things; the men like James J. Hill, Charles

 

 

 

 

YQ E. Perkins, Philip G. Armour, Norton
Q) Finney, S.S. Merrill, or the late Tom Pot-
. , ter, who gloried in difficulties, waxed
<)\ strong in overcoming obstacles & laughed
at disaster—men who could build three

®

  

miles of railroad a day, and cause pros-
perous cities to spring up where before
were only swamps and jungle, barren
. plains or endless forest—these men were
all country boys, nurtured in adversity ¥
\ And it is but the tritest truism to say that
the early life of industry and unceasing
economy of time and things, was the best

possible preparation and education that
\ these men could have had for doing a

great work ¥

 
  
  
 

127
A MESSAGE I once heard George M. Pullman tell how

TO GARCIA at ten years of age he used to cut wood
so his mother could cook, help her wash
the dishes and sweep; carry water for her
to do the washing, and assist her hanging
out the clothes. In a year or two more he
planted the garden, knew all kinds of veg-
etable seeds on sight, knew every forest
tree that grew in Western New York and
could distinguish between the qualities of
the wood. At seventeen he helped his
father move houses and barns and dig
wells and construct church steeples. That
is to say he was getting an education—
learning to do things in the best way. He
was developing physique and also build-
ing character and making soul-fibre. He
was learning to make plans and execute
them, think for himself and be strong and
self-reliant. Yet he did n’t know it at the
time, and later regretted his lack of edu-
cation and absence of opportunity.
Pullman was always a little too busy to
be a philosopher; in spite of his mighty
grasp on practical things he failed to per-
ceive that he was a product of the “ unkind
conditions” of his boyhood. He plumed
himself on overcoming great difficulties.

128
In after dinner conferences he occasionally A MESSAGE
recited the great things he had done and TO GARCIA
compared them to the still greater things
he might have done “if he had only had
a chance.”

Perhaps George M. Pullman knew down
deep in his heart that he had received the
very best training possible for his life
work; but that quality in “self-made”
men which causes them to want all the
credit for the job, blinded him in a great
degree to the truth. Hence we find him
protecting his own sons from the blessings
that had been his. Instead of having his
boys brought up to do things, he had ser-
vants who cheated them out of all that
round of daily duties which had made
him strong. He had tutors who taught
them things out of books and gave them
advice. The result was that the sons of
George M. Pullman have achieved guard-
ians and their fantastic tricks before high
heaven have added to the gayety of
nations ¥

Pullman’s boys are without even a trace
of that decision and strength that made
their father famous. George M. Pullman
could operate a great industry, but he

129
A MESSAGE could not bring up a family. He succeeded

TO GARCIA in everything but the boy business.
Of course, we cannot assume that these.
boys would have been as competent as
their father had they been brought up to
work, but work would have, at least, pro-
tected them from excess.
The method pursued by George M. Pull-
man in educating his boys is the plan pur-
sued by most rich men. All that they gain
for the world is lost again in their
children
And until yesterday all the college presi-
dents and all the pedagogs who lectured
and taught and wrote and preached, fully
endorsed the plan adopted by George M.
Pullman in educating his boys.
So sternly true is this that Dr. Edward
Everett Hale, a graduate of Harvard, has
said, “If you should take twelve prize
men from Harvard and put them ona
sinking ship, they would all drown through
inability to construct a raft.”
The mole-blind pedagogs are quite willing
to keep on stuffing boys with impressions,
not knowing that the number of impres-
sions a boy can hold is limited. We grow
through expression, and the large colleges,

130
even yet, afford a very imperfect means A MESSAGE
for expression—all is impression and re- TO GARCIA
pression and suppression.
But to-day we find a few of the highest
type of teachers making a bold stand for
the natural method of education. That is,
they recognize that the education which
George M. Pullman received was a bet-
ter, wiser and safer education than the
education which George M. Pullman gave
to his boys ¥#
Recently I visited the John Dewey School
at Chicago, and there I saw them doing
for the children, with carefully prepared
intent, just what fate, poverty & “ unkind
conditions’’ did for George M. Pullman.
8 John Dewey, the head of the Dewey
School, is a pupil of that noted psycholo-
gist and thoroughly sane man, Dr. Stanley
Hall; and the cry of Dr. Hall is “‘ Back to
Nature.”
At the Dewey School they try to teach
children just as a kind, intelligent and
loving mother would teach her children
if she lived away off forty miles from
nowhere, and had an income of three
hundred dollars a year to support a fam-
ily of nine sf

131
A MESSAGE Nothing interests us save as it comes
TO GARCIA home to us as a personal issue. And in
visiting the Dewey School I unconsciously
compared it with my own early lack of
instruction %
When I was fifteen years of age I could
break wild horses to saddle or harness,
and teach kicking cows to stand while
they were being milked. I could fell trees
and drop the tree in any direction desired;
I knew the relative value of all native
woods; appreciated the difference in soil,
grains, fruits and simple minerals. I could
use the drawshave, adz, axe, broad-axe,
crosscut saw, sickle and cradle. I could
make a figure-four trap, an axe helve, a
_neckyoke, ox yoke, whiffletrees, clevis,
and braid an eight-strand cattle whip. We
used to mend our harness on rainy days,
and I could make a wax end and thread
it with a bristle and use a brad awl. I
knew how to construct an ash leach and
to make soft soap, apple butter and pump-
kin pies. I knew the process of weaving
flax and wool, of making and burning
brick. I knew on sight and had names for
a score or more of birds, and had a good
idea of the habits of squirrels, skunks,
132
wolves and the fishes that swam in the A MESSAGE
creeks. I knew how to cure hams, shoul- TO GARCIA
ders & sidemeat ; to pickle beef, and cover
apples with straw and earth so they would
keep in safety through the most severe
winter, and open up in the spring fresh
and valuable

Of course, my knowledge was not of the
scientific order, and I could not have ex-
plained it to another, because I never knew
I had it. It all came along easily, natur-
ally and as a matter of course. It would
be absurd to say that I was an expert
worker in all the lines I have mentioned,
but I was familiar with the processes and
could do things with my hands all in my
own crude way, just as I daily saw my
father and the neighbors doing.

And so when I saw at this experimental
school of Chicago University the same
curriculum that I had known in youth
being worked out I could not but smile.
Professor John Dewey, with his costly
apparatus and heavy endowment, is mere-
ly trying to overcome the “ advantages ”’
of civilization s¥

They have no wild horses nor kicking
cows in the Dewey School, but they teach

133
A MESSAGE children to make things out of wood, iron

TO GARCIA and cloth. They are taught to measure,
weigh, compare and decide. They wash
dishes and put things away in a neat and
orderly manner. They are taught the na-
ture of wool, cotton and flax, and are
shown how to weave, dye and construct.
They learn without knowing when or how
they learn. The repression and discipline
that one feels in many schools is removed
and there is an air of freedom in the place
that is very helpful. It’s a curious experi-
ment—this back to nature—but in the line
of truth ¥
There is no more preposterous admoni-
tion than that which has been dinged into
the ears of innocence for centuries, that
“ Children should be seen and not heard.”’
sf The healthy, active child is full of im-
pressions and that he should express him-
self is just as natural as for a bird to sing.
It is nature’s way of giving growth—no
one knows a thing for sure until he tells it
to someone else. We deepen impressions
by recounting them, and habitually to sup-
press and repress the child when he wants
to tell of the curious things he has seen, is
to fly in the face of God.

134
Last summer on a horseback ride of a A MESSAGE
hundred miles or so I came to an out-of- TO GARCIA
the-way “ Deestrick School,’”’ just such a
one as you see every three miles all over
New York State. This particular school
house would not have attracted my atten-
tion specially had I not noticed that nearly
half the school lot was taken up with a
garden and flower beds. No house was
near, and it was apparent that this garden
was the work of the teacher and pupils.
xf Straightway I dismounted, tied my
horse and walked into the school house sf
The teacher was a man of middle age—a
hunchback and one of the rarest, gentlest
spirits I ever met. Have you ever noticed
what an alert, receptive and beautiful soul
is often housed in a misshapen body ? This
man was modest and shy as a woman, &
when I spoke of the flower beds he half
apologized for them and tried to change
the subject. When after a few moments he
realized that my interest in his garden was
something deeper than mere curiosity, he
offered to go out and show me what had
been done. So we walked out, and out,
too, behind us trooped the school of just
fifteen children 3
135
A MESSAGE ‘In winter we have sixty or more pupils,

TO GARCIA but you see the school is small now. I
thought I would try the plan of teaching
out of doors half the time, and to keep
the girls and boys busy I just let each
scholar have a flower bed. Some wanted
to raise vegetables and of course I let
them plant any seed they wished. The
older children, girls or boys, help the
younger ones—it is lots of fun. When the
weather is fine we are out here a good
deal of the time, just working and talk-
ing,’’ explained the teacher.
And that is the way this man taught—let-
ting the children do things and talk. He
explained to me that he was not an “ edu-
cated ’’ man, and as I contradicted him
my eyes filled with tears. Not educated ?
I wonder how many of us who call our-
selves educated have a disciplined mind,
and can call by name the forest birds in
our own vicinity ? Do we know the bird
notes when we hear them? Can we with
pencil outline the leaves of oak, elm, wal-
nut, maple, chestnut, hazel, birch or beech
trees, so that others, familiar with these
trees, can recognize them ?
Do we know by name or on sight the

136
insects that fill the summer night with A MESSAGE
melody ? Do we know whether the katy- TO GARCIA
did, cricket and locust “sing’’ with mouth,
wings or feet? Do we know what they
feed upon, how long they live, and what
becomes of the tree-toad in winter ?

I wonder what it is to be educated! Here
was a man seemingly sore smitten by the
hand of Fate, and yet whose heart was
filled with sympathy and love. He had no
quarrel with either the world or Destiny.
He was childless that he might love all
children, and that his heart might go out
to every living thing. The trustees of the
school did not take much interest in the
curriculum, I found, so they let the teacher
have his way. A collection of birds’ eggs,
fungi and forest leaves had been made,
and I-was shown outline drawings of all
the leaves in the garden. This idea of
drawing a picture of the object led to a
closer observation, the teacher thought.
And when I found on questioning some of
the children, that the whole school took
semi-weekly rambles through the woods,
and made close studies of the wild birds,
as well as insects, it came to me that this
man, far from any “intellectual center,”’

137
A MESSAGE was working out a pedagogic system that

TO GARCIA science could never improve upon. Now
whether the little man realized this or not
I cannot say, but I do not think he guessed
the greatness of his work and methods.
It was all so simple—he did the thing he
liked to do, and led the children out, and
they followed because they loved the man
and soon loved the things that he loved.
sf Science seeks to simplify. This country
school teacher, doing his own little work
in his own little way, was a true scientist.
And in the presence of such aman should
we not uncover ?
The success of an individual is usually
damnation for his children. Luxury ener-
vates and kills, and this is the reason that
the race has made such slow and painful
progress. All one generation gains is lost
in the next. The great nations have died
off from the earth simply because they
succeeded. The grandeur that was Greece
and the glory that was Rome are but
names writ in water. The splendours of
Spain and Italy are crumbling into dust.
Whether France and England have not
expressed their best is a question—nations
like families die the death and they die

138
because they win # Institutions similar 4 MESSAGE
to the Dewey School are attempts to hold To GARCIA
the ground once gained, and as such they
should command the earnest considera-
tion and respect of every man who knows
history and who realizes that the progress
of civilization has been only a repetition of
the labor of Sisyphus.
We grow strong through doing things
And when one generation comes into pos-
session of the material good that the for-
mer generation has gained, and makes that
fool remark, “I do n’t have to work,’’ it
straightway is stepping on the chute that
gives it a slide to Avernus—and then all
has to be done over again.
I expect to see the day when school
teachers will not be supplied a beautiful
scarcity of everything but hard work.
I expect to see the day when no school
teacher will have more than twenty pupils..
wf I expect to see the day when the hon-
ors and compensation of school teaching
will command the services of the best
and strongest men and women in every
community ¥
I expect to see the day when the conver-
sational method will be supreme, and
139
A MESSAGE teaching will be done practically without

TO GARCIA books—by object lessons, thinking things
out and doing things.
I expect to see the day when overwrought
nerves in teacher or pupil will be un-
known, for joy will take the place of
anxiety, and all the bugaboo of “‘exams’”’
will be consigned to limbo. The evolution
even now is at work, and the time is ripe.
The beauty seen in all school rooms, and
the reaching out for harmony are not in
vain. These things are bearing fruit.
This is the richest country the world has
ever known. We are loaning money to
Europe—and ideas, too. We spend a sum
total in America of two hundred million
dollars a year for the support of our pub-
lic schools. Yet we raised a like sum last
year for war and fighting machines, and
no one lifted an eyebrow, except a few
cranks around Boston and a man in
Nebraska 9
Now suppose that we awaken to the truth
that war is waste, and worse,—that we
stand in no danger and need few soldiers,
and that we would better educate our
boys and girls at home than indulge in
doubtful Old World experiments—then

140
what ! Why, we ’ll reduce our fighting A MESSAGE
force and use the money to increase the TO GARCIA
efficiency of our teaching force. We will
let children grow strong and unfold
through doing things and talking about
them as they do them, and pupils and
teacher will grow strong together. We will
do away with truancy, trampism, hood-
lumism and lessen crime by nine-tenths.
We will not suppress bad or restless boys,
we will divert them and direct their ener-
gies into paths of usefulness. And the day
is coming

For these thoughts are not my thoughts.
They are in the hearts of thousands in
every city, town, hamlet and village—east
or west, north or south—it ’s just God’s
truth

And when enough people arrive at
Truth, and realize that every day is Judg-
ment Day, and the important place is
Here, and the time is Now, then we will
work for a present good, and educate, not
kill; love, not hate; and the men and
women who educate most and best shall
be honored most. The Day is dawning in
the East 9

141
THE BETTER
PART
 

7) AM an Anarchist # A MESSAGE
dy| All good men are An- TO GARCIA
archists.

X(@| All cultured and kindly

04) men; all gentle men; all:

¥q| just men are Anarchists.

¥,|9¢ Jesus was an Anarch-

ist.

A Monarchist is one who believes a mon-

arch should govern. A Plutocrat believes

2 is in the rule of the rich. A Democrat holds

 

 

 

 

that the majority should dictate. An Aris-
tocrat thinks only the wise should decide;

XS
while an Anarchist does not believe in
ey government at all.
Richard Croker is a Monarchist; Mark
\") Hanna is a Plutocrat; Cleveland a Demo-
crat; Cabot Lodge an Aristocrat; William

“A : Penn, Henry D. Thoreau, Bronson Alcott

-

and Walt Whitman were Anarchists.
N\ An Anarchist is one who minds his own
¢ business. An Anarchist does not believe.
. / in sending war ships across wide oceans
(4 to kill brown men, and lay waste rice
oy lo fields, and burn the homes of people who
> are fighting for liberty. An Anarchist does
not drive women with babes at the breast
and other women with babes unborn,

147
1

A MESSAGE children and old men into the jungle to be

TO GARCIA devoured by beasts or fever or fear, or die
of hunger, homeless, unhouseled and
undone ¥
Destruction, violence, ravages and murder
are perpetrated by statute law. Without
law there would be no infernal machines,
no war ships, no dynamite guns, no flat-
nosed bullets, no pointed cartridges, no
bayonets, no policemen’s billies, no night
sticks, no come-alongs, no handcuffs, no
Straight jackets, no dark cells, no gallows,
no prison walls to conceal the infamies
therein inflicted. Without law no little
souls fresh from God would be branded
“illegitimate ”’ indelibly as soon as they
reach Earth. Without law there would be
less liars, no lawyers, fewer hypocrites
and no Devil’s Island.

The Cry of the Little Peoples goes up to God
in vain,

For the world is given over to the cruel sons of
Cain ;

The hand that would bless us is weak, and the
hand that would break us is strong,

And the power of pity is naught but the power
of a song,

The dreams that our fathers dreamed to-day are
laughter and dust,

148
And nothing at all in the world is left for a man A MESSAGE

to trust. TO GARCIA
Let us hope no more, nor dream, nor prophesy,

nor pray,

For the iron world no less will crash on its iron
way ;

And nothing is left but to watch, with a helpless

pitying eye,
The kind old aims for the world, and the kind
old fashions die.

I do not go quite so far as that—I’m a
pessimistic-optimist, Dearie,—I believe
that brutality tends to defeat itself. Prize
fighters die young, gourmands get the
gout, hate hurts worse the man who nurses
it, and all selfishness robs the mind of its
divine insight and cheats the soul that
would know. Mind alone is eternal! He,
watching over Israel, slumbers not nor
sleeps. My faith is great: out of the tran-
sient darkness of the present the shadows
will flee away, and Day will yet dawn.

I am an Anarchist.

No man who believes in force and vio-
lence is an Anarchist. The true Anarchist
decries all influences save those of love
and reason. Ideas are his only arms.
Being an Anarchist I am also a Socialist.
Socialism is the antithesis of Anarchy.

149
A MESSAGE One is the North Pole of Truth, the other

TO GARCIA the South. The Socialist believes in work-
ing for the good of all, while Anarchy is
pure Individualism. I believe in every
man working for the good of self; and in
working for the good of self, he works for
the good of all. To think, to see, to feel,
to know; to deal justly ; to bear all pa-
tiently ; to act quietly ; to speak cheerfully;
to moderate one’s voice—these things will
bring you the highest good. They will
bring you the love of the best and the
esteem of that Sacred Few whose good
opinion alone is worth cultivating. And
further than this, it is the best way you
can serve Society—live your life. The wise
way to benefit humanity is to attend to
your own affairs, and thus give other peo-
ple an opportunity to look after theirs.
If there is any better way to teach virtue
than by practicing it, I do not know it.
Would you make men better—set them
an example x
The Millennium will never come until
governments cease from governing, and
the meddler is at rest. Politicians are men
who volunteer the task of governing us
for a consideration. The political boss is

150
intent on living off your labor. Aman may A MESSAGE
seek an office in order to do away with TO GARCIA
the rascal who now occupies it, but for the
most part office-seekers are rank rogues.
Shakespeare uses the-word politician five
times, and each time it is synonymous
with knave. That is to say, a politician is
one who sacrifices truth and honor for pol-
icy. The highest motive of his life is
expediency—policy. In King Lear it is the
“scurvy politician,’’ who through tattered
clothes beholds small vices, while robes
and furred gowns, for him, cover all.
Europe is divided up between eight great
governments, and in time of peace over
three million men are taken from the ranks
of industry and are under arms, not to
protect the people, but to protect one gov-
ernment from another.
Mankind is governed by the worst—the
strongest example of this is to be seen in
American municipalities, but it is true of
every government 9
We are governed by rogues who hold
their grip upon us by and through statute
law. Were it not for law the people could
protect themselves against these thieves,
but now we are powerless and are robbed
151
A MESSAGE legally # One mild form of coercion these
TO GARCIA rogues resort to, is to call us unpatriotic
when we speak the truth about them. Not
long ago they would have cut off our
heads. The world moves.
Governments cannot be done away with
instantaneously, but progress will come,
as it has in the past, by lessening the num-
ber of laws. We want less governing, and
the Ideal Government will arrive when
there is no government at all.
So long as governments set the example of
killing their enemies, private individuals
will occasionally kill theirs.
So long as men are clubbed, robbed,
imprisoned, disgraced, hanged by the gov-
erning class, just so long will the idea of
violence and brutality be born in the souls
of men ¥
Governments imprison men, and then
hound them when they are released.
Hate springs eternal in the human breast.
sf And hate will never die so long as men
are taken from useful production on the
specious plea of patriotism, and bayonets
gleam in God’s pure sunshine.
And the worst part about making a soldier
of a man is, not that the soldier kills
152
brown men or black men or white men, A MESSAGE
but it is that the soldier loses his own TO GARCIA
soul

I am an Anarchist.

I do not believe in bolts or bars or brutal-
ity. I make my appeal to the Divinity in
men, and they, in some mysterious way,
feeling this, do not fail me.

I send valuable books, without question,
on a postal card request, to every part of
the Earth where the mail can carry them,
and my confidence is never abused. The
Roycroft Shop is never locked, employees
and visitors come and go at pleasure, and
nothing is molested. My library is for
anyone who cares to use it.

Out in the great world women occasion-
ally walk off the dock in the darkness, and
then struggle for life in the deep waters.
Society jigs and ambles by, with a coil of
rope, but before throwing it demands of
the sinking one a certificate of character
from her Pastor or aletter of recommend-
ation from her Sunday School Superin-
tendent, or a testimonial from a School
Principal. Not being able to produce the
document, the struggler is left to go down
to her death in the darkness.

153
A MESSAGE A so-called “bad woman” is usually one

TO GARCIA whose soul is being rent in an awful tra-
vail of prayer to God that she may get
back upon solid footing and lead an honest
life. Believing this, the Roycroft principle
is never to ask for such a preposterous
thing as a letter of recommendation from
anyone. We have two hundred helpers,
and while it must not be imagined by any
means that we operate a reform school
or a charitable institution, I wish to say
that I distinctly and positively refuse to
discriminate between “ good ”’ and “ bad ”’
people. I will not condemn, nor for an in-
stant imagine that it is my duty to resolve
myself into a section of the Day of Judg-
ment ¥
I fix my thought on the good that is in
every soul and make my appeal to that.
And the plan is a wise one, judged by re-
sults. It secures you loyal helpers, worthy
friends, gets the work done, aids digestion
and tends to sleep o’ nights. And I say to
you, that if you have never known the
love, loyalty and integrity of a proscribed
person, you have never known what love,
loyalty and integrity are # I do not be-
lieve in governing by force, or threat, or

154
any other form of coercion. I would not A MESSAGE
arouse in the heart of any of God’s TO GARCIA
creatures a thought of fear, or discord, or
hate, or revenge. I will influence men, if I
can, but it shall be only by aiding them to
think for themselves ; and so mayhap, they,
of their own accord, will choose the better
part—the ways that lead to life and light.

155
THE CRYING
NEED
 

 

humorists in Class B;
e4g| and the troubles of the
4; Mistress are a recurring
4| theme in every club and
4| editorial room.
The wailings of the
Woman who has employed a Cook-lady
form a subdued anvil chorus that hums
the round world over as the earth re-
volves, like the drum-taps of Great Britain
on which the sun never sets—but may.
The Woes of the Mistress! They will
never down—and as a topic for conversa-
tion the Servant Girl question will remain
with us just as long as does the Servant
Girl. I think, however, although I may be
all wrong, that it isthe Mistress that needs
reformation—not the Girl.
The Servant Girl system draws a sharp
line of demarcation between the Girl and
the Mistress. The Mistress fights to keep
the line more deeply etched—the Girl
Strives to obliterate it.
And the Girl will win—and some day I ’Il

 

 

 

 

\ tell you why.

But there is a Chorus of Kickers that
r61

Sp(|HE Servant Girl is a A MESSAGE
jy; Property used by all TO GARCIA
A MESSAGE growls its thunderous bass in a manner

TO GARCIA just as pronounced as the shrill falsetto of
the Amalgamated Mistresses. And yet no
funny man has ever made note of the bass,
while the soprano is worked over-time
The Kick to which I refer is the wail of
every man who operates a store, shop,
factory, bank, railroad or any other insti-
tution that employs many men.

“Ewvery Successful Concern is the result of
a One-Man Power. Co-operation, tech-
nically, is an iridescent dream — things
co-operate because the Man makes them.
He cements them by his will.

But find this Man, and get his confidence
and his weary eyes will look into yours
and the cry of his heart shall echoin your
ears, “O for someone to help me bear this
burden!”’
Then he will tell you of his endless search
for Ability, and of his continual disap-
pointments and thwartings in trying to
get someone to help himself by helping
him
Ability is the one crying need of the hour.
% The banks are bulging with money,
everywhere are men wanting work. The
harvest is ripe.

162
But the Ability to captain the unemployed A MESSAGE
and utilize the capital is lacking—sadly TO GARCIA
lacking 3
In every city there are dozens of five and
ten thousand dollar a year positions to be
filled, but the only applicants are men who
want a job at fifteen dollars a week. Your
man of Ability has a place already.
Yes, Ability is a rare article.
But there is something that is much more
scarce, something finer far, something
rarer than Ability.
It is the Ability to recognize Ability. x
The sternest comment that can be made
against employers as a class lies in the
fact that men of Ability usually succeed
in showing their worth in spite of their
employer, and not with his assistance and
encouragement s¥
If you know the lives of men of Ability,
you know that they discovered their
power, almost without exception, through
accident. Had the accident not occurred
that made the opportunity, the man would
have been practically lost to the world ¥
The experience of Tom Potter, the tele-
graph operator, at an obscure little way
station, is truth painted large. That fearful
163
Z
A MESSAGE night, when most of the wires were down
TO GARCIA and a passenger train went through the
bridge, gave Tom Potter the opportunity
of discovering himself. He took charge of
the dead, cared for the wounded, settled
fifty claims—drawing drafts on the com-
pany—burned the last vestige of the
wreck, sunk the waste iron in the river
and repaired the bridge before the Super-
intendent arrived on the spot.
“Who gave you authority to do all this? ”’
demanded the Superintendent.
“‘ Nobody,”’ said Tom, “I assumed the
authority.”’
The next month Tom Potter’s salary was
$5,000 a year, and in three years he was
making ten times this, simply because he
could get other men to do things.
Why wait for an accident to discover
Tom Potter? Let us set traps for Tom
Potter, and lie in wait for him. Perhaps
Tom Potter is just around the corner,
across the street, in the next room, or at
our elbow!
I knowa man who roamed the woods and
fields for thirty years and never found an
Indian arrow. One day he began to think
“arrow,” and stepping out of his doorway
164
he picked one up. Since then he has col- A MESSAGE
lected a bushel. TO GARCIA
Suppose we cease wailing about incom-
petence, sleepy indifference and slip-shod
“help”? that watches the clock. These
things exist—let us Aispose of the subject
by admitting it, and then emphasize the
fact that freckled farmer boys come out
of the West and East and often go to the
front and do things in a masterly way ¥
There is one name that stands out in his-
tory like a beacon light after all these
twenty-five hundred years have passed,
just because the man had the sublime
Genius of discovering Ability.
That man is Pericles.
Pericles made Athens.
And to-day the very dust of the streets of
Athens is being sifted and searched for
relics and remnants of the things made by
people who were captained’ by men of
Ability who were discovered by Pericles.
vf There is little competition in this line of
discovering Ability. We sit down and
wail because Ability does not come our
way %F ;
Let us think “ Ability’’ and possibly we
can jostle Pericles there on his pedestal,
165
A MESSAGE where he has stood for over a score of
TO GARCIA centuries—the man with a supreme Gen-
ius for recognizing Ability # Hail to thee,
Pericles, and hail to thee, Great Unknown,
who shall ae successfully imitate him!

 

166
SO HERE ENDETH THE GOODLY BOOK
ENTITLED ‘‘A MESSAGE TO GARCIA AND
THIRTEEN OTHER THINGS,” AS WRIT-
TEN BY FRA ELBERTUS, AND DONEINTO

PRINT BY THE ROYCROFTERS AT THEIR
SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST AURORA gf
 

 

   
   
    

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