Class 3i 
 
 a 
 
 Book .1? 7 
 
 xn ^? 
 
 Copyright N° c_^^ ^; 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Archive 
 in 2011 witii funding from 
 Tine Library of Congress 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/adventuresincommOOcran 
 
ADVENTURES IN COMMON SENSE 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 JUST HUMAN $i.oonet 
 
 FOOTNOTES TO LIFE, $i.oonet 
 
 WAR and WORLD 
 GOVERNMENT . . . $i.oonet 
 
 JOHN LANE COMPANY, NEW YORK 
 
ADVENTURES 
 
 IN COMMON SENSE 
 
 By dr. frank CRANE ■ 
 
 Author of "Just Human," 
 
 "Footnotes to Life," 
 
 "War and World Government,"Etc. 
 
 NEW YORK /. /. JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 MCMXVI /. ,-. /. /. ,-. .-. .-. .*. /. 
 
4 
 
 0<^' A^ > ^ 
 
 Copyright, 1916, 
 By JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 
 V 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little & Ives Company 
 
 New York, U. S. A. 
 
 APR 
 
 3 1916 
 
 ^Cl,A427671 '■;^,v 
 
TO 
 
 JOHN H. PATTERSON 
 OF DAYTON 
 
 THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
 IN EECOGNITION OF A HELPFUL FRIENDSHIP 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 By Way of Introduction I Tell My Own Adven- 
 ture EST Common Sense 13 
 
 The Smile of La Joconde 22 
 
 A Recipe for Happiness 26 
 
 The Secret of Permanent Pleasure ... 29 
 
 Spanking Father . 33 
 
 Things 36 
 
 The Horror of Jewels 39 
 
 In Paris 42 
 
 Flapdoodle 45 
 
 Strange! 48 
 
 What's the Matter With Art? 51 
 
 The American Penal System 53 
 
 In Praise of Laziness 56 
 
 The Ladies' Card Game 59 
 
 Love and Wisdom 61 
 
 The Sick Room 64 
 
 Up Against It 67 
 
 The Kitchen 70 
 
 Superfluous Energy 73 
 
 Why Was I Born? 76 
 
 The Outpopulating Power 79 
 
 Intelligent Optimism 82 
 
 The Scrap Pile 85 
 
 Aischrolatreia 88 
 
 7 
 
PAGE 
 
 The Mirth Cure 91 
 
 Discarded Things 95 
 
 The Baptism 98 
 
 The Cry oe the Weary loi 
 
 The Friend 104 
 
 The Stairway 107 
 
 The Cage 109 
 
 The Blessing 112 
 
 The City and Privacy 115 
 
 A Wealthy Man 118 
 
 The Fireplace 121 
 
 The Sand Pile 124 
 
 Music . 127 
 
 No Need op Charm 130 
 
 The Practice of Greatness by Words . . . 132 
 
 What We Can Never Know 135 
 
 "And No One Shall Work For Money" . . 138 
 
 The School Yard 141 
 
 The Curse of Poverty 144 
 
 What is Best? 147 
 
 A Christmas Card . 150 
 
 What is a Woman to Do? 152 
 
 Should Girls Pay? 155 
 
 Over and Over Forever 158 
 
 A Successful Woman 161 
 
 Fried Chicken 164 
 
 Learn Thanksgiving from the Have-nots . . 167 
 
 George Washington, Gentleman 170 
 
 Freedom and Knowledge for Women . . . 174 
 
 The Written Examination 177 
 
 There Are Others 180 
 
 Real Greatness 183 
 
 8 
 
PAGE 
 
 Happy Drugs . i86 
 
 The Unfrocked 189 
 
 Meaning op the Woman Movement . . . . 191 
 
 Theory and Practice in Bringing Up Children 194 
 
 Unnoted Heroism 197 
 
 Housework 200 
 
 Fear Kills Talk 203 
 
 Lincoln, Democrat, Servant of All'. . , . 206 
 
 A $5,000 Flea 209 
 
 Shall She Tell Him? . 212 
 
 The Undying Credulities 215 
 
 The Unbeliever 218 
 
 When the World Woke Up 221 
 
 The Unknown Future 224 
 
 The New Nobility 227 
 
 Word Pictures 230 
 
 Dancing 233 
 
 The Pond of Vanoise 235 
 
 A Wonderful Sinner 237 
 
 Mandrakes and Modernism 240 
 
 New Year's Resolutions 244 
 
 An Open Letter to Santa Claus .... 247 
 
 Shakespeare 250 
 
 The Anonymous Letter 252 
 
 Golden Rod 254 
 
 9 
 
ADVENTURES IN COMMON SENSE 
 
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION I TELL MY 
 OWN ADVENTURE IN COMMON SENSE 
 
 In 1909 I was pastor of the Union Congre- 
 gational Church at Worcester, Massachusetts. 
 
 It was a strong Church. My relations with 
 the people were delightful. My salary was good, 
 as preachers' salaries go. I was practically set- 
 tled for life, as a New England Church rarely 
 dismisses its pastor. 
 
 In the midst of this comfortable career I sud- 
 denly resigned. For these reasons: 
 
 My position was too secure. It was not pre- 
 carious enough. Unless one is a bit uncertain 
 where his daily bread is coming from he lacks 
 the atmosphere of hazard necessary if one is to 
 keep young. I was drifting into the horrible 
 stagnation of the endowed class. I was forty- 
 eight. I wanted to get out into the arena and 
 wrestle with men, else I felt that my mental and 
 spiritual muscles would stiffen. I longed to hunt 
 for work, and was tired of having employment 
 assured me. 
 
 In other words I wanted Adventure. I wanted 
 the Open Road, and was tired of the House. 
 
 There was no friction with my people. I loved 
 13 
 
them and they gave every indication of liking me. 
 
 I had no theological or credal difficulties. My 
 church allowed me entire intellectual freedom; 
 in fact, they were as progressive and independent 
 in thought as I. 
 
 And there was a deeper reason for my stepping 
 out of a regular pulpit. No matter how excellent 
 a congregation may be, it is limited; the very 
 word "Church" means "called out," and implies 
 exclusiveness. But in me there had grown a 
 passion for the multitude. I realized that my 
 Maker had intended me for an Outsider. All 
 the while that I sat in my study or stood in my 
 pulpit I was yearning for the great, unherded 
 mass of men and women who never came to my 
 Church, many of them to no Church at all. 
 Those were my people. My message was to 
 them, not to the elect. 
 
 I do not want to be taken as criticizing the 
 Church. I am persuaded it is the best place for 
 most preachers to work. All I say is that my 
 feeling forced me out into the highway and mar- 
 ket. 
 
 It took me forty-eight years to come to my- 
 self, but finally I found out where I belonged. 
 
 So I said to my wife : "I want to quit. I want 
 to get out and play with the boys in the alley. 
 Above all I want to write for the Newspapers. 
 Of course, preaching is all I know, but I believe 
 the best place to preach is in the columns of the 
 daily press. Jesus was not in the Temple; He 
 
 14 
 
was by the roadside; He went down to where 
 humanity was and talked there. I want to try 
 that once before I die. 
 
 "Our children are now grown up and through 
 school. We are foot-loose. Let us take to the 
 open, and see what happens." 
 
 The idea appealed to her. I resigned. I had 
 no money. Preachers rarely save money. So I 
 borrowed $i,6oo on my life insurance, and we 
 began our wanderings by going by water to Chi- 
 cago, up the Hudson, down the St. Lawrence, 
 and through the Great Lakes. 
 
 I began to infest the Chicago Newspapers. I 
 found out that while I desired to write for the 
 newspapers I was quite alone in my desire. The 
 editors laughed at me. "Why," they said, "we 
 can get preaching stuff by the yard — for nothing. 
 Nobody reads it. We want news." 
 
 I argued with them. "You are mistaken. Hu- 
 man nature is the same as it has always been, 
 and people have always liked to be preached to. 
 The only trouble is that nobody has offered 
 preaching of the right kind to the newspapers. 
 Mine is the right kind. Try it." 
 
 At last Leigh Reilly, then editor of the Chi- 
 cago Evening Post, fell. He accepted my pro- 
 posal to run a stickful or two on his editorial 
 page, under the title, "The Philosopher's Cor- 
 ner." For this I received one dollar a day, but 
 that was nothing compared to the immense bliss 
 and rapture I received from seeing my pet notion 
 
 15 
 
exploited at last. I never expect to be as happy 
 again as I was at seeing my name in the Post. 
 
 It is pleasant to feel the response of an audi- 
 ence to the spoken word, and this is the spiritual 
 reward of the public speaker. But I now tasted 
 the delight of seeing my writing in print, and the 
 joy of it was more than that of the orator. 
 
 About six months I lasted on the Post, at that 
 time the high-brow paper of Chicago. Then the 
 owner fired me, fearing probably that there must 
 be something shady about any man that had quit 
 preaching. An ex-preacher is a suspicious char- 
 acter, I discovered. The average mind reasons: 
 "There must have been something wrong or he 
 would not have left the pulpit." If he left a 
 good salary also, the suspicion hardens to a cer- 
 tainty. I suppose that the proprietor feared that 
 if I should suddenly get drunk, or run off with my 
 neighbor's wife, or do some other ex-ministerial 
 high-jinks, the elegant and refined readers of the 
 Post would be down on him for carrying my name 
 on his pages. 
 
 Anyway, I was gently dismissed, though Reilly 
 assured me that he, and all the boys around the 
 office, liked the stuff. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, I had received a letter 
 from Edward Bok, of the Ladies' Home Journal, 
 enclosing a clipping from my Philosopher's Cor- 
 ner in the Post, and asking me whether I did that 
 just once, by accident, or whether I could do it 
 again, and regularly. I sat down and wrote him 
 
 i6 
 
twenty little articles of the kind he had noticed, 
 and sent them to him and said that the best way 
 to answer his question was to submit specimens. 
 
 For the benefit of struggling young authors, 
 seeking for the key to success, I may state a curi- 
 ous element of this correspondence. Each of my 
 twenty articles was on a separate sheet. Some of 
 the sheets were pink and some white. Mr. Bok 
 accepted all those that were pink. This ranks 
 about on a par with most hints to aspiring 
 authors. 
 
 Mr. Bok ran a page of my matter for several 
 months. I had also broken into the Chicago Trib- 
 une, and George Matthew Adams was using a 
 daily brief article in his syndicate. The Hearst 
 papers were buying some at my counter. 
 
 I was now feeling so rich that I went to Europe 
 and spent a year or so living in Rome, Paris and 
 London, talking with common folks and learning 
 their philosophy. 
 
 The syndicate of The Associated Newspapers 
 was formed about this time, consisting of some 
 forty newspapers throughout the United States 
 and Canada, and I became a writer for them, a 
 position I yet hold. 
 
 My experiment has succeeded. I will tell 
 why. 
 
 At first I asked a literary friend to write this 
 introduction. He replied, "I will do so with 
 pleasure. But why don't you do it yourself? 
 What I would write would be only the usual ap- 
 
 17 
 
preclatlon of one author by another, and would 
 interest readers but sHghtly. Tell your story 
 yourself and people will read it. You know more 
 about yourself than any one else knows." 
 
 Hence this blurb. 
 
 Why have I succeeded in getting people to read 
 my articles and inducing newspapers to pay for 
 them? 
 
 My opinion has changed. It now seems to me 
 that it is not so much the Sermon people want, 
 as it is the Essay. 
 
 The Essay had finally achieved the distinction 
 of being praised by all and read by none. It had 
 become a highly developed literary ornament. A 
 few persons in Boston, and a few Brahmans else- 
 where, read Essays. The vast commons, never. 
 
 The first thing I did to the Essay was to make 
 it short. I perceived that the average Intelligence 
 wanted one point, not a dozen. A man will seize 
 one idea and devour It with relish; overload his 
 plate and you kill his appetite. 
 
 People like Ideas, but they like them a la carte 
 and not table d'hote. 
 
 The old-fashioned Essay was a conglomerate 
 of many Ideas. JVer zu viel will geht oft leer aus. 
 
 I took one point, sharpened it and drove It 
 home. I resisted the ecclesiastical temptation to 
 firstly and tenthly. As a result, the reader, first 
 seeing that it wasn't very long, tackled it. He 
 remembered it. He was tempted to cut it out and 
 carry it in his pocketbook. 
 
 1 8 
 
Second, I realized that the most Interesting 
 things In the world are the old things and the 
 common things. Hence I did not strain after the 
 outlandish and the unusual, In the selection of 
 themes, but went Into the living-room, bed-room 
 and kitchen of the human heart, and spoke of 
 what I saw there. I tried to tell the housewife 
 what a wonderful thing her work-basket Is, and 
 how It is related to the spheres and to her ever- 
 lasting soul; to show the cook the divine relation 
 of dishwashing to life; to make the business man 
 see the River of God running through his office; 
 and to reveal to the shop girl that her tears and 
 laughter are just as real and as rich In human 
 quality as the emotions of duchesses and famous 
 actresses. 
 
 I found among the undistinguished and the un- 
 elect a mine of human gold. 
 
 Furthermore I did not take my wares to the 
 kings and nobles of literature, to the stately Quar- 
 terlies and other magazines that give tone to the 
 library table but lie uncut and unread. Having 
 stuff for the millions I went with It to the news- 
 papers, which the millions read. Having a pas- 
 sion for democracy I took the greatest of all 
 democratic vehicles, the newspaper, which Is read 
 by millionaire and hobo, fat and rich gentlemen 
 and lean and hungry, fine ladies and servant girls, 
 read by the President and by the peddler. 
 
 I found that the same ideas that are preached 
 from pulpits to the chosen few, and lectured on by 
 
 19 
 
professors to select classes, and favored by intel- 
 lectuals generally, are equally welcomed by com- 
 mon folks, only they want it unaffected and dis- 
 infected. They, too, love problems of conscience 
 and conduct, of God and destiny, of love and mys- 
 tery. They do not, however, care for literary 
 posing, for the antics of conventional culture, nor 
 for the conceit of technical phraseology. 
 
 Hence I once for all renounced all ambition 
 toward fine writing. I tried to say my say in the 
 clearest, fewest words possible. I went straight 
 at my point and quit when I had got done. 
 
 I found out that when one writes simply and 
 only to be understood, in entire disregard of rules 
 of art, without stumbling over his medium, one 
 writes entertainingly. 
 
 I have taken the dead Essay and made it a 
 living thing. I have taken the Essay out of its 
 glass coffin in the library and put it on the office 
 desk, on the woman's work-table, and in the la- 
 borer's pocket. 
 
 , This I have done without using the ready-made 
 platform of the preacher, the prestige of a famous 
 name, the antics of the mountebank or the salac- 
 ity of the border-bands of literature. 
 
 My name meant nothing to readers. What I 
 said was read for its own sake. 
 
 To sum up, my conviction was and is that the 
 Short Idea, or Essay, can be made as interesting 
 as the Short Story. This I did, because I believed 
 it; this I believe, because I did it. 
 
 20 
 
I do not know whether these Essays are good 
 literature or not. Only to-day they are asked for, 
 paid for and read. To-morrow the critics will 
 tell you why. Also they will tell you why they 
 should not have succeeded. 
 
 All I do here Is to tell you why and how they 
 were written. I ought to know, for I wrote them 
 myself. 
 
 At any rate, here Is a bookful of them, and the 
 gentle reader may judge for himself. 
 
 Frank Crane 
 
 21 
 
THE SMILE OF LA JOCONDE 
 
 When Leonardo's Mona Lisa finally got back 
 to her place upon the walls of the Louvre all the 
 world came to see her — at least on the first day 
 of her home-coming some twenty thousand 
 trooped by to have a look at the most famous of 
 paintings. 
 
 And there, with those placid hands upon her 
 lap, she sat in her frame, regarding the passers- 
 by with her amused and superior smile, very much 
 as you would look upon the antics of your pet 
 kitten. 
 
 "Why worry?" she seemed to say. "Here I 
 am, as you see. I came back, of course, since it Is 
 written. It was destiny. All of us but follow our 
 programme. I am the original predestinarian. 
 I am the cheerful fatalist. Men and women 
 struggle and fume, but always by and by they do 
 what is set down for them to do, in the book of 
 fate. It is to smile ! 
 
 "I am the companion of Omar Khayyam. For 
 I am the Looker-On. I do not mingle with the 
 energies of men. I am the Bystander. 
 
 "My Maker was the Many-Minded One. He 
 was a Philosopher. Philosophy is aloofness. I 
 
 22 
 
am the daughter of the Aloof, Leonardo smiled 
 at men In his heart, and made me that I might 
 smile at them forever. 
 
 "I am the Eternal Feminine. I do not labor. 
 I sit. I judge. I smile. 
 
 "I know, hence I am amused. I am in the se- 
 cret of things, and that is always rather funny ; it 
 is so different from the appearance of things. 
 
 "In the core of wisdom is laughter. In the se- 
 cret springs of history there is grim humor. 
 Underneath the intense activities, the fierce rival- 
 ries, the burning passions of men, back of the de- 
 bates of senates, the thunder of wars, the display 
 of wealth, and the earnestness of reformers, there 
 is something that makes me smile. I cannot tell 
 you what It Is. You would have to be a Leonardo 
 to understand. 
 
 "Wisdom is Jocund as it nears Perfection. 
 God is Glad. 
 
 "This at least I can hint to you. You are fret- 
 ting over nothing at all. The universe is Kind. 
 It means well by man. When you get through 
 with life, and pass through revealing death, and 
 see what It all means, the first thing you will do 
 will be to have a good laugh. 
 
 "Tragedy is the greatest of humbugs. I have 
 peeped behind the veil. I know that every Jack 
 will have his Jill, every wrong be righted, and the 
 Short Story called Life will have a happy ending. 
 
 "I have seen the end of the world. It is pleas- 
 ant. That is why all through the Revolution and 
 
 23 
 
/ 
 Tyranny, the flow and ebb of progress, Louis the/ 
 Luxurious, and Robespierre the Terrible, I hav6 
 sat so contented and unruffled. 
 
 "I smiled to see how long it took men to dis- 
 cover Gravitation, Steam, Electricity, Evolution, 
 Democracy. The race is so stupid, so awkward, 
 and amusing. 
 
 "I am Nature. Look at me and you see how 
 self-satisfied and smiling Nature goes about her 
 business. 
 
 "I am Mankind, playing, procreating, joking, 
 planting trees, building houses, and going away. 
 
 "I am Death, which is the most delightful sur- 
 prise, and not at all the horrible catastrophe you 
 fancy. 
 
 "I am Everything and Everybody. Some 
 things and some people are morbid and vicious, 
 but, in the All, cheer predominates. 
 
 "I am in the Secret of God, and the Secret of 
 God is — a smile. 
 
 "Men take themselves so seriously. They 
 think they do things. In reality they are leaves 
 upon the streams, clouds in the sky, motes in the 
 sunbeam. They are but chess-men. He who 
 moves is God, who smiles. 
 
 "I am the Soul of kittens that play with their 
 tails, of puppies that frisk, of little lambs that 
 gambol, of all things newborn. I am Youth for- 
 ever recurrent. 
 
 "If I could speak I should utter the greatest 
 words ever spoken, and recall to you that the 
 
 24 
 
world's Master said : *I am the Resurrection and 
 the Life.' " 
 
 It is said that the crowd that viewed Mona Lisa 
 that day were of "a light gayety, with a decided 
 tendency to crack jokes." Even the police guard- 
 ing her were smiling. 
 
 The incomparable Leonardo, full of strange 
 and cunning secrets, embodied his whole wisdom 
 in a Smile, that it might infect the world. 
 
 25 
 
A RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 It is worth while to try any recipe for happi- 
 ness. 
 
 Here is one that at least is to be commended 
 for its simplicity and for the fact that it is within 
 the reach of all. 
 
 It is to rid yourself of your notion of your 
 Rights. 
 
 Think a bit, and you will see that the greater 
 part of all the indignities, chagrins, and humilia- 
 tions you have had to endure arise from certain 
 ideas you entertain about what is Due you. 
 
 If you can knead your mind about until you 
 come to the conclusion that Nothing At All 
 is due you, happiness is pretty sure to come in and 
 take permanent lodgings in your heart. 
 
 Most of us have a contempt for manipulating 
 our minds to suit the inevitable, and an admira- 
 tion for those of us who can coerce events to suit 
 their desires. 
 
 But, for instance, suppose, when you awake in 
 the morning, before you get out of bed to do your 
 gymnastics, you do a little mental exercise. Ask 
 yourself: "Why should any one love me? Why 
 should I be sought, admired, or praised? What 
 
 26 
 
right have I to health or wealth? Others suffer, 
 why should I be happy? I have no claims on the 
 universe, so if anything good comes my way to- 
 day I shall consider myself in luck." 
 
 Before you get up clean out of your mind every 
 feeling of your Rights, and see what kind of a 
 day you will have. 
 
 Don't try for more than one day, at first, for 
 it will tax your forces. 
 
 Old habits of thought will bring constant sug- 
 gestions, that you are being abused, imposed 
 upon, oppressed and devoured. Be patient. Put 
 these ideas away. Try, just one day, to act on the 
 theory that you have no rights at all. 
 
 Expect no gratitude when you help the poor. 
 Look for no recognition when you accommodate 
 a friend. Give up your seat in the crowded car. 
 Step back and wait for others at the theatre box 
 office. Require no attention from your servants, 
 your children, or your wife. Be a door-mat — it's 
 only for one day. 
 
 By night you may be disgusted with the experi- 
 ment. 
 
 And yet, reflect ! Have not all the best things 
 in life come to you over your shoulder, and have 
 not the great, miseries of your life been due to 
 not getting things you thought you ought to have, 
 things you strived for? 
 
 Remember the simple and lively emotions 
 caused by the unexpected stroke of luck, by the 
 favor of some one from whom you did not look 
 
 27 
 
for it, by the love shown you that you did not 
 dream of, by beautiful sights, pleasant odors, de- 
 lightful foods, as well as other surprises of sym- 
 pathy, regard, and appreciation that fell to you as 
 bolts from a clear sky. 
 
 The best of our treasures came to us unde- 
 served. 
 
 The joys that know no yesterdays are all sur- 
 plus. We never earned them. 
 
 Health is nature's largess. 
 
 True love is the Gift of an overbrimming 
 heart. The man who thinks he Deserves the 
 love of a good woman, and the worship of little 
 children, ought to be kicked. 
 
 In its higher plane, life is not commercial; it Is 
 not buying for a price; it is not a realm of law, 
 except the mystic law of love. Thank God! we 
 do Not get our just deserts. 
 
 To get the taste of life we must approach It as 
 a beggar at the king's court. If we are despised, 
 what more natural? If we are feasted, what a 
 marvel ? 
 
 Rather, let us say that none of us can get the 
 rich, sweet flavor of life unless he has the spirit in 
 him of a little child. 
 
 Verily, verily, he that cannot be changed and 
 become as a little child shall never know at all 
 how good a thing It is to live. 
 
 28 
 
THE SECRET OF PERMANENT 
 PLEASURE 
 
 How can I get the most out of life? 
 
 How can I keep from having that sense of dis- 
 satisfaction from coming to bed with me of 
 nights? 
 
 How can I have, for my visitor at the close of 
 day, that feeling of content, that the gone twenty- 
 four hours were worth while? 
 
 Tell me that. Tell me a cure for my disgust 
 of self, for that ash-taste of self-consciousness, 
 for that irritation in reflection, for that perpetual 
 turning to to-morrow in order to drown the bit- 
 terness of to-day, as a fool turns to his cups to 
 forget his life-weariness. 
 
 Well, this hint may help: The Secret of 
 Permanent Pleasure Lies in Cultivating 
 Ever Higher Forms of Pleasure. 
 
 The savage eats raw flesh, the civilized man 
 wants it cooked, the more civilized man likes it 
 well cooked. 
 
 The value of culture is the refinement of wants. 
 
 In a dumb, silly way the world perceives this, 
 and tries to show superiority in forms of pleasure 
 that are unusual, expensive, and exclusive. It 
 
 29 
 
dines at tawdry hotels, wears costly jewels, preens 
 itself in fine clothes and wraps itself in rich furs. 
 
 This is the twisted, perverted notion of what 
 is a great truth. 
 
 All luxury and extravagance soon become 
 coarse and degrading to real souls. The Upper 
 Ten get around to the crassness of life of the 
 Submerged Tenth. 
 
 They are victims of the Great Delusion. 
 
 The Great Delusion is that it is Complexity that 
 Indicates higher life; whereas it is Simplicity, de- 
 veloping into ever greater Fineness (Refinement). 
 
 The roads to more permanent pleasures are 
 these: Religion, Philosophy, Love, Art, Crafts- 
 manship and Nature, 
 
 By Religion I mean a reverent habit of mind, a 
 sense of wonder and mystery, a realization that 
 we live in a world of spiritual meanings. Unless 
 you can attain to this your life must always be 
 mean and hard. Of course, I refer to no religious 
 institution, but to that religious feeling that has 
 always marked great lives. 
 
 By Philosophy I mean that you must have some 
 sort of programme for your life. So long as 
 events to you are but a disordered mess of "hap- 
 penings" you will be miserable; the football of 
 fate. You must have certain foundation princi- 
 ples, some settled theory of life that will bring 
 order out of chaos. 
 
 By Love I mean that you must have the power 
 to idealize your crude instincts. Lust sates, sick- 
 
 30 
 
ens, wearies. Love, which Is the idealization of 
 passion, is eternal, ever fresh. 
 
 By Art I mean the expression of the higher 
 powers of the mind in creating beautiful things. 
 When you learn to love a Greek Temple more 
 than the gingerbread house of a New York mil- 
 lionaire, a painting by Israels or Millet more than 
 a chromo, the wit of Charles Lamb more than that 
 of Joe Miller, the charm of Michelangelo's 
 "Moses" more than the huge parlor-clock monu- 
 ments in some of our parks, a Beethoven quartet 
 more than cabaret music, a story by Hawthorne 
 more than one of the modern sex-soaked or ad- 
 venture-choked romances, such a play as Barrie's 
 "The Admirable Crichton" more than a cheap 
 and loud melodrama, and, in general, all things 
 that have the quietness of power, the self-restraint 
 of genius and the subtlety of intellectual vision, 
 then you have come considerably toward the point 
 where your Pleasures Are More Permanent 
 and have less nauseating dregs. 
 
 By Craftsmanship I mean that skill that trans- 
 forms work from drudgery to enchantment. 
 
 And by the love of Nature I mean that patient 
 study of, and eventual delight in, the marvellous 
 design, perfection and handicraft exhibited by 
 everything that grows, by everything the Creator 
 has made. 
 
 The Secret of Permanent Pleasure will 
 be found by any one who will make it his life 
 
 31 
 
business to seek his satisfaction in these six 
 sources. 
 
 Thus you may come to that rational Delight 
 IN Your Own Thoughts, such as Robert 
 Bridges, the new laureate of England, expresses : 
 
 "My thoughts swim like a ship, that with the weight 
 Of her rich burden sleeps on the infinite seas 
 Becalm'd and cannot stir her golden freight." 
 
SPANKING FATHER 
 
 The country was agitated some days ago by 
 the news of a gentleman from Indiana, a preacher, 
 too, who had deemed it needful to spank his pa. 
 
 Although I have enrolled my name on the list 
 of them who do not believe in spanking children, 
 and have thereto set down many and cogent argu- 
 ments, I do not wish to be taken as being opposed 
 to spanking per se. 
 
 Spanking is a most wholesome and health-giv- 
 ing exercise, and is not without its mental and 
 moral advantageous by-products. 
 
 Fathers often need it, and they are fortunate 
 if they have sons husky enough to give them 
 what they are suffering for. 
 
 Why, also, when innumerable children are be- 
 ing daily pounded a posteriori and nobody seems 
 to think it's anybody's business to interfere, 
 should all this hullabaloo arise when one child 
 proceeds to turn the tables and castigate dad a 
 bit? What are we coming to? Where is our 
 personal liberty? Where the inviolability of 
 family secrets? What next? 
 
 There are a lot of people who need spanking. 
 Let me call a few to your mind. 
 
 33 
 
There is the college youth putting in his nights 
 and days in acquiring a set of ruinous habits and 
 cultivating an assortment of snob notions, when 
 he ought to be trying to learn something in re- 
 turn for the money his parents are advancing. He 
 is going to be a gilded social bonehead, simply 
 because there Is no proper official to turn him over 
 the knee and whale some sense into him. 
 
 There is the down-and-outer, the man who 
 thinks the world is against him, who can't try 
 again, and who believes there is nothing now left 
 for him but to go out into the garden and eat 
 worms. There's no use talking to him. The 
 only remedy for his case Is a tough hickory lath 
 and a strong right arm. 
 
 There are the women who are so sorry for 
 themselves, who have every disease they hear of, 
 whose complaining whine is as the unceasing No- 
 vember rain upon the window. Of course we 
 would not strike a woman; there ought to be a 
 spanking machine. 
 
 Indeed, there Is the whole army of self-pity; 
 the weepers who rule their husbands by "the tyr- 
 anny of tears"; the naggers, human mosquitoes, 
 and "the female of the species is more deadly 
 than the male"; the drunken loafers who "can't" 
 quit making beasts of themselves; the gentlemen 
 content to let their wives earn the living; the 
 dudes and mashers who infest pubhc ways, whose 
 eyes Insult every decent woman passing; the lacka- 
 daisical daughters who lounge about reading nov- 
 
 34 
 
els or manicuring their nails while mother washes 
 the dishes ; the egoist perky as a bantam rooster, 
 and as pin-headed; and the whole dawdling set of 
 idlers, who never dream of doing any of the 
 world's work, are content to amuse themselves 
 spending money other people have earned, and 
 who, strange to say, look upon themselves as the 
 superior class. 
 
 These to the shingle and the slipper! Let us 
 have no "cruel and unusual" punishment, not the 
 boot nor the wheel nor the Maiden of Nurem- 
 berg! No. Turn them gently up, and with the 
 hairbrush or other handy instrument, and upon 
 the place the Creator especially designed for cor- 
 rection unto the soul's health — soak 'em! 
 
 The question may arise. Who is going to de- 
 cide which individuals are to be spanked? The 
 answer is simple. If no one has any other nomi- 
 nation to offer, I will decide. 
 
 35. 
 
THINGS 
 
 Miss Mathilda Tommet of Milwaukee left 
 a will the other day eight and one-half feet long, 
 written in her own hand on sheets of paper pasted 
 together. In it she bequeathed to one relative 
 "my best bedspread and one-half of my best tow- 
 els" ; to another a high-backed chair, admonishing 
 her executors to "be sure to take the one standing 
 on the north side of the sideboard" ; to another 
 her chickens and feed; while vegetables, fruit, 
 pickles, a pail of lard, and "father's old clock" 
 go to another, and to her dearest enemy a pair of 
 old shoestrings. 
 
 Then there was Thoreau, who in his house by 
 Walden Pond would have no furniture; he found 
 a stone once which he fancied, and kept awhile, 
 but soon threw it away, as he found it had to be 
 dusted. 
 
 One of the greatest tyrannies of life is 
 Things. 
 
 The most common form ;of insanity is the 
 mania to Own. 
 
 One of the first acts of a person who comes into 
 money is to load himself down with a pile of 
 rubbish that makes his life a fret and his death- 
 bed terrible. 
 
 36 
 
The very rich collect. They get together 
 spoons, canes, pictures, vases, pitchers, books, or 
 marbles. When there is no more room for them 
 in the house they build a wing and pack it full. 
 
 I knew a man who had $20,000 worth of old 
 postage stamps locked up in a safety deposit 
 vault. 
 
 I knew an old woman who never travelled, 
 although she longed to travel and had plenty of 
 means, because she was afraid her parlor carpet 
 and her blue china dishes would not properly be 
 taken care of. 
 
 The stores are heaped up with Things. The 
 most skilful men are employed to persuade people 
 to buy Things for which they have no earthly 
 use. 
 
 Every home contains sets of books that were 
 bought at a high rate, and that have stood for 
 years without a soul looking into them. 
 
 American living rooms are as cluttered as 
 Westminster Abbey. Every mantel is loaded with 
 junk. The walls are covered with pictures, most 
 of them bad. The floors are so thick with chairs 
 and superfluous stands and tables that few can 
 wind their way through them by day and none by 
 night. 
 
 Things, things, things! Bedrooms are full of 
 them, closets heaped with them, the attic is choked 
 with them, the woodshed and barn are running 
 over. 
 
 When we go away on vacations we take trunks 
 
 37 
 
full of things. When we go to Europe also we 
 find that baggage is the plague of our life. 
 
 It is a relief to turn to the books of the Hindus 
 and read: 
 
 "Even if they have longer remained with us, 
 the objects of sense are sure to vanish. Why, 
 then, not forsake them ourselves? If they pass 
 away by themselves they cause the greatest pain 
 to the mind, but if we forsake them ourselves they 
 cause endless happiness and peace." 
 
 And in another Oriental book we find this 
 searching word: 
 
 "For a man's life consisteth not in the abun- 
 dance of Things which he possesseth." 
 
 38 
 
THE HORROR OF JEWELS 
 
 You have read de Maupassant's story "The 
 Diamond Necklace"? It tells of a poor and 
 beautiful young wife who borrowed of a rich 
 friend whom she had known In her school days a 
 string of diamonds to wear to a ball. She lost 
 the trinket. Her husband borrowed a great sum 
 of money, had the necklace duplicated by a jewel- 
 ler, and gave It to the rich woman, to avoid the 
 charge of theft. The poor couple worked years 
 to pay off the debt. The wretched woman, re- 
 duced to drudgery, lost all her beauty; became 
 wrinkled, bent, old before her time. One day she 
 met by chance her wealthy friend. They spoke 
 of the necklace. The poor woman told the truth 
 about her experience. The rich woman said It 
 was too bad — for the necklace was but paste. 
 
 The tale Is an artistic expression of what might 
 be called The Horror of Jewels. 
 
 Almost every precious stone of great value, al- 
 most every $20,000 rope of pearls, or $1,000 
 solitaire diamond, or extraordinary ruby, has a 
 history that runs to the accompaniment of vanity, 
 envy, lust, theft, hate, and murder. Not one has 
 produced any speck of real love or pure peace 
 of mind. 
 
 39 
 
The Devil probably wears a million-dollar dia- 
 mond ring. And his wife jewels running into the 
 billions. They ought to. 
 
 The desire to own, wear, or collect gems of 
 fabulous value is akin to the lowest cravings of 
 which human beings are capable. It is an adver- 
 tisement of offensive pride. It is provocative of 
 unhappiness. 
 
 Precious gems are the seeds of those passions 
 that destroy content. 
 
 To display them marks a certain lack of good 
 breeding, of that gentleness that makes a gentle- 
 man. 
 
 They are the crystallized sap of the vicious in- 
 equity of privilege. 
 
 If one has money the worst form in which he 
 can invest it is in the parade of gems. 
 
 The queer part of it is that you never can tell. 
 Once we could distinguish real pearls from imita- 
 tion by the person who wore them: if it was a 
 lady with an income of fifty thousand a year they 
 were genuine; if she was a working woman they 
 were false. Nowadays the wealthy classes lock 
 their real jewels in safety deposit vaults and wear 
 imitation. They can arouse all the detestable 
 emotions desired by wearing the false jewels, and 
 run no risk of losing the real. The paste jewel 
 holds the same "legal tender" relation socially to 
 the true jewel that the ten-dollar bill holds com- 
 mercially to the gold eagle. 
 
 Expensive jewels are of value to the rich as a 
 40 
 
quick means of squandering their money and 
 creating misery. "To us," says Gustave Tery, 
 "there is no difference between a necklace costing 
 a million francs and one costing three francs ; but 
 to the rich the difference is very real, since it 
 comes, if I calculate correctly, to nine hundred 
 and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety- 
 seven francs. Which is not to be sneezed at." 
 
 41 
 
IN PARIS 
 
 She was one of the most charming and well 
 known artistes of the Theatre Frangais. The 
 other morning at an early hour she called a taxi 
 to go to the railway station. She was to visit a 
 sick friend in a near-by town. On arriving at the 
 station she opened her handbag. Horrors I She 
 found therein a handkerchief, some keys, a small 
 mirror, and a powder box — ^but no money. She 
 had forgotten her purse. 
 
 And the train was due to leave in ten minutes. 
 
 She got out of the taxi more frightened than 
 she had ever been upon the stage, and addressed 
 the chauffeur: 
 
 "Monsieur," she said, "something absurd has 
 happened me, something desolating. I have left 
 my pocketbook at home. I have no money to buy 
 my railway ticket, no money to pay your fare." 
 
 The chauffeur smiled. The lady thereupon 
 smiled also, an embarrassed smile, though she 
 had a strong impulse to cry. 
 
 "If I dared. Monsieur," she said tremblingly, 
 "I would ask you for a little money, instead of 
 giving you some." 
 
 The chauffeur put his hand in his pocket. 
 42 
 
"How much do you need, Madame?" 
 
 He had taken his purse from the pocket of his 
 coat and was holding it politely in his hand. 
 
 The artiste, abashed, said: 
 
 "Oh, Monsieur, with fifty francs I " 
 
 "Here you are, Madame!" 
 
 He handed her a fifty-franc note, which she 
 took. At the same time she gave him her card, 
 upon which she had written something. 
 
 "Here is my address," she said. "My husband 
 will pay you. But — in the meanwhile — ^would 
 you — may I offer you " 
 
 She made a motion to remove her diamond 
 ring. The chauffeur, with the manner of a gentle- 
 man, gave a gesture of protest. 
 
 "Oh ! I pray you, Madame !" he said. "The 
 card is quite enough." 
 
 She thanked him. She was furious, yet 
 charmed. As she insisted in her very nicest words 
 that he go get himself paid at once, he replied, 
 with a shrug: 
 
 "Oh, yes, Madame, this evening, perhaps, or 
 to-morrow, or next day. It doesn't matter in the 
 least." 
 
 He smiled again, raised his cap, and, mounting 
 his machine, disappeared. 
 
 No, this did not happen In New York, nor Chi- 
 cago. I said Paris. 
 
 I think I read somewhere In Thackeray his ac- 
 count of a certain tailor in the Rue Something-or- 
 other whom he owed a long-standing bill, and 
 
 43 
 
who, when Thackeray came to see him and apolo- 
 gized for not paying, not only expressed deep 
 sympathy with his customer's embarrassment but 
 even offered to lend him money. Such things do 
 happen — in Paris. 
 
 44 
 
FLAPDOODLE 
 
 "The food on which fools are fed," says the 
 Standard Dictionary. 
 
 In common use the term is the favorite one of 
 cynics to characterize any sort of exuberance. 
 
 They also love the words "twaddle," "non- 
 sense," "gush," and "balderdash." 
 
 The word cynic has the root-meaning of dog. 
 It is a slander on the dog. The dog is the most 
 sentimental animal known. He has a fit of ec- 
 static joy at even a glance from you. 
 
 When the lover makes a sonnet upon his mis- 
 tress's eyebrow, it is Flapdoodle, to the cynic. 
 
 Read over your last letter, young lady, where 
 he says your brow is like the snowdrift and your 
 neck is like the swan, and your face it is the fairest 
 that e'er the sun shone on. Flapdoodle! 
 
 Coo to your baby, little mother, and speak 
 your infantile dialect, and ask him, "Does ums 
 want to come to ums muzzers?" Flapdoodle! 
 
 Preach to the crowd gathered in the slums, O 
 Salvation Army Lassie ! Put tears in your voice, 
 and make the spiritual appeal a red-hot heart 
 force; bring the drunkard to sobriety and the 
 smirched woman to repentance and a new life. 
 Flapdoodle ! 
 
 45 
 
Plead for the cause of man, O social dreamer! 
 Seek to put business upon a base of absolute jus- 
 tice, and to get for every human being equality of 
 opportunity. Impractical ! Flapdoodle ! 
 
 Strive to abolish the accursed error of punish- 
 ment, with its inhuman prisons and gallows trees, 
 and substitute the organized prevention of crime 
 and the scientific healing of the criminal. Flap- 
 doodle ! 
 
 Plead for the right of all children to play, to 
 be duly equipped for life, and to be kept out of 
 economic struggle by the mothering state. Flap- 
 doodle ! 
 
 Speak for the right of every woman to the full 
 privilege of a human being. Flapdoodle ! 
 
 Declare, O President of the United States, for 
 the better way of self-restraint and patience, and 
 against the medieval monstrosity of war, in deal- 
 ing with a neighbor state. Flapdoodle! 
 
 Work, Mr. Lloyd George, for the protection 
 of mothers, the alleviation of poverty, reforms in 
 land holding, and the curbing of age-old privi- 
 lege. All the Wise Ones cry out Flapdoodle! 
 
 Write, O Newspaper Man, not with dull pros- 
 ing, but with the fire of conviction, words that 
 throb like hearts alive. Flapdoodle! 
 
 So say the Critics, the Experienced, the Old- 
 Hearted, the Sophisticated, the Burnt Out, from 
 all whom the good God deliver us! 
 
 Give us, rather, the wonder of youth, the rap- 
 ture of lovers, the gush of the enthusiastic, those 
 
 46 
 
that yet can weep over a book and wipe their eyes 
 at a play, women who cuddle babies and are fool- 
 ish over their husbands, men who can yell at a 
 ball game and whoop at a political meeting, poets 
 who still hear Pan's pipings, and patriots whose 
 throats choke at the sight of their country's flag. 
 Thanks be ! there are yet a thousand Fans, Sob 
 Sisters, Giggling Girls, and Lovesick Swains to 
 one Cynic! We wish him no harm, but one of 
 him is a crowd. 
 
 47 
 
STRANGE! 
 
 "What fools these mortals be I" said Puck. 
 
 And we are inclined to agree with him when 
 we observe : 
 
 That men toil their life long to lay up money 
 for their children, when the worst calamity that 
 can befall a youth is to be relieved from the need 
 to work for a living; 
 
 That a man's pride and aim seems to be to 
 keep his wife in idleness and luxury, and he con- 
 siders himself disgraced if she engages in useful 
 work, when the greatest foe to female virtue is 
 idleness ; 
 
 That all our greatness comes from struggle and 
 danger, while we devote our lives to avoiding 
 these things; 
 
 That the only faith that is worth anything Is 
 the product of wrestling with doubts, yet doubts 
 we consider to be irreligious; 
 
 That all the world is convinced of the waste, 
 stupidity, and madness of war, while each nation 
 impoverishes itself still in the endeavor to pre- 
 pare for war; 
 
 That individually we love our children better 
 than anything in the world, while collectively, as 
 
 48 
 
a city, we leave no spaces for their playgrounds, 
 but compel them to romp in the streets among the 
 horses, street cars, and automobiles; 
 
 That we lock men up in prison as an antidote 
 to crime, and when they come out they are more 
 hardened criminals than before; 
 
 That we gather in churches and worship Jesus, 
 yet consider as perfectly absurd and irrational 
 the teachings He most insisted upon, deriding 
 His faith in humdn nature. His law of love, and 
 His principle of non-resistance; while the thing 
 against which He warned us most strictly, the 
 heaping up of money, is the one thing after which 
 we are all mad; 
 
 That those of us most favored by fortune are 
 in the heated pursuit of happiness, while we know 
 very well that nobody who pursuea happiness ever 
 found it; 
 
 That we easily believe in selfishness and hate, 
 which render us unhappy, while it is hard for us 
 to believe in love and goodness, which make us 
 happy; 
 
 That man should "put an enemy into his mouth 
 to steal away his brains"; 
 
 That politics is universally despised among us, 
 while the only possible way to make a democracy 
 successful is for every citizen to take an active in- 
 terest in politics ; 
 
 • That the accepted method of preparing our 
 sons and daughters for life is to send them to in- 
 stitutions sooted with medievalism, and while but 
 
 49 
 
one person in a hundred Is by nature fitted to be- 
 come a scholar or literary person, we continue the 
 useless effort to make scholars out of those who 
 are to become merchants, hand workers, sales- 
 men, and housewives; 
 
 That while we all believe in majority rule, our 
 cities are still governed by a compact minority 
 composed of men of deficient character; 
 
 That we exert the greatest effort to be pleasant 
 to strangers and mere acquaintances, for whom 
 we care little or nothing, while we are neglectful, 
 indifferent and often cruel to those we love most 
 dearly; 
 
 That most of our worry is about the past, which 
 is gone forever, and the future, which may never 
 come, while we omit to enjoy to-day, which is all 
 that we have to enjoy, and 
 
 That those who observe customs and conven- 
 tions are called wise and safe, while those who 
 believe In their reason, listen to the dictates of 
 their heart, and trust their instinct are considered 
 dangerous, If not wicked. 
 
 50 
 
WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH ART? 
 
 Shortly after the first production of the opera 
 "Nail," at Paris, I met its composer, Mr, Isa- 
 dore Lara, who, I found, saw eye to eye with me 
 on the question, "What's the Matter With Art?" 
 
 "The trouble is," he said, in substance, "that 
 opera is controlled by a small class of people. 
 It ought to belong to the whole people." 
 
 In other words, that same thing is the matter 
 with art that is the matter with almost everything 
 else, to wit: class. 
 
 Like every other department of human activ- 
 ity, art awaits the liberating touch of democracy. 
 
 Like everything else, art can have nothing so 
 bad happen to it as to be patronized. 
 
 So long as the artist is dependent upon the ca- 
 price of millionaires and kings, it will be ham- 
 pered. 
 
 The best friend of the artist is the people. 
 What he needs is a public, not a patron. 
 
 To serve the public gives a man freedom, mas- 
 tery, inspiration. To please a patron invariably 
 produces the spirit of a valet. 
 
 First of all, the public must be brought to 
 realize that art Is not the plaything of the rich, 
 
 51 
 
but the food of the whole community. That it Is 
 civilizing, refining, has distinct human value. 
 
 When it reaches this point it will pay its artists. 
 It will provide scope, in its public halls, churches, 
 galleries, and parks, for the painter and sculptor. 
 
 It will maintain, each city its own opera house, 
 where the masterpieces of all ages can be given 
 at prices the people can afford to pay. 
 
 It will abolish the "star" nuisance. 
 
 The singers and players will be chosen from 
 among each country's own youth. We shall go 
 to hear, not Caruso or Tetrazzini, but La Tosca 
 and the Mastersingers. 
 
 So far from democracy meaning the universal 
 dulness of mediocrity, it means opportunity for 
 real superiority; it means merit to the front, and 
 the contempt of push, pull, influence, and money. 
 
 As monarchy has been abolished in America 
 in the realm of politics, as hierarchy has been put 
 by in religion, and as we are working to get wealth 
 into the control of the whole people, instead of a 
 few, so art needs to be delivered from patronage 
 and made a public good. 
 
 52 
 
THE AMERICAN PENAL SYSTEM 
 
 It is hard, It is almost impossible, for advo- 
 cates of a change in custom or government to get 
 out from under a charge which has worn down to 
 a platitude. 
 
 The average man refuses to think, when he can 
 get his thinking ready-made. 
 
 For Instance, we, who believe that prisons and 
 punishments are wrong, are generally classed with 
 the sentimental perverts who pet criminals, with 
 the women who carry bouquets to murderers, 
 weep over the sad lot of burglars that have been 
 justly laid by the heels, and want to feed them pie. 
 
 Allow us, therefore, to clearly state our point 
 of view. 
 
 We are not opposed to the present prison sys- 
 tem because of pity for jail birds. We are sorry 
 for them, as any human being Is sorry to witness 
 suffering, but if their punishment were good for 
 them or for society at large we would gladly ap- 
 plaud their stripes. 
 
 But our position is this: that The Facts in 
 THE Case Prove beyond any reasonable doubt 
 that the theory of punishment is both impotent 
 for good and fruitful of evil. 
 
 53 
 
Why do we punish a thief or robber, for ex- 
 ample? For three reasons only. 
 
 First, to protect the community against him. 
 We incarcerate him, shave his head, put him at 
 hard labor, isolate him, or even hang him, so that 
 innocent citizens may be safe from his pernicious 
 activities. 
 
 Second, we punish him to "teach him a lesson," 
 to change him and make him an honest man. 
 
 Third, it is also to give an example to other 
 evildoers and by fear to dissuade them from 
 crime. 
 
 All very well. The only trouble is, that send- 
 ing a man to the penitentiary does Not result 
 in any of these benefits. 
 
 As a rule, which any intelligent prison keeper 
 will verify, the convict who has served his time 
 comes back to society A Worse Criminal Than 
 When He Went to Prison. From being an 
 ordinary man, who committed a crime by impulse, 
 he has become a member of the hardened crim- 
 inal class and is a greater menace to the common- 
 wealth than ever. 
 
 As a rule, instead of prison changing him to an 
 honest man, it Makes Him a More Vicious 
 Man. It destroys the little good character he 
 had. 
 
 And, as a rule, instead of his punishment de- 
 terring others it psychologically Develops More 
 Criminals. 
 
 Why, therefore, keep up a system that is 
 
 54 
 
proved by experience and reason to work pre- 
 cisely contrary to what we expected it to work? 
 
 It is a pleasure to note that the more intelligent 
 of the lawyers themselves are with us. At least 
 they cannot be accused of maudlin sentimentality. 
 At a recent meeting of the American Bar As- 
 sociation, at Montreal, at which session William 
 H. Taft was chosen president, Mr. Moorfield 
 Storey of Massachusetts declared the American 
 penal system a failure. 
 
 "Our prisons are manufactories of criminals, 
 and it is time we changed our whole method of 
 dealing with convicts," he said. 
 
 "All convicted persons should be turned over 
 to a commission charged with full responsibility 
 for their care and custody under an indetermi- 
 nate sentence, with authority to release them at 
 such time and on such terms as would guarantee 
 their future harmlessness to society. 
 
 "In Other Words, We Should Treat 
 Criminals .Rather As Sick Men Than As 
 Bad Men, and Our Places of Confinement 
 As Hospitals Rather Than As Prisons." 
 
 $S 
 
IN PRAISE OF LAZINESS 
 
 I MAKE no bones of it, but here confess and set 
 down that I am lazy. I was born lazy and it has 
 grown on me. I would never move at all if it did 
 not hurt so to remain in one position. The only 
 reason I take exercise is in order to relax after- 
 ward. 
 
 Furthermore, I raise my voice in defense of 
 the army of the lazy ones. They are the salt of 
 the earth. 
 
 A lazy person does better work than an indus- 
 trious body. He puts a fiery energy into his task 
 because he wants to finish it as soon as possible. 
 
 A lazy boy will saw wood fast so that he can 
 get through and rest. A lazy girl sweeps the 
 room with whirlwind activity, while the girl who 
 loves work will fiddle about all morning. 
 
 It is laziness that is the spring of human prog- 
 ress. 
 
 Because a lazy man wanted to get out of the 
 job of currying the horse, he thought out a plan 
 for putting a bucket of gasoline under the buggy 
 seat, whereby we ride like the wind. 
 
 Because lazy folks hated to climb stairs, eleva- 
 tors were invented. 
 
 S6 
 
Because people were too lazy to get off the 
 train and go to the lunch counter, they devised 
 dining cars; and being too lazy to ride on the 
 railway all night sitting up, they contrived sleep- 
 ing cars. 
 
 Being too lazy to dip his pen in the ink every 
 few seconds, some genius invented the fountain 
 pen. And being too lazy even to use that, he pro- 
 ceeded to build a typewriter. Also too lazy to run 
 the typewriter himself, he started the fashion of 
 having girl typists. 
 
 It was a lazy genius that thought of making a 
 patent cigar lighter out of a flint stone and ben- 
 zine, because he was too tired to strike matches. 
 
 Likewise, who would have conceived the idea 
 of a iireless cooker except some woman too lazy 
 to stand over the cook stove? 
 
 The eight-day clock is due to the unwillingness 
 of men to wind the thing up every evening; and 
 now they have clocks that will run a year. 
 
 The coat-shirt is the triumph of laziness too 
 great to put the garment on over one's head, In 
 the good old style. 
 
 It Is to almighty laziness we owe the ocean 
 liner, the electric telegraph, the baby wagon, the 
 buggy spring. Cook's tours, the shoe-horn and the 
 works of Mark Twain. 
 
 It Is told of the last named that when he 
 worked In a newspaper office he would pay the 
 office boy a nickel to sweep around him so that 
 he would not have to take his feet off the table. 
 
 57 
 
If everybody was an earnest and toiling little 
 Willie that just ate up work and loved to employ 
 every moment in useful energy, we should lapse 
 into barbarism. 
 
 It is because the race is so blamed trifling and 
 shiftless that it forges ahead. 
 
THE LADIES' CARD GAME 
 
 I NEVER understood the calling business until 
 one day I found my small children, with the chil- 
 dren of some of the neighbors, playing in the 
 nursery. They had a number of cards and were 
 depositing them, with much ceremony, at various 
 chairs about the room. 
 
 Then I saw. It is a Game. 
 
 Compared to calling, football and baseball are 
 second rate In popularity. 
 
 It Is a game especially for ladies, more espe- 
 cially for those fair ones who are hobbled by no 
 useful occupation. It is played as follows : 
 
 You take a deck of cards, more properly speak- 
 ing, a package of cards; nice, new, white cards, 
 which the lady in charge of the stationery at the 
 department store will have printed for you, ac- 
 cording to Hoyle. 
 
 Then you foot It, or If you live In a city where 
 distances are great, you hire a cab ; or If you want 
 to appear the indubitable thing you own a ve- 
 hicle with your monogram on the door, and you 
 go to all the houses on your list. 
 
 Arriving at the door you ring the bell. A ser- 
 vant appears. You ask if Mrs. Van Dunsensnip- 
 per Is at home. 
 
 59 
 
If she is, you go into the parlor and wait till 
 she gets her hair fixed. When she comes down 
 you engage in a little short and pleasant conver- 
 sation; the shorter the pleasanter. 
 
 If she is not at home you leave a certain num- 
 ber of your cards with the maid, which is still 
 pleasanter. I don't know what the right number 
 is, but it is very important. 
 
 You check the lady off your list. By and by 
 all the ladies you have dealt cards to come around 
 to your house and deal. 
 
 That this is a game is proved by the fact that 
 it is fatal, unforgivable, to make a mistake. In 
 business, when you make an error, you apologize 
 and pay up and go ahead. But in a game, when 
 you make a slip, you're Out. 
 
 A male friend of mine observed that he couldn't 
 guess what the Sam Hill it was all about. But 
 he was plain ignorant. There are also people 
 that do not enjoy baseball. « 
 
 If the ladies want to play cards in a taxicab, 
 let them alone. It is more healthful, to say the 
 least, than playing poker in the Black Hole of 
 Calcutta, otherwise known as the card room of 
 the club. 
 
 60 
 
LOVE AND WISDOM] 
 
 A CORRESPONDENT wHtes : "When people are 
 married we often hear, 'What could he or she see 
 in the other?' 
 
 "Does love give a deeper insight and see a 
 worth really there, or does it merely overheat the 
 fancy to imagine a worth not there? 
 
 "Will you give an explanation of this?" 
 
 I will. Because there are few questions of 
 deeper concern to thousands than this. 
 
 For practical purposes, for living one's life in 
 peace and happiness, it is more Important to know 
 about the laws of love than the laws of chemistry 
 or of the United States. 
 
 The question asked by my correspondent is a 
 great big vital one, up to date, and almost a mat- 
 ter of life and death. 
 
 Here, therefore, is the answer: Love is not a 
 delusion. Love is the only thing that can see 
 truth. 
 
 That is true not only in the relation of men 
 and women but everywhere else. 
 
 The reason Edison is a wizard at invention is 
 not only because of his genius, but also because 
 he loves his laboratory work. 
 
 6i 
 
No man can handle a horse who does not love 
 a horse. 
 
 The best cook Is the best lover of cooking. 
 
 The greatest baseball player is the most tre- 
 mendous lover of the game, other things being 
 equal. 
 
 The best novelist or story writer Is the one 
 who most wholly loves the characters he creates. 
 
 The best actor Is the greatest lover of his art. 
 
 The only preacher of any account Is the one 
 who Is infatuated with preaching. 
 
 There Is only one potency. It is love. There 
 is only one vision. It Is love. There Is only one 
 wisdom. It is love. There is only one religion. 
 It is love. 
 
 You cannot get anything out of a book unless 
 you love it. 
 
 You cannot teach children unless you love them. 
 
 Money never did any permanent good in the 
 world. One loving heart outweighs all the gifts 
 of Carnegie and Rockefeller in its results on 
 the welfare of mankind. 
 
 Love sees. It is not blind. Indifference is 
 blind. The cold heart is blind. 
 
 There is only one tragedy. It is when love 
 dies. 
 
 Love creates. Coldness is impotent. 
 
 Love has that faith (trust) which saves the 
 world. Intellect has those doubts which unloose 
 the world. Love is synthetic. Intellect is an- 
 alytic. 
 
 62 
 
The bottommost pit of hell, Dante says, is 
 frozen; the seat of the Eternal in heaven glows 
 with heat and light. 
 
 The Devil, Mephistopheles, according to 
 Goethe, is pure intellect. "He never loved a hu- 
 man soul." 
 
 "God," says the Bible, "is love." 
 
 This earth was made for lovers, and he who 
 loves not, though he be walking about, is dead, 
 dead, dead. 
 
 63 
 
THE SICK ROOM 
 
 The newspaper pages are filled with tides of 
 vigorous life. Advertisers exploit their goods, 
 theatres display their attractions, there are the 
 activities of crime, of politics, of sport; the virile 
 stream of humanity leaps and sparkles beneath 
 the reader's eye. 
 
 And all the while a great part of these readers 
 are in a condition where the arena of strife does 
 not interest them, and the warmth of the world's 
 blood chills them. I speak of the sick. 
 
 They are shut up in darkened bedrooms, they 
 lie in hospital wards, they sit solitary by the win- 
 dow of the sitting-room, or hobble about with 
 crutch or cane. They are the wounded in life's 
 battle, the driftwood upon the banks of life's, 
 stream. 
 
 So here's a word for them. 
 
 Do not imagine that because you are not well 
 you are out of the game. Opportunity is still 
 yours. Some of the best and finest work done for 
 the human race is done by the sick people. 
 
 You may no longer be a centre of active work 
 in the business of money-getting, you cannot go 
 to your office nor attend to your house, but you 
 can do better than that. You can be a centre of 
 
 64 
 
cheer and encouragement to all who know you. 
 
 If you will put away self-pity, if you will not 
 complain, if you will be just as courageous and 
 intelligent in the business of being unwell as you 
 were in the street and mart when you were well, 
 if in your weakened body you will maintain a 
 stout heart, you cannot realize how you will 
 radiate life and power into all who come in con- 
 tact with you. 
 
 The sick room may be the temple of the house. 
 
 There's a little old blind grandmother in a cer- 
 tain home who, by her spirit of sanity and her 
 sense of human values, has reconciled her daugh- 
 ter and son-in-law who were drifting toward 
 alienation, brought a wayward granddaughter 
 and a foolish college grandson to their senses, 
 and governs that household not with a rod of 
 iron but with a fairy wand of subtler power. 
 
 There is a man, once active in great affairs, 
 a figure in the money world, but now sitting help- 
 less with paralysis. He is just as brave and hope- 
 ful now as ever. Around his affliction have 
 bloomed priceless flowers of love and tenderness, 
 of whose existence he was never before aware. 
 
 Your sickness may be a privilege. It will show 
 you, if you can take it heroically, the very best 
 things in life. 
 
 You are out of the game of getting-on, but 
 you are placed where certain factors of life of 
 inestimable value may be made clear and usable 
 to you. 
 
 6s 
 
In fact, the best part of living is not monopo- 
 lized by the healthy people. Sickness has its spirit- 
 compensations. Life is very great and wide and 
 high, it has vast mysteries that active people 
 miss. It has reaches of thought and feeling they 
 cannot know. 
 
 In your quiet room you may find your soul, 
 your real self; you may have experiences so rich 
 and strange that, when you grow well again, if 
 so be that shall come to pass, you will look back 
 upon these shaded and idle days, as the traveller 
 who has crossed the desert remembers the oasis. 
 
 m 
 
UP AGAINST IT 
 
 , It is a terse Americanism, and expresses in 
 solid, idiomatic language a solid, bitter fact: "Up 
 Against It." 
 
 There's an army of them right in this city, an 
 army of soldiers that battle for sustenance, an 
 army fighting in the last ditch. 
 
 I saw and talked with one the other day. She 
 was a mere child, just twenty-two. Her clothes 
 were not new. Her neck was thin, her cheeks 
 thin, her eyes, it seemed, too large. 
 
 "I am still trying to get a job," she said. "Oh I 
 I'm pretty well; only I haven't as much strength 
 as I had. You see, when I don't eat regularly it 
 tells on me. I don't eat every day, and some days 
 I only get one meal. And then I walk from 
 where I room to the business places downtown. 
 It's a long way. I get awful tired. My land- 
 lady is awful good to me. She's waiting till I 
 get my job. Gee! it's fierce to be up against it!" 
 
 Yet withal she was brave, cheerful, self-re- 
 specting, keeping her soul and her little body 
 clean, while she fought with the wild wolves that 
 hunt in cities. 
 
 "I got a raise yesterday," said a young man, 
 
 67 
 
a friend of mine. "I pawned my watch. I had 
 a grand feed." 
 
 He had come to the city to study music. Oh! 
 the heart-breaking company of them that hope 
 to live by music! For every singer in a church 
 choir, getting $5 a Sunday, twenty stand hungry 
 for the place. For every girl in the theatre 
 chorus, twenty have been turned away to tramp 
 further. For every clerk in the stores there are 
 three in line waiting, up against it. 
 
 It is the firing line of civilization. 
 
 It is the thin red line we have thrown out to 
 meet the common enemy, Hunger. 
 
 Late at night I have seen them on the benches 
 in the parks, sitting with a newspaper over the 
 knees. There seems to be a deal of warmth in 
 a newspaper. I have talked with them. They 
 are sociable folks, much easier to approach than 
 successful people. 
 
 I have always loved failures. They are more 
 human. Their souls seem more visible than the 
 souls of the prosperous. 
 
 Where the Salvation Army's drums are beating 
 and horns blowing they congregate. That is my 
 favorite church. Surely if the Messiah is any- 
 where He may be found there. 
 
 You can see them in the saloons. A glass of 
 beer can be got for five cents. It is the little 
 bit of light in lives most terribly dark. 
 
 They are not all tfamps. There are mothers 
 yp against It, holding babies, looking all night 
 
 68 
 
into the darkness, as if into the eyes of Pauguk. 
 
 There are hard-working fathers who have 
 plodded all day searching for what means more 
 to them than salvation — a job. 
 
 There are boys, for whom crime bids. 
 
 There are girls, for whom human tigers lie in 
 wait. 
 
 There are little children. I saw two, a little 
 boy and girl, the other morning early; they were 
 going through a garbage can, looking for scraps 
 of food. 
 
 Those who have never been up against it do 
 not know what a tragic world this is. 
 
 69 
 
THE KITCHEN 
 
 If I ever get money enough to build a house 
 of my own the first thing I shall construct will 
 be the kitchen. 
 
 The kitchen is to the home what the stomach 
 is to the body. The Greeks used to think the 
 soul was located in the stomach, and it wasn't 
 a bad guess. Certain it is that you cannot see 
 much glory in the universe while you have any 
 kind of a stomachache. 
 
 My kitchen will be five things : big, light, clean, 
 well equipped, and comfortable to loaf in. 
 
 To begin with the last, I do not see why a man 
 who owns a house should be excluded from an 
 essential part of it. Why should I be condemned 
 to sit always in the front room surrounded by 
 uncomfortable furniture, slippery floors, and 
 fragile bric-a-brac, while the hired girl enjoys a 
 neat, homey kitchen? 
 
 When I feel like it I want to occupy a cane 
 rocker by the window, look around upon shining 
 brass stewpans, and read in the recipe book how 
 to make ginger cookies. 
 
 And then the sounds of the kitchen. They 
 are more intimately lovely than any other house- 
 
 70 
 
voices. First and foremost the song of the tea 
 kettle : It just sings home and mother and solid 
 comfort right into the core of your everlasting 
 soul. Then the roar of the fire in the stove, the 
 bubbling of the pot where the potatoes are boil- 
 ing, the angry sputter of ham frying, and above 
 all the solemn tick-tock of the old clock, beating 
 time like an orchestra leader over the whole per- 
 formance. 
 
 Also come the odors of the kitchen; the fra- 
 grance of bread just out of the oven, of the fowl 
 done to a turn, filling the air with an aroma be- 
 yond that of flowers, and. Lord bless us all! if 
 that isn't a real pumpkin pie the cook has just 
 delivered Into the world! It is an event that 
 should be celebrated with cheer and song. 
 
 The eye feasts likewise. I want a floor of old- 
 fashioned red brick on my kitchen floor; In all 
 the realm of art no color is so rich. I want the 
 copper utensils to gleam like burnished shields 
 upon the shelf. I want to see the flash of the 
 Sabatier knives in a row on the wall, weapons 
 in the noble war of gastronomy. I want to see 
 the old Delft-blue bowls and brown cooking ves- 
 sels round about. Besides, there are the white- 
 ness of white flour on the biscuit board, the spark- 
 ling heaps of sugar, the rosy-cheekedness of ap- 
 ples, the orangeness of oranges, and the grapeness 
 of grapes. 
 
 There is no place where you can feel so hu- 
 man as in the kitchen. When you are tired of 
 
 71 
 
being respectable, and your soul is sick of good 
 clothes, oh, to come aside a while here, in slip- 
 pers and shirt-sleeves, and in the cane rocker 
 aforesaid read in peace in your daily paper all 
 the antics of this mountebank world! 
 
 And then — best of all — ^the little boy comes in, 
 you know what he wants, and although it is 
 against the rules, you steal for him two Jonathan 
 apples and three sugar cookies; he beams undy- 
 ing love at you, and skips out before mother sees 
 him, while you, partner in such delicious crime, 
 read your paper as if nothing had happened. 
 
 ,72 
 
SUPERFLUOUS ENERGY 
 
 One of the most astounding things in nature 
 Is the waste of sun-force. Frank W. Very, in an 
 article in the Popular Science Monthly, calls at- 
 tention to this, saying: 
 
 "The earth is a mere point in space, and re- 
 ceives no more than one 2,200,000,000th of the 
 radiant energy the sun is outpouring so lavishly." 
 Yet from this almost infinitesimal fraction of the 
 sun's total radiation practically all known forces 
 on earth are due. 
 
 The power of wind and wave and tide, of fire 
 and its son, steam, of plant and animal life, of 
 glacial movement, of rain and snow, even of all 
 growth in trees and herbs and all forms of animal 
 energy, come from this crumb of solar potency 
 caught by the whirling world. 
 
 And this apparent waste and extravagance 
 characterizes all nature, and men and their spirit- 
 ual dynamics. 
 
 It is a law of mind. You cannot learn one 
 fact alone. Your study, your experience, must 
 embrace a myriad of facts; only so will the one 
 remain with you. 
 
 From months and years of "practice" the 
 pianist culls at last the flower of perfection. 
 
 73 
 
You read a book of 400 pages, and are lucky 
 If one paragraph sticks. 
 
 To make forty sales the department store must 
 induce 400 customers to come and look. 
 
 The travelling salesman interviews twenty mer- 
 chants to get three or four who will place orders 
 with him. 
 
 This is the law of success: Keep trying; if 
 you want one man to give you employment or 
 buy your wares you must apply to many men. 
 
 Out from every soul pours the power of per- 
 sonal influence. All but a minute fraction of 
 it seems wasted, as in the case of the sun. You 
 must be kind a thousand times to be effectually 
 kind once. You must forgive seventy times seven 
 to find the one instance where forgiveness counts. 
 A hundred times must you be courageous if you 
 hope to be brave the one time when it will be 
 worth while. 
 
 The teacher knows how in the schoolroom she 
 must sow beside all waters to make a few seeds 
 grow. 
 
 An editor writes one appeal in his daily news^ 
 paper. A hundred thousand copies are bought. 
 Perhaps 5,000 persons glance at his article. Five 
 hundred read it through. One hundred are in- 
 terested. Ten perhaps are persuaded. 
 
 Of the countless volumes of philosophy, how 
 rare are those that reach and fecundate the re- 
 ceptive mind! 
 
 What becomes of all the wasted energy of 
 
 74 
 
suns, souls, books and all powers, physical and 
 spiritual? We do not know. We believe that 
 somehow Nature, in her nicely balanced adjust- 
 ments, throws nothing away, and transforms into 
 other kinds of energy all superfluous vigor. 
 
 But the observer may learn, if he be wise, not 
 to be discouraged at the apparent fruitlessness 
 of his effort, but to go on, as the sun for many 
 millions of years has gone on, putting forth his 
 full vitality, that some fragment be used. 
 
 IS 
 
WHY WAS I BORN? 
 
 There is one question upon the answer to 
 which rests the success or failure of life. 
 
 It is the question: "Why was I born?" 
 
 A strange fact is that nobody knows the an- 
 swer. The purpose which the Creator had in 
 mind when He made me has never been known, 
 never will be known. 
 
 Curious that the most fateful of all problems 
 should be forever unanswerable ! 
 
 We may Believe this or that to be the rea- 
 son why we were created; we cannot Know. 
 
 Notwithstanding this fact, the net result of 
 my life depends upon The Theory I form to an- 
 swer this query. 
 
 But how can I tell which theory is best when 
 there is no means of knowing which is true? 
 
 There is a way to tell which theory is, if not 
 true, at least approximately true. This way is 
 suggested by what is called Pragmatism. 
 
 That is to say: That answer to the question 
 is most likely to be true Which Will Work. 
 
 We cannot answer the question "Why was I 
 born?" by investigating Causes. The secrets of 
 life are beyond us. The Creator will not be in- 
 terviewed. 
 
 76 
 
But we can select an answer by noting Results. 
 For instance: 
 
 "I was made in order that I might get all the 
 pleasure possible out of life." This solution 
 means wreckage. Its fallacy is proved by insane 
 hospitals, feeble-minded asylums, and by those 
 murders, adulteries, and heart-breaks that con- 
 stantly attend the end of the pleasure seeker. 
 
 "I was made in order that I might escape this 
 evil world and get safely into a better one after 
 death." Such an answer leads logically to the 
 asceticism that marked the dark ages and the 
 hard morbidity that characterized Puritanism. 
 
 "I was born to labor for others" means a race 
 of slaves. 
 
 "I was born to live and to enjoy myself upon 
 the fruits of others' labor" means a class of snobs. 
 
 The most satisfactory answer, in twentieth cen- 
 tury terms, is: "I was born to express what 
 forces my Creator planted in me; to develop my 
 instincts and talents under the guidance of rea- 
 son ; to find permanent happiness by fostering the 
 higher, more altruistic, and spirit impulses and 
 by subduing the violence of the more brutal im- 
 pulses. I was born to find love and my own work, 
 and through these liberty. In one word the pur- 
 pose of creating me was that I should be as Great 
 as possible." 
 
 Only by this answer do we get strength with- 
 out cruelty, virtue without narrowness, beauty 
 without effeminacy, love without contamination, 
 
 77 
 
reverence without superstition, joy without excess. 
 I do not Know this answer is correct. I Be- 
 lieve it to be the Most Nearly correct for the 
 simple reason that It Works. 
 
 78 
 
^ 
 
 THE OUTPOPULATING POWER 
 
 There is a war constantly going on. It is not 
 of axe upon helm, shot upon armor plate, duels 
 of death-spitting dreadnoughts, nor airplanes 
 dropping bombs upon a sleeping city. 
 
 It is a deeper battle, subterranean as instinct, 
 unseen as nature's hidden laws. 
 
 Deep as the cause of the running of sap in 
 spring. Deep as the reason why Sahara is 
 parched and the Mississippi Valley is watered. 
 
 A battle unnoticed as glacier movements, ir- 
 resistible as the succession of geologic eras, piti- 
 less as Time, sure as the precession of the equi- 
 noxes. 
 
 It is the battle of blood against blood, race 
 against race, stock against stock. 
 
 It is the war of the powers of procreation. 
 
 It Is the elemental competition in fecundity. 
 
 "What constitutes a state?" asks Sir William 
 Jones; and answers his question: "Not cities 
 proud with spires and turrets crowned; not bays 
 and broad armed ports, where laughing at the 
 storm rich navies ride; but — men"; and his con- 
 clusion should be mended; let us rather say, 
 
 "women.' 
 
 79 
 
The state's ultimate armament is the strong, 
 breeding woman. 
 
 Not the war cries of bearded hosts but the 
 lusty cries of the army of babies are the terrible 
 menace of destiny. 
 
 Sex perversion means the end of the world, 
 the people extinguished in madness. Sex unclean- 
 ness means a race rushing toward its Day of 
 Judgment. 
 
 England builds battleships; it were far better 
 she gave heed to the fact that her population is 
 decreasing. 
 
 The profoundest crime of American plutocracy 
 is that it will not breed, and spreads the death- 
 gospel of childlessness to others. 
 
 Look at the fashion papers, the newest mod- 
 els in gowns, latest hints from Paris; and see the 
 tendency of upper-tendom toward the ideal of 
 Kipling's "damn thin-hipted woman" ; man's play- 
 thing, not his creative mate! 
 
 Observe the universal fear of the responsibili- 
 ties of marriage, the dread of children, the ex- 
 pressed creed of a weak race that one should not 
 have children until one has gained a competence ! 
 The pioneers who hewed the path for the Golden 
 West had no such puling timidity. 
 
 In the long evolutionary strife for the survival 
 of the fittest that nation shall conquer that shall 
 not shrink from applying science to the procrea- 
 tion of itself ; that shall study eugenics as the key- 
 problem of destiny; that shall drive out sex-per- 
 
 80 
 
version from life and literature with the whip 
 of life-preserving scorn; that shall idealize with 
 the utmost beauty of poet and romancer the mat- 
 ing of its young; that shall tear the veils of false 
 modesty and criminal ignorance from the sex in- 
 stinct and replace them with the halo of truth, 
 knowledge, and self-reverence; that shall reject 
 the mediaeval shame of nature and take pride in 
 Its virility; that shall exalt in its heart and sup- 
 port and protect with all its resources the woman 
 who bears children and devotes her life to their 
 bringing up. 
 
 For the vanguard of a nation's conquest, and 
 the last citadel of its defense, is not the armed 
 man norjhe war machine; it is the Mother. 
 
 8i 
 
INTELLIGENT OPTIMISM 
 
 There is an intelligent optimism, and there are 
 several varieties of fool optimism. 
 
 There is a theological optimism that claims to 
 have proved that this is "the best possible world" ; 
 it is a hopefulness built on logic, and is rather 
 unconvincing to the modern mind. 
 
 There is a kind of self-willed optimism, an as- 
 sumption that all is well whether it's well or not, 
 a postulating, assertive optimism that grins even 
 at funerals, from a sense of duty. People of 
 this cult are rather trying. They are always 
 telling you that "all is for the best" when you 
 know very well that certain things are for the 
 worst. 
 
 Intelligent optimism, however, does not declare 
 that all is good, including the devil and disease, 
 but it asserts that the general law of progress 
 is upward, that there is much good in things as 
 they are, that it is conducive to our comfort and 
 efficiency to let our niinds dwell upon that rather 
 than upon the evil, and that we are capable of 
 making things better and propose to do so. 
 
 Our confidence in the constant improvement of 
 the world is not a matter of faith. We do not 
 
 82 
 
need to shut our eyes, cross our fingers, and re- 
 peat a creed. Our assurance is based upon knowl- 
 edge. An understanding of history, of the condi- 
 tions of society in former times compared to this 
 time, and of the steady growth of liberty and civil 
 rights, forms the foundation of our conclusion. 
 
 Further ground for our hopefulness consists in 
 our realization that it is in men's power to im- 
 prove the world they live in. We are finding out 
 that human welfare grows, not only by Provi- 
 dence or superhuman "laws," but also by our own 
 efforts. By organized exertion we have over- 
 turned tyrannies, abolished slavery, removed 
 plagues, and rendered life in the twentieth cen- 
 tury a hundred times more agreeable than it was 
 in the eighteenth. What we have done we can 
 continue to do. We can go on improving our 
 state, we can produce wealth less wastefuUy and 
 distribute profits more fairly, we can raise the 
 condition of the workingman, liberate woman, 
 give children better training, curb swollen for- 
 tunes and wealth-combinations, take better care of 
 our unfortunates, and do much toward prevent- 
 ing crime and poverty. We no longer look to 
 kings and nobles to do those things for us, we 
 no longer merely pray and hope for the Deity to 
 do them, we are conscious of the ability to help 
 along by our own activities. Hence our optimism. 
 
 But optimism is not only a logical affair. It 
 is a state of mind, a temperamental product. 
 Wherever you find health, vigor, and work, you 
 
 83 
 
find optimism. Pessimism is a secretion of a 
 morbid mind, of weakness, anemia or idleness. 
 
 We are optimists because we are better fed, 
 housed, and clothed, have more books and news- 
 papers, have the remedy for social wrongs in 
 our own hands in the agency of democracy, and 
 in short have a faith and joy in life and its pos- 
 sibilities not based upon tradition or authority, 
 but upon facts, upon instincts, and upon the con- 
 sciousness of our own strength. 
 
 That is why this great people front the future 
 with "morning faces," and refuse to melt in fear 
 at the alarms of the calamity-howlers. 
 
 % 
 
THE SCRAP PILE 
 
 The human scrap pile. 
 
 The refuse, the discard, the useless, the non- 
 producers, the wasters, the parasites, the loafers, 
 the do-nothings, the consumers of unearned food, 
 the wearers of given clothes, the stalled, fattened, 
 curried, sleek human animals devouring the sub- 
 stance of them that sweat and toil. 
 
 Wherever you find an idle group you find a 
 septic point in mankind. 
 
 Among the "rights of man" there is no right 
 to work not. 
 
 The conscience of the Twentieth Century thun- 
 ders the commandment of Carlyle: "Find thy 
 work! Produce! Produce! In God's name, pro- 
 duce!" 
 
 The prosperity of America is attacked already 
 by that species of vermin that always infest ac- 
 cumulated wealth, vested privilege, old-standing 
 institutions. 
 
 The tramps, hoboes, and slum loafers are not 
 our severest menace. The unemployed rkh men, 
 who do nothing but amuse themselves and spend 
 their own or their father's money, are just as 
 bad. 
 
 85i 
 
The women who flit from northern fashionable 
 resort hotels in summer to southern fashionable 
 hotels in winter, who spend their days in motor- 
 ing and their evenings at cards, whose whole en- 
 ergy is occupied in dress and schemes of pre- 
 cedence, are but particles of that heap of waste 
 and poison that must be swept away before de- 
 mocracy shall find a basis of justice and peace. 
 They are the seed of the coming revolution. They 
 are the kindlings for the cleansing fires of Des- 
 tiny. 
 
 There is direct connection between the work- 
 house convicts and the hangers-about at the snob 
 palaces of American plutocracy. 
 
 A. A. McCormick, president of the County 
 Board of Cook County (Chicago), speaking of 
 the efforts being made to put paupers and out- 
 casts to work, observed: 
 
 "The human scrap pile for which we have to 
 pay is cluttered up, not alone with the paupers and 
 the 'down and outs,' but with the idle rich, who 
 sit around luxurious hotels and watering places 
 with nothing to do but overeat and sleep. I was 
 astounded by the waste of human energy at the 
 county institutions, but I am appalled when I 
 think of that far greater waste of energy among 
 those whose wants have been provided for and 
 who have nothing to do but dress for dinner. 
 
 "We have 2,500 persons sitting with folded 
 hands in our county institutions, content because 
 their wants have been provided for. I could 
 
 86 
 
not help thinking of our wealthy outcasts in this 
 connection. They are really beyond the pale of 
 human effort, for they are doing nothing that is 
 of good to anybody, not even to themselves. 
 
 "The idle wealthy are going on the scrap pile 
 voluntarily. They are not only useless but harm- 
 ful. Somebody ought to wake them up and make 
 them think." 
 
 87 
 
AISCHROLATREIA 
 
 AiscHROLATREiA IS a word used by Frederic 
 Harrison, and his definition of it is "the worship 
 of the ugly, the nasty, and the brutal." 
 
 The human soul has its laws as fixed as the 
 laws of the human body. Feed the body enough 
 alcohol and you will get delirium tremens. Feed 
 the soul enough sensual emotion, and cultivate it 
 with introspection, and you get aischrolatreia. 
 
 Any egotism is bad, but emotional egotism is 
 poison. 
 
 The best part of life is feeling, but it is al- 
 ways the best things that are most liable to ex- 
 cess. Beyond a certain point enthusiasm becomes 
 madness, love becomes perversion, and the taste 
 for beauty becomes the taste for the hideous. 
 
 Even in religious emotion this is true. As 
 Charles H. Spurgeon said, "Excessive spiritual- 
 ity is akin to sensuality." 
 
 The antidote to toxic emotion is work, accom- 
 plishment, activity. Where one has no task, no 
 pressure of duty, the soul rots. It is the idle class 
 that is the dangerous class, because having no 
 work the soul gives itself over to the search for 
 new sensations. This is as bad as taking opium, 
 cocaine, or whiskey. 
 
 88 
 
The first buds of passion in the soul are the 
 most exquisitely beautiful of all human experi- 
 ence. Give yourself over to the pursuit of pas- 
 sion, however, and your end will be the most hor- 
 rible torture conceivable. 
 
 Cubism and Futurism in art are the results 
 of unrestrained love of beauty; they are that 
 hideousness into which egoistic emotional drunk- 
 enness leads. After a while the art drunkard 
 finds no satisfaction in the simplicities of nature; 
 nothing but the distorted can arouse him, just 
 as after a while the victim of alcoholism has no 
 taste for beer or honest wine, but must have ab- 
 sinthe, mescal, or vodka. 
 
 It was because of the cumulative danger of 
 pleasure, when followed solely, that the Puritans 
 sought to prohibit it. But the master word of 
 morality is not prohibition ; it is self-control. Life 
 needs love, beauty, laughter, and its measure of 
 rational inebriation. Without these the soul 
 hardens. Yet with these, and without self-con- 
 trol, the soul fevers and decays. 
 
 The law of life is not "Never!" It is "Never 
 too much!" This was the motto of Socrates. 
 
 A good example of the ruin of over-emotion- 
 alism is found in the poet Baudelaire. He gave 
 himself up to feeling and to analyzing the emo- 
 tions of his inner life. Typical of his philosophy 
 are these words from one of his prose-poems : 
 
 "One must ever be drunken. Everything is in 
 that; it is the only question. In order not to feel 
 
 89 
 
the horrible burden of Time that is breaking your 
 shoulders, bending you earthwards, you must be 
 ceaselessly drunken. 
 
 "But with what? With wine, poetry, or virtue, 
 as you will — only intoxicate yourself; and if 
 sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green- 
 sward of a grave, or in the mournful solitude of 
 your room, you wake to find the intoxication di- 
 minished or vanished, ask of the wind, or the 
 wave, or the star, or the bird, or the clock . . . 
 ask what time it is; and the wind, wave, star, 
 bird, and clock will tell you: 'It is time to be 
 drunken.' Lest you should be the martyred 
 slaves of Time, be ceaselessly drunken! With 
 wine, poetry, or virtue, as you will." 
 
 The life of Baudelaire went out in the impo- 
 tence of despair, the agony of self-torture. His 
 beauty worship finished in aischrolatreia. His 
 sterile genius left nothing to mankind. 
 
 Compare his sentiment with that of another 
 man who gave as his life-motive : "I must work 
 the works of him that sent me, while it is day; 
 for the night cometh when no man can work." 
 The life of this man has been a fountain of in- 
 exhausted passion for a thousand years. 
 
 90 
 
THE MIRTH CURE 
 
 There are all manner of cures, from mud 
 baths and Perkins's Patent Porous Plaster up to 
 Thought Vibrations, but the grandest of all is 
 the Mirth Cure. 
 
 It keeps well in any climate, is guaranteed un- 
 der the pure food and drug law, doesn't cost a 
 cent, and has helped others. Why not you? 
 
 The formula is found in the writings of the 
 wisest man, who was a Jewish king and philos- 
 opher. He said: 
 
 "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." 
 
 Note — he did not say a merry wife, though she 
 certainly does good. (Perhaps he had too many 
 wives and was afraid he would be asked which 
 one.) 
 
 He did not say a merry husband, though he 
 helps some. 
 
 Nor did he say merry children, nor a merry 
 house, nor a merry occupation, nor any such thing. 
 
 For his wise old eyes saw too deeply into life 
 to make the mistake of supposing that circum- 
 stances are the root of joy. He knew that the 
 real fountain of mirth is the heart. 
 
 If you have a merry heart it makes no differ- 
 
 91 
 
ence what may be your position, whether you 
 be a tramp on the road, a scrubwoman in an 
 office building, a brakeman, a street car conduc- 
 tor, a merchant man, or even a college president. 
 You are an electric light in the fog of human 
 despondency, sunshine breaking through earth- 
 sorrow clouds, water to parched souls. 
 
 Did you ever hear the story of "The Happy 
 Man's Shirt?" It is an old one, but one of those 
 that ought constantly be retold. 
 
 There was once a king who was smitten with 
 sadness and disgust of life. He had gorged at 
 all human pleasures, could no more be amused, 
 and now was like to die. 
 
 They called in the soothsayers and medicine 
 men, but none could suggest a remedy. At last 
 they sent to an old hermit who lived in the wood, 
 who said: "The case is simple. Let the king 
 sleep all night in a happy man's shirt, and he will 
 be healed." 
 
 Whereupon the king ordered that the palace 
 be searched, a happy man be found and his shirt 
 brought. But no happy man could be discovered 
 in the palace. 
 
 Then they sought through the city and then 
 throughout the length and breadth of the king- 
 dom, but no man could they lay hands upon who 
 would declare, without reservation or secret eva- 
 sion of mind whatever, that he was entirely happy. 
 
 A little group of the king's courtiers were re- 
 turning home disconsolate, and as they rode along 
 
 92 
 
the highway they espied a beggar sitting under 
 a tree, playing with the autumn leaves and smil- 
 ing to himself. 
 
 *'Hola!" they shouted. "Are you happy?" 
 
 "Surely!" replied the beggarman. 
 
 "Why, you're nothing but a beggar ! You don't 
 know where you are going to get your dinner, 
 do you?" 
 
 "Oh, no. But it isn't dinner time yet. I had 
 a good breakfast." 
 
 Then they told him of the king's plight and 
 besought him to give them his shirt forthwith, 
 adding that it should be returned to him filled with 
 gold pieces. 
 
 At that the ragged man lay back on the grass 
 and laughed as if he would expire. 
 
 "Come," said the royal attendants, "we have 
 no time for trifling. Off with your shirt, or we 
 will jerk it off." 
 
 "Hold hard, gentlemen," said the beggar, striv- 
 ing to control his mirth. "That is just what I 
 am laughing at. I Ain't Got No Shirt!" 
 
 So they went and told the king that but one 
 happy man could be unearthed in all his realm, 
 and that one was shirtless. 
 
 And the king had sense enough to perceive that 
 happiness does not depend on the shirt you sleep 
 in, nor the bed on which you lie, nor the house 
 that covers you — no, nor any external thing, but 
 comes from the heart within you. 
 
 93, 
 
Thus was he cured, and arose and went about 
 his business; and thus also may you be cured, if 
 so be that there is still left unparalyzed in you the 
 power to Think. 
 
 94 
 
DISCARDED THINGS 
 
 The secret of health is the elimination of 
 waste. 
 
 The first thing the physician prescribes usually 
 is a physic. No matter what ails the patient li 
 hardly ever can be a mistake to see that the body 
 is well rid of its waste. If the organs of ex- 
 cretion go on a strike it is fatal. 
 
 The same law holds in affairs. Every busi- 
 ness man knows what pains he must take to keep 
 his desk clean, and how papers will accumulate 
 on the table and get choked into pigeonholes and 
 obstipate letter files and pile up in drawers and 
 cases. There are so many things we are not 
 quite ready to do to-day, and to-morrow finds 
 us still indecisive, and so the documents drift into 
 forgotten holes and before long the desk is a jun- 
 gle of undone matters. 
 
 It takes moral courage to use the waste basket 
 vigorously. 
 
 Some men can work in litter, with papers on 
 their desk like snowdrifts, papers stuffed bulging 
 full into boxes, papers on the floor about them 
 "thick as autumnal leaves that strew the vale of 
 Vallombrosa," but I don't understand how they 
 
 95 
 
do it. An unanswered letter haunts me like the 
 ghost of Banquo. An unplgeonholed receipt on 
 my table irritates me like a fly. 
 
 The art of life is to discard. 
 
 Progress is clogged by the persistent remnants 
 of the outworn past. 
 
 Clogged ! clogged ! clogged ! That is the story 
 of the Church, the School, the State. 
 
 Clogged with moth-eaten ideas, with traditional 
 passions, with antiquated ideals, with petty moral- 
 ities ! 
 
 The past makes the present; the bracts pro- 
 tect the flower, but if the bracts persist and the 
 blossom cannot throw them off they become throt- 
 tling instruments of death. 
 
 The curse and weakness of the law is prece- 
 dent, of which it boasts. 
 
 All unjust privilege is but the constipation of 
 life. When justice refuses to flow, is dammed 
 up by custom, and will not follow in the new chan- 
 nels of reason, there we find the iniquitous, stag- 
 nant pools of privilege, full of poison, parasitic 
 lives. 
 
 What a world it would be if we could swing 
 forward unhampered by the past! 
 
 The past is to teach us, not to bind us. It is 
 a bane and not a blessing if it does not invigorate 
 us to go on. 
 
 The world keeps sweet and sound, young and 
 green, because plants die and rot, and the waters 
 flow forever by, and institutions crumble, and 
 
 96 
 
old ideas fade, and Nature is strong enough to 
 throw away continually her waste, bring us every 
 Spring new flowers, and every Autumn new fruits. 
 
 Swords and books and Bishops' rings! 
 
 Fast they fall upon the pile 
 Of the world's discarded things, 
 
 A little use a little while. 
 
 m 
 
THE BAPTISM 
 
 Clarice had a baby. It was the wonder of 
 the island. From the old fisherman down by 
 the beach to the Honorable Joneses and Walkers 
 up at the big hotel the baby was the subject of 
 intense discussion. For everybody liked Clarice 
 and her husband, who was a play-actor, and the 
 baby was an amazing compound of the excellences 
 of both. 
 
 Clarice wanted the baby baptized. No priest 
 or minister could be found on the island. "Just 
 the same, I shall have the baby baptized," said 
 she. "I'll have Berriman do it." Berriman was 
 a poet, past sixty, and a beautiful failure. Physi- 
 cally he lived on the crusts and edges of things; 
 spiritually he ate of the heart of the world. 
 
 So one afternoon they had the christening. And 
 Berriman, the poet, spoke, saying: 
 
 "Beloved friends, we are here gathered, in 
 the sight of God and in the presence of these 
 witnesses, to baptize this child. 
 
 "Baptism is the application of water to the 
 human body, solemnly and formally, as a symbol 
 of the cleansing of the soul. It is a most ancient 
 rite, and is found in all religions. 
 
 98 
 
"It indicates the adoption of a candidate into 
 the membership of the elect. 
 
 "There has always been a superior few, an 
 aristocracy in the world. 
 
 "There is the apparent or so-called aristocracy, 
 who as a rule are not superior at all; and there 
 is the real aristocracy, who are a secret order 
 known to themselves only. 
 
 "We are here to baptize this baby into the 
 real elect, the real upper-tendom, the real church, 
 or ecclesia, or called-out. 
 
 "We therefore consecrate ourselves to teach 
 this child to take the Upper Thought as to all 
 things. 
 
 "To her, flowers shall not be mere plants, but 
 God's thoughts. 
 
 "To her, stars shall be more than burning 
 words; they shall be eyes of mystery. 
 
 "To her, men shall not be brutes, whose labor 
 is to be exploited; they shall be brothers, 
 prophets, spirit flames. 
 
 "To her, the sex feeling, when it comes, shall 
 be as a lily, which, though its roots grow in com- 
 mon soil, yet lifts its pure petals to perfume the 
 air, to make glad the garden, and to greet the 
 sun. 
 
 "To her. Events shall not be as the shaking of 
 dice, the fortuity of chance; but they shall be 
 meaningful moves of the intelligence of destiny, 
 which guides men and things by its own perfect 
 plan. 
 
 99 
 
"We consecrate this child to reverence and 
 against flippancy; to justice, and against all lies; 
 to loyalty, and against deception; to love, and 
 against all kinds of hate ; to patience, and against 
 petulance; to beauty, and against ugliness; to 
 greatness of mind, of heart and of soul, and to 
 the world and the fellowship of the entire human 
 race, against all littleness and narrowness; to the 
 citizenship of the world and against all clans, ex- 
 clusive sects, cliques and cults. 
 
 "And this little Citizen of the World and 
 Heiress of the Future we commend unto that 
 God who has made no thing common and to that 
 Master who loved no less than the whole world." 
 
 Too 
 
THE STAIRWAY 
 
 In the house of life is a great stairway that 
 runs from the cellar to the roof. 
 
 And I saw a hog enter the cellar and go up 
 the stairs. As he went up he squealed and grunt- 
 ed, and looked for refuse to devour, but ever as 
 he ascended his squeals turned to laughter and 
 his grunts to sighs, and he sought bread and not 
 filth to eat. His form also changed, so that when 
 he had come to the upper floors he was a man, 
 and when he reached the roof he was an angel 
 and flew away. 
 
 And I saw also a poisonous snake, and an un- 
 clean goat, and a cruel wolf, and a surly bear, 
 and a fierce lion, and a snarling dog, and a sneak- 
 ing rat, and a wild horse, and a stupid donkey, 
 and all manner of inhuman beasts go up, one by 
 one, along the stairs, and at every rising step 
 each one lost some animality and gained some 
 humanity, and each one as he came to the top 
 became an angel, as a chrysalis breaks into a but- 
 terfly, and flew into the sky. 
 
 And I asked : "What is this stairway of Meta- 
 morphosis that begins with the brute and ends 
 with the superman?" 
 
 And the interpreter answered and said: "The 
 107 
 
name of this stair, by which men climb to God, 
 is Woman." The most significant thing that en- 
 ters the life of man or woman is the sex feeling. 
 
 "The sex passion makes or breaks the soul. 
 
 "For ages men considered the sex lure as a 
 device of the devil to destroy mankind. They 
 seemed to have grounds for their belief. Thou- 
 sands wallow in the bog of uncleanness, self-loath- 
 ing, despair, and crime, because this powerful in- 
 stinct in them is perverted. The life of the per- 
 vert is like a sixty-horsepower motor driven by 
 a drunken chauffeur. 
 
 "Dante, with his Beatrice, showed us a better 
 way. So also Tennyson and all the nobler poets. 
 
 "The art of nobleness consists in changing 
 what is coarse into that which is fine, making what 
 is common to be beautiful and strange; this can 
 only be done by the spirit in man. 
 
 "When eating becomes communion, when wash- 
 ing becomes baptism, and when man-woman love 
 becomes marriage, then they are sacraments, and 
 life becomes sacramental and is raised from ani- 
 mality to high and divine level. 
 
 "Where there is nothing any more that is sac- 
 rament to man, then life sinks to the stage in 
 which it was in the days of Augustus in Rome, 
 which Matthew Arnold described: 
 
 "On that hard pagan world disgust 
 And secret loathing fell; 
 Deep weariness and sated lust 
 Made human life a hell." 
 
 io8 
 
THE CAGE 
 
 A GIRAFFE in the Paris Zoo has broken his head 
 against the bars of his cage. What ailed the 
 beast? For seventeen years he has had plenty 
 of fodder and drink, an attendant in uniform and 
 gold lace to wait on him, and the privilege of 
 making the crowd gape. It was a career each 
 of us is dying for. It would seem that Mr. Gi- 
 raffe was hard to please. 
 
 When you go to a circus you see not only the 
 caged brutes in the menagerie, but around the 
 sawdust ring you find little wooden-fenced inclo- 
 sures; in these sit the elect. Similar cages are at 
 the prize fight, the roof garden, and the horse 
 show. Nobody is It unless he has a fence around 
 him. 
 
 Then there are the boxes at the theatre, the 
 very worst places in the house from which to see 
 what is going on upon the stage. But when you 
 put a barrier around the poorest seats you can 
 charge for them three times the price of good 
 seats. 
 
 The only reason we want money is that we may 
 buy a cage. As soon as a man gets rich he pro- 
 cures a house with a yard and a high iron fence 
 
 109 
 
around it. If a visitor enters the yard and gets 
 by the bulldog he still has difficulty in breaking 
 into the mansion. A butler meets him at the 
 door to see if his clothes look fit, and a secre- 
 tary meets him in the hall to make sure he is not 
 after money. 
 
 When a woman acquires money her one desire 
 also is to find a cage. She yearns for exclusive- 
 ness. Her altitude in the social scale is measured 
 by the number of persons she will not speak to. 
 
 What we call getting up in the world amounts 
 to getting properly caged. We want to travel in 
 a private car — at least, in a private compartment. 
 We want our meals at the hotel served in our 
 own private dining room. We want to be shaved 
 by our own private valet and not in the barber 
 shop. Anything to be caged off from the people. 
 
 The instinct is in us from the first. Turn a 
 child loose in a garden. What birds and insects 
 he cannot kill he captures and wants to cage. 
 
 When we say a woman loves birds we mean 
 she has one or more poor little wild things hang- 
 ing in cages around the house. 
 
 You may find here and there a squirrel in a 
 cage; to give him exercise and to amuse him an 
 infernal wheeled grill has been arranged in which 
 the captive travels miles; he doubtless enjoys it 
 — about as much as you would enjoy a treadmill; 
 his mistress "loves animals." 
 
 Meanwhile there remain a few souls who really 
 love freedom. They decline to "belong" to all 
 
 no 
 
sorts of things. They refuse to be bound by 
 convention and the opinions of other people. 
 They don't want to get away from the common 
 people, but to know and love them better. They 
 love flowers and have no desire to pick them. 
 They love birds — in trees and hedgerows. They 
 love wild beasts — in the woods, and have no de- 
 sire to see them pacing up and down in cages. 
 They want to be free, free, free. And they want 
 all other people to be free. 
 
 Some of these are tramps. Some are the caged 
 captives of convention sighing through the bars. 
 Some are poets, like Whitman, crying: 
 
 "I utter my barbaric yawp over the roofs of 
 the world." 
 
 Ill 
 
THE BLESSING 
 
 In the days of our youth the family never sat 
 down to the table without the blessing. All heads 
 would be bowed, and all the clatter of child- 
 voices would hush, while father would say: 
 
 "For what we are about to receive, O Lord, 
 make us truly grateful. Amen." 
 
 Alas! the blessing is gone. Nobody gets up 
 to breakfast, or the affair is a "movable feast," 
 where one at a time the people appear, snatch a 
 bite and a sup and hurry away. 
 
 There are even many who have their coffee 
 and rolls while lying abed; of which custom let 
 us say nothing. 
 
 City people eat their midday meal downtown 
 in restaurant or club, where, of course, there is 
 no room for blessing — quite the contrary. 
 
 The family usually gathers at dinner, but In 
 how many households do they fall to, like un- 
 souled animals, without one word of grace to 
 redeem the crassness of feeding? 
 
 I hold it is not a matter of belonging to a 
 church, believing a creed, or professing to be pi- 
 ous, but that it is an act of decency, and of hu- 
 man dignity, and of that spiritual self-respect 
 all souls ought to have to say grace. 
 
 112 
 
Adopt the custom in your household. Let there 
 be at least one minute in the day when, as a fam- 
 ily, officially and ritually, you seriously recognize 
 that you are children of the infinite, pensioners 
 upon the bounty of "a power not of yourselves." 
 
 Don't let your peculiar theology, or lack of 
 it, hinder you from a sweet and wholesome cere- 
 mony that may light up a sordid day with a lit- 
 tle beam of the Sun of souls. 
 
 One family I know used to sing the blessing; 
 and who, whether Jew, Buddhist, Christian, or 
 agnostic, could be anything but bettered by join- 
 ing for a moment, before eating, in this hymn? 
 
 "Be present at our table, Lord; 
 Be here as everywhere adored; 
 Feed us with bread, and grant that we 
 May feast in paradise with Thee!" 
 
 If that sounds too churchly, say the quaint 
 "Selkirk Grace," once used by Bobby Burns : 
 
 "Some hae meat and canna eat, 
 And some wad eat that want it, 
 But we hae meat, and we can eat, 
 And sae the Lord be thanket!" 
 
 Think! Here we all are, fellow travellers, 
 upon "the good ship Earth," whirling through 
 starry ways. We know not whence we came nor 
 whither we go. We know not our appointed 
 time. There is some power, some mind, in the 
 sum of things, that has all these secrets. 
 
 113 
 
Eating should be the sacrament indicative of 
 our reasonable reverence for that Supreme Guid- 
 ing Spirit. 
 
 Say this grace of Robert Louis Stevenson, lib- 
 eral enough for all, to whatever power you be- 
 lieve in: 
 
 "Help us to repay in service one to another 
 the debt of Thine unmerited benefits and mer- 
 cies." 
 
 114 
 
THE CITY AND PRIVACY 
 
 One reason why people flock to cities is that 
 they may be able to mind their own business. 
 
 Political economists seek complex and devious 
 reasons for the tremendous rapidity of city 
 growth and for the desertion of the country and 
 of the country town. The cause, however, is 
 quite simple, as simple as human nature. The 
 people go to cities because they "want to." That's 
 all. 
 
 Take the village of Podunk. In the first place 
 you would not be allowed to go there to live 
 without explaining why you came, where you 
 came from, and what your business is. You can 
 rent a flat in Chicago, however, and nobody cares 
 a tuppence who you are or what is your criminal 
 record, so long as you are peaceable. 
 
 If you do business in Podunk, and usually get 
 down to the store at nine, and some morning 
 you do not appear until ten, the town will not 
 rest until it has found out the cause of your delay. 
 
 Your neighbors know all about you and your 
 wife, your sons, and your daughters. The bank 
 cashier knows the size of your pile, the grocer 
 and butcher know what you eat, the dry goods 
 
 115 
 
merchant knows what sort of underclothes you 
 wear and how much your women folks spend on 
 corsets, and they all meet and check up. 
 
 When you leave town they know it, also when 
 you return; and they want to know what you 
 were doing in St. Louis. 
 
 It is all a very cosy family arrangement. You 
 live in the constant glare of the limelight. 
 
 Some people like it, and feel lost and lone- 
 some in the city. But more and more that class 
 is growing to whom this perpetual invasion of 
 privacy is disagreeable. 
 
 It is pretty generally assumed among moral- 
 ists that people love the privacy of cities because 
 they wish to plunge into vice. Doubtless some 
 do. But it is doubtful if the average city-bred 
 person is any more immoral than the country- 
 bred. 
 
 It is conceivable that a person may wish to 
 live his own life as he pleases, and not under the 
 unremitting supervision of Mrs. Grundy, ,and 
 that this wish may be prompted not by a desire 
 for secret crime but simply by a desire for per- 
 sonal privacy. 
 
 The matter is really a conflict between the old 
 idea that morality is conformity and the modern 
 idea that morality is the responsible expression 
 of one's own personality. 
 
 The city means the revolt of the soul of man 
 against moral dictation. Of course, wicked peo- 
 
 ii6 
 
pie have always resented moral tyranny. Now 
 the good people are beginning to resent it too. 
 So the country is squeezing out its best and its 
 worst into the cities. 
 
 117 
 
A WEALTHY MAN 
 
 I have received a remarkable letter. It is so 
 significant that I am going to give the greater 
 part of it, amended a bit, to my readers. 
 
 Here is a man, it seems to me, who has got 
 himself on the right side of the universe. He 
 is so rich he makes me ashamed of my poverty. 
 He writes : 
 
 "I am very wealthy. 
 
 "Although you will look in vain for my name 
 in 'Who's Who' or the society 'Blue Book,' never- 
 theless all the art treasures of Mr. Morgan or 
 Mr. Altman are trifles compared to my posses- 
 sions. 
 
 "As I write I glance at one of them in rapt ad- 
 miration and wonder. It is an inexhaustible 
 source of delight to me. Its gifts to me are so 
 prolific that I can trample them under foot, yet 
 still they come. 
 
 "My gems are beyond price. The pleasure 
 they supply to me is unalloyed, for they give me 
 no worry along with their enjoyment. I have 
 no fear of burglars. Whoso would rob me would 
 but enrich me further. 
 
 "All this vast wealth is confined within the 
 
 11$ 
 
small area of a few hundred feet of the earth's 
 surface, a portion of ground for which I have 
 toiled the greater part of my fifty years of life. 
 
 "The thing of beauty I refer to is a noble 
 Sugar Maple Tree about sixty or seventy feet 
 high, in all the glory of its autumnal foliage. 
 
 "To-day it is vermilion and green and gold in 
 the sunlight after a drenching rain. 
 
 "Every leaf is a jewel, and every one different, 
 thousands upon thousands of them. No rare 
 enamels can compare with them. They shame 
 the porcelains of China, the vases of Japan, the 
 king's treasures from Dresden or Sevres. 
 
 "The delicate tracery, the fantastic shapes, the 
 tumult of color in these leaves! They are full 
 of the craftsmanship-joy, the artist-delight, of the 
 infinite Creator. I feel by the joy I get in appre- 
 ciating them what joy He must Have in making 
 them. 
 
 "They are falling one by one, and lie in 
 splotches of rich color upon the green of the 
 grass, which flashes with raindrops in all the hues 
 of the prism, a carpet of oriental colors upon 
 a background of diamonds. 
 
 "And when all the leaves have returned to the 
 earth from which they came, where they will help 
 to fertilize new lives, I will still have my Tree 
 to admire. Its beautiful naked limbs will be 
 etched against the sky, its rugged bark upon its 
 sturdy trunk will hide the inner secret of life to 
 come. 
 
 119 
 
"I get rest from my Tree, and high thoughts, 
 and winged fancies, which I cannot utter. 
 
 "I see two things in my Maple, the two things 
 which speak to my soul, and whisper to me the 
 secret of the world and of the world to come, and 
 of all worthy living. 
 
 "The two things are Strength and Beauty." 
 
 1 20 
 
THE FIREPLACE 
 
 In the modern dwelling the fireplace has dis- 
 appeared, the steam radiator has been substi- 
 tuted. 
 
 The change is not without significance to the 
 spirits of men. The fire on the hearth was the 
 symbol of The Family. It was the original al- 
 tar, the centre about which gathered the first hu- 
 man institution. 
 
 In the advance ranks of "progress" The Fam- 
 ily is likewise vanishing. A certain group of fu- 
 turist thinkers, typified by H. G. Wells, seriously 
 propose the State instead of The Family as the 
 proper agent to care for children. 
 
 We move from flat to flat, like gypsies. Our 
 children are born at stations by the way, and have 
 no home feeling. 
 
 Divorces increase; for women are travelling 
 companions, not home makers. 
 
 By our most praiseworthy charities we are un- 
 dermining The Family. By many of those 
 schemes, both of Church and State, by which we 
 seek to "save" the individual, we try to do what 
 ought to be done through The Family. 
 
 Old ladies are put into institutional homes, 
 
 121 
 
often, when it is the duty and the blessing of The 
 Family to keep them. 
 
 The children of the well-to-do, who ought to 
 be growing up in daily contact with mother, fa- 
 ther, brothers, and sisters, are sent away to pri- 
 vate schools. They may get expert training, but 
 they miss that family life that is Infinitely more 
 valuable to them, and equally as necessary to the 
 parents. 
 
 Babies will be taken care of by hospitals, found- 
 ling asylums, and other charitable institutions, 
 provided the mother will renounce all claim to her 
 offspring. 
 
 We heal defective souls and bodies and rescue 
 the perishing generally, but we insist upon sup- 
 pressing the function of The Family. The mother 
 is incompetent, the father unfit, the environment 
 is unideal; hence, take the child away to a huge 
 brick barracks where he can be herded scientifi- 
 cally with other children. 
 
 Rational helpfulness should aid the defective 
 individual by aiding The Family. For The Fam- 
 ily is more important than the individual. 
 
 It is more to be desired that we maintain The 
 Family than that we preserve the Nation or the 
 Church. 
 
 Without Family life we are what Urbain Go- 
 hler calls "une poussiere de peuples," a dust-peo- 
 ple, loose grains of sand, with no solidarity. 
 
 The "live your own life" gospel Is often dan- 
 gerously near humbuggery. Every young man 
 
 122 
 
and young woman should plan to have children, 
 born in happy marriage, growing up in an atmos- 
 phere of Family love ; for there is nothing that so 
 develops one's soul as the responsibilities, the joys, 
 and sorrows of The Family. 
 
 We need a deal of wholesome human feeling 
 to resist the entirely corrupting influence of arti- 
 ficial mantels over artificial grates where there is 
 no fire, or at least but a gas log, and of radiators, 
 and of registers, holes in the floors where hot air 
 comes up. Would that there were some way to 
 gather The Family once more around blazing 
 logs and a hearthstone! 
 
 For the most beautiful cross in the world is 
 composed of two sticks crossed and burning in the 
 fireplace, with father, mother, and the children all 
 gathered around it. 
 
 The Family is the first spiritual unit of man- 
 kind, the real Church, "and the gates of hell shall 
 not prevail against it." 
 
 123 
 
THE SAND PILE 
 
 Some men the other day came around and 
 dumped about forty wagon loads of sand in the 
 street at our corner. They are going to use it 
 in repaying the street; but meanwhile it is being 
 put to a far better use. 
 
 For, as soon as the heap was complete, out 
 from all sorts of places came small children and 
 covered the sand heap, even as flies come and 
 cover a lump of sugar. 
 
 I can see them out of my window now, and 
 hear them; for they are shrieking like mad, as 
 all children do who are having a perfectly gor- 
 geous time. 
 
 If I could tell you all that is happening on that 
 sand it would make more interesting reading than 
 a pageful of newspaper crimes or a bookful of 
 Diamond Dick adventures. 
 
 Over there a pirate has captured a crew of 
 merchantmen and made them walk the plank. 
 One by one the poor wretches tumbled down the 
 sand, while the bold Captain Kidd with his sword 
 of lath stood mercilessly at the top. 
 
 A general has led his troops to glory. He is an 
 Irish boy of seven; his army consists of his two 
 
 124 
 
sisters and two neighbor boys. But it was a 
 famous victory. They hked it so well they did it 
 over and over. 
 
 There have been knife fights on the cliff, terrific 
 struggles with the Indians, bloody hold-ups, prize 
 fights, and bear fights. 
 
 Little Sissy Matthews, aged three, has rolled 
 down the sand mountain until she is half sand 
 herself; and her soul is filled with pure joy, even 
 as her ears are filled with sand. 
 
 They have dug holes, moulded forts, made 
 houses, pierced tunnels. They have patted the 
 sand and piled it and thrown it and rolled in it, 
 everything but eaten it. 
 
 On behalf of the children I wish to thank the 
 municipality for its kind consideration. Whether 
 the street needs paving or not I will not undertake 
 to discuss, but it is certain that the children need 
 all the laughter and glee that is contained in that 
 sand pile. 
 
 Therefore, O wise and learned rulers of the 
 town, I would petition you to come on with the 
 sand. Please make some more heaps. Dump 
 one at every corner. 
 
 It is good of you to provide schools where the 
 little ones can sit up straight and study and not 
 whisper. But oh ! how much more bliss and rap- 
 ture in a hill of sand! 
 
 All day long thousands of children stay in 
 their cooped-up flats, or go out to play in streets 
 crowded with murderous automobiles and trucks. 
 
 125 
 
So that a sand pile is a godsend, and goes toward 
 realizing the prophecy of the seer of old: 
 
 "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys 
 and girls playing in the streets thereof." 
 
 iz6 
 
MUSIC 
 
 The study of music should be made compul- 
 sory in the public schools. 
 
 The whole populace should be taught what true 
 music is. The only way to accomplish this is to 
 cause the children continually to hear, to sing, 
 and to perform upon instruments music of the 
 highest quality. 
 
 Cheap and nasty music is worse than cheap and 
 nasty meat and bread; the former destroys the 
 character, the latter only the body. 
 
 The average popular music of America to-day 
 is without doubt the most base and evil ever in the 
 world. It is without ingenuity, taste, or musical 
 value. It is as injurious as profanity. The 
 wretched tunes are more deleterious than the 
 smut-words to which they are set. 
 
 A generation of boys and girls brought up on 
 Bach, Beethoven, Gounod, and Wagner would 
 have souls lOO per cent, higher in quality than the 
 unfortunate children of to-day fed upon ragtime 
 and melodies of contemptible inanity. 
 
 The greatest danger threatening this nation is 
 that it may become utterly material and trivial; 
 for triviality invariably accompanies materialism 
 and the decay of ideals. 
 
 127 
 
A nation that has no deep-hearted songs, a na- 
 tion that can not or will not sing, can be no or- 
 ganic thing; it is but loose dust. 
 
 The most terrible trait of the laborers of the 
 United States is not their violence nor their drink, 
 but the fact that they do not sing at their meet- 
 ings. 
 
 Cultured and well-to-do people have a tendency 
 to perversion and idle mischief because there is 
 no music in them. Who ever heard of a fash- 
 ionable "function" where the guests sang choruses 
 and part-songs? 
 
 Our people are educated to have music made 
 At them, not to make music themselves ; a fatal, 
 deadly mistake. 
 
 The American cabaret is a ghastly and, to an 
 intelligent person, a most boresome affair. Watch 
 the hideous, wriggling women and jumping males 
 trying to entertain the eaters and drinkers, who 
 sit with stolid, cheerless faces! 
 
 A company of German students in a beer cellar 
 is jovial, because they can sing, and sing music 
 that has worth. 
 
 Not the least reason why the church is losing 
 its hold upon the masses is that congregations 
 have ceased to sing. A company of worshippers 
 that hire their music to be performed before them 
 is already dead. 
 
 There can be no civic conscience, no clean poli- 
 tics, no firm organization of the people, without 
 music as a basis. Those who cannot sing together 
 
 128 
 
cannot act together for high spiritual and political 
 ends. 
 
 Music is not an entertainment, an accomplish- 
 ment, a side-show. 
 
 It is as necessary for the populace to have 
 music as they march toward their civic and na- 
 tional goals as it is for an army to have bands 
 or to chant folk-hymns on its way to battle. 
 
 A dumb democracy is a dead one. 
 
 We are the dumb slaves of such organizations 
 as Tammany because we do not sing; for those 
 who have no music in their souls cannot keep step. 
 
 Why quarrel over teaching religion in the pub- 
 lic schools? Why not teach music, which is the 
 gist of all religions? "It is incontestable," says 
 M. Victor de Laprade, a French writer on music, 
 "that music induces in us a sense of the infinite 
 and the contemplation of the invisible." 
 
 "See deep enough," says Carlyle, "and you see 
 musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere 
 music." 
 
 And William Watson : 
 
 Nay, what is Nature's 
 Self, but an endless 
 Strife towards music, 
 Euphony, rhyme? 
 
 We must learn as a people to love good music, 
 or we shall perish of sheer cheapness and shal- 
 lowness of soul. 
 
 129 
 
NO NEED OF CHARM 
 
 In "The Marriage Game," Mrs. Flexner's 
 play, occurs a fine line : 
 
 "Unless a woman wants something she has no 
 business to want, she has no need of charm." 
 
 No need of charm! How many a foolish lit- 
 tle brain, devoid of understanding, has ship- 
 wrecked things by this unreason! 
 
 The silly woman, who exerted all her arts and 
 wiles to draw a suitor, drops her efforts with him 
 become a husband. Her market's made. She has 
 caught her train, is safely aboard, and why run 
 any more? 
 
 She gives frank expression to her peevish 
 whims and ailments. She is captious, critical. 
 
 She is dowdy at breakfast. She is unkempt 
 and sloppily dressed when they two are alone. 
 
 Exert one's self to woo a husband? Why, 
 there are those women who seem to think it's 
 hardly decent. 
 
 And right here is the cue for the entrance of 
 "the other woman." 
 
 Many a man, too, thinks the game's up when 
 he has haltered and altared the woman of his 
 choice. The excitement of the chase is over. It's 
 "married and done for." 
 
 130 
 
Then if the woman be strongly human, as she 
 generally is, and a bit weak and sensitive, as she 
 often is, marriage breaks down. Possibly — en- 
 ter "the other man." 
 
 People speak of having tried marriage and 
 found it a failure. Most of them have not tried 
 at all. That is the trouble. They didn't "try." 
 
 Eternal vigilance is the price of love, as well as 
 of liberty. Success, in marriage also, means keep- 
 ing everlastingly at it. 
 
 To sit down, once married, and expect to be 
 coddled, waited on, served, and pleased, you a 
 king on a throne and your mate your servitor, is 
 rather sure to bring on swift ruin. 
 
 There is not one wife in a thousand that could 
 not keep her husband if she would keep working 
 at the job. The wife has a thousand advantages 
 over the other woman. 
 
 And if a husband will only not stop making 
 love he need fear no rival. 
 
 Most of the unhappy marriages are due to self- 
 ishness plus pure boneheadedness. 
 
 The love and devotion of a good woman, and 
 of an honest man, is worth working hard for. 
 
 And the beauty of it is that it is the most de- 
 lightful work in the world, once it gets established 
 as a habit. 
 
 You need charm every day you live. 
 
 m 
 
THE PRACTICE OF GREATNESS BY 
 WORDS 
 
 You take exercises for the muscles of your 
 arms, legs, and back; why not take an exercise 
 occasionally for your soul? 
 
 Your spirit, or ego, or self, or whatever you 
 may call that inner invisible something that is 
 more really you than your body; that something 
 which thinks, loves, feels, imagines, and wills is 
 well worth a little training. 
 
 Here is a suggestion. There are certain great 
 ideas, represented by certain great words. These 
 words have power-volts in their very sound. 
 Every time you think one of them you grow 
 greater. 
 
 Take to bed with you the following seven 
 words. As you lie, waiting for sleep, say them 
 over, one by one, to yourself. 
 
 Or, better, take a half hour during the day, In 
 silence and solitude, and practise the feeling of 
 these terms. 
 
 God. Never mind about your belief or disbe- 
 lief. Say that word ten times, slowly, with pauses 
 between. Think of what is above, below, around, 
 and in all things. Spread your mind out upon the 
 yniverse. Practise the sensing of the infinite. 
 
 13? 
 
I^TARS. Say Stars. Think iStars. Try i6 
 reach the feeling of stars. Let your fancy climb 
 to the top of the night sky. Get the vibrations 
 of those measureless distances, those suns, gal- 
 axies, sweeping worlds; all silent, luminous, im- 
 mense, swift whirling yet orderly. Happy you 
 if you can induce a bit of star feeling within you I 
 
 Mountain. Repeat some names of individu- 
 als; Mont Blanc, Himalaya, Orizaba, Matter- 
 horn, Popocatepetl. Get your mind up among the 
 noiseless heights. Let the serenity, the eternity 
 of the words filter Into you. 
 
 Ocean. Go a-sailing, out of sight of land. 
 Be surrounded for a moment by waste, wild wa- 
 ters. See on all sides only horizon. Stand, in 
 your imagination, by the seashore. Hear the surf 
 boom. Do not talk. Do not make phrases. 
 Feel! 
 
 Tree. Call to mind the most majestic tree you 
 know. Touch its rough trunk. Look up at its 
 wide branches. Stand from it and see Its outline 
 against the sky. Get some of the Tree feeling 
 into your spirit. Think Trees ; it's a wonderful 
 relief from thinking dishes and dust-rags. 
 
 Dawn. Think of sunrise, of the freshness of 
 life, of hopeful beginnings. Induce, if you can, 
 a sense of sunrise. 
 
 More. It Is a sonorous word. Repeat it — 
 slowly, significantly, and note how you grow. The 
 word lifts you up, expands you. 
 
 Don't try to argue. Just say these seven words. 
 
 133 
 
Let them boom across your consciousness. Some- 
 how they will still and banish your littleness. 
 You will come to a great calm. You will have a 
 sense of poise. You will get a sense of remote- 
 ness from affairs. You cannot describe it, nor 
 impart it. It is a secret. 
 
 Your self-contempt will vanish. You will cease 
 to think yourself a nothing, a puppet, insignificant. 
 
 You will feel that you are, deep in your hid- 
 den life, great and strong and wonderful. For 
 who can think such thoughts and be wholly little 
 and contemptible? 
 
 134 
 
WHAT WE CAN NEVER KNOW 
 
 The most striking thing about a really learned 
 man is not the extent of his knowledge, but the 
 extent of his admitted ignorance. The wiser a 
 person is the greater the number of things he 
 doesn't know. 
 
 The more universally cock-sure and well in- 
 formed one seems the more likely it is that he is 
 a humbug. 
 
 Socrates . . . 
 
 Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronounced 
 
 Wisest of men, 
 
 used often to say he knew nothing. 
 
 How little has science made inroad upon that 
 stupendous and limitless nescience that surrounds 
 it, as the stellar universe enfolds the tiny earth! 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge the other day, at the meet- 
 ing of the British Association, spoke of the mys- 
 tery of sex determination. Spite of all claims, 
 we know little more to-day than did the cave 
 men why one child is born a boy and another a 
 girl, and why the world ratio keeps about the 
 same. 
 
 135 
 
Sir Oliver also expressed his wonder that some 
 plants bore both male and female flowers. He 
 said the same sap comes into the stem, but just 
 at that junction where differently sexed flowers 
 branched away from each other there must be 
 some profound change in the sap. 
 
 "I don't know what it is, and microscopes tell 
 me nothing about it," he continued. "Perhaps 
 if physiologists could find out just what happens 
 in that little plant joint they would get some clue 
 to the reason why some human beings are born 
 boys and others girls." 
 
 He might have pushed further his point of 
 wonder. How comes it that the earth juices make 
 here a white flower and there a red? How is a 
 huge oak all folded in a little acorn? 
 
 How can nature make the peach, full of juice 
 and cased so closely in the thinnest of fuzzy skin 
 that never leaks ? 
 
 How does blood food here create a hard finger- 
 nail, there a hair, and there a stony tooth? 
 
 What is electricity? We know somewhat of 
 how it acts. But what is it? We know little 
 more of it than does a savage. 
 
 What is life? What is that secret force that 
 transforms in a trice a living dog, who eats his 
 environment, into a dead dog, whose environment 
 eats him? 
 
 What is love? Why does this woman thrill 
 you and that one leave you cold or repel you? 
 
 What h conscience, that world's policeman that 
 
urges us on to what we think right and affrights 
 us at what we think wrong? 
 
 What is truth? What is personality? What 
 is being? 
 
 And these questions are not remote, academic 
 questions, not such things as Huxley called "lunar 
 politics," but they touch the very nearest and 
 dearest regions of every man's life. 
 
 We are but dust-motes in the sunbeam of the 
 infinite. We cling like oysters to our little point 
 in the bed of the vast ocean of mystery. 
 
 All about us is nature, deep-wombed, gray-eyed, 
 her mind a galaxy of secrets, her thoughts far 
 and strange as the procession of the suns. 
 
 Nothing befits us, her children, so much as rev- 
 erence for her purposes, humility before her great 
 brain, trust and love in her vast heart. 
 
 No one is so consummate an ass as the one 
 who thinks he knows it all. 
 
 1.37 
 
"AND NO ONE SHALL WORK FOR 
 
 MONEY" 
 
 It is usually put forth as a knockdown argu- 
 ment that if men did not have to work for bread 
 and butter they would not work at all. 
 
 It is assumed as a matter of course that money 
 is the representative of the only universal mo- 
 tive of human energy, and that if all were assured 
 a good living nobody would turn a hand. 
 
 I do not believe this. I believe that money is 
 not a legitimate motive at all. To illustrate, let 
 us imagine that state of the world, to which we 
 will come some day, where wages exist no more. 
 
 Let us suppose we have so developed the state 
 that every child is assured of care and due train- 
 ing. No ignorant, unskilled, or criminally de- 
 fective beings are brought into the number of in- 
 dependent adults. If incapable of decent life on 
 arriving at manhood they are taken care of in 
 proper institutions. 
 
 Let us suppose also that every person Is fed, 
 housed, and clothed by the state. No man or 
 woman needs to labor to make a living. The en- 
 tire motive of subsistence is eliminated. 
 
 Instead of this resulting in the paralysis of all 
 
 138 
 
energy, it would be but the beginning of prog- 
 ress. As Moryd Sheridan says : "When our ex- 
 istence is comfortably assured, the battle of life 
 will have begun in earnest." 
 
 Men, with their present stock of ideals, would 
 of course drop into idleness under such circum- 
 stances ; but men now differ from men then almost 
 as much as a hog differs from a man. It is frankly 
 to be admitted that altruistic feelings and civic 
 conscience must be greatly strengthened. Condi- 
 tions now are the only practical ones for half- 
 barbarous creatures such as we are at present. 
 
 But let us be specific. What motives precisely 
 will supersede personal gain? 
 
 Instead of work for money there will be crafts- 
 manship for the joy of it. People now love to 
 make, do, and manage things, for fun, when the 
 things are what they enjoy doing. The problem 
 of civilization is to change labor into craft, and 
 thus into play. 
 
 Machinery is more and more replacing the 
 drudgery of hands. The steam dredger does the 
 work of a hundred hand shovels ; carry that on a 
 hundred years and imagine the vast amount of 
 disagreeable effort that will be taken from men. 
 
 There will be the enthusiasms of art, of music, 
 of letters and science. Even now the best work 
 here is not at all for money and is poorly paid. 
 
 The joy of home making is not a money-paid 
 pleasure. The wives and mothers of the future 
 will be as busy and as happy as now. 
 
 139 
 
We are all sensitive to public opinion. The 
 scorn of our fellows is a sharp whip. As we pro- 
 gress it will grow sharper. Men will be 
 Ashamed to Be Idle. Human beings work as 
 hard to avoid contempt as to get money. To 
 have the esteem and praise of the community will 
 move men as powerfully as to make gain. 
 
 In a wage-free democracy we shall not only 
 have better poems and paintings and scientific dis- 
 coveries and music, but street cars will be run bet- 
 ter, groceries and milk will be of better quality 
 and better distributed, meals will be better cooked, 
 clothes will be better made, and all the little, nec- 
 essary work of the world better done, because al- 
 ways a large part of the people can do these 
 things and cannot write poetry nor compose music. 
 
 You remember Tom Sawyer's getting the boys 
 to whitewash his fence, when he made it Seem 
 Fun to them? 
 
 That is plain human nature. And I believe all 
 men will do more and better work when they shall 
 work because it is fun to them, and when not to 
 work will only mean the contempt of their fel- 
 lows. 
 
 And, take it now, the people who never have to 
 care for bread or clothing are about as ener- 
 getic as the farm-hands, with, of course, notable 
 exceptions among the perverts of society and of 
 "society's" hangers on. 
 
 140 
 
THE SCHOOL YARD 
 
 Few greater wrongs can be done an American 
 child than to deprive him of the privilege of the 
 Public School. 
 
 I am not so sure children get much training in 
 the schoolhouse that really trains, for we are 
 still monstrously medieval with our "grades," 
 "courses of study," and "examinations," classify- 
 ing human beings like cabbages, pigeon-holing 
 them and working them through systems as if 
 they were scientijfic specimens, instead of study- 
 ing them and developing the singular talent in 
 each of them. 
 
 But there is no doubt as to the educational value 
 of the school playground. It is there that your 
 little darling will learn that one thing he needs 
 to know above and before all other things, to wit : 
 Democracy. 
 
 It is there he will get the self-conceit punched 
 out of him. He will learn to play the man. He 
 will learn self-reliance, courage, and "not to think 
 more highly of himself than he ought to think." 
 
 Children, even the offspring of snobs and snob- 
 esses, are natural born democrats. They know 
 no distinction of race, creed, or social position. 
 
Your child will play with the little Chinese boy 
 and never dream he is not a perfectly good hu- 
 man being until you teach him. 
 
 Sir Francis Vane of Hutton, in the September 
 number of the Contemporary Review, tells how, 
 when he had established a school in the Trans- 
 vaal, the little whites and blacks studied and 
 sported together in entire good will, until the 
 Dutch parents begged him as a favor not to al- 
 low their children to play with colored ones. 
 
 He continues : "I have seen this fight of the 
 young for freedom from race and caste prejudice, 
 against elderly sinners — the laggards of time — 
 not in one country, but in many. In Italy on the 
 democratic sands of Viareggio, where Shelley 
 died, I have seen little people playing in harmony 
 together, and suddenly separated by those whose 
 duty it was to instil wisdom and Christianity into 
 them with these words : 'I will not have you play 
 with Protestant children.' I have seen at San 
 Sebastian children educated in the vulgarity of 
 class prejudice just as I have in race; and I can 
 never forget my own first experience in this kind 
 of stupid cruelty, when as a child of nine I had 
 played with a small girl of the same age one long 
 morning, and she, having been invited to our 
 house to dinner, to my surprise and mortification 
 was sent to the kitchen for her meal while I had 
 mine in solitary state in the day nursery. To my 
 vehement inquiry why we should be divided, the 
 governess's reply was, 'But you are a little gen- 
 
 142 
 
tleman' — a poor and inexplicable consolation for 
 having my food alone I" 
 
 For some time to come, doubtless, grown- 
 ups will continue their vulgar, Pharisaic, and sep- 
 tic notions and practices of class prejudice; but 
 something should be done to save the little ones. 
 
 Parents should realize that no more danger- 
 ous idea can get itself fixed in the child mind than 
 that he is of a class apart from and superior to 
 ordinary people; or that there are insuperable 
 barriers between high-born and low-born, rich 
 and poor, white and yellow, Hebrew and Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 Georg Ebers describes a saint in Mount Sinai 
 who crawled into a hole, away from the wicked 
 world, but when they found him dead they found 
 also that he had written upon the wall that fa- 
 mous line of Terence, "Homo sum; humani nihil 
 a me alien puto." (I am a man, and I consider 
 nothing human alien to me.) 
 
 No institution for thfe inculcation of the sense 
 of humanity has ever been devised that is better 
 than the United States public school yard. 
 
 143 
 
THE CURSE OF POVERTY 
 
 There is but one calamity — poverty. There 
 is but one thing to be desired — riches. 
 
 Any kind of poverty is bad: material, intellec- 
 tual, emotional, spiritual. 
 
 Every bodily disease is due to bodily poverty: 
 of the blood, of nutrition, of elimination, of co- 
 ordination. 
 
 Malignant germs abound everywhere. But 
 they are snobs. They do not attack the rich- 
 blooded, the richly functioned; they pounce upon 
 the anemic. A health-rich boy can have a mil- 
 lion pneumonia microbes in his mouth and not be 
 hurt. 
 
 Money poverty is bad. You do not have to be 
 a money worshipper to believe that you cannot 
 lead a decent life without income enough to get 
 you comfortable clothing, wholesome food, a san- 
 itary habitation, and the saving bits of culture 
 and leisure. 
 
 It is perfectly right for us to want money 
 enough to secure a reasonable independence. 
 Any one who is not investing regularly a portion 
 of his earnings is a fool. Thrift is just as sterling 
 a virtue now as it was in the days of Ben Frank- 
 
 144 
 
lin. Any child not trained to save is wronged. 
 
 The newspapers are full of the news of do- 
 mestic scandal. It is due to poverty of love, and 
 poverty of character. 
 
 The richest rich people on earth are they who 
 have plenty of love. 
 
 And how terrible and far-reaching are the ef- 
 fects of mind poverty! 
 
 The people are like "dumb, driven cattle," 
 herded by shrewd political bosses. Their chil- 
 dren are stunted, their homes are cramped, their 
 rights are denied them, their food is poisoned, 
 they are insulted, despised, pillaged, and swin- 
 dled, simply because they are ignorant, they are 
 victims of intellectual poverty, they don't know 
 what to do. 
 
 Duly train just one generation of children and 
 see what a tremendous silent revolution would 
 ensue ! 
 
 It is the great army of the ignorant who stir 
 up violence, follow fatuous enthusiasms and bring 
 defeat in the battles of the people. 
 
 It is the moral poverty of the money-rich that 
 renders them pests. 
 
 It is the spiritual poverty of the Church that 
 makes it ineffective. 
 
 It is the artistic poverty of the People that 
 gives us ugly cities, dreary streets, stuffy flats, 
 hideous advertising plastered over street cars and 
 billboards. 
 
 It is artistic poverty that produces poor theat- 
 
 145 
 
rical shows, wretched, musically poverty-stricken 
 comic operas, idea-poverty-stricken plays. 
 
 It is moral impotence that causes the dearth 
 of honest men as great leaders. 
 
 Yet reformers h,awk preventive remedies. 
 Prohibit this, stop that, curb the other! Hu- 
 manity needs the bit, the brake, and the restraint 
 of its too powerful forces ! 
 
 Stuff and nonsense! The one thing mankind 
 needs is more force, more fire, more steam, more 
 riches. 
 
 Never more than now. Democracy needs a 
 thousandfold more money than royalty. Free- 
 dom needs more brains than serfdom. Virtue 
 needs more energy than vice. Love is aseptic in 
 proportion as it is potent. Real religion is only 
 in surcharged souls; watery and timid souls can 
 have but Pharisaism. 
 
 Give us riches ! Rich hearts to love might- 
 ily, rich brains to think boldly, rich hands to work 
 skilfully, rich bodies to live wholesomely, riches 
 of culture to keep us out of the bogs of barbar- 
 ism, riches of music, of sculpture, of architecture, 
 riches of spirit to grasp the majesty of moral 
 laws, and riches of money to secure our personal 
 independence. 
 
 The great man is the man of full life. 
 
 "And he shall be like a tree planted by the 
 rivers of water, that bringeth forth fruit; his leaf 
 also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth 
 shall prosper." 
 
 146 
 
WHAT IS BEST? 
 
 What is the best? We all agree we should 
 strive for it, but what is it? Christians say the 
 answer is found in the Bible, Mahometans in the 
 Koran, some say it is in the theories of Herbert 
 Spencer, others of Descartes. 
 
 These have been given as "the greatest good" : 
 righteousness, happiness, wisdom, love, holiness, 
 and so on. 
 
 My own notion is that "the best" is whatever 
 favors the fullest development of the personality. 
 I believe we are set in this garden of the world 
 to grow, and that he who grows most perfectly 
 is the best man. 
 
 There are in us sensual, selfish, and other so- 
 called "evil" qualities, and others called "higher" 
 elements or "good." What is the difference? 
 
 The evil elements are those which the experi- 
 ence of the race has shown to be destructive, their 
 pleasure is brief; the higher are those proven to be 
 both lasting in themselves and preservative and 
 strengthening to the whole man. 
 
 Over the individual man is mankind. From 
 this comes a still truer fact. Whatever is hostile 
 to the full development and permanent order, 
 
 147 
 
health, and joy of the whole race becomes a "bad" 
 thing for the single person; and whatever pro- 
 motes the welfare of humanity is a "good" in the 
 one man. 
 
 From this comes what we call morality, which 
 is the limiting of the individual self-expression by 
 the collective. I may have an impulse to glutton- 
 ize, steal, or kill; if I and all others freely in- 
 dulged such promptings the race would be imper- 
 illed; hence they are "wicked." 
 
 The moralities therefore are not the inven- 
 tions of priests, are not forms of tyranny. No 
 man nor conspiracy could establish a fake or ar- 
 tificial system of ethics which will stand the test 
 of time. For morals are the feeling of self-pres- 
 ervation in the race, superimposed upon the feel- 
 ing of self-expression in the individual. 
 
 The great "law-givers" never "gave" laws at 
 all. They discovered them. They were poets, 
 seers. Moses discovered the Ten Command- 
 ments ; he perceived them to be the real principles 
 of racial self-preservation. Socrates, Buddha, 
 Confucius and all the sages merely saw vast race- 
 principles and gave them to us as correctives of 
 individual forces. 
 
 Let us go back to our definition, "the best is 
 whatever favors the fullest growth of the person- 
 ality," and ask how we may know what this is. 
 The answer is, by experience, not only individual 
 experience, but the experience of the whole world. 
 
 148 
 
The latter is stored in our conscience, cellared in 
 our inborn sense of right and wrong. 
 
 The man who pursues only self-expression, and 
 gives self up to sensual, intellectual, or spiritual 
 self-indulgence, is a dangerous man. He is surely 
 headed for tragedy. 
 
 But the man who, while freely indulging every 
 instinct, every desire, yet feels in himself a race- 
 consciousness that controls his private impulses, 
 such a man is truly altruistic. 
 
 When altruism becomes a passion we call it re- 
 ligion. 
 
 Thus, then, we may know what is "best." First, 
 it is whatever in us seeks expression, it is the 
 forthputting of our personality. And second, it 
 Is the world-consciousness, more or less mani- 
 fested in love, patriotism, God, and all inclusive 
 race-passions, guiding and fostering our individ- 
 ual desires. 
 
 I know that hope, faith, courage, and chaste- 
 mindedness are good because I feel that if all the 
 world practised them it would be well. I know 
 that fear, pride, petulance, greed, and such things 
 are bad, because if everybody were governed by 
 such emotions it would produce chaos and univer- 
 sal unhappiness. This is practically Kant's "cate- 
 gorical imperative." It Is a simple, understand- 
 able means of deciding by common-sense, and not 
 by authority nor hearsay, what is "best." 
 
 149 
 
A CHRISTMAS CARD 
 
 My Dear Friend — Christmas is coming, the 
 great human festival. It is making me realize as 
 it approaches that the best possessions I have 
 been able to get from life are my friendships. 
 
 I want to give something to my friends. 
 
 The other night, after thinking it all over, I 
 was surprised by the old truth, which came 
 strongly to me, that what friends want most is 
 to know we think of them and love them. 
 
 Therefore I am going just to tell you I think 
 of you, that Christmas to me means you, that you 
 are a part of the spirit of these times in my life. 
 
 I want to tell you that the thought of you is 
 sunshine to me. When memory brings back our 
 days and words together, I am glad. 
 
 If I were Fate I should make you very happy. 
 I should write success upon your hands and brain 
 every day, and bring restful sleep to you every 
 night. Each impulse from my heart goes out to 
 you in well-wishing. 
 
 I like you. And I am angry with the space 
 that separates us and the circumstances that ren- 
 der our meetings few. You are "my kind of 
 folks," and I have a constant desire to be near 
 you. 
 
 150 
 
I do not believe any of us realize how much 
 friends mean to us, how their spirits subtly touch 
 and stimulate ours when we are far apart, and 
 what a glorious companionship they make for us 
 when their faces gather around us in fancy in 
 our moments of loneliness. Your face, my friend, 
 is often with me, and I wish you could know what 
 cheer it always brings. 
 
 So here's to you ! I raise the glass of memory 
 brimful of happy recollections and drink to you. 
 
 All my good wishes fly to you as doves. I ap- 
 preciate what you have meant to me. I value 
 your personality, just as It is. I clasp your hand 
 through the intervening distance. From the bot- 
 tom of my heart I say "God bless you!" 
 
 I think of you when I recall these words of 
 Goethe : 
 
 "This world is so waste and empty, when we 
 figure but towns and hills and rivers in It; but to 
 know that some one Is living on with us, even In 
 silence, this makes our earthly ball a peopled gar- 
 den." 
 
 151 
 
WHAT IS A WOMAN TO DO? 
 
 An anonymous letter has come to my desk. As 
 a rule such missives slide right over into the waste- 
 basket. But this one is different. It is not a 
 cowardly effort to stab, nor malicious, nor in any 
 wise the ordinary anonymous nuisance. It is so 
 human, so real, and so gives expression to a very 
 vital and common problem that I will make some 
 quotation from it. 
 
 After a few observations upon my writings 
 which modesty prevents me from here setting 
 forth, the writer says: 
 
 "Briefly, my problem is a very old one, merely 
 that of a woman who has long suffered from in- 
 tense loneliness and heart-hunger. My greatest 
 need seems to be the love and companionship of 
 a congenial man. 
 
 "I am well born, coming from an old family 
 of refinement, culture, and one-time wealth. I 
 am also well educated, a graduate of one of our 
 foremost women's colleges. I am no longer 
 young, neither am I old; my friends flatter me 
 by saying that I look ten years younger than I am. 
 Always have I had the reputation of unusual 
 charm, that of personality, perhaps, rather than 
 of beauty. 
 
"How, please, Is a woman alone, without fam- 
 ily — for all have died — and with no social back- 
 ground to meet desirable men, in a great city? 
 Such a one would like to make friends and com- 
 rades from among whom she could find a suitable 
 mate. With every possible advantage of educa- 
 tion and culture, living in a delightfully artistic 
 home, adapted in every way to offer hospitality to 
 friends, I perforce live practically the life of a 
 hermit. 
 
 "Is it any wonder that we restless, unsatisfied 
 women, whom nature has intended for wives and 
 mothers, should seek some avenue for expression, 
 some absorbing interest which will enable us to 
 stifle our longings? 
 
 "Politics, or any sort of a career of publicity, 
 does not appeal to me. I want a home and chil- 
 dren. 
 
 "Is it that there are no men of my kind in the 
 city? And if there aie such, why is it so impos- 
 sible to meet them ? 
 
 "A well-known physician recently observed that 
 'city men are not marrying men.' It is a great 
 pity. 
 
 "Boy and man friends I have had all my life, 
 but never has the right one come. Perhaps, as 
 has been said of me, I am too exclusive, too much 
 inclined to seek the ideal. Certainly the tricks of 
 such as 'Annie' in Shaw's 'Man and Superman' 
 I have never felt I could stoop to. 
 
 "What can a refined woman do, who believes 
 
 153 
 
in marriage and the family, and who has scorned 
 the occupation of husband-hunting? It seems to 
 be too often the other type of woman who wins 
 the man. 
 
 "Pardon me if I do not sign my name. How 
 can I to such a letter as this?" 
 
 I cannot answer this appeal, for the simple 
 reason that I do not know the answer. I give 
 the letter to you, gentle reader, that you may 
 realize, as this epistle so strongly impressed it 
 upon me, that there are situations in life which 
 our present civilization, morals, and conventions 
 do not touch. Monogamy, religion, society's cus- 
 toms are good enough and suit the many, but they 
 are far from covering all of the deep needs and 
 peculiar Issues of the human heart. 
 
 And how pitiful our little smug philosophy be- 
 fore this primeval cry of human instinct! 
 
 Lady Unknown, I can only, through the dark- 
 ness, send you a sincere thought, a handclasp of 
 sympathy, and offer up a prayer to the kindly 
 fates that they may send you, some adventurous 
 day, your Prince and Knight, who shall know 
 and value your woman's worth. I will not be like 
 the father in Tennyson, 
 
 "With a little hoard of maxims 
 Preaching down a daughter's heart." 
 
 154 
 
SHOULD GIRLS PAY? 
 
 Speaking of the emancipation of woman and 
 all that, there is one little item that seems to be 
 overlooked. In order to get upon the same foot- 
 ting as man, the woman demands the vote, the 
 right to be a police officer, and to sit on a jury, 
 the privilege of being a lawyer, physician, 
 preacher, and merchant, commercial traveller, 
 author, and clerk, and the eligibility to carry the 
 latch-key. 
 
 One thing is passed by In the strife of tongues. 
 It is the right of the woman to pay. 
 
 Reference is here had more particularly to 
 young women In re food and drink, taxicabs, car- 
 fare, ice cream sodas, dances, and theatres. 
 
 Think, sisters! So long as custom demands 
 that you allow the male to settle the bill at the 
 restaurant when you have consumed ten dollars' 
 worth of birds and vintage, while he has had milk 
 toast, on the plea of indigestion, but for the real 
 reason of Impecunloslty, will you not always be 
 upon the level of an inferior, a child, a slave? 
 
 Can a girl retain her self-esteem when she per- 
 mits her masculine escort to count out the ten 
 cents for her chocolate sundae at the drug store, 
 
 ^5S 
 
as if forsooth she were some sort of canary — 
 let us not say poodle — to be fed with dainties, 
 that her master may see her eat? 
 
 And would not a young lady feel far more in- 
 dependent, and hold up her head with a far 
 prouder mien, if, when she goes to a theatre, she 
 pay her half of the cab fare, of the dinner, of the 
 tickets, and of the supper? Why should she be 
 a pensioner for her amusements upon mere man? 
 
 And why should he pay out eleven dollars for 
 a bunch of long-stemmed roses, or a clump of 
 violets with a yard of purple ribbon, and send 
 said floral offering around to her house? Who is 
 she that she should be tricked out in bouquets like 
 a prize horse? Would it not be more in keeping 
 with woman's new-found live-your-own-lifeness if 
 he were to send to her a flower catalogue, indi- 
 cate with a blue pencil the kind that he would 
 admire to see her have, and let her pay for her 
 posies herself? 
 
 Money is the real badge of servitude. It is 
 economic dependence, they tell us, that is throt- 
 tling femininity. 
 
 Budding suffragettes, therefore, might do well 
 to reflect that if they wish Simon-pure individu- 
 ality they should insist upon Dutch treat. Then, 
 instead of being "his girl," some one to be shel- 
 tered and fought for and paid for by him, she 
 would be a comrade, an equal, and, possibly, a 
 superior. 
 
 If you are going to strike at the very core and 
 
 156 
 
gist of the whole matter of feminine subserviency, 
 girls, you must pay your own way. 
 
 Otherwise you may be some day nothing but a 
 wife. 
 
 157 
 
OVER AND OVER FOREVER 
 
 The other day I had a conversation with a 
 genuine old troglodyte. He lived in an old town, 
 in a large house surrounded by a cast-iron fence. 
 There were a stone dog and a fountain in the 
 yard. 
 
 He belonged to one of the first families. One 
 of his ancestors had heaped up a lot of money 
 by making patent medicine, investing in real es- 
 tate and never letting go of a nickel without a 
 cry of pain. Subsequent generations had man- 
 aged to sit on the money, so that the present 
 scions of the house are the real thing. The fe- 
 males start playing bridge in the morning, and 
 the males buy polo ponies and are deeply inter- 
 ested in club matters. 
 
 The gentleman I talked with has nice side whis- 
 kers, is head trustee of the church and the denom- 
 inational college, is past grand high hewgag in 
 the lodge, and has a large library of books bound 
 in morocco with his "crest" stamped thereon. 
 
 He spoke to me in this wise: "This talk of 
 equality is all bosh. Why, children in the same 
 family have different ability. If you would dis- 
 tribute the entire wealth of the country, giving 
 
 158 
 
each inhabitant an equal portion, within a week 
 some would have plenty and many would have 
 nothing. Some men are born with genius, brains, 
 and leadership, and some are born helpless and 
 without initiative." And so on to infinity, and 
 nausea. 
 
 Isn't that funny? For a hundred years or so 
 it has been reiterated that all the equality any- 
 body is clamoring for is equality of opportunity, 
 equality before the law, the absence of unearned 
 privilege, and has no reference whatever to nat- 
 ural capacity. Never in the history of language 
 did the equality of democracy refer to personal 
 worth or force. 
 
 Still, I suppose, a hundred years from now old 
 gentlemen will be sitting on front porches and 
 pooh-poohing the idea of all men being equal. 
 
 The beauty of social and intellectual life is Its 
 inequalities. It is because some people are better, 
 wiser, and shrewder than others that life is so 
 Interesting. The garden of human souls contains 
 more different species than can be found amongst 
 the flora of the earth. 
 
 And It is precisely to preserve and emphasize 
 these natural Irregularities that we want justice 
 and a square deal. 
 
 It is the Inherited irregularities of money and 
 birth that produce intellectual and spiritual dead 
 levels. 
 
 When all babies "start at the scratch," all have 
 an equal opportunity to make the most of their 
 
 159 
 
natural abilities, we will see human diversity in 
 its full charm. 
 
 It is not aristocracy, but artificial aristocracy; 
 not nobility, but humbug nobility; not the real 
 superior class, but the non-superior, privilege- 
 maintained class, that democracy threatens. 
 
 1 60 
 
A SUCCESSFUL WOMAN 
 
 There is a woman of my acquaintance who is 
 a success. She is not rich, not gifted in the usual 
 arts that gain notoriety, not young and peachy, 
 not celebrated. 
 
 She is in quite moderate circumstances, and 
 lives with her husband in a flat in a neighborhood 
 that is not "select." She has no children. 
 
 She is past fifty, and glad of it. 
 
 .Why is she successful? 
 
 Because she is cheerful, and because she cheers 
 everybody around her. 
 
 And she is cheerful because she is the one 
 woman out of, say, fifty I know who has suc- 
 ceeded in perfectly Adjusting herself to her sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 The secret of the art of life is Adjustment, 
 and whoever can accomplish that is entitled to 
 be called successful. And to this title no other 
 person has a right. 
 
 No human being is able to secure an entirely 
 ideal environment. No woman ever lived who 
 had a perfect husband, perfect children, a perfect 
 home, perfect clothes, a perfect income, and per- 
 fect friends. Those who complain because they 
 
 i6i 
 
lack in any one of these respects are foolish, and 
 know nothing of how to take hold of life. 
 
 This woman is content with the husband she 
 has, she loves him for precisely what he is, and 
 does not want to make him over. To have tink- 
 ered him and changed him to suit her fancy of 
 what a husband ought to be was, of course, im- 
 possible, though many a silly woman wrecks her 
 happiness at that task. She has done the better 
 thing: She has Adjusted herself to the man as 
 he is. 
 
 Homekeeping is her lot. So she has Ad- 
 justed herself to it. She has learned to love it. 
 Her home is beautiful within, restful, tasteful, al- 
 together delightful. 
 
 Her income is at a certain figure. To that 
 figure she has Adjusted all her desires. She 
 lives just as contentedly as if the figure were ten 
 times as great. 
 
 She said to me the other day: "I wish you 
 would write something to persuade women to 
 love the common things, the everyday things. 
 You ask me why I am so contented. It is because 
 I love everything I see constantly about me. I 
 love that chair, that table, that desk, those pic- 
 tures, curtains, and rugs. They are all friends 
 of mine. 
 
 "Every piece of glass or china on my table 
 means something to me. There is not an article 
 in this apartment that does not please me when 
 I look at it. 
 
 162 
 
"I love my friends. I love my day's duties. I 
 love the way we live. 
 
 "When any thought of unlove presents itself 
 to me, I put it away, just as if it were unclean. 
 I will not give room to dislikes." 
 
 This woman Is a point of sunshine in a cloudy 
 world. If the Lord were angry with the city, as 
 He was wroth against Sodom, and should look 
 about to see if there were at least three souls 
 worth while, for whose sake He might spare the 
 town from His consuming fire, this woman would 
 be one of the saving sort. For she is a radiating 
 centre of helpfulness. She boosts all spirits. 
 
 Any woman can be successful, as this woman is, 
 if she will learn the art of Adjustment. For 
 better than a billion dollars it is to be adjusted. 
 Better than having everything just as you'd like 
 it, is to like things just as they come to you. 
 
 163. 
 
FRIED CHICKEN 
 
 What are we coming to? Whither are we 
 drifting? And oh, times and oh, manners! 
 
 The chief high worshipful of the United States 
 Food Research Department, Mary E. Penning- 
 ton, now takes the stand and deposes that Fried 
 Chicken Is bad for us. That Is to say, fried 
 chicken that is fresh killed. 
 
 She withdraws her objection provided that the 
 fowl "after being killed be kept in dry, cold air 
 for twenty-four hours while the flesh loses its 
 heat. Then it should be ripened from three to 
 ten days In a temperature of 32 degrees. Then," 
 she says, "your chicken will be fit for cooking 
 and eating." 
 
 This, of course, Is prohibitive. Few farms and 
 families have cold-storage houses. The plan In 
 operation since the days of Adam Is to send one 
 of the boys out into the yard to chase the de- 
 voted pullet seven times around the barn, finally 
 to sit on It, and then wring its neck. Shortly after 
 this the hired girl dresses it, and ere the sun sets 
 It is on the table bringing joy and gladness to the 
 Inwards of the family. 
 
 I cannot get over the conviction that these sci- 
 164 
 
entific people are set upon robbing us of our most 
 delectable things to eat. Naturally we would not 
 strike a woman, but why does the Pennington 
 lady attack us at the very core and citadel of our 
 national gustatory treasure? 
 
 For, I put it to the reader as man to man, was 
 any dish ever so downright, plum Good as fried 
 chicken ? 
 
 All other forms of preparing the fowl fade into 
 drabness beside this. Roast chicken, baked 
 chicken, smothered chicken, fricasseed chicken, 
 stewed chicken, pressed chicken, and devilled 
 chicken — I take my stand with regulation south- 
 ern fried chicken against them, one and all. 
 
 Not jointed with the meataxe, after the man- 
 ner of restaurants, but with all the joints sepa- 
 rated carefully where the Creator made them, 
 then rolled in flour and put into a skillet of lard 
 and turned faithfully until a golden brown. Then 
 pile the pieces high on the platter before dad, and 
 have all the Browns and Robinsons to dinner, and 
 plenty of real gravy and mashed potatoes, and 
 I, for one, don't care what becomes of me. 
 
 I have eaten the vaunted delicacies of the Old 
 World and of the New; I have eaten bouillabaisse 
 at Marseilles, goulash at Vienna, paprika schnit- 
 zel at Munich, goose liver pie at Strasburg, sole 
 at Marguery's in Paris, whitebait at Greenwich, 
 beans in Boston, and oysters at Baltimore; but 
 above them all Fried Chicken, when turned out 
 by the deft hands of a real Negro mammy, has, 
 
 165 
 
in the language of an ex-president, got them all 
 beat to a frazzle. 
 
 All Americans should rally to repel this inva- 
 sion of our most sacred institution. Alas! the 
 Philistines are upon us. In what hotel or res- 
 taurant can you get old-fashioned fried chicken 
 and gravy? Where in Europe can you find it? 
 They know it not. Ask for it and the waiter 
 looks at you as if he thought you were toying 
 with him. 
 
 Hence to arms ! If we must lose all our palla- 
 diums and historic institutions let us go down 
 like heroes, with the banner of "Fried Chicken" 
 nailed to the mast. 
 
 i66 
 
LEARN THANKSGIVING FROM THE 
 HAVE-NOTS 
 
 The President has proclaimed the annual day 
 of Thanksgiving. Possibly that comes to you as 
 a joke. What have I to be thankful for? you ask, 
 and then begin to run over the list of your griev- 
 ances. 
 
 But go and see the have-nots, and maybe you 
 will learn something, if you are not a hopeless 
 whiner. 
 
 Visit the have-not nations. Live a while in 
 Russia or Mexico, have your opinions suppressed, 
 your property confiscated, your life threatened, 
 all without justice; perhaps then you may get a 
 few thrills when you look at the American flag. 
 
 Return, in your mind, to former ages ; feel how 
 it seems to have the nobility despise, curse, and 
 rob you, and treat you as a dog; to have a state 
 church clap you in prison or roast you in the public 
 square for daring to think; to have solemn mag- 
 istrates condemn your mother to be hanged as a 
 witch; to have your daughters outraged by the 
 lord of the manor and your sons killed fighting 
 his battles. 
 
 If your skin is black, go back sixty years and 
 167 
 
live among the have-nots of Liberty, and be sold 
 in the market place as a chattel. 
 
 If you are well, turn to the have-nots of health, 
 to the hospitals, where the crowded prisoners of 
 pain would give the world to walk and eat and 
 work as you now do. Go to the dim chamber of 
 the invalid, listen to the consumptive's cough, the 
 dyspeptic's groan, the raving of the fevered and 
 moan of the suffering and smitten. Then, if you 
 are anything of a man, come out and hire some 
 one to kick you for complaining ever. 
 
 The have-nots of sound; observe the deaf and 
 dumb, not to gloat over your advantages, but to 
 realize what music and the voices of people and 
 the gift of speech mean to you. 
 
 Watch the pathetic faces of the have-nots of 
 light; and, seeing the blind, learn to be humbly 
 grateful toward that fate that grants to you the 
 light of heaven. 
 
 Do you know the have-nots of love? Consider 
 them, and if one heart ever so simple loves you, 
 be thankful. Mark the deserted wife, her dream 
 shattered, her heart broken, her children father- 
 less, and the burden of care upon her shoulders; 
 and, if you have a husband that's half decent, be 
 thankful. 
 
 Go to the wronged, betrayed husband; look 
 upon him; and if you have a faithful wife who 
 believes in you and is glad because of you, be 
 thankful. 
 
 Little girl, little boy, have you a mother that 
 i68 
 
hugs you up, and a daddy that's proud of you? 
 Think of the have-nots, the boys and girls whose 
 mother is still and gone or whose father is no 
 more, and be as thankful as you can. 
 
 Have you children? Call to mind the have- 
 nots, the mother whose loneliness is that most 
 bitter of all, the loneliness of the empty arms, of 
 a breast where once cuddled a curly head. 
 
 Then think of the worried, wretched, remorse- 
 ful, perverted, of all those whose conscience stings 
 them, and, if you have the comfortable self-re- 
 spect of decency, be thankful. 
 
 Visit, in your mind, the wide realm of the 
 dead and half-dead. You have the unspeakable 
 gift of Life. You can walk in the sun, and 
 breathe the sweet air, and get the message of 
 trees, mountains, and ocean; for you the flowers 
 blow, and the snow falls, and the hearth-fire 
 burns, and children's voices sound, and the light 
 of love kindles in some one's eyes. 
 
 Be thankful for life. 
 
 Think of the have-nots, and reflect. Who am 
 I that I should not also be among them ? 
 
 169 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON, GENTLEMAN 
 
 The most significant thing about George 
 Washington, it seems to me, that fact about him 
 which our young folks would best note and imi- 
 tate in him, is that he was a Gentleman. 
 
 After all, the finest compliment we can pay any 
 man is to say he is a gentleman. Not that he is 
 a spurious gentleman, an idler, a spendthrift, and 
 a dandy, but that he is a real man, and gentle. 
 
 One of the best descriptions of a gentleman Is 
 to be found in the words of St. Paul. Let me 
 paraphrase them: 
 
 "A gentleman suffereth long, and is kind; en- 
 vieth not; vaunteth not himself and is not puffed 
 up; doth not behave himself unseemly; seeketh 
 not his own; is not easily provoked; and think- 
 eth no evil." 
 
 If you will analyze this list (found in I. Cor. 
 xiii, 4, 5) you will find these eight marks of a 
 gentleman, to wit: Patience, Humaneness, Ab- 
 sence of Envy, Humility, Courtesy, Unselfishness, 
 Self-Control, and High-Mindedness. In propor- 
 tion as a man has these elements, whether he be 
 a section hand on a railway or a millionaire's son, 
 he is a gentleman. 
 
 170 
 
And whoever has the opposite traits is no gen- 
 tleman, even if he wear a dress suit and have a 
 college education, to wit: Impatience, Cruelty, 
 Envy, Pride, Discourtesy, Selfishness, Petulance, 
 and Suspicion. 
 
 By these tests George Washington was the 
 Foremost Gentleman of America, and indeed far 
 outclassed any prominent person of his time in 
 the world. 
 
 His patience was amazing. What hero in his- 
 tory bore greater burdens, and with such unswerv- 
 ing fortitude? In the turmoil of his day all men 
 turned to him as the one strong, rock-like figure, 
 the embodiment of the highest quality of man- 
 hood in the New World. 
 
 He was Humane. Under his dignity was a 
 warm heart. Not a vicious, cruel, or resentful act 
 is in his record. 
 
 He had no Envy, which perhaps is the very 
 meanest feeling common among mortals. An- 
 other's success pleased him. The cynic remark of 
 La Rochefoucauld was untrue at least in him: 
 "In the adversity of our best friends we often 
 find something that is not exactly displeasing." 
 
 He had Humility, perhaps the greatest of vir- 
 tues, as Pride is the sure sign of a petty nature. 
 He never coveted prominence. He never strug- 
 gled for office. He ruled only because it was the 
 best way he could serve. He refused a crown, 
 and retired gladly from the presidency. 
 
 He was Courteous. This is an acid test of 
 171 
 
greatness. The small man's first impulse, when 
 clothed with a "little brief authority," is to dom- 
 ineer. How many a false great man betrays his 
 vulgar soul by rudeness and disregard of others' 
 feelings ! 
 
 He was Unselfish. He "sought not his own." 
 A coarse nature is sensitive about his "rights." 
 He is alert to his advantage. He wants all that 
 is coming to him. But when you meet a great 
 soul you find no trace of the pig in it. His noble 
 disinterestedness rises upon you like the sun. 
 
 He was Self-Controlled. You find in him none 
 of that petulance and irritation, of those storms 
 of alternate self-pity and self-conceit you see in 
 Napoleon. Napoleon had great talents; Wash- 
 ington was a great man. 
 
 He was High-Minded. He "bore all things, 
 believed all things, hoped all things, endured all 
 things." He trusted men. He was slow to listen 
 to slander. He clung stubbornly to his ideals 
 concerning his country. 
 
 He was not perhaps what the world would call 
 a saint. He had his imperfections, his limitations. 
 He was not a superman. 
 
 But he was a Gentleman. 
 
 And thus he bore without abuse 
 The grand old name of gentleman, 
 Defamed by every charlatan, 
 
 And soiled with all ignoble use! 
 
 He was a Gentleman; and you cannot go 
 172 
 
amiss, young man, if you love that fine old face 
 that looks down upon you from its frame on the 
 wall, where your grandfather hung it, and if you 
 strive to mould your life after the example of 
 George Washington. 
 
 173 
 
FREEDOM AND KNOWLEDGE FOR 
 
 WOMEN 
 
 Freedom without knowledge Is a curse. 
 
 To leave a child of six without guardianship 
 would be criminal, because he has not knowledge 
 enough to keep out of danger. 
 
 A lot of ignorant savages in a state of entire 
 freedom would proceed to butcher one another. 
 
 Hence a thorough system of education is rec- 
 ognized as essential among people who wish to 
 live in a democracy. 
 
 American girls are the freest in the world. 
 
 Europe is amazed at them. 
 
 Here girls come and go as they please, and 
 have the independence of men. In Europe they 
 are carefully guarded at home, educated in con- 
 vents or in rigidly sequestered schools, their court- 
 ing days are strictly chaperoned, and their mar- 
 riage is managed for them. 
 
 There are not a few who decry our custom, 
 holding that woman's liberty is too dangerous a 
 thing, and that parents should maintain closer 
 surveillance. 
 
 But the real trouble is not that girls have too 
 much freedom, but that they do not have enough 
 knowledge. 
 
 174 
 
A system that keeps girls In ignorance of the 
 most vital facts and laws of life, that makes total 
 lack of information about their bodies and the 
 functions thereof to be a sort of religious and 
 moral excellence, and then turns them loose upon 
 their own responsibility to mingle freely withj 
 men, is absurd. 
 
 The first right of a woman is not to be pro- 
 tected; it is to know, so that she can protect her- 
 self. 
 
 The movement for "the emancipation of 
 woman" is good. They have as much claim to 
 liberty as men. But it is cruel and illogical to en- 
 large their freedom to equal man's without at the 
 same time doing something to equip them with 
 that knowledge the lack of which makes freedom 
 a road to ruin. 
 
 We cannot return to the old way of chaperon- 
 age and put high walls around women to save 
 them. That is not in line with progress. It 
 would be to turn again to orientalism, or medie- 
 valism. What we can and must do is to make vir- 
 tue the twin sister of intelligence and not of ig- 
 norance. 
 
 The second wife of Napoleon was brought up 
 as a child with particular seclusion; she was not 
 allowed to see males even among the domestic 
 animals. She was fond of frogs, but even the 
 male frogs were exterminated. That is the sort 
 of thing the old regime called "purity." In the 
 
 175 
 
minds of a great many worthy people Innocence 
 means still utter lack of knowledge. 
 
 But our mothers are as chaste as our daugh- 
 ters. The hospital nurse may be as chaste-minded 
 as the young miss in an exclusive "finishing 
 school." And the soul of a happily married man 
 is much more likely to be "pure" than that of a 
 celibate. 
 
 By all means loose the bonds of women and set 
 them free; but do not imagine you can do this 
 without peril unless at the same time you get rid 
 of your ideas of feminine ignorance being neces- 
 sary to virtue. 
 
 176 
 
THE WRITTEN EXAMINATION 
 
 Not long ago a little girl of thirteen, in one 
 of our public schools, tried to take poison because 
 she dreaded the examination set for the next day. 
 She was rescued by her companions. 
 
 Also a student in the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania committed suicide because, as was discov- 
 ered by inquiring among his fellow students, "he 
 was of an extremely nervous temperament and 
 was repeating his second year's work as a result 
 of having failed to pass his examinations." 
 
 The name of the system-worshipping and mar- 
 ble-hearted teacher who invented examinations is 
 happily buried in obscurity. His soul probably 
 haunts all dark schoolhouses and frightens all 
 little boys and girls who sit up late cramming into 
 their noggins historical dates and geometric crazy- 
 quilt patterns. 
 
 Written examinations are a relic of barbarism. 
 They rank along with racks and thumbscrews, 
 birch rods and leather straps as a method of 
 "cruel and unusual punishment." Only these are 
 not unusual, more's the pity! 
 
 A teacher who associates a month or so with 
 a pupil, and at the end of that time needs a writ- 
 
 177 
 
ten examination to find out what the child knows, 
 ought to resign and make place for a real teacher. 
 
 The written examination is a test of but one 
 thing, the learner's skill in writing. 
 
 Writing is an art; it is a trick, you might say, 
 that one has by gift of God or by practice. Be- 
 cause I can tell about a matter is no sign that I 
 know much about it. 
 
 I can probably write a better essay on horse- 
 shoeing than any blacksmith in town, because 
 composing sentences is my trade, but if I went to 
 shoe a horse I should very likely be kicked to 
 death. 
 
 By going to the public library and consulting 
 books I might prepare a paper on engineering, 
 building bridges, or constructing office buildings 
 that would be much more readable and interest- 
 ing than any practical expert could furnish; yet 
 who would think of hiring me to build even a hen- 
 house? 
 
 The gift of gab and the gift of doing have 
 nothing to do with each other. 
 
 A child might be taken by an intelligent instruc- 
 tor into the fields and woods daily, and learn to 
 know intimately plant life, the habits, laws of 
 growth, and relationship of all the flora of his 
 neighborhood ; but another child, bookish and im- 
 practical, could confine himself to his textbook in 
 botany and give you a written examination that 
 would rank lOO per cent., while the first child's 
 paper would be full of baitings and confusion. 
 
 178 
 
As an Exercise, as a means of practice to cul- 
 tivate clearness of thought, the written exami- 
 nation has its place. But as a Test it is a hum- 
 bug. 
 
 It is usually conducted under circumstances pe- 
 culiarly trying to nervous pupils, and there are 
 many perfectly competent minds that refuse to 
 operate under pressure. 
 
 In boy or man let the day's work count, and let 
 it be judged with sympathy, fairness, and appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 179 
 
THERE ARE OTHERS 
 
 A GOOD part of all you do Is done by others. 
 
 To all your righteousness, and all your weak- 
 ness and wickedness, others contribute a large 
 share. 
 
 The criminal has some truth when he lays the 
 blame on others. The banker might as justly 
 place the credit for his prosperity to others. 
 
 There is a deal of humbug in individuality. 
 Each of us is a part of our parents, neighbor- 
 hood, times, of the prevalent public opinion, of 
 soul-drifts hither and yonder. We progress or 
 recede, we suppose; but it Is like one walking in 
 a coach while the train is going its own course 
 with us and all our fellow-passengers. 
 
 In Bernard Shaw's "Philanderer" Is a line: 
 "If you take people seriously off the stage, why 
 don't you take them seriously on It, where they 
 are under some sort of decent restraint?" 
 
 Mary Lawton, an actress playing In the above- 
 mentioned comedy, expressed an opinion, in a re- 
 cent newspaper interview, that there Is a deal of 
 irony in that line which only actor people can ap- 
 preciate. 
 
 "Is there any place in the world," she asks, 
 i8o 
 
"where a human being Is more restrained than 
 on the stage? Any place where every result de- 
 pends not only on yourself and your power, but 
 on everything and everybody else? Is there any 
 other profession where the crucial moment may 
 be spoiled by a giggling schoolgirl or by a tack on 
 the carpet? Where your entire effect is wasted 
 if you are not given the right cue ? Where your 
 big scene may be entirely lost by a chair put in 
 the wrong place?" 
 
 If this be the case upon the stage, then "all the 
 world's a stage," for the like holds true every- 
 where. 
 
 The orator's triumph is a nicely balanced af- 
 fair, of himself, his genius, and his effort on the 
 one hand, and the time, the place, and the audi- 
 ence on the other. Beecher's speech in England, 
 where he subdued the mob and won undying 
 fame; Webster's reply to Hayne, and the ad- 
 dresses of Burke and John Bright make poor 
 reading now, at least compared with their tremen- 
 dous power when uttered, for the others are no 
 longer here. 
 
 The rule holds in the smaller matters of life. 
 Every swain knows how the success of his avowal 
 depends fearfully upon seizing precisely the psy- 
 chological moment. 
 
 There are things you can say to your wife un- 
 der certain circumstances and all will be well, 
 while if you are stupid in your choice of time 
 and place woe be unto you ! 
 
 i8i 
 
The net effect of anything you say, for that 
 matter, to anybody anywhere is more than half 
 determined by the "stage setting." 
 
 The fact is, life is team play. 
 
 Most of the failures have imagined that they 
 were the only persons on the boards. 
 
 Most of the sensitive, pouting, and soured sim- 
 ply missed their cue. 
 
 The best conversationalist is not the one who 
 says the cleverest things, but the one who waits, 
 judges, and times his remark perfectly. 
 
 Whoever will "make a hit" in this life must 
 watch his neighbor as himself. 
 
 Much of the prominence of the prominent is 
 due to their ability to keep off the stage while it 
 is the turn of some one else. 
 
 It was not a bad idea of Mr. Roosevelt to 
 visit Africa and South America. 
 
 And to all those who suffer the pangs of a 
 neglected ego, and who for one reason or an- 
 other feel that they have hardly won the applause 
 in Hfe they deserved, it may be well to hand the 
 homely observation: 
 
 "There are others!" 
 
 182 
 
REAL GREATNESS 
 
 Jacob H. Schiff, at the annual meeting of the 
 Hebrew Free Loan Society of New York, said 
 the other day, when he was introduced as a "great 
 man": 
 
 "Greatness often comes from accident or fa- 
 vor, and if this lifts us above the multitude it 
 should carry with it the realization of greater re- 
 sponsibilities on our part toward others." 
 
 And herein Mr. Schiff showed one trait at least 
 of a great man, and said a great thing. 
 
 For you can distinguish a great from a small 
 man in this, that when riches, or honors, or prom- 
 inence come to him the great man is humbled 
 and sobered by his sense of duty, and by his con- 
 sciousness of how little after all he had to do with 
 it. 
 
 No sincere soul really thinks he is superior. 
 Success "comes" to us. No man earns it; or, 
 rather, the one who earns it is denied it as often 
 as not. 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes described how an idea 
 "came" to him, striking him like a bullet, as he 
 expressed it. 
 
 JEvery creative mind has felt this, how things 
 
 J83 
 
"just come." The composer of music, the 
 painter, the sculptor, the novelist, dramatist and 
 orator, the inventor, all have that sense of recipi- 
 ency. Only the egotistic fool thinks he is the 
 author of his own conceptions. 
 
 Socrates had his "daimon" that whispered to 
 him suggestions. And every other great construc- 
 tive soul has had that peculiar feeling of being 
 played upon by some force or spirit not of him- 
 self. 
 
 Only little souls are cocky and chesty and 
 greedy for praise, whether they deserve it or not. 
 These are the plagiarists, copiers, and second- 
 raters of the world. 
 
 The same is true of the greatly rich. For there 
 are contemptible rich and noble rich. 
 
 Under existing economic conditions a man may 
 inherit a million dollars. In proportion as he re- 
 gards it as "mine, to do with as I please," he is 
 small. He probably will spend it in luxuries and 
 amusements. He and his set are nuisances. Their 
 very existence is immoral. 
 
 But if he realizes that destiny, under its laws, 
 has put this wealth upon him, for no merit of his 
 own, and that the high and serious task of ad- 
 ministering it for the welfare of mankind is laid 
 on his shoulders, then he becomes great. 
 
 So also if a man makes his own fortune. He 
 still perceives, if he be great, that "accident or 
 favor" has played into his hands, and he can have 
 no peace nor self-respect unless he gives himself 
 
 184 
 
over to doing what he can to help those less for- 
 tunate. 
 
 This is the modern conscience, which is better 
 and sounder than the conscience of any other age. 
 
 More and more the magnificent ones of earth 
 are hearing the dim vo'ce of that something or 
 somebody, call it God, call it humanity, saying to 
 them: 
 
 "What hast thou done with the talent Lent 
 thee?" 
 
 185 
 
HAPPY DRUGS 
 
 Let us suppose there is a Devil. 
 
 I do not say there is ; but suppose there is, some 
 being, a sort of vicious god, who has a grudge 
 against the human race, who is thoroughly mali- 
 cious, and takes delight in ruining men and women, 
 and gloats over their physical agonies, mental tor- 
 ments, and spiritual heart-breaks. 
 
 If there be such an Evil Spirit, he no doubt 
 considers the Habit-Forming Drug his bright 
 particular masterpiece. For such drugs have pro- 
 duced more misery to the square inch in humanity 
 than any other agency. 
 
 In every human being there is implanted the 
 desire for happiness. We all want to "feel 
 good." The normal means for producing the sen- 
 sation of contentment consists in obeying the laws 
 of hygiene and of morals. 
 
 Whoever conforms to the rule of nature as to 
 his body, and of God as to his mind, has inward 
 success ; that is, he is cheerful, sound, and strong. 
 
 And now comes the Devil and says: 
 
 "You want to feel good? Why follow the 
 poky road to health? That takes self-control and 
 will-power. It is hard. I will show you the eas]'- 
 est way. Just swallow this Happy Drijg/' 
 
 J 86 
 
The Happy Drugs have been known from time 
 immemorial. The oldest is Alcohol. It has got 
 itself woven into the customs and the imagina- 
 tion of the people until many cannot conceive of 
 having a good time without it. It is the expected 
 thing at weddings, wakes, and all manner of cele- 
 brations. In vain Intelligence has shown that it 
 is a poison, habit-forming, weakens the heart and 
 hardens the arteries. "What the hell do we 
 care?" 
 
 A. man requested permission the other day to 
 visit the Tombs prison in New York. Upon 
 searching him the officer found some envelopes 
 containing the drug heroin. In these envelopes 
 were notes addressed to various inmates. One 
 of them read: 
 
 "Dear Mac — A little Happy Dust. Regards 
 to Jim and all the boys." 
 
 Heroin, a drug allied to morphine, but deadlier 
 and cheaper than either that or cocaine, is the 
 latest dope of the slums, the latest invention of the 
 able and efficient Mr. Devil. 
 
 Dr. Jackson R. Campbell, who has been prison 
 physician for some years, says: "Heroin is one 
 of the most desperate dangers that confront our 
 race. The stuff is so cheap — lo cents' worth of 
 it is enough to produce the 'sensation' for two or 
 three hours — that any boy or girl can afford 
 to buy it. But, once accustomed to it, the user 
 needs more and more, and will commit any crime 
 to get it. 
 
 187 
 
"Within a mile's radius of 149th street and 
 Third avenue, the Bronx," the doctor declared, 
 "there are at least a thousand victims of the 
 heroin habit, including many boys and girls. Po- 
 lice records show many arrests of children for 
 having the stuff." 
 
 There may be people who do not believe in 
 Hell, but they are not found among the Happy 
 Drug users. They Know There Is a Hell. 
 They Live in It. 
 
 Let any boy or girl — or grown person, for that 
 matter — who reads this Think a minute! The 
 Drug That Makes You Happy Is the Most 
 Lying, Cheating, Cruel, and Terrible 
 Enemy You Have in the World. Don't 
 Take It! 
 
 188 
 
THE UNFROCKED 
 
 There was a curious banquet held at Paris not 
 long ago. There met a hundred and fifty ex- 
 priests and ex-preachers, who did not blush either 
 for their past or for their present. 
 
 To one class of men society seems peculiarly 
 unjust — to the "unfrocked." The man who 
 leaves the ministry, no matter how conscientious 
 and sincere his motives, is always looked upon as- 
 kance. We persist in regarding him as if he were 
 tainted with the flavor of desertion and disloyalty. 
 
 Why? Is it not more honorable to leave holy 
 orders, when one no longer believes the articles 
 of faith, or when one is convinced of the inutility 
 of the institution, when the development of one's 
 mind and heart has led him honestly to these con- 
 victions, than to remain and be insincere? 
 
 Does not the church itself believe that an hon- 
 est layman, no matter what his views, is better 
 than a dishonest clergyman? 
 
 For all that, the rupture between the parson 
 and his organization is always painful. Laymen 
 hardly welcome him. By a strange illogicality we 
 are usually cold to the men who enter our ranks 
 for conscience' sake. We mistrust them; we put 
 pressure upon them to conceal their past as some- 
 
 189 
 
thing of which to be ashamed; as a rule, they have 
 a hard time making a living. 
 
 Among the ex-clergymen at the banquet men- 
 tioned we may note three lawyers, two police mag- 
 istrates, two farmers, a physician, two artists, two 
 capitalists, one mayor, besides commercial travel- 
 lers, university professors, accountants, and public 
 school teachers. 
 
 They have formed a union which proposes, ac- 
 cording to its by-laws, never to proselyte or in 
 any way attempt to induce men to leave the minis- 
 try, but to extend a helping hand to those who, 
 on their own initiative, have severed their eccle' 
 siastical ties, and to help them in their endeavors 
 to gain an honest livelihood. 
 
 It will do no harm to the church — it can only do 
 good — to make the way as easy as possible for 
 those who have ceased to be in harmony with 
 its faith or its methods to get out. 
 
 In most instances men enter the ministry when 
 young. When they arrive at maturity their con- 
 victions may in all honor have undergone a 
 change. It should not be taken as a matter of 
 course that their reluctance to continue in the 
 ministry means a loss of religion or of personal 
 integrity. The minister may discover that, while 
 his religious sentiment is as profound as ever, he 
 is not adapted by nature or gifts to be a clergy- 
 man. 
 
 His retirement from church office may be as he- 
 roic and worthy of praise as his entrance into it. 
 
 190 
 
MEANING OF THE WOMAN 
 MOVEMENT 
 
 Very few of those engaged in the movements 
 of modern feminism, or of those opposed, realize 
 the depth, the tidal resistlessness, the cosmic char- 
 acter, of the force which is, now quietly and now 
 with turbulence, bringing women into even higher 
 prominence in our civilization. 
 
 Most of the things advanced women are striv- 
 ing for are straws, but they show the way the 
 wind blows. Getting the vote, in itself, means lit- 
 tle; so also mean little the wearing of trousers, 
 the entrance into the professions or into business, 
 or the capture of any of the superficial privileges 
 traditionally enjoyed by men only. But as indi- 
 cations of the gradual feminization of the race 
 these things mean much. 
 
 In a state of nature and of freedom, where so- 
 ciety is not continually prevented from normal 
 growth by wars and threatening wars, as has been 
 the case up to this age and everywhere but in 
 America, woman would be naturally the superior 
 and dominant sex. 
 
 Ruskin points out that Shakespeare, and Scott, 
 and Dante, and all the greatest masters of litera- 
 ture have not been mistaken in making the heroine 
 
 191 
 
always the stronger spiritually. It is she who is* 
 queen and disposer, it is for her the hero fights 
 and labors, his reward and his incentive are in 
 her keeping. 
 
 Man is the weaker vessel. Only in imperfectly 
 developed races is the strong man master. As 
 culture and intellectual growth advance the reins 
 of control pass into the woman's hands. 
 
 Biologists are now intimating that it is prob- 
 able that Eve was made first and that Adam Is the 
 after product created to assist In the perpetuation 
 of the race. 
 
 That women now "look up" to men, and are 
 usually clinging vines and leaning, dependent crea- 
 tures, idle dolls or indolent playthings, is simply 
 due to the lingering influence of centuries of ar- 
 tificial conditions caused by the universal presence 
 of war. 
 
 In time to come the woman and not the man 
 will be the Head of the Family. Hers are the 
 children more than his; she carries them while 
 they are being formed; her body and soul Is 
 poured into them. 
 
 In marriage the man will take the woman's 
 name. All that he achieves will be frankly rec- 
 ognized as caused by her direction. Property 
 rights will be vested in her, not in him. 
 
 She it is that has the divine beauty of face and 
 form, and when the struggle shall have been trans- 
 ferred from fists and clubs to ideas and spirit po- 
 tencies she will naturally assume leadership. 
 
 192 
 
The farther we evolve from beasthood the 
 nearer we approach to a woman-ruled world. 
 
 In all the things that tend to the health and 
 soundness of mankind, and hence to "the outpopu- 
 lating power" of a nation, woman is superior. 
 She has by nature the strength that lies in chas- 
 tity, loyalty, and the appreciation of the higher 
 spiritual quantities of reverence, self-control and 
 idealism. Man is carnal, drunken, and earthy, 
 only kept up to the mark by the enchantment 
 woman casts upon him. 
 
 The "mastery" of such men as Napoleon and 
 Bismarck is crude, cheap stuff. The world to-day, 
 and even more to-morrow, needs and will need 
 another kind of mastery, not that of battle might, 
 of Tammany power, of the brutal efficiency of 
 enormous capital, but the mastery of conscience, 
 of the sense of justice, and of the just estimate 
 of human values. 
 
 Here woman is supreme. Hail to her, queen 
 of the coming race ! 
 
 Even to-day a man does no work worth while 
 except it be to lay it at the feet of the woman he 
 serves. 
 
 193 
 
THEORY AND PRACTICE IN 
 BRINGING UP CHILDREN 
 
 The trouble with most of the theories of child- 
 training is that the child is supposed to be located 
 in the middle of a forty acre lot, and to be at- 
 tended by three all-wise angels, who work in shifts 
 of eight hours each and who unerringly know al- 
 ways just what is the matter and precisely what 
 to do. 
 
 If there is anything more impractical and more 
 maddening to a poor mortal parent or teacher 
 than a grand educational programme I do not 
 know what it is. 
 
 Several factors are invariably left out. In the 
 first place, there are relatives. You may deter- 
 mine to refrain from carrying, rocking, or jig- 
 gling the baby, and to accustom him to lying in 
 his crib without attention, but what are you go- 
 ing to do when Aunt Jane, who has money, comes 
 along and insists on picking him up and showing 
 him the boofle flowers? 
 
 You may endeavor to break him of crying and 
 attempt to let him whine himself to sleep; but 
 grandma has something to say about that. 
 
 And what happens to the most rational systems 
 
 194 
 
of child management when the mother has four 
 little ones cooped up in a city flat, and must take 
 care of them and keep them from poisoning or 
 maiming themselves, and must do this in such in- 
 tervals of time as she can snatch between wash- 
 ing dishes, getting dinner, cleaning house, sew- 
 ing, and mending? 
 
 Besides, a perfectly good mother may not be 
 physically strong. Four vigorous little personali- 
 ties demanding instant care all day may reduce 
 her to the borders of nervous prostration. And 
 where are the grand laws of patience and preven- 
 tion when your back hurts like the toothache and 
 you are so tired you don't know your name? 
 
 Also, a good mother may not be endowed with 
 mental perspicacity and deep wisdom. A thou- 
 sand times she does not know what to do. She 
 may have real love and a high purpose, and do 
 the wrong thing from sheer bewilderment or ig- 
 norance. 
 
 As for the schoolteacher, her ideal systems for 
 developing the growing mind are usually crushed 
 to death by numbers. Sixty children in a crowded 
 room are too much for any human teacher. By 
 and by she is forced to drop back into mere rou- 
 tine because it is impossible to give each child due 
 care and be alive at the end of the week. 
 
 Yet, somehow, children do grow up and flour- 
 ish. Weak and incompetent mothers bring up 
 capable children, who love her and give her credit 
 in maturer years for the best that is in them. Out 
 
 I9A 
 
of the homes of the poor come great men and 
 noble women. Out of the overcrowded school- 
 room garden human plants rise strong and fruit- 
 ful. 
 
 It is because human nature is better than any 
 scheme for bettering it; because honest love is 
 better than shrewd handling; because motherhood 
 is more efficacious in its instincts than any experts 
 are in their pedagogy and psychology; and be- 
 cause the child absorbs helpful forces from the 
 atmosphere of a school that far outbalance the 
 personal guidance he misses. 
 
 196 
 
UNNOTED HEROISM 
 
 The world is full of unnoted heroism. 
 
 That is the best kind. Spectacular heroism is 
 always a little tainted. 
 
 The man who stops a runaway horse in the city 
 street, or the man who dives and rescues a drown- 
 ing woman, or the soldier who dashes forward 
 in the face of death, does well; but there is a bet- 
 ter type. 
 
 Many can act nobly under the spur of sudden 
 impulse and with an inspiring audience; but to 
 live upon the high plane of self-sacrifice daily 
 takes finer fibre. 
 
 There is the workman who brings home his en- 
 tire week's pay every Saturday night, that it may 
 be used for the care of wife and children, and 
 that the balance be put in the savings bank. Some 
 look on him as tame and dull, a routiner with no 
 spirit; but he would like to go to the ball game 
 as well as any man, to take his beer in the saloon 
 and crack jokes with the boys, and to buy for 
 himself the expensive luxuries men enjoy. He 
 daily subdues himself in little things; heroism 
 with him is a rule and not an exception; it is of 
 the kind the world passes by, often misjudges 
 and despises. 
 
 197 
 
And how many women, unknown and un- 
 praised, are living days of constant devotion to 
 high purpose! They are hidden in homes, they 
 are persecuted by petty economies, they have given 
 up tastes soul-deep and renounced ambitions dear 
 as life, just to be faithful and loyal in the small 
 corner where destiny has placed them. 
 
 What a wonderful, divine thing is a human 
 being! Capable of how serene heights of great- 
 ness! 
 
 Whoever would see this, however, must him- 
 self be great, for to small souls all men are worms 
 and spiders. 
 
 And against what odds the common man main- 
 tains his character! Sensational newspapers pour 
 into his consciousness their daily gathering of per- 
 version, violence, and greed; novels exploit their 
 stories of the idle and privileged class, and the 
 morbidities of passion; almost every cult and 
 ism exclaims against the innate evil of men and 
 women; yet he clings to his reverences, does his 
 work and keeps clean. 
 
 The most admirable nobility is that of the com- 
 mon run of people. The mass of men is better 
 than any class of men. 
 
 You can bribe, debauch, and ruin this or that 
 group; you cannot corrupt a whole people. 
 
 It is mankind that is steadily, persistently good. 
 It is humanity that rejects all poisons. It is the 
 human race that best reflects the faces of the 
 gods. 
 
 198 
 
If any one would drink of the unfailing spring 
 of optimism, feed on the treasures of hope, learn 
 the secret of wholesome faith, and find that sweet, 
 strong quality in spirit that corresponds to the 
 sanity and peace found in nature, let him study 
 to know and to love the common people, for theirs 
 are the infinite resources, the rich supplies, of 
 unnoted heroism. 
 
 199 
 
HOUSEWORK 
 
 There is no better business, no nobler nor 
 more helpful to mankind, than housework. 
 
 And it is one of the curious quirks of the 
 times that while we rank "home" alongside of 
 "heaven," call it the sacredest word in the lan- 
 guage and all that, we set housework or home- 
 keeping down as one of the least desirable of 
 occupations. 
 
 Nine girls out of ten would rather do anything 
 than cook, make beds, and wash dishes. 
 
 Country girls swarm to the cities, and city girls 
 flock to offices, to type and keep books and mind 
 cash; leaving only those who cannot do anything 
 else to attend to homes. 
 
 The servant girls are in the rearward of the 
 march of labor. They have few or no organiza- 
 tions, no standardized training, no social standing, 
 no rights any one is bound to respect, and no in- 
 dependent spirit to demand those rights. 
 
 Things also are getting worse. The disgust- 
 ing custom of tipping is on the increase, insulting 
 to the worker and demoralizing to the giver. For 
 the tip is never anything else than a cheap and 
 nasty substitute for paying decent wages. 
 
 200 
 
The housemaid is one of the few laborers who 
 wear distinctive uniforms, emphasizing class dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 The home seems to be a little corner where 
 the snows of aristocratic sentiment linger in the 
 spring of democracy. "Housework," says Ida 
 Tarbell, "is the only field of labor in which there 
 seems to be a general tendency to abandon the 
 democratic notion and return frankly to the aris- 
 tocratic regime." 
 
 And that is exactly what is the matter with 
 domestic service. For wherever the vain, vulgar, 
 hoity-toity idea prevails that one class of workers 
 is inferior to another, wherever the segregative, 
 exclusive feeling of artificial aristocracy is found, 
 there is the soiling touch, the dirty fingers of in- 
 justice, the poison of caste. 
 
 What housework needs is the redeeming breath 
 of democracy. There is no reason why making 
 good biscuit and maintaining a home in order and 
 beauty should not be as dignified a business as 
 laying brick or attending to the plumbing. Why 
 should not the kitchen girls have their union, 
 their regular hours of service, and their well-de- 
 fined rights, as well as the bricklayer and the 
 plumber? 
 
 There is no department of labor where brains 
 are more needed than in housework. The intel- 
 ligent, deft, and capable maid-of-all-work can 
 produce quite as much human contentment, joy, 
 and gladness as any of the world's workers. 
 
 201 
 
Those women who burn with the desire to do 
 something to emancipate their sex, to make 
 woman's lot more tolerable and light, are invited 
 to turn their attention to improving the condition 
 of serving girls, who need far more sympathy 
 and get far less than shop girls. 
 
 202 
 
FEAR KILLS TALK 
 
 The joy of talk Is to say what you please. 
 
 Any restraint upon the free expression of what- 
 ever pops into your mind kills conversation. 
 
 Conversation becomes a bore when people are 
 saying what they are supposed to say. Then it 
 is no more the free mingling of souls, for each is 
 posing. It is dress parade. 
 
 I would rather hear a man swear than to be 
 entertained by some one who is working at me 
 from a sense of duty. 
 
 When you have to be careful what you say, 
 the only refuge is silence. 
 
 Hence parsons, college presidents, and all those 
 in high office, who are likely to be quoted, and 
 whose chance words may upset that terrible crea- 
 ture known as the "young person," must take one 
 of two alternatives ; either they must speak rarely 
 and be mindful to say nothing when they do speak, 
 or they must practice the handling of bromidions 
 and avoid saying anything that is fresh or has 
 sharp corners. 
 
 New-minted speech is only for the irresponsi- 
 ble. Slang words especially, being the babes of 
 language, such words as will not for years be per- 
 
 203 
 
mitted to associate with their elders, are to be 
 used by people of no standing. 
 
 The conversation of children, when they are 
 by themselves, or among such grown persons as 
 put them under no bond of fear, is the most in- 
 teresting of all talk. They say things that are 
 immensely funny, that are stuffed with ingenuous 
 feeling and piquant with rare philosophy; and for 
 but one reason, that they do not care. 
 
 It is fear that blights talk, as it nips in the bud 
 all flowers of the soul. 
 
 Let us stretch our legs under the table, and 
 until long after midnight crack our jokes, tell our 
 pet hates and loves, expose our doubts, air our 
 heresies, give wing to our fancies, gossip freely 
 of the neighbors, and preen our comfortable vani- 
 ties, and so will our souls empty themselves and 
 become clean vessels, holding over till to-morrow 
 no stagnant opinions to breed spiritual malaria. 
 
 I once peddled maps, when young, and learned 
 a speech by rote, which I repeated to every vic- 
 tim. By and by I came to loathe it. Also it be- 
 came deliciously absurd. Which Is a reasonable 
 contradiction. 
 
 And I never go to a reception, or tea, or other 
 regulated talkfest, and listen to the usualities ban- 
 died back and forth with well-tempered laughter, 
 but I think of that map-peddling rigmarole, and 
 wonder why the whole company does not break 
 out into Gargantuan laughter at itself. 
 
 The better way for us would be to hold no 
 204 
 
speech at all with them from whom we expect 
 fear or favor, only make signs, and reserve our 
 frank openings of heart for those whom we owe 
 nothing, for those who take our chatter for amuse- 
 ment only. 
 
 For the rest, let us read books, or newspapers, 
 or attend lectures. Why talk when we are afraid? 
 
 205; 
 
LINCOLN, DEMOCRAT, 
 SERVANT OF ALL 
 
 It is rather unfortunate, in the interests of 
 clear thinking, that the two leading political par- 
 ties of the United States take the titles of Demo- 
 crat and Republican. It makes it difficult to speak 
 of democracy or republicanism without leading 
 some of your auditors to fancy that you mean one 
 of the two great job-hunting organizations. 
 
 When I call Lincoln a democrat I have, of 
 course, no intention of identifying him with any 
 political faction, but refer to the fact that he 
 believed in the rule of the people and not of the 
 classes, which is the root-meaning of democracy. 
 
 To me Lincoln was the greatest democrat that 
 ever lived — that is, no one seems to have had 
 such an utter confidence in the common people 
 as he. 
 
 In the first place, he knew the people. He did 
 not come down from some higher social level to 
 "do them good." He was not a missionary to 
 the people. He was one of them. He was born 
 right. His parents, relatives, and all the neigh- 
 bors of his early life were "just folks." 
 
 It was a free, wide country he lived in. Every- 
 206 
 
body worked. There were no endowed loafers, 
 no self-styled superior class. A man was a man 
 for a' that in Sangamon County, Illinois, In the 
 forties and fifties. The only way to know a peo- 
 ple Is to be born of them and to have your youth 
 soaked In their environment. 
 
 And Lincoln "sensed" the people, knew what 
 they wanted, loved, feared, and hoped better than 
 any other man of his age, and, possibly, of any 
 age. He was the people's nerve, part and par- 
 cel of their body; he Felt them. 
 
 Then he esteemed them. He thought the 
 whole people had more sense than any leader 
 or wise statesman. You are never a genuine dem- 
 ocrat until you think that. He expressed It 
 in his wondrous way when he said: "You can 
 fool some of the people all the time, and all of 
 the people some of the time, but you can't fool 
 all of the people all the time." 
 
 And the people, he believed, were not only 
 wiser, but they were also honester, purer, holier, 
 and more nearly right than any small number or 
 specially trained or bred group. To him the will 
 of that great people from whom he sprang was 
 the will of God. Their grim purpose was the 
 purpose of God. The majesty of their deep feel- 
 ing he revered as If It were the majesty of God. 
 
 There was none of the clap-trap and hypocrisy 
 of the office seeker in his appreciation of the peo- 
 ple. It was through and through his soul. 
 
 He was not a ruler, as Julius Caesar. He was 
 207 
 
not a leader, nor teacher, nor guide to the peo- 
 ple, as other great men have been. He was one 
 of the greatest Servants of the people that ever 
 lived. 
 
 He did not "want to help" them; he knew they 
 could help themselves if they could find the right 
 kind of servant, and that he strove to be. 
 
 He knew the people did not need any king or 
 general or statesman to instruct them what to do, 
 nor any philanthropist nor billionaire to do things 
 for them; all they wanted was to be given a 
 chance to do things for themselves, to struggle 
 out of their poverty by their own efforts, to rem- 
 edy their own wrongs and to carry out their own 
 reforms when they got ready. 
 
 And what Lincoln stood for is the thing Amer- 
 ica, and all the world, for that matter, needs to- 
 day — to wit, that the people do not need so much 
 new laws, new and fantastic schemes of govern- 
 ment, new gospels, wise guides, benefactors, and 
 helpers, but they simply need agents who will 
 carry out their will; they need simple justice, a 
 square deal, and a chance to paddle their own 
 canoe. 
 
 The world to-day needs the faithful servant, 
 not the superior ruler. 
 
 In Lincoln was fulfilled the words of One who 
 also took upon Himself the form of a servant: 
 
 "And whosoever will be great among you shall 
 be the servant of all." 
 
 208 
 
A $5,000 FLEA 
 
 I SEE by the papers that Alfred Charles de 
 Rothschild of London is said, on the authority 
 of Edmond Perrier of the French Institute, to 
 have paid $5,000 for a specimen of a rare va- 
 riety of flea — one of the kind which is occasion- 
 ally found in the skin of the sea otter. The flea 
 is to be added to Mr. de Rothschild's entomologi- 
 cal collection. 
 
 The other day two postage stamps were sold 
 in Paris for $1,000. They had been issued by 
 some island country. Immediately afterward an 
 earthquake swallowed up the place, and only 
 these two of the whole issue of stamps happened 
 to escape in the mail. 
 
 Every once in a while we hear of a millionaire 
 dropping off and leaving a large heap of junk. 
 They shall all be eclipsed when I shy my hat into 
 the ring. 
 
 For when my ship comes in, or when my rich 
 uncle (joke) passes and saddles forty million 
 plunks upon me, I know what I will do. 
 
 At present I am living quite comfortably, with 
 one wife, plenty of bread and cheese, and with 
 pie upon occasion; but that sort of thing will 
 be all over. 
 
 209 
 
I shall eat gamy things and drink bubbly 
 things, and accumulate indigestion, arteriosclero- 
 sis, and headaches. Let the workingmen have 
 vulgar health. Me for the purple pangs of plu- 
 tocracy — what ? 
 
 But first of all I shall buy me a flea. I must 
 have a flea, and a bigger and fiercer one than 
 Rothschild's. I think I shall go in for hippo- 
 potamus fleas. 
 
 Then I shall get me a couple of stamps. I shall 
 visit the Ahkoond of Swat or Mr. Villa of Mexico 
 and have printed a special edition of two heathen 
 stamps, just for me, for which I shall pay $20,- 
 000 apiece, and turn all philatelists greener and 
 purpler with envy than my stamps. 
 
 Then I shall hire a man to go up and down 
 Europe and explore all the ragbags of royalty, 
 and buy up the debts of all the bankrupt dukes, 
 and ship me home nine carloads of Old Masters, 
 eight tons of Louis Quinze and Pre-Raphaelite 
 and European Elbert Hubbard furniture, seventy- 
 seven wagon-loads of china and glassware, thirty 
 bales of moth-eaten tapestry, six cords of canes, 
 sixteen hogsheads of old armor, swords, 'and 
 blunderbusses, a hundred gallons of ancient coins 
 with green on them (specially manufactured in 
 Florence and Rome), besides a collection of col- 
 lars and cuffs, boots and buttons, napkin rings, 
 crowns, and sceptres from the various kings, 
 queens, and knaves of the Old World. 
 
 I will have an oflice into which you can enter 
 210 
 
only by passing four rooms and five secretaries, 
 and never allow any one at all to come and se6 
 me; and I shall live in a house in the middle of 
 a hundred-acre woods-pasture, with two men at 
 the gate with shotguns. 
 
 It sure will be nice to be rich. When I get 
 lonesome I will go and play with my flea. 
 
 211 
 
SHALL SHE TELL HIM? ^ 
 
 A MOST Interesting letter comes to me from a 
 reader. She writes: 
 
 "I am nearly thirty. Some years ago I for- 
 got, for a brief time, that I was a woman, and 
 being unhappy, restless, and extremely foolish, I 
 lowered myself to sin. I did not fall utterly, but 
 In my Indiscretion I stained my soul. 
 
 "After a short period my conscience awakened. 
 I saw where I was going, and I stopped. I re- 
 pented bitterly of my acts and thoughts. I asked 
 forgiveness of Heaven, and thought that It had 
 been granted. 
 
 "I did not think when I committed those sins 
 that love would ever come to accuse me. But 
 to-day I love a man, and he loves me with all his 
 heart. He believes me to be all that a woman 
 should be. If I tell him the facts of my past 
 life I know he will hate me. 
 
 "Yet I feel that I do not deserve his love, and 
 that I Ought not to marry him and deceive him, 
 as I would deceive him if I remain silent. 
 
 "What shall I do? Shall I tell him? 
 
 "I had thought repentance and right living 
 would wipe out any sin, however great, but I can 
 
 212 
 
find no peace since love has come, and I stand 
 accused before it. 
 
 "Do I deserve love? Or must I give him up, 
 and put love away from me forever because of 
 those early mistakes of mine? 
 
 "I know, and he has not tried to conceal it 
 from me, that his life has not been blameless. 
 But somehow it seems different in a woman. 
 
 "Shall I tell him?" 
 
 The "unpardonable sin" nonsense has done no 
 end of hurt. It is not wrongdoing that perma- 
 nently soils; it is continuance in it, and the per- 
 sistent love of it. If you are honestly sorry that 
 you did wrong, and not merely fearful that you 
 will be found out, and if you have ceased evil- 
 doing, you have a moral right to respect your- 
 self. 
 
 The "bird with a broken wing" theory Is im- 
 moral. We have all sinned, the Good Book tells 
 us; and, for that matter, we do not need to be 
 told; we know it. And it is the very essence 
 of any right living to be able, by repentance and 
 reformation, to take up life afresh, "with a con- 
 science void of offense toward God and man." 
 
 As for your husband, or husband to be, he is 
 not your confessor. You are your own judge 
 as to your fitness for wifehood. You know 
 whether you come to him worthily or not. And 
 if he Is not satisfied to take you as you are, and 
 upon your own estimate of yourself, you would 
 better let him go. 
 
 213 
 
Hold on to common sense. Be just to your- 
 self, or you cannot be just to others. It is very 
 easy to fall into the luxury of self-condemnation, 
 to wallow in remorse; but a diseased, morbid, 
 and unintelligent conscience can do quite as much 
 harm as no conscience at all. 
 
 Keep your chin up. Tell the truth in prefer- 
 ence to a lie, but remember there are times when 
 our highest duty is to keep our mouth shut. 
 
 To believe that you are forever ruined and 
 hopeless is about the worst belief you can indulge 
 in. And rest assured if you are now sure in 
 your own heart that you have put away forever 
 the follies of the past, love can and will come 
 and keep you sound and clean in the future. 
 
 Old as human sin is human and divine forgive- 
 ness, and old as the blackness of weakness and 
 perversion is the whiteness of the new life built 
 upon the death of the old. Says Whittier: 
 
 For still the new transcends the old 
 In signs and tokens manifold; 
 Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, 
 With roots deep set in battle graves. 
 
 214 
 
THE UNDYING CREDULITIES 
 
 "Superstition," says Lippert, "has a tenacity 
 of life which no religion possesses." 
 
 In the second part of his "Christentum, Volks- 
 glaube und Volksbrauch" there is an interesting 
 list of pre-Christian superstitions still prevalent 
 in Europe. 
 
 Almost all of our Christmas customs are sur- 
 vivals of heathendom, though made beautiful by 
 the spirit of the Christ-Child. 
 
 The religious feeling is the property of cer- 
 tain minds, of a limited number, even among 
 church folk; but superstitions are in every mind. 
 Some people are religious; all people are super- 
 stitious. 
 
 They have changed religions several times in 
 England; they still retain the old Druid fancies. 
 Long after old faiths lose their power old credu- 
 lities hold their grip. When the gods fled from 
 Greece they settled in the backwoods of Christen- 
 dom. They ceased to be respectable and adored; 
 they became bush-whackers and feared. 
 
 The Venus that inspired Praxiteles became the 
 Venus that lived in the mountain and lured Tann- 
 hauser to his ruin. 
 
 215 
 
The religions of India are dead; the folk-lore 
 of India is still alive. 
 
 What is preached in temples varies with time ; 
 what is told to children by mothers at bedtime is 
 fixed and eternal. 
 
 The theses of theologians in one century are 
 obsolete in the next century; but Little Red Rid- 
 inghood and Jack the Giant Killer are as fresh 
 with youth and interest now in the nursery as 
 they ever were. 
 
 Bluebeard will outlive Napoleon; and the Old 
 Woman that Lived in a Shoe has a dynasty of 
 fame beyond that of Queen Victoria. 
 
 When beliefs disappear from the consciousness 
 of the race they sink into the subconsciousness. 
 The visible river of faith becomes subterranean 
 streams of credulity. 
 
 The high priests that ruled Egypt are no more ; 
 the prophets of Israel have ceased; the medieval 
 monks and hermits have gone; the echoes of Lu- 
 ther and Loyola, Calvin, John Knox, and Wesley 
 grow fainter; new preachers, new gospels, new 
 moral programmes appear; but the clairvoyants, 
 palmists, fortune-tellers, astrologers, table-rap- 
 pers, and all the tribe of hocus-pocus are doing 
 as lively a business, and by the same methods, in 
 New York, London, and Paris as they ever did 
 in Samarcand and Hellopolls, Palmyra, and Baby- 
 lon. 
 
 Religion Is progressive development and adapts 
 itself to the development of the Intellect. Super- 
 
 3i6 
 
stition is the immovable orthodoxy, that adapts 
 itself to nothing, reigning forever in its pristine 
 shapes. 
 
 They that play at the Stock Exchange and the 
 horse-race and the poker game are too advanced 
 to go to church; but they believe in luck, wear 
 charms, and are afraid of Friday the thirteenth, 
 precisely as the men of Nineveh. They are the 
 truly orthodox. 
 
 217 
 
THE UNBELIEVER 
 
 "As sure as the sun rises," said the Believer. 
 
 "That," replied the Unbeliever, "is not sure 
 at all." 
 
 Believer — What do you mean? Would you 
 dispute the sun? 
 
 Unbeliever — Certainly! Why not? The sun- 
 rise is only one of those things everybody takes 
 for granted. You have perhaps seen it a half 
 dozen times. From that you reason that it takes 
 place every day. But I doubt if the sun rises 
 when there is no one present to see it. Would 
 a theatrical company go on with a performance 
 if every seat in the house were empty? 
 
 Believer — You are crazy. 
 
 Unbeliever — Rational, you mean. The proba- 
 bility is that this sunrise business is just another 
 scheme of hotel proprietors of mountain resorts, 
 of farmers who want their farmhands to get up 
 early, and of other interested people. Whenever 
 you find a permanent institution which imposes 
 upon the whole of mankind you will find graft 
 behind it. 
 
 Believer — ^What a charming belief I 
 
 Unbeliever — Don't accuse me of belief ! I hate 
 
 2i8 
 
the word. I have only unbelief. That alone is 
 consistent with high mentality. It is the dupes of 
 the world who believe. It is the sharpers of the 
 world who live upon beliefs. 
 
 Believer — ^Yes? 
 
 Unbeliever — Sure ! If there were no confidence 
 there could be no confidence men. If there were 
 no trust there could be no heartbreaks. If there 
 were no assurance there could be no disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 Believer — But, man, you know the sun rises 
 every day, and will rise to-morrow. 
 
 Unbeliever — Nothing of the kind I When I 
 see it rise, I know it rises. When I don't see it, 
 I do not know. I refuse to take other people's 
 word. And how do you know the sun will come 
 up to-morrow? Simply because you saw it to-day 
 and yesterday. But because a thing has happened 
 twice or three times or a million times, is that 
 any proof it will go on happening? I took Christ- 
 abel out to dinner last night and the night before ; 
 do I have to go on taking her out to dinner for- 
 ever? 
 
 Believer — Good! You have convinced me. I 
 shall begin by doubting the things that make me 
 unhappy. First, I shall doubt the cocksureness 
 of my own reason. That will land me in a com- 
 fortable confidence in my Instincts. Then I shall 
 register a doubt against that fixed belief of yours 
 in the evil of all men and the cussedness of things 
 in general. By that I shall bounce back again 
 
 219 
 
into my old faith in good men and my trust that 
 all things work out for the best. I shall doubt 
 the frailty of women and so come again to my 
 belief in virtue. I shall doubt doubt, and hence 
 have faith in faith. 
 
 Unbeliever — But 
 
 Believer — But me no buts! If I am to be a 
 doubter I am going the whole hog. 
 
 Unbeliever — ^Amazing ! 
 
 Believer — Not at all. Rational! Superra- 
 tional! 
 
 220 
 
WHEN THE WORLD WOKE UP 
 
 John Fiske calls the thirteenth century "the 
 glorious century." In H. L. Chamberlain's re- 
 cent volume Is a list of some of the wonders of 
 that time. I condense them here, to give the 
 reader a bird's-eye view of that century, in which 
 the world woke up. 
 
 In Europe the Hansa and Rhenish Alliance of 
 Cities was formed, "paving the way," says Ranke, 
 "for civic liberty and the formation of powerful 
 states." 
 
 The Magna Charta was proclaimed in England 
 in 1 2 15, "a solemn proclamation of the inviola- 
 bility of the great principle of personal freedom 
 and personal security." 
 
 During this century the slave trade disap- 
 peared from European countries (except Spain). 
 
 Money begins to take the place of barter in 
 buying and selling; the foundation of modern 
 business is laid. 
 
 Paper is first manufactured, "the most momen- 
 tous industrial achievement till the invention of 
 the locomotive." 
 
 The religious awakening under Francis of As- 
 slsi occurred. Thode says: "This movement 
 
 221 
 
gives men the first forewarning of universal free- 
 dom of thought." 
 
 Scholars like Albertus Magnus and Roger Ba- 
 con prepared the ground for modern natural sci- 
 ence by turning the attention of men from logical 
 disputes to mathematics, physics, astronomy, and 
 chemistry. 
 
 "A new era in mathematical science began," 
 says Cantor; this was especially the work of Leo- 
 nardo of Pisa, who was the first to introduce to 
 Europe the Indian (falsely called Arabian) nu- 
 merical signs; also Jordanus Saxo, who initiated 
 us into the art of algebraic calculation (also origi- 
 nally invented by the Hindoos). 
 
 The first dissection of a human body took place 
 at the close of this century. 
 
 Dante lived in the thirteenth century. 
 
 Adam de la Halle, born in 1240, was the first 
 master of note in the treatment of counterpoint, 
 so that with him modern music in a strict sense 
 begins. Gevaert, the musical authority, writes: 
 "Henceforward we must consider the thirteenth 
 century, formerly so despised, as the beginner of 
 all modern art." 
 
 Giotto, Cimabue, and Niccolo Pisano were of 
 the thirteenth century; and to them the world 
 is indebted for a perfectly new art, that of mod- 
 ern painting. 
 
 Almost all the masterpieces of Gothic archi- 
 tecture, "the incomparable beauty of which we 
 
 222 
 
to-day admire, but cannot imitate," originated in 
 this century. 
 
 The first purely secular university, Bologna, 
 was founded shortly before 1200. 
 
 In the thirteenth century Marco Polo made his 
 expeditions of discovery which laid the founda- 
 tions of our knowledge of the earth's surface. 
 This beginning of world geography is the germ 
 that ripens into world-civilization and world-gov- 
 ernment, which we are now commencing to grasp 
 as an Ideal. 
 
 But, most significant of all, it was in the thir- 
 teenth century that the long and horrid darkness 
 that had closed upon men's minds began to lift. 
 
 The western world ceased to sleep and to 
 dream and began to awaken, to live, to do. 
 
 "Men, so to speak, turned a corner in their 
 course, the past vanished from their sight, hence- 
 forth they belong to the future." 
 
 The declaration of the Magna Charta sounds 
 as a trumpet blast for all modern morals, a sen- 
 timent not yet realized, but understood and 
 toward which we aim : 
 
 "No one may be condemned except in accord- 
 ance with the laws of the land. Right and jus- 
 tice may not be bought nor refused." 
 
 Since June 15, 12 15, when this decree went 
 forth, it has become a law above all laws; sen- 
 ates and kings must bow to it. 
 
 223' 
 
THE UNKNOWN FUTURE 
 
 A GIRL went to a physician, who felt of her 
 pulse, peeked into her eye, listened to her heart 
 action, and announced that she had no more than 
 six years to live. 
 
 At least, so it is presented in a recent Parisian 
 play, and one critic proposed the query: "If you 
 suddenly learned that you would die in six years, 
 what would you do, and how would you pass the 
 remainder of your allotted time?" 
 
 We cannot think of this without depression. 
 And this leads us to realize that one of the chief 
 ingredients in the sum of our contentment is our 
 ignorance of the future. 
 
 The only reason why fortune tellers may be 
 tolerated, together with gypsy seers, dealers in 
 premonitions, and forewarners, is that they lie. 
 If they tell the truth occasionally it is by acci- 
 dent. 
 
 The one thing we can never know, the eternally 
 inscrutable region, is the future. 
 
 A European astronomer, Jean Mascart, feels 
 confident he can tell what the weather is going 
 to be a month in advance. The old-fashioned 
 almanac claimed even more, for it foretold 
 
 224 
 
droughts and cold spells for the whole year. John 
 Stuart Mill expressed the opinion that a science 
 of the future might be created, indicating coming 
 events by well known laws. 
 
 But so far all efforts to peer ahead are not 
 in anywise to be depended on. For which let 
 us be thankful! 
 
 What a calamity it would be if science should 
 not only register the weather of next July, but 
 the various happenings which are to come to us 
 in the course of our existence, the disease which 
 finally is to take us off, and even the date of our 
 death I 
 
 Imagine a poor wretch who from childhood 
 should know exactly the experiences he is to go 
 through, and should thus play his part in the 
 drama of life carefully following an unescapable 
 programme ! 
 
 No more surprises, and they are the chief 
 pleasures of life. 
 
 No more mystery, and that is life's beauty. 
 
 No more fancy and wonder about to-morrow, 
 and thus to-day would be asph)rxiated. 
 
 No more liberty, no more spirit of adventure, 
 no gay meeting of the dawn with expectant heart. 
 
 You couldn't even commit suicide, unless it 
 were in the programme. 
 
 No more courting and the delicious uncertainty 
 as to her answer ; you would know that you would 
 get her anyhow, or not; why flutter? 
 
 The great tragedy, or comedy, of life is often 
 225 
 
disappointing in the end, but at least it is mighty 
 interesting as we go along, thanks to the blessed 
 curtain that 
 
 hides from us all the book of fate, 
 All but the page prescribed, the present date. 
 
 If the scientist should offer us a knowledge of 
 the future we should tell him to go hang. Life is 
 poky enough as it is ; at least leave us those graces 
 of surprise, of mystery, and of adventure without 
 which existence would be a bore twice cursed. 
 
 226 
 
THE NEW NOBILITY 
 
 There will always be a nobility and a com- 
 mons. Democracy does not operate to level all 
 people to one grade. It creates distinctions as 
 sharp as those of the old world systems. There 
 will be as great a difference between a noble and 
 a vulgar person under democracy as there is be- 
 tween a duke and a stable boy in the artificial 
 class scheme of England. There will be more; 
 for often in European society the real character 
 of the stable boy is not far removed from that 
 of the duke. 
 
 In the real gradations of nobility rank is of 
 no significance. A lady who is a leader in the 
 smart set may be low and common, and the lady 
 who runs the typewriter may be high and gentle. 
 
 As a rule, extreme wealth which creates idle- 
 ness produces vulgarity, causing narrowness, 
 pride, and selfishness; and extreme poverty has 
 the same effect, as it stunts, imbrutes and clogs 
 life. Beyond this, one's circumstances mean lit- 
 tle or nothing in cultural value. 
 
 Real nobility may be known by these marks: 
 
 A certain fine cleanliness of mind. An ignoring 
 and an unconsciousness of the body and its ap- 
 
 227 
 
petltes. Moderation in eating and drinking. Per- 
 fect control over the sex instinct. The body must 
 be got out of the way, else one always gives an 
 impression of grossness that is offensive. 
 
 Genuine humility of spirit. Not servility, but 
 a noble indifference to praise and honors. To 
 want high office, to want to be noticed, admired, 
 and envied, is to be, to a degree, coarse natured. 
 
 To push one's self, to advertise, to scheme for 
 prominence, may be good business, but it is not 
 noble. This does not apply to the advertisement 
 of one's goods which he has for sale, but to one's 
 self. 
 
 All vanity, boasting, talking of self and of one's 
 own achievements or money, a loud tone of voice, 
 the habit of breaking in upon the conversation 
 of others, too much prominence of the pronoun 
 I, these are low. 
 
 The real nobility never dress strikingly. The 
 woman who wears a garment that attracts atten- 
 tion because of its startlingness shows a streak of 
 commonness. The height of good dressing is to 
 be unobserved, said Beau Brummel. 
 
 A fondness for jewelry and perfumes is a mark 
 of a lack of refinement. 
 
 Real nobleness is indicated by a taste for sim- 
 plicity, a quietness in speech, in manner, in one's 
 furniture and house. All display, whether in a 
 Fifth avenue mansion or a Bowery necktie, is 
 coarse. 
 
 Luxury is an unfailing mark of a low nature, 
 228 
 
particularly when it is accompanied by extrava- 
 gance and debts. 
 
 The noble mind respects itself, and will not be 
 imposed upon. It is unafraid, but not bullying. 
 
 Nobleness is shown by courtesy, by an unfailing 
 regard for the feelings of others, by an inborn 
 gentleness and modesty; just as coarseness of na- 
 ture is shown by the opposite kind of thing. 
 
 Testing yourself and others by these standards, 
 you will be surprised at the number of genuinely 
 noble people you know. You find them every- 
 where; one may be selling newspapers at the 
 street comer, one may work in your kitchen, one 
 may be a millionaire, one a poor man. 
 
 The most striking presentation I have ever 
 seen of the kind of an aristocrat democracy 
 stands for is in Forbes-Robertson's "Passing of 
 the Third Floor Back." 
 
 229 
 
WORD PICTURES 
 
 Try to realize words, especially the strong, 
 vital words. 
 
 One way to do this is to create by your im- 
 agination a picture that shall express the word. 
 Make your own cinematograph show. Learn 
 how to entertain yourself a little by your own 
 fancy and you will not be so helpless — dependent 
 upon other people and outside things for amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 Here are some hints. Start from them and 
 create your own scenes. 
 
 Strength. A strong man ploughing. His 
 face is ruddy, smiling, vigorous. His hair is 
 crisp, his eyes blue and clear. Sleeves uprolled 
 and collar downturned display his healthy skin. 
 He is pausing for a moment's rest, his hand upon 
 the plough. His two huge Norman horses stand, 
 deep breathing, ready, docile. Watch that man 
 work. 
 
 Power. You stand at a little way station In 
 the country. The lightning express goes by. You 
 hear its owl-like hoot in the distance, see its head- 
 light miles away as a dim star; It approaches, 
 whirls past with crash and shriek as of a thou- 
 
 230 
 
sand giants. There is a blur of light, there are 
 streams of Sparks, a whirlwind of smoke, and it 
 Is gone; soon you hear its owl-hoot again in the 
 distance. Power I 
 
 Dominion. A big, helpful word, to get one's 
 soul out of the swamps of pettiness. See Gibral- 
 tar, huge, impregnable, cannon-pierced, dominat- 
 ing all about. 
 
 Peace. A summer lake. Sheep asleep in a 
 meadow. Motionless trees. A soft half-moon 
 silvering all with a veil of mystery. A house, 
 dark, with drawn blinds. 
 
 Wisdom. Recall Michael Angelo's "Moses." 
 Let this statute rise before you, massive, majes- 
 tical. Wonder what those lips might say if, as 
 the artist once commanded, it should "speak." 
 
 Hope. Dawn. A rising sun, just peep,5ng 
 above the hill. Apple blossoms budding. Fuzzy 
 little chickens running about. The red cock crow- 
 ing. A young girl dressed in white standing at 
 the open door of a cottage, her eyes smiling. 
 
 And Jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. 
 
 Faith. A long wedge-line of wild geese flying 
 northward on a spring night. You hear their 
 honk-honk dropping from the vague dimness 
 above. A sailing boat drawing toward port, yet 
 out of sight of land; a pilot with his eye on the 
 compass and his hand upon the wheel. A farmer 
 
 231 
 
planting seed, covering them up, and going away. 
 
 Strength, power, dominion, peace, wisdom, 
 hope, faith. 
 
 Let us get the habit of thinking these things, 
 of picturing them. 
 
 It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 
 And foolish notion. 
 
 232 
 
\ 
 
 DANCING 
 
 Dancing Is the oldest art in the world. 
 
 It is the primeval form of self-expression. 
 
 It is peculiarly the form In which youth shows 
 forth Its joy. When grandfather Is pleased he 
 smiles. When the boy of six is pleased he jumps 
 up and down, spins about and capers; I. e., dances. 
 
 The little lambs leap up, the calves caper, the 
 colts kick and race, the kitten chases its tail, and 
 the puppies Indulge In the most twisted antics, 
 all to express their joy in life. 
 
 Of human creatures the same Is true. Dancing 
 Is as natural as singing. It is the first and most 
 satisfactory outlet for the spirit of play. 
 
 Is dancing Immoral? 
 
 Morality consists not in the doing or not doing 
 of this or that. It consists in such a moderate, 
 decent, and Intelligent Indulgence In any form of 
 pleasure as shall Indicate that one is "above his 
 pleasures," always has due regard for the es- 
 teem of his world, and never makes his amuse- 
 ment the vehicle for his vices. 
 
 One can dance, therefore, quite as morally, as 
 temperately, and self-respectingly as he can dine 
 or sleigh ride. 
 
 233 
 
Dancing is no more moral or immoral than 
 pussy-wants-a-corner or drop-the-handkerchief. 
 
 It is not the thunders of the Puritanic moralist 
 that dancing needs; it is the spirit of the gentle- 
 man and gentlewoman. 
 
 Within the last few years dancing has advanced 
 into an amazing vogue. The so-called "new 
 dances" are such that elderly people can partici- 
 pate in them, as they are simpler and more readily 
 learned than the waltzes, schottisches, and polkas 
 of a former day. 
 
 The result has been that instead of sitting 
 about all evening after dinner, smoking, drinking, 
 and playing cards, the older persons arise and 
 shake their legs even as the youth. 
 
 Of course there Is danger in dancing. There 
 is danger In every kind of self-expression in joy. 
 But the morals of the American people are not 
 going to be corrupted. 
 
 The intelligence, good sense, and self-restraint 
 of decent people can be trusted. And If not, then 
 no amount of police control and moral admoni- 
 tion will do them any good. 
 
 Whatever induces the people to play more and 
 drink and lounge less is helpful. And dancing 
 is the original play. It is the first impulse of a 
 happy heart In a sound body. 
 
 Instead of abolishing dancing in restaurants, 
 we ought to teach it in the public schools. 
 
 234 
 
THE POND OF VANOISE 
 
 At Romille, near Fougeres, In France, there is 
 a pretty pond, the pond of the Vanoise it is called. 
 
 From twenty leagues around they used to come 
 there to drown themselves, says the Paris Figaro. 
 The pond of the Vanoise attracted the candidates 
 for suicide, as if its placid waters exercised an 
 evil spell. In vain the place was watched. Every 
 day or so a body was found. 
 
 The inhabitants of Romille, calm Bretons who 
 love life, strongly disaplproved of this use of 
 their pond as an extinguisher of vital sparks. 
 They had a meeting, they passed resolutions, they 
 made a motion and took a vote. It was carried. 
 On the banks of the pool they put up signs: 
 
 "Defense de se noyer sous peine d'amende." 
 Which may be translated, "Drowning one's self 
 is prohibited under penalty of law." 
 
 And the beauty of it is that, since these pla- 
 cards have been placed, no one has dared drown 
 himself in the pond of the Vanoise. 
 
 The simplicity and effectiveness of this plan 
 commend it as suitable for universal adoption. 
 At one Alexandrian stroke any civic or social Gor- 
 dian knot may be loosed. 
 
Are we tired of political bosses, lobbyists, and 
 corruptlonists ? Simply pass a law that such per- 
 sons be hereby forbidden to practise their arts 
 and are ordered to go to farming. 
 
 Why trifle longer with burglary, arson, and 
 murder? Be it resolved that such offenses be 
 from now on prohibited. And there you are. It 
 is like Columbus and the egg. So simple you 
 never thought of it. 
 
 Are we aweary of the strife of opinion? Let us 
 legislate that all people shall, beginning the first 
 of January, be required to think as we think. 
 Then shall we lapse Into summer calm and none 
 shall any more argue. 
 
 Why be offended further by the drinking of 
 alcoholic liquor, by the use of tobacco, by the 
 end-seat hog, by the slit skirt, by the X-ray robe, 
 by peroxide hair, by crowded street cars, by de- 
 layed railway trains, by political parties that do 
 not fulfil their pledges, by gum-chewing and bad 
 grammar? 
 
 Let the legislature or city council simply print 
 a number of placards and insert properly paid 
 notices in the newspapers. 
 
 "Defense to do any of these things sous peine 
 d'amende." 
 
 Just a simple twist of the wrist. The millen-. 
 nium is right here in a minute. 
 
 236 
 
A WONDERFUL SINNER 
 
 You have doubtless read that recent story of 
 the woman who lived for seven years in the 
 back ofSce of a lawyer because she loved him 
 and could only love him unlawfully; lived in her 
 mean quarters as a prisoner in a cell, just to be 
 near him, foregoing all the world for him, until 
 one day he died suddenly in her arms, and all 
 their secret joy perished In a moment of shame 
 and death. 
 
 This news item lay like a red splash across the 
 page. Among the other news, all of sordid in- 
 terest, political self-seeking, the snarl of money- 
 monsters, the yelp of taken criminals, the ges- 
 tures of despair, the preening of society, the vani- 
 ties of kings, the rumors of war, the long roll of 
 accidents, among all this mud of the ordinary 
 bloomed one morning this story of purple pas- 
 sion, through the coarse clay of events swept this 
 sudden fire of unbelievable love. 
 
 I am not going to praise this woman, lest the 
 army of the righteous sweep down on me, lest all 
 the holy hands of those whose secret sins have 
 never bloomed In public be raised to condemn me 
 as a corrupter of public morals. 
 
 237 
 
If they say her sin is great, and that her ex- 
 ample is evil and in nowise to be commended or 
 followed, and that it is all a disgraceful, pitiable 
 tale, and one to be suppressed, hushed, and turned 
 away from, and inimical to morals, I have nothing 
 to answer, I cannot defend her. 
 
 The woman was a sinner. But I, for one, take 
 off my hat and stand bowed with a great awe 
 before her, for her sin was a love so mighty and 
 strange and unbelievable that beside it most of 
 the comfortable righteousness of the world looks 
 shrunken and little. 
 
 When I think of those long days of loneliness 
 gladly spent for a few words of affection, of those 
 Intolerable convict hours borne with transfigur- 
 ing loyalty for the sake of being near the man 
 she adored, I seem to be in the presence of the 
 elemental woman heart, majestic as the high 
 mountains, awful as Niagara or the roar of the 
 storm-driven ocean. 
 
 She loved. Where in the pages of romance 
 is to be found such love! Before it our smug 
 conventions are shattered, our nice respectabili- 
 ties are shrivelled away, our bitter words of con- 
 demnation dry upon our lips, and we go out from 
 where she and her Judge stand face to face, as 
 the Pharisees went out from the presence of the 
 Master and the wayward woman when He said: 
 "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no 
 more." 
 
 To how many who have read her story has 
 238 
 
there come an amazing revelation of the depth, 
 the height, the length, the breadth of that most 
 abysmal of things, a woman's heart I And how 
 many of us, while we talked lightly and care- 
 fully of the scandal of it, and said, "It was too 
 bad," have felt in our hearts shamed and be- 
 littled, for that we knew that in us was capability 
 of no such greatness, such towering self-sacrifice, 
 no, not even in sin. For even in our sins we are 
 so petty! 
 
 239 
 
MANDRAKES AND MODERNISM 
 
 There is a vast deal of the world's learning 
 that is pure waste. 
 
 I have seen libraries in Europe, books of 
 precious vellum, hand printed, many of them by 
 the lifetime labor of anchorites, and not one of 
 them containing an ounce of wisdom useful to- 
 day. 
 
 Many of our public and private book collec- 
 tions at the present time are for the most part 
 junk heaps. 
 
 The worship of books has become a blind cult. 
 We esteem any aggregation of bound volumes a 
 mark of learning. 
 
 As a matter of fact, perhaps nine-tenths of the 
 knowledge men accumulated up to a hundred 
 years ago is useless, except to show how much is 
 not worth while. 
 
 As a sample of the amazing non-facts men 
 swallowed whole on the word of savants, take the 
 literature of the mandrake. 
 
 This plant, the mandragora officinalis of the 
 Mediterranean region, was from the most ancient 
 times endowed by superstition with strange 
 powers. Read the story of Leah's mandrakes in 
 the thirtieth chapter of Genesis. 
 
 240 
 
The reason for the crazy beliefs that attached 
 themselves to this plant was doubtless the shape 
 of its root, which is forked and crudely resembles 
 human legs. The upper part is not unlike a man's 
 body, and with a little skill one can cut the top 
 to look like a head, while if grains are imbedded 
 In the crown they will sprout and give a fair imi- 
 tation of hair. 
 
 Here are some of the "facts" : 
 
 The mandrake can be used as the basis of a love 
 philter. It will also cure childlessness. 
 
 When pulled from the ground it utters a hu- 
 man cry, as in Longfellow's "Spanish Student" : 
 
 Teach me where that wondrous mandrake grows, 
 Whose magic root, torn from the earth with groans 
 At midnight hour, can scare the fiends away 
 And make the mind prolific in its fancies. 
 
 To uproot a mandrake was dangerous business. 
 Pliny advised first drawing three concentric cir- 
 cles around it with a sword. Theophrastus rec- 
 ommended jumping three times around it. The 
 approved method in the middle ages was to tie 
 a hungry dog to the plant and offer him a piece 
 of meat; he gives a lunge, and there you are! 
 No one hurt with a curse except a dog. 
 
 Greek, Latin, and Arabic literature abound in 
 mandrake information. The plant was an inter- 
 mediate creation between the vegetable and ani- 
 mal kingdoms, as the ape comes between animal 
 and man. 
 
 241 
 
The mandrake is part demon in its powers, 
 part plant in nature, and part human in form. 
 
 It doubles the treasure of those who own It. 
 
 It knows the future. Ask it a question and it 
 shakes Its head. 
 
 Boccaccio and Machlavelli, La Fontaine and 
 Caliban make use of It In drama and story. 
 
 The best mandrakes are those pulled under a 
 gibbet where hangs a fresh corpse. 
 
 Mandrake leaves shine like stars. 
 
 All this may serve to show the method of minds 
 before the modern era. 
 
 People did not want to know what was true, 
 but what was interesting. 
 
 Historical truth Is a modern discovery. Sci- 
 entific truth had no particular value up to a few 
 generations ago. 
 
 People then were children, with all a child's 
 credulity, a fact no book has brought out so vivid- 
 ly as Mark Twain's "A Yankee at King Arthur's 
 Court." 
 
 The tendency to-day Is to accept learned men's 
 statements for nothing, except they be proved. 
 No authority goes. The most famous scientist 
 In the world would be laughed at if he wrote a 
 book of assertions without facts to back them up. 
 
 Furthermore, the learned are learning that 
 their sayings have little weight unless they can 
 strip them of long words and technical terms and 
 put them into plain English, understandable of 
 the people. 
 
 242 
 
The wonderful eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
 turies saw more than the downfall of the irra- 
 tional tyranny in government; they saw the be- 
 ginning of the downfall of all humbug authority 
 in every realm of thought — the first step in the 
 emancipation of mankind. 
 
 243 
 
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS 
 
 The New Year is here. It is inventory time. 
 Let us look over the stock of habits, ideas, and 
 relationships we have accumulated the past twelve 
 months and clean up. 
 
 The New Year's resolution is a good thing. 
 Why drift along, the slave and plaything of our 
 unmanaged desires and of our accidental circum- 
 stances? Why not be our own master and live 
 one year like an intelligent human being? 
 
 Examine your habits. Lop off the bad ones. 
 Free yourself from any ways you have fallen 
 Into that make you lazy, unhealthy, miserable, 
 and disagreeable to other people. 
 
 Determine this year to be master of self; that 
 you will control your thoughts, regulate your pas- 
 sions, and guide your own deeds; that you will 
 not let events lead you by the nose. 
 
 Resolve to be happy. Remember Lincoln's 
 saying that "folks are usually about as happy as 
 they make up their minds to be." 
 
 This year you shall not neglect your friends. 
 They are too valuable, as life assets, to lose. 
 
 You will adopt some system and stick to it, 
 knowing that nine-tenths of our irritation comes 
 from lack of system. 
 
 244 
 
Lay out a course of study. No one Is too old 
 to learn. Resolve to give some time each day 
 to reading some helpful book. Cut out the trash. 
 
 Resolve to keep an account of all the money 
 you get and of all you spend. You may have 
 tried this many times and failed. Never mind; 
 you are still alive and have the chance to try it 
 again. 
 
 Save. Put a certain fraction by of all you 
 make. There's no friend like money in the bank. 
 
 Don't spend any money till you get it. Don't 
 go into debt. Beware of buying all those things 
 you "must have," for you mustn't have anything 
 until you can pay for it. 
 
 No alcohol this year. Let your body rest 365 
 days from this poison and see how you feel. 
 Don't get into a moral fever over this. Don't 
 "try" not to drink. Just don't drink. 
 
 Resolve to take that daily exercise. 
 
 Eliminate worry. This year make up your 
 mind to fret over nothing. Adjust yourself to 
 facts instead of getting into a stew over them. 
 If a matter can be helped, help it; if it cannot be 
 helped, forget it. 
 
 This year resolve to keep discord out of the 
 house. Nobody can quarrel with you if you do 
 not quarrel with him. Say to yourself that you 
 will not once in 19 16 speak crossly to your chil- 
 dren; that you will not say one unkind word to 
 your husband or wife, and that you will keep 
 agreeable if it takes a leg. 
 
 245 
 
This may be the last year you will have. Make 
 it a good one. 
 
 You know how you ought to live. At least, 
 you think you do. And if you do as well as your 
 own judgment tells you, it will be an advance. 
 
 This is old-fashioned advice. But happiness is 
 old-fashioned, and life. There is no new-fan- 
 gled way to be content. 
 
 And learn this of wise Marcus Aurelius: 
 
 "To change thy mind and follow him that sets 
 thee right is to be none the less the free agent 
 that thou wast before." 
 
 Also : "The happiness and unhappiness of the 
 rational social animal depends not on what he 
 feels but on what he does; just as virtue and vice 
 consist not in feeling but in doing." 
 
 246 
 
AN OPEN LETTER TO SANTA CLAUS 
 
 My dear Santa Claus : I am writing to you 
 in behalf of the several millions of people in this 
 country who are orthodox. 
 
 By orthodox I mean those who believe in you. 
 We also believe in fairies and angels. We be- 
 lieve that the spirits of dead mothers still are 
 near to all little boys and girls, and love them 
 always, and look after them, and often put good 
 thoughts into their minds, and kiss them in their 
 sleep. And that fathers who are dead are living 
 yet and loving their children and working for 
 them somewhere. 
 
 We believe in you, dear Santa Claus, because 
 you do not do anything else but come around once 
 a year and make children happy. Surely anybody 
 who is in that business ought to be believed in, 
 whether he exists or not. 
 
 But you do exist. You live In the hearts and 
 fancies of thousands and thousands of little peo- 
 ple, and surely that is a much better place to 
 live than in a big house in a fine city. 
 
 So, when you come dashing along with your 
 reindeer and your sledful of toys on Christmas 
 Eve, don't forget that many, many eager eyes are 
 
 247 
 
upon you and a vast number of little hearts are 
 fluttering in tune and time with your sleighbells. 
 
 Our stockings will be hung up, as usual, around 
 the fireplace. If we haven't a fireplace you can 
 find them hung up on the radiator or the back of 
 a chair. For we know that people who build 
 houses without fireplaces cannot fool you, and 
 that you can come down the steam pipe or creep 
 in through the keyhole just as easily as you used 
 to enter houses by chimneys. 
 
 Please don't bring us useful presents, like mit- 
 tens and handkerchiefs. We want red wagons 
 and dolls, and all sorts of those funny and Christ- 
 masy thingumajigs that you know so well how to 
 make. Also please bring some striped stick candy, 
 because we can suck it a long time and it doesn't 
 give us the stomach ache. 
 
 If you see a very tiny stocking hanging among 
 the others, don't overlook It. That's the baby's. 
 He is not old enough, of course, to know what 
 Christmas means, but go on, put something in his 
 stocking anyhow, because we don't want him left 
 out. Please do this. 
 
 And don't forget grandma's stocking. She 
 doesn't want to hang It up, but we are going to 
 make her, because she is the very sweetest, dar- 
 llngest grandma in all the whole world, and she 
 believes in you, and has told us lots about you. 
 Haven't you any grandma toys? 
 
 We are all going to bed early and sleep tight 
 as tight can be on Christmas Eve, and we prom- 
 
 248 
 
ise honestly not to look, and we will be up early 
 Christmas morning; so be sure and come. 
 
 And please, please don't forget the poor chil- 
 dren. You know it takes only the cheapest kind 
 of a toy to make them happy, to make them know 
 that Christmas is really and truly here. 
 
 So come, dear old Santa Claus, come to the 
 myriad children who adore you, to the mother 
 hearts that live again their childhood days when 
 you visit them, to the fathers who, when they 
 hear you coming, are changed "and become as lit- 
 tle children," and even to all those whose babies 
 are no more about them, but are gone to live 
 with the blessed dead. 
 
 We need you; and this world would be poorer 
 and so waste and sad if you and the fairies and 
 the angels should lose faith in us and come no 
 more. 
 
 P. S. — Last night little Tim, when he was say- 
 ing his prayers, said "God bless Santa Claus, 
 too." So you see there's one little fellow in this 
 house that thinks you're all right. 
 
 249 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Back to Shakespeare! 
 
 Study him in your youth, and in your old age 
 he will come back to comfort you. 
 
 If you would be a writer, learn from him how 
 grandeur of thought can flow in a limpid style, 
 and how an exquisite judgment can choose the one 
 word wherein trembles the essence of conviction. 
 
 If you would speak in public, let him be your 
 master in that combined conciseness and eloquence 
 that warms men's hearts while it persuades their 
 minds. 
 
 If you would know human nature and grasp 
 the art of living, make familiar friends of his 
 characters, high and low, mean and noble, and 
 you shall come into that universality of experi- 
 ence no man than he has better set forth. 
 
 Of all Time's figures he appears the most 
 amazing. The empires of Napoleon and Charle- 
 magne have dissolved. The books of poets, es- 
 sayists, and novelists who have been acclaimed 
 by the people as Immortal have stood awhile, 
 and at last have fallen from their pedestals, but 
 Shakespeare remains, polished and perfect, the 
 admiration of present day intelligence as much 
 as when Ben Jonson sang his praise. 
 
 He has been attacked and derided, his flaws 
 have been pointed out. His very existence has 
 
 250 
 
been denied. But all the waves of criticism have 
 beaten in vain upon the edifice of his fame. He 
 remains to-day the greatest master of the greatest 
 language of history. There is no other author 
 where you can find English in its ideal perfection. 
 
 He is a true master of men. As has been said: 
 "What king has he not taught state? What 
 maiden has not found him finer than her deli- 
 cacy? What lover has he not outloved? What 
 gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness 
 of his behavior?" 
 
 Read your Shakespeare, young men and 
 women ! If he bores you, it is for the same rea- 
 son that the noble bores the low and narrow; 
 read on, until you catch step with that majestical 
 mind; read on, and find your littleness falling 
 from you and your soul growing great ! 
 
 And rest assured that it is a sad thing for us 
 when we cannot have a whole-souled admiration 
 for those real kings of men whom Time has test- 
 ed and all mankind has crowned. 
 
 Buy the small editions of his separate plays. 
 Carry a little volume in your pocket. Pencil it. 
 Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Read 
 aloud his sounding phrases to another or to your- 
 self. Commit to memory those lines which find 
 you. 
 
 The mind to whom Shakespeare is a constant 
 companion cannot be entirely commonplace; for 
 in Shakespeare is the soul of the English race 
 at its best. 
 
 251 
 
THE ANONYMOUS LETTER 
 
 Lift up your hand right now and swear that 
 never, so long as you live, and so help you God, 
 will you write an anonymous letter, except it be 
 a kind one. After which please kiss the Bible. 
 
 If you hate anybody, either go and whip him, 
 or else go away and let him alone. 
 
 Don't stab him in the back, don't put poison in 
 his tea, don't shoot him from behind a fence cor- 
 ner, and, what is worse, because still more cow- 
 ardly, don't write him an anonymous letter. 
 
 The anonymous letter is the triumph of the 
 petty. It is the victory of the impotent. It is 
 the pride of the cowardly. 
 
 The writer of such a letter is a copperhead 
 snake, which differs from the gentlemanly rattle- 
 snake in that it strikes without warning. 
 
 An open, out and out enemy who loathes you 
 heartily and says so is a wholesome person. He 
 keeps you humble and makes you careful. But 
 the man that smiles on you and goes home and 
 writes you an anonymous letter is too low to be 
 described here, on account of the postal laws. 
 
 Of course you do not use profane language, 
 which is naughty. But recall all the bad words 
 
 252 
 
you ever heard, the unrepeatable vile epithets of 
 all the languages you know, focus them upon one 
 point — that is the anonymous letter writer. 
 
 Don't hint. Don't insinuate. Insult if you 
 must, but do it in plain English. And sign your 
 name. 
 
 Imitate the clerk, who was called to the boss's 
 office. The boss said: 
 
 "Mr. Brown, I understand you have been mak- 
 ing insinuations about me." 
 
 "Oh, no. That must be a mistake." 
 
 "It is no mistake, Mr. Brown. I have it upon 
 the best authority. Don't try to wriggle out 
 of it." 
 
 "But it must be a mistake. I never insinuate. 
 To be sure, I said you were an old muttonhead 
 and a rascal, but I never insinuated anything." 
 
 By common consent, since the world was built, 
 and men began the great game of fighting each 
 other for gold, for woman, and for nothing at 
 all, the sneak, the spy, and the traitor have been 
 blackballed from the society of brave men. Away 
 down below sneak, spy, and traitor in the list 
 of human detestables may be found the man or 
 woman who enjoys sending an anonymous letter. 
 
 If you are full of venom and must get it out 
 of your system write — write fully and foully. 
 Then burn your letter. Thus it may relieve your- 
 self and hurt no one. 
 
 253 
 
GOLDEN ROD 
 
 It has come, the army with golden plumes, 
 and conquered the land. 
 
 Every wall Is held, every highway is senti- 
 nelled. There are squadrons in the meadows and 
 pickets in the woods. 
 
 So quietly the little soldiers came, myriads upon 
 myriads of them, stealing northward by moon- 
 light, spreading east and west guided by the winds 
 and piped to by the birds in the hedgerows, so 
 gently were we beleaguered, that until but a few 
 days ago we knew it not, and then when we 
 strolled far out one Sunday In the countryside we 
 saw them, sheen of pure gold In the sun, nodding 
 clusters of the most beautiful royal yellow in the 
 world, happy groups laughing to us from the way- 
 side, until we were all atremble with the exquisite- 
 ness, the daintiness, the consummate wonder of It 
 all, and "or ever I was aware my soul made me 
 like the chariots of the Aminadab." 
 
 There are other flowers for other spirit moods, 
 for other seasons. We must love the little crocus, 
 first born of the sun and the woman-earth, as it 
 thrusts its fragile beauty up through the snow 
 upon the warm side of the house; and the violet, 
 shy beneath Its covering leaf, blue as a speck of 
 ,sky fallen timid and chaste; and the brilliant dan- 
 
 -254 
 
delions, smearing the grass fields as with a brusK 
 dipped In the sun; and the wild roses, like sweet 
 thoughts of young girls gladdening the dusty 
 road; and hollyhocks and marigold, pinks and for- 
 get-me-nots, roses and rue; but what can compare 
 with this gypsy flower of the open, this flower un- 
 cultured and unimprovable by man, the direct gift 
 and most gracious handiwork of God, the Master 
 Craftsman of beauty, who lends the earth, at the 
 death of summer, this garment of cloth-of-gold 
 as a splendid cerement! 
 
 Lovers love you, little Golden Rod. I saw 
 them wandering in the woodland and along the 
 lanes, gathering armfuls of your treasure. 
 
 Mothers love you and set you In their windows 
 to catch the sun. 
 
 And I know a man (and how many are there, 
 brothers of his spirit?) who goes out alone and 
 looks at you these days, and finds your charm 
 singing in his heart, a broken heart that seems 
 to mend In your presence, for he thinks of her 
 who last year walked beside him, as glorious in 
 her eyes and smile as you are glorious, and who 
 loved you so, and he takes the fullest and richest 
 of your blooms, and lays them on the little mound 
 where she sleeps forever. 
 
 You too must go, Golden Rod, as all beauty 
 must go, for evanescence Is writ on earthly joy. 
 But would you might stay always with us, 
 Clothing the palpable and familiar 
 With golden exhalations of the dawn.