Chapter II: Oh, Missouri! (2)

By help of these suggested amendments, Progress and Civilization in that country can have a boom, and it will take in the Persons who are Sitting in Darkness, and we can resume Business at the old stand.

-----

Footnote 10:

“Rebels!” Mumble that funny word--don’t let the Person catch it
distinctly.

TO MY MISSIONARY CRITICS
(_North American Review_, 1901)

I have received many newspaper cuttings; also letters from several clergymen; also a note from the Rev. Dr. Judson Smith, Corresponding Secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions--all of a like tenor; all saying, substantially, what is said in the cutting here copied:

AN APOLOGY DUE FROM MR. CLEMENS

The evidence of the past day or two should induce Mark Twain to make
for the amen corner and formulate a prompt apology for his scathing
attack on the Rev. Dr. Ament, the veteran Chinese missionary. The
assault was based on a Peking dispatch to the New York _Sun_, which
said that Dr. Ament had collected from the Chinese in various places
damages thirteen times in excess of actual losses. So Mark Twain
charged Mr. Ament with bullyragging, extortion, and things. A Peking
dispatch to the _Sun_ yesterday, however, explains that the amount
collected was not thirteen times the damage sustained, but _one-third
in excess of the indemnities_, and that the blunder was due to a cable
error in transmission. The 1-3d got converted into 13. Yesterday the
Rev. Judson Smith, Secretary of the American Board, received a
dispatch from Dr. Ament, calling attention to the cable blunder, and
declaring that all the collections which he made were _approved by the
Chinese officials_. The fractional amount that was collected in excess
of actual losses, he explains, is being _used for the support of
widows and orphans_.

So collapses completely--and convulsively--Mark Twain’s sensational
and ugly bombardment of a missionary whose character and services
should have exempted him from such an assault.

From the charge the underpinning has been knocked out. To Dr. Ament
Mr. Clemens has done an injustice which is gross but unintentional. If
Mark Twain is the man we take him to be he won’t be long in filing a
retraction, plus an apology.

I have no prejudice against apologies. I trust I shall never withhold one when it is due; I trust I shall never even have a disposition to do so. These letters and newspaper paragraphs are entitled to my best attention; respect for their writers and for the humane feeling which has prompted their utterances requires this of me. It may be barely possible that, if these requests for an apology had reached me before the 20th of February, I might have had a sort of qualified chance to apologize; but on that day appeared the two little cablegrams referred to in the newspaper cutting copied above--one from the Rev. Dr. Smith to the Rev. Dr. Ament, the other from Dr. Ament to Dr. Smith--and my small chance died then. In my opinion, these cablegrams ought to have been suppressed, for it seems clear that they give Dr. Ament’s case entirely away. Still, that is only an opinion, and may be a mistake. It will be best to examine the case from the beginning, by the light of the documents connected with it.

EXHIBIT A

This is a dispatch from Mr. Chamberlain,[11] chief of the _Sun’s_ correspondence staff in Peking. It appeared in the _Sun_ last Christmas Eve, and in referring to it hereafter I will call it the “C. E. dispatch” for short:

The Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions, has
returned from a trip which he made for the purpose of collecting
indemnities for damages done by Boxers. Everywhere he went he
compelled the Chinese to pay. He says that all his native Christians
are now provided for. He had seven hundred of them under his charge,
and three hundred were killed. He has collected 300 taels for each of
these murders, and has compelled full payment for all the property
belonging to Christians that was destroyed. He also assessed fines
amounting to thirteen times[12] the amount of the indemnity. This
money will be used for the propagation of the Gospel.

Mr. Ament declares that the compensation he has collected is moderate
when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics, who demand, in
addition to money, head for head. They collect 500 taels for each
murder of a Catholic. In the Wen-Chiu country 680 Catholics were
killed, and for this the European Catholics here demand 750,000
strings of cash and 680 heads.

In the course of a conversation Mr. Ament referred to the attitude of
the missionaries toward the Chinese. He said:

“I deny emphatically that the missionaries are vindictive, that they
generally looted, or that they have done anything since the siege that
the circumstances did not demand. I criticize the Americans. The soft
hand of the Americans is not as good as the mailed fist of the
Germans. If you deal with the Chinese with a soft hand they will take
advantage of it.”

In an article addressed “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” published in the _North American Review_ for February, I made some comments upon this C. E. dispatch.

In an Open Letter to me, from the Rev. Dr. Smith, published in the _Tribune_ of February 15th, doubt is cast upon the authenticity of the dispatch.

Up to the 20th of February, this doubt was an important factor in the case: Dr. Ament’s brief cablegram, published on that date, took the importance all out of it.

In the Open Letter, Dr. Smith quotes this passage from a letter from Dr. Ament, dated November 13th. The italics are mine:

_This_ time I proposed to settle affairs _without the aid of soldiers
or_ legations.

This cannot mean two things, but only one: that, previously, he _had_ collected by armed force.

Also, in the Open Letter, Dr. Smith quotes some praises of Dr. Ament and the Rev. Mr. Tewksbury, furnished by the Rev. Dr. Sheffield, and says:

Dr. Sheffield is not accustomed to speak thus of _thieves_, or
_extortioners_, or _braggarts_.

What can he mean by those vigorous expressions? Can he mean that the first two would be applicable to a missionary who should collect from B, with the “aid of soldiers,” indemnities possibly due by A, and upon occasion go out looting?

EXHIBIT B

Testimony of George Lynch (indorsed as entirely trustworthy by the _Tribune_ and the _Herald_), war correspondent in the Cuban and South African wars, and in the march upon Peking for the rescue of the legations. The italics are mine:

When the _soldiers_ were prohibited from looting, no such prohibitions
seemed to operate with the _missionaries_. For instance, the _Rev. Mr.
Tewksbury held a great sale of looted goods, which lasted several
days_.

A day or two after the relief, when looking for a place to sleep in, I
met the Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions. _He
told me_ he was going to take possession of the house of a wealthy
Chinaman who was an old enemy of his, as he had interfered much in the
past with his missionary labors in Peking. A couple of days afterwards
_he did so_, and held a _great sale of his enemy’s effects_. I bought
a sable cloak at it for $125, and a couple of statues of Buddha. As
the stock became depleted _it was replenished by the efforts of his
converts, who were ransacking the houses in the neighborhood_.--New
York _Herald_, February 18th.

It is Dr. Smith, not I, who has suggested that persons who act in this way are “thieves and extortioners.”

EXHIBIT C

Sir Robert Hart, in the _Fortnightly Review_ for January, 1901. This witness has been for many years the most prominent and important Englishman in China, and bears an irreproachable reputation for moderation, fairness, and truth-speaking. In closing a description of the revolting scenes which followed the occupation of Peking, when the Christian armies (with the proud exception of the American soldiery, let us be thankful for that) gave themselves up to a ruthless orgy of robbery and spoliation, he says (the italics are mine):

And even some _missionaries_ took such a _leading_ part in “spoiling
the Egyptians” for the greater glory of God that a bystander was heard
to say: “_For a century to come Chinese converts will consider looting
and vengeance Christian virtues._”

It is Dr. Smith, not I, who has suggested that persons who act in this way are “thieves and extortioners.” According to Mr. Lynch and Mr. Martin (another war correspondent), Dr. Ament helped to spoil several of those Egyptians. Mr. Martin took a photograph of the scene. It was reproduced in the _Herald_. I have it.

EXHIBIT D

In a brief reply to Dr. Smith’s Open Letter to me, I said this in the _Tribune_. I am italicizing several words--for a purpose:

Whenever he (Dr. Smith) can produce from the Rev. Mr. Ament an
assertion that the _Sun’s_ character-blasting dispatch was not
authorized _by him_, and whenever Dr. Smith can buttress Mr. Ament’s
disclaimer with a confession from _Mr. Chamberlain_, the head of the
Laffan News Service in China, that that dispatch was a false invention
_and unauthorized_, the case against Mr. Ament will fall at once to
the ground.

EXHIBIT E

Brief cablegrams, referred to above, which passed between Dr. Smith and Dr. Ament, and were published on February 20th:

Ament, Peking: Reported December 24 your collecting thirteen times
actual losses; using for propagating the Gospel. Are these statements
true? Cable specific answer.

SMITH.

Statement untrue. Collected 1-3 for church expenses, additional actual
damages; now supporting widows and orphans. Publication thirteen times
blunder cable. All collections received approval Chinese officials,
who are urging further settlements same line.

AMENT.

Only two questions are asked; “specific” answers required; no perilous wanderings among the other details of the unhappy dispatch desired.

EXHIBIT F

Letter from Dr. Smith to me, dated March 8th. The italics are mine; they tag inaccuracies of statement:

Permit me to call your attention to the marked paragraphs in the
inclosed papers, and to ask you to note their relation to the two
conditions named in your letter to the New York _Tribune_ of February
15th.

The first is _Dr. Ament’s denial of the truth of the dispatch in the
New York “Sun,”_ of December 24th, on which your criticisms of him in
the _North American Review_ of February were founded. The second is a
correction by the _“Sun’s”_ _special correspondent_ in Peking of the
dispatch printed in the _Sun_ of December 24th.

Since, as you state in your letter to the _Tribune_, “the case against
Mr. Ament would fall to the ground” _if Mr. Ament denied the truth_ of
the _Sun’s_ first dispatch, and _if the ‘Sun’s’ news agency_ in Peking
also _declared that dispatch false_, and these two conditions _have
thus been fulfilled_, I am sure that upon having these _facts_ brought
to your attention you will gladly withdraw the criticisms that were
_founded on a “cable blunder.”_

I think Dr. Smith ought to read me more carefully; then he would not make so many mistakes. Within the narrow space of two paragraphs, totaling eleven lines, he has scored nine departures from fact out of a possible 9½. Now, is that parliamentary? I do not treat him like that. Whenever I quote him, I am particular not to do him the least wrong, or make him say anything he did not say.

(1) Mr. Ament doesn’t “deny the truth of the C. E. dispatch”; he merely changes one of its phrases, without materially changing the meaning, and (immaterially) corrects a cable blunder (which correction I accept). He was asked no question about the other four fifths of the C. E. dispatch. (2) I said nothing about “special” correspondents; I named the right and responsible man--Mr. Chamberlain. The “correction” referred to is a repetition of the one I have just accepted, which (immaterially) changes “thirteen times” to “one third” extra tax. (3) I did not say anything about “the _Sun’s_ news agency”; I said “Chamberlain.” I have every confidence in Mr. Chamberlain, but I am not personally acquainted with the others. (4) Once more--Mr. Ament didn’t “deny the truth” of the C. E. dispatch, but merely made unimportant emendations of a couple of its many details. (5) I did not say “if Mr. Ament denied the truth” of the C. E. dispatch: I said, if he would assert that the dispatch was not “authorized” _by him_. For example, I did not suppose that the charge that the Catholic missionaries wanted 680 Chinamen beheaded was true; but I did want to know if Dr. Ament personally authorized that statement and the others, as coming from his lips. Another detail: one of my conditions was that Mr. Chamberlain must not stop with confessing that the C. E. was a “false invention,” he must also confess that it was “_unauthorized_.” Dr. Smith has left out that large detail. (6) The _Sun’s_ news agency did not “declare the C. E. dispatch false,” but confined itself to correcting one unimportant detail of its long list--the change of “13 times” to “one third” extra. (7) The “two conditions” have not “been fulfilled”--far from it. (8) Those details labeled “facts” are only fancies. (9) Finally, my criticisms were by no means confined to that detail of the C. E. dispatch which we now accept as having been a “cable blunder.”

Setting to one side these nine departures from fact, I find that what is left of the eleven lines is straight and true. I am not blaming Dr. Smith for these discrepancies--it would not be right, it would not be fair. I make the proper allowances. He has not been a journalist, as I have been--a trade wherein a person is brought to book by the rest of the press so often for divergencies that, by and by, he gets to be almost morbidly afraid to indulge in them. It is so with me. I always have the disposition to tell what is not so; I was born with it; we all have it. But I try not to do it now, because I have found out that it is unsafe. But with the Doctor of course it is different.

EXHIBIT G

I wanted to get at the whole of the facts as regards the C. E. dispatch, and so I wrote to China for them, when I found that the Board was not going to do it. But I am not allowed to wait. It seemed quite within the possibilities that a full detail of the facts might furnish me a chance to make an apology to Mr. Ament--a chance which, I give you my word, I would have honestly used, and not abused. But it is no matter. If the Board is not troubled about the bulk of that lurid dispatch, why should I be? I answered the apology-urging letters of several clergymen with the information that I had written to China for the details, and said I thought it was the only sure way of getting into a position to do fair and full justice to all concerned; but a couple of them replied that it was not a matter that could wait. That is to say, groping your way out of a jungle in the dark with guesses and conjectures is better than a straight march out in the sunlight of fact. It seems a curious idea.

However, those two clergymen were in a large measure right--from their point of view and the Board’s; which is, putting it in the form of a couple of questions:

1. _Did Dr. Ament collect the assessed damages and thirteen times over?_ The answer is: He did _not_. He collected only a _third_ over.

2. _Did he apply the third to the “propagation of the Gospel?”_ The answer is this correction: He applied it to “church expenses.” Part or all of the outlay, it appears, goes to “supporting widows and orphans.” It may be that church expenses and supporting widows and orphans are not part of the machinery for propagating the Gospel. I supposed they were, but it isn’t any matter; I prefer this phrasing; it is not so blunt as the other.

In the opinion of the two clergymen and of the Board, these two points are _the only important ones_ in the whole C. E. dispatch.

I accept that. Therefore let us throw out the rest of the dispatch as being no longer a part of Dr. Ament’s case.

EXHIBIT H

The two clergymen and the Board are quite content with Dr. Ament’s
answers upon the two points.

Upon the first point of the two, my own viewpoint may be indicated by a question:

_Did Dr. Ament collect from B (whether by compulsion or simple demand) even so much as a penny in payment for murders or depredations, without knowing, beyond question, that B, and not another, committed the murders or the depredations?_

Or, in other words:

_Did Dr. Ament ever, by chance or through ignorance, make the innocent pay the debts of the guilty?_

In the article entitled “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” I put forward that point in a paragraph taken from Macallum’s (imaginary) “History”:

EXHIBIT I

When a white Boxer kills a Pawnee and destroys his property the other
Pawnees do not trouble to seek _him_ out; they kill any white person
that comes along; also, they make some white village pay deceased’s
heirs the full cash value of deceased, together with full cash value
of the property destroyed; they also make the village pay, in
addition, _thirteen times_[13] the value of that property into a fund
for the dissemination of the Pawnee religion, which they regard as the
best of all religions for the softening and humanizing of the heart of
man. It is their idea that it is only fair and right _that the
innocent should be made to suffer for the guilty_, and that it is
better that 90 and 9 innocent should suffer than that one guilty
person should escape.

We all know that Dr. Ament did not bring suspected persons into a duly organized court and try them by just and fair Christian and civilized methods, but proclaimed his “conditions,” and collected damages from the innocent and the guilty alike, without any court proceedings at all.[14] That he himself, and not the villagers, made the “conditions,” we learn from his letter of November 13th, already quoted from--the one in which he remarked that, upon _that_ occasion he brought no soldiers with him. The italics are mine:

After our _conditions_ were known many villagers came of their own
accord and brought their money with them.

Not all, but “many.” The Board really believes that those hunted and harried paupers out there were not only willing to strip themselves to pay Boxer damages, whether they owed them or not, but were sentimentally eager to do it. Mr. Ament says, in his letter: “The villagers were extremely grateful because I brought no foreign soldiers, and were glad to settle on the terms proposed.” Some of those people know more about theology than they do about human nature. I do not remember encountering even a Christian who was “glad” to pay money he did not owe; and as for a Chinaman doing it, why, dear me, the thing is unthinkable. We have all seen Chinamen, many Chinamen, but not that kind. It is a new kind: an invention of the Board--and “soldiers.”

CONCERNING THE COLLECTIONS

What was the “one third extra”? Money due? No. Was it a theft, then? Putting aside the “one third extra,” what was the _remainder_ of the exacted indemnity, if collected from persons not _known_ to owe it, and without Christian and civilized forms of procedure? Was _it_ theft, was it robbery? In America it would be that; in Christian Europe it would be that. I have great confidence in Dr. Smith’s judgment concerning this detail, and he calls it “theft and extortion”--even in China; for he was talking about the “thirteen times” at the time that he gave it that strong name.[15] It is his idea that, when you make guilty and innocent villagers pay the appraised damages, and then make them pay thirteen times that, besides, the _thirteen_ stand for “theft and extortion.”

Then what does _one third_ extra stand for? Will he give that one third a name? Is it Modified Theft and Extortion? Is that it? The girl who was rebuked for having borne an illegitimate child excused herself by saying, “But it is such a _little_ one.”

When the “thirteen-times-extra” was alleged, it stood for theft and extortion, in Dr. Smith’s eyes, and he was shocked. But when Dr. Ament showed that he had taken only a _third_ extra, instead of thirteenfold, Dr. Smith was relieved, content, happy. I declare I cannot imagine why. That editor--quoted at the head of this article--was happy about it, too. I cannot think why. He thought I ought to “make for the amen corner and formulate a prompt apology.” To whom, and for what? It is too deep for me.

To Dr. Smith, the “thirteenfold extra” clearly stood for “theft and extortion,” and he was right, distinctly right, indisputably right. He manifestly thinks that when it got scaled away down to a mere “one third,” a little thing like that was something other than “theft and extortion.” Why? Only the Board knows! I will try to explain this difficult problem, so that the Board can get an idea of it. If a pauper owes me a dollar, and I catch him unprotected and make him pay me fourteen dollars, thirteen of it is “theft and extortion”; if I make him pay only a dollar and thirty-three and a third cents the thirty-three and a third cents are “theft and extortion” just the same. I will put it in another way, still simpler. If a man owes me one dog--any kind of a dog, the breed is of no consequence--and I----But let it go; the Board would never understand it. It _can’t_ understand these involved and difficult things.

But _if_ the Board could understand, then I could furnish some more instruction--which is this. The one third, obtained by “theft and extortion,” is _tainted money_, and cannot be purified even by defraying “church expenses” and “supporting widows and orphans” with it. It has to be restored to the people it was taken from.

Also, there is another view of these things. By our Christian code of morals and law, the _whole_ $1.33 1-3, if taken from a man not formally _proven_ to have committed the damage the dollar represents, is “theft and extortion.” It cannot be honestly used for any purpose at all. It must be handed back to the man it was taken from.

Is there no way, then, to justify these thefts and extortions and make them clean and fair and honorable? Yes, there is. It can be done; it has been done; it continues to be done--by revising the Ten Commandments and bringing them down to date: for use in pagan lands. For example:

_Thou shalt not steal_--except when it is the custom of the country.

This way out is recognized and _approved_ by all the best authorities, including the Board. I will cite witnesses.

_The newspaper cutting, above_: “Dr. Ament declares that all the collections which he made were approved by the _Chinese_ officials.” The editor is satisfied.

_Dr. Ament’s cable to Dr. Smith_: “All collections received approval _Chinese_ officials.” Dr. Ament is satisfied.

_Letters from eight clergymen_--all to the same effect: Dr. Ament merely did as the _Chinese_ do. So they are satisfied.

_Mr. Ward, of the “Independent.”_

_The Rev. Dr. Washington Gladden._

I have mislaid the letters of these gentlemen and cannot quote their words, but they are of the satisfied.

_The Rev. Dr. Smith_, in his Open Letter, published in the _Tribune:_ “The whole procedure [Dr. Ament’s] is in accordance with a custom among the _Chinese_, of holding a village responsible for wrongs suffered in that village, and especially making the head man of the village accountable for wrongs committed there.” Dr. Smith is satisfied. Which means that the Board is satisfied.

The “head man”! Why, then, this poor rascal, innocent or guilty, must pay the whole bill, if he cannot squeeze it out of his poor-devil neighbors. But, indeed, he can be depended upon to try, even to the skinning them of their last brass farthing, their last rag of clothing, their last ounce of food. He can be depended upon to get the indemnity out of them, though it cost stripes and blows, blood-tears, and flesh.

THE TALE OF THE KING AND HIS TREASURER

How strange and remote and romantic and Oriental and Arabian-Nighty it all seems--and is. It brings back the old forgotten tales, and we hear the King say to his Treasurer:

“Bring me 30,000 gold tomauns.”

“Allah preserve us, Sire! the treasury is empty.”

“Do you hear? Bring the money--in ten days. Else, send me your head in a basket.”

“I hear and obey.”

The Treasurer summons the head men of a hundred villages, and says to one:

“Bring me a hundred gold tomauns.” To another, “Bring me five hundred.” To another, “Bring a thousand. In ten days. Your head is the forfeit.”

“Your slaves kiss your feet! Ah, high and mighty lord, be merciful to our hard-pressed villagers; they are poor, they are naked, they starve; oh, these impossible sums! even the half----”

“Go! Grind it out of them, crush it out of them, turn the blood of the fathers, the tears of the mothers, the milk of the babes to money--or take the consequences. Have you heard?”

“His will be done, Who is the Fount of love and mercy and compassion, Who layeth this heavy burden upon us by the hand of His anointed servants--blessed be His holy Name! The father shall bleed, the mother shall faint for hunger, the babe shall perish at the dry breast. The chosen of God have commanded: it shall be as they say.”

I am not meaning to object to the substitution of pagan customs for Christian, here and there and now and then, when the Christian ones are inconvenient. No; I like it and admire it. I do it myself. And I admire the alertness of the Board in watching out for chances to trade Board morals for Chinese morals, and get the best of the swap; for I cannot endure those people, they are yellow, and I have never considered yellow becoming. I have always been like the Board--perfectly well-meaning, but destitute of the Moral Sense. Now, one of the main reasons why it is so hard to make the Board understand that there is no moral difference between a big filch and a little filch, but only a legal one, is that vacancy in its make-up. Morally, there are no degrees in stealing. The Commandment merely says, “Thou shalt not _steal_,” and stops there. It doesn’t recognize any difference between stealing a third and stealing thirteenfold. If I could think of a way to put it before the Board in such a plain and--

THE WATERMELONS

I have it, now. Many years ago, when I was studying for the gallows, I had a dear comrade, a youth who was not in my line, but still a thoroughly good fellow, though devious. He was preparing to qualify for a place on the Board, for there was going to be a vacancy by superannuation in about five years. This was down South, in the slavery days. It was the nature of the negro then, as now, to steal watermelons. They stole three of the melons of an adoptive brother of mine, the only good ones he had. I suspected three of a neighbor’s negroes, but there was no proof: and, besides, the watermelons in those negroes’ private patches were all green and small, and not up to indemnity standard. But in the private patches of three other negroes there were a number of competent melons. I consulted with my comrade, the understudy of the Board. He said that if I would approve his arrangements, he would arrange. I said, “Consider me the Board; I approve: arrange.” So he took a gun, and went and collected three large melons for my brother-on-the-half-shell, and one over. I was greatly pleased, and asked:

“Who gets the extra one?”

“Widows and orphans.”

“A good idea, too. Why didn’t you take thirteen?”

“It would have been wrong; a crime, in fact--Theft and Extortion.”

“What is the one third extra--the odd melon--the same?”

It caused him to reflect. But there was no result.

The justice of the peace was a stern man. On the trial, he found fault with the scheme, and required us to explain upon what we based our strange conduct--as he called it. The understudy said:

“On the custom of the niggers. They all do it.”

The justice forgot his dignity, and descended to sarcasm:

“Custom of the niggers! Are our morals so inadequate that we have to borrow of niggers?” Then he said to the jury: “Three melons were owing; they were collected from persons not proven to owe them; this is theft. They were collected by compulsion; this is extortion. A melon was added--for the widows and orphans. It was owed by no one. It is another theft, another extortion. Return it whence it came, with the others. It is not permissible, here, to apply to any object goods dishonestly obtained--not even to the feeding of widows and orphans, for that would be to put a shame upon charity and dishonor it.”

He said it in open court, before everybody, and to me it did not seem very kind.

A clergyman, in a letter to me, reminds me, with a touch of reproach, that “many of the missionaries are good men, kind-hearted, earnest, devoted to their work.” Certainly they are. No one is disputing it. Instead of “many,” he could have said “almost all,” and still said the truth, no doubt. I know many missionaries; I have met them all about the globe, and have known only one or two who could not fill that bill and answer to that description. “Almost all” comes near to being a proportion and a description applicable also to lawyers, authors, editors, merchants, manufacturers--in fact, to most guilds and vocations. Without a doubt, Dr. Ament did what he believed to be right, and I concede that when a man is doing what he believes to be right, there is argument on his side. I differ with Dr. Ament, but that is only because he got his training from the Board and I got mine outside. Neither of us is responsible, altogether.

RECAPITULATION

But there is no need to sum up. Mr. Ament has acknowledged the “one third extra”--no other witness is necessary. The Rev. Dr. Smith has carefully considered the act and labeled it with a stern name, and his verdict seems to have no flaw in it. The morals of the act are Chinese, but are approved by the Board, and by some of the clergy and some of the newspapers, as being a valuable improvement upon Christian ones--which leaves me with a closed mouth, though with a pain in my heart.

IS THE AMERICAN BOARD ON TRIAL?

Do I think that Dr. Ament and certain of his fellow missionaries are as bad as their conduct? No, I do not. They are the product of their training; and now that I understand the whole case, and where they got their ideals, and that they are merely subordinates and subject to authority, I comprehend that they are rather accessories than principals, and that their acts only show faulty heads curiously trained, not bad hearts. Mainly, as it seems to me, it is the American Board that is on trial. And again, it is a case of the head, not of the heart. That it has a heart which has never harbored an evil intention, no one will deny, no one will question; the Board’s history can silence any challenge on that score. The Board’s heart is not in court: it is its head that is on trial.

It is a sufficiently strange head. Its ways baffle comprehension; its ideas are like no one else’s; its methods are novelties to the practical world; its judgments are surprises. When one thinks it is going to speak and must speak, it is silent; when one thinks it ought to be silent and must be silent, it speaks. Put your finger where you think it ought to be, it is not there; put it where you think it ought not to be, there you find it.

When its servant in China seemed to be charging himself with amazing things, in a reputable journal--in a dispatch which was copied into many other papers--the Board was as silent about it as any dead man could have been who was informed that his house was burning over his head. An exchange of cablegrams could have enabled it, within two days, to prove to the world--possibly--that the damaging dispatch had not proceeded from the mouth of its servant; yet it sat silent and asked no questions about the matter.

It was silent during thirty-eight days. Then the dispatch came into prominence again. It chanced that I was the occasion of it. A break in the stillness followed. In what form? An exchange of cablegrams, resulting in proof that the damaging dispatch had not been authorized? No, in the form of an Open Letter by the Corresponding Secretary of the American Board, the Rev. Dr. Smith, in which it was _argued_ that Dr. Ament could not have said and done the things set forth in the dispatch.

Surely, this was bad politics. A repudiating telegram would have been worth more than a library of argument.

An extension of the silence would have been better than the Open Letter, I think. I thought so at the time. It seemed to me that mistakes enough had been made and harm enough done. I thought it questionable policy to publish the Letter, for I “did not think it likely that Dr. Ament would disown the dispatch,” and I telegraphed that to the Rev. Dr. Smith. Personally, I had nothing against Dr. Ament, and that is my attitude yet.

Once more it was a good time for an extension of the silence. But no; the Board has its own ways, and one of them is to do the unwise thing, when occasion offers. After having waited fifty-six days, it cabled to Dr. Ament. No one can divine why it did so then, instead of fifty-six days earlier.[16] It got a fatal reply--and was not aware of it. That was that curious confession about the “one third extra”; its application, not to the “propagation of the Gospel,” but only to “church expenses,” support of widows and orphans; and, on top of this confession, that other strange one revealing the dizzying fact that our missionaries, who went to China to teach Christian morals and justice, had adopted pagan morals and justice in their place. _That cablegram was dynamite._

It seems odd that the Board did not see that that revelation made the case far worse than it was before; for there was a saving doubt, before--a doubt which was a Gibraltar for strength, and should have been carefully left undisturbed. Why did the Board allow that revelation to get into print? Why did the Board not suppress it and keep still? But no; in the Board’s opinion, this was once more the time for speech. Hence Dr. Smith’s latest letter to me, suggesting that I speak also--a letter which is a good enough letter, barring its nine defects, but is another evidence that the Board’s head is not as good as its heart.

A missionary is a man who is pretty nearly all heart, else he would not be in a calling which requires of him such large sacrifices of one kind and another. He is made up of faith, zeal, courage, sentiment, emotion, enthusiasm; and so he is a mixture of poet, devotee, and knight errant. He exiles himself from home and friends and the scenes and associations that are dearest to him; patiently endures discomforts, privations, discouragements; goes with good pluck into dangers which he knows may cost him his life; and when he must suffer death, willingly makes that supreme sacrifice for his cause.

Sometimes the headpiece of that kind of a man can be of an inferior sort, and error of judgment can result--as we have seen. Then, for his protection, as it seems to me, he ought to have at his back a Board able to know a blunder when it sees one, and prompt to bring him back upon his right course when he strays from it. That is to say, I think the captain of a ship ought to understand navigation. Whether he does or not, he will have to take a captain’s share of the blame, if the crew bring the vessel to grief.

-----

Footnote 11:

Testimony of the manager of the _Sun_.

Footnote 12:

Cable error. For “thirteen times” read “one third.” This correction
was made by Dr. Ament in his brief cablegram published February
20th, previously referred to.

Footnote 13:

For “thirteen times” read “one third.”--M. T.

Footnote 14:

In civilized countries, if a mob destroy property in a town, the
damage is paid out of the town treasury, and no taxpayer suffers a
disproportionate share of the burden; the mayor is not privileged to
distribute the burden according to his private notions, sparing
himself and his friends, and fleecing persons he holds a spite
against--as in the Orient--and the citizen who is too poor to be a
taxpayer pays no part of the fine at all.

Footnote 15:

In his Open Letter, Dr. Smith cites Dr. Ament’s letter of November
13th, which contains an account of Dr. Ament’s collecting tour; then
Dr. Smith makes this comment: “Nothing is said of securing ‘thirteen
times’ the amount of the losses.” Farther down, Dr. Smith quotes
praises of Dr. Ament and his work (from a letter of the Rev. Dr.
Sheffield), and adds this comment: “Dr. Sheffield is not accustomed to
speak thus in praise of thieves, or extortioners, or braggarts.” The
reference is to the “thirteen-times” extra tax.

Footnote 16:

The cablegram went on the day (February 18th) that Mr. George Lynch’s
account of the looting was published. See “Exhibit B.” It seems a pity
it did not inquire about the looting and get it denied.

THOMAS BRACKETT REED

He wore no shell. His ways were frank and open, and the road to his large sympathies was straight and unobstructed. His was a nature which invited affection--compelled it, in fact--and met it halfway. Hence he was “Tom” to the most of his friends, and to half of the nation. The abbreviating of such a man’s name is a patent of nobility, and is conferred from the heart. Mr. Reed had a very strong and decided character, and he may have had enemies; I do not know; if he had them--outside of politics--they did not know the man. He was transparently honest and honorable, there were no furtivenesses about him, and whoever came to know him trusted him and was not disappointed. He was wise, he was shrewd and alert, he was a clear and capable thinker, a logical reasoner, and a strong and convincing speaker. His manner was easy and engaging, his speeches sparkled with felicities of phrasing thrown off without apparent effort, and when he needed the happy help of humor he had a mine of it as deep and rich as Kimberly to draw from. His services to his country were great, and they were gratefully acknowledged.

I cannot remember back to a time when he was not “Tom” Reed to me, nor to a time when he would have been offended at being so addressed by me. I cannot remember back to a time when I could let him alone in an after-dinner speech if he was present, nor to a time when he did not take my extravagances concerning him and misstatements about him in good part, nor yet to a time when he did not pay them back with usury when his turn came. The last speech he made was at my birthday dinner at the end of November, when naturally I was his text; my last word to him was in a letter the next day; a day later I was illustrating a fantastic article on Art with his portrait among others--a portrait now to be laid reverently away among the jests that begin in humor and end in pathos. These things happened only eight days ago, and now he is gone from us, and the nation is speaking of him as one who _was_. It seems incredible, impossible. Such a man, such a friend, seems to us a permanent possession; his vanishing from our midst is unthinkable; as unthinkable as was the vanishing of the Campanile, that had stood for a thousand years, and was turned to dust in a moment.

I have no wish, at this time, to enter upon light and humorous reminiscences connected with yachting voyages with Mr. Reed in northern and southern seas, nor with other recreations in his company in other places--they do not belong in this paper, they do not invite me, they would jar upon me. I have only wished to say how fine and beautiful was his life and character, and to take him by the hand and say good-by, as to a fortunate friend who has done well his work and goes a pleasant journey.

THE FINISHED BOOK
(On Finishing _Joan of Arc_)

PARIS, 1895.

Do you know that shock? I mean, when you come, at your regular hour, into the sick room where you have watched for months, and find the medicine bottles all gone, the night table removed, the bed stripped, the furniture set stiffly to rights, the windows up, the room cold, stark, vacant--and you catch your breath. Do you know that shock?

The man who has written a long book has that experience the morning after he has revised it for the last time, seen the bearers convey it from the house, and sent it away to the printer. He steps into his study at the hour established by the habit of months--and he gets that little shock. All the litter and the confusion are gone. The piles of dusty reference books are gone from the chairs, the maps from the floor; the chaos of letters, manuscripts, notebooks, paper knives, pipes, matches, photographs, tobacco jars, and cigar boxes is gone from the writing table. The furniture is back where it use to be in the long ago. The housemaid, forbidden the place for five months, has been there, and tidied it up, and scoured it clean, and made it repellent and awful.

I stand here this morning, contemplating this desolation, and I realize that if I would bring back the spirit that made this hospital homelike and pleasant to me, I must restore the aids to lingering dissolution to their wonted places, and nurse another patient through and send it forth for the last rites, with many or few to assist there, as may happen; and that I will do.

AS REGARDS PATRIOTISM
(About 1900)

It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.

In Austria and some other countries this is not the case. There the state arranges a man’s religion for him, he has no voice in it himself.

Patriotism is merely a religion--love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country’s flag and honor and welfare.

In absolute monarchies it is furnished from the throne, cut and dried, to the subject; in England and America it is furnished, cut and dried, to the citizen by the politician and the newspaper.

The newspaper-and-politician-manufactured Patriot often gags in private over his dose; but he takes it, and keeps it on his stomach the best he can. Blessed are the meek.

Sometimes, in the beginning of an insane shabby political upheaval, he is strongly moved to revolt, but he doesn’t do it--he knows better. He knows that his maker would find it out--the maker of his Patriotism, the windy and incoherent six-dollar subeditor of his village newspaper--and would bray out in print and call him a Traitor. And how dreadful that would be. It makes him tuck his tail between his legs and shiver. We all know--the reader knows it quite well--that two or three years ago nine tenths of the human tails in England and America performed just that act. Which is to say, nine tenths of the Patriots in England and America turned traitor to keep from being called traitor. Isn’t it true? You know it to be true. Isn’t it curious?

Yet it was not a thing to be very seriously ashamed of. A man can seldom--very, very seldom--fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy. For many a year--perhaps always--the training of the two nations had been dead against independence in political thought, persistently inhospitable toward patriotism manufactured on a man’s own premises, Patriotism reasoned out in the man’s own head and fire-assayed and tested and proved in his own conscience. The resulting Patriotism was a shop-worn product procured at second hand. The Patriot did not know just how or when or where he got his opinions, neither did he care, so long as he was with what seemed the majority--which was the main thing, the safe thing, the comfortable thing. Does the reader believe he knows three men who have actual reasons for their pattern of Patriotism--and can furnish them? Let him not examine, unless he wants to be disappointed. He will be likely to find that his men got their Patriotism at the public trough, and had no hand in its preparation themselves.

Training does wonderful things. It moved the people of this country to oppose the Mexican War; then moved them to fall in with what they supposed was the opinion of the majority--majority Patriotism is the customary Patriotism--and go down there and fight. Before the Civil War it made the North indifferent to slavery and friendly to the slave interest; in that interest it made Massachusetts hostile to the American flag, and she would not allow it to be hoisted on her State House--in her eyes it was the flag of a faction. Then by and by, training swung Massachusetts the other way, and she went raging South to fight under that very flag and against that aforetime protected interest of hers.

There is nothing that training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach or below it. It can turn bad morals to good, good morals to bad; it can destroy principles, it can recreate them; it can debase angels to men and lift men to angelship. And it can do any one of these miracles in a year--even in six months.

Then men can be trained to manufacture their own Patriotism. They can be trained to labor it out in their own heads and hearts and in the privacy and independence of their own premises. It can train them to stop taking it by command, as the Austrian takes his religion.

DR. LOEB’S INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY

Experts in biology will be apt to receive with some skepticism the
announcement of Dr. Jacques Loeb of the University of California as to
the creation of life by chemical agencies.... Doctor Loeb is a very
bright and ingenious experimenter, but _a consensus of opinion among
biologists_ would show that he is voted rather as a man of lively
imagination than an inerrant investigator of natural phenomena.--New
York _Times_, March 2d.

I wish I could be as young as that again. Although I seem so old, now, I was once as young as that. I remember, as if it were but thirty or forty years ago, how a paralyzing Consensus of Opinion accumulated from Experts a-setting around, about brother experts who had patiently and laboriously cold-chiseled their way into one or another of nature’s safe-deposit vaults and were reporting that they had found something valuable was a plenty for me. It settled it.

But it isn’t so now--no. Because, in the drift of the years I by and by found out that a Consensus examines a new thing with its feelings rather oftener than with its mind. You know, yourself, that that is so. Do those people examine with feelings that are friendly to evidence? You know they don’t. It is the other way about. They do the examining by the light of their prejudices--now isn’t that true?

With curious results, yes. So curious that you wonder the Consensuses do not go out of the business. Do you know of a case where a Consensus won a game? You can go back as far as you want to and you will find history furnishing you this (until now) unwritten maxim for your guidance and profit: Whatever new thing a Consensus coppers (colloquial for “bets against”), bet your money on that very card and do not be afraid.

There was that primitive steam engine--ages back, in Greek times: a Consensus made fun of it. There was the Marquis of Worcester’s steam engine, 250 years ago: a Consensus made fun of it. There was Fulton’s steamboat of a century ago: a French Consensus, including the Great Napoleon, made fun of it. There was Priestly, with his oxygen: a Consensus scoffed at him, mobbed him, burned him out, banished him. While a Consensus was proving, by statistics and things, that a steamship could not cross the Atlantic, a steamship did it. A Consensus consisting of all the medical experts in Great Britain made fun of Jenner and inoculation. A Consensus consisting of all the medical experts in France made fun of the stethoscope. A Consensus of all the medical experts in Germany made fun of that young doctor (his name? forgotten by all but doctors, now, revered now by doctors alone) who discovered and abolished the cause of that awful disease, puerperal fever; made fun of him, reviled him, hunted him, persecuted him, broke his heart, killed him. Electric telegraph, Atlantic cable, telephone, all “toys,” and of no practical value--verdict of the Consensuses. Geology, palæontology, evolution--all brushed into space by a Consensus of theological experts, comprising all the preachers in Christendom, assisted by the Duke of Argyle and (at first) the other scientists. And do look at Pasteur and his majestic honor roll of prodigious benefactions! Damned--each and every one of them in its turn--by frenzied and ferocious Consensuses of medical and chemical Experts comprising, for years, every member of the tribe in Europe; damned without even a casual _look_ at what he was doing--and he pathetically imploring them to come and take at least one little look before making the damnation eternal. They shortened his life by their malignities and persecutions; and thus robbed the world of the further and priceless services of a man who--along certain lines and within certain limits--had done more for the human race than any other one man in all its long history: a man whom it had taken the Expert brotherhood ten thousand years to produce, and whose mate and match the brotherhood may possibly not be able to bring forth and assassinate in another ten thousand. The preacher has an old and tough reputation for bull-headed and unreasoning hostility to new light; why, he is not “in it” with the doctor! Nor, perhaps, with some of the other breeds of Experts that sit around and get up the Consensuses and squelch the new things as fast as they come from the hands of the plodders, the searchers, the inspired dreamers, the Pasteurs that come bearing pearls to scatter in the Consensus sty.

This is warm work! It puts my temperature up to 106 and raises my pulse to the limit. It always works just so when the red rag of a Consensus jumps my fence and starts across my pasture. I have been a Consensus more than once myself, and I know the business--and its vicissitudes. I am a compositor-expert, of old and seasoned experience; nineteen years ago I delivered the final-and-for-good verdict that the linotype would never be able to earn its own living nor anyone else’s: it takes fourteen acres of ground, now, to accommodate its factories in England. Thirty-five years ago I was an expert precious-metal quartz-miner. There was an outcrop in my neighborhood that assayed $600 a ton--gold. But every fleck of gold in it was shut up tight and fast in an intractable and impersuadable base-metal shell. Acting as a Consensus, I delivered the finality verdict that no human ingenuity would ever be able to set free two dollars’ worth of gold out of a ton of that rock. The fact is, I did not foresee the cyanide process. Indeed, I have been a Consensus ever so many times since I reached maturity and approached the age of discretion, but I call to mind no instance in which I won out.