Chapter II (2)

The Reporter confessed that those whom he had seen performing this religious rite were mostly moderns.

“They will say when detected,” continued the oracle, “that what they uncover to is not the flag, but the sentiment that it represents. If ingenious enough, the idolater would make the same defence. So would the shagpated chap that prostrates himself before the sacred moogoo tree.

“What’s that—a flag is a symbol? Why, yes, ‘symbol’ is the name we choose to give to objects which we know to have no real sanctity, yet, either from hereditary instinct or other unreasoning impulse, cannot forbear to revere. The word is also used to denote a mere ‘survival,’ an object that once had a useful purpose, but now exists only because of our habit of having it. Be pleased to look down into that burial place.”

The Curmudgeon Philosopher’s dwelling had characteristically been chosen because of its contiguity to a cemetery.

“Note the number of ‘dummy’ urns surmounting the monuments. Centuries ago, when cremation was the rule, as it seems likely to be again, those would have been true urns, holding ashes of the dead. We have inherited the tendency to have them, but as they have now no utility we spare ourselves the trouble of accounting for them by saying they are symbolic—whereby the fashion is exalted to a high dignity.

“I assume your familiarity with the word ‘fetish.’ It is spelled two ways and pronounced four; I pronounce it as I was taught at my mother’s knee.”

By way of accentuating the fact that he had had a mother he affected a rudimentary tenderness of tone and expression which in a case of doubtful identity would have assisted in distinguishing him as a pirate of the Spanish Main.

The Reporter asked what fetish worship might have the hardihood to be.

“Fetish worship,” replied the Curmudgeon Philosopher, “is the most primitive of religions. It is the form that belief in the supernatural takes in our lowest stage of intellectual development—the adoration of material objects. A stone or a tree supposed to possess supernatural powers of good or evil, or to have some peculiar sanctity, is a fetish. Idolatry and the worship of living things are not uncommonly confounded with fetish worship, but in reality are another and higher form of religion, belonging to a more advanced culture.”

“You have seen the proposal to transport Plymouth Rock about the country for a show? It is in the morning papers, one of which I had the bad luck to pick up while at breakfast. Hate the morning papers!”

The Timorous Reporter signified his regret.

“I hope it will not be done,” continued the Curmudgeon Philosopher, ignoring the apology. “In the first place, the Rock is devoid of authenticity. It is indubitably a rock, and it is at Plymouth, but its connection with the landing of the Pilgrims was supplied by imagination. That is all right; by imagination we demonstrate our superiority to the novelists. Historians and scientists are credentialed by imagination; through imagination the philosopher attains to a knowledge of the meaning and message of things. Without imagination we should be as the magazine poets that perish.”

With obvious satisfaction in his character of cynic the Curmudgeon Philosopher again mitigated the austerity of his countenance—this time by something that may have been honestly intended as a smile.

“We have seen bands of children taught to march about a cracked bell, throw flowers upon it, sing hymns to it. When it stopped in the several cities that it was carried through on a triumphal car the populace turned out to worship it. It was supplied with a ‘guard of honor.’ Bands played appropriate music before it, and mayors ‘delivered eulogies.’ No popular hero or august sovereign could be accorded a more obsequious homage than this lifeless piece of cracked metal—nay, its progress is more like that of a Grecian god. This was fetishism, pure and undefiled.

“If this new project is carried out the people that worshiped a bell will worship a stone. True, the stone weighs several tons.”

Proud of his generosity in making so great a concession, the Curmudgeon Philosopher looked over the top of his spectacles for the applause that came not to his hope.

“Sir,” he concluded, his great fist falling like a thunderbolt upon the table at which he stood, “we are Pottawattomies!”

OUR AUDIBLE SISTERS

“No,” said the Curmudgeon Philosopher, “I am no believer in ‘the elevating influence of woman.’ We have had women a long time, now; the influence is obvious, but the elevation—we are still waiting for that. Perhaps it was different in the old days when they had no connection with public affairs and could devote their entire attention to the business of giving men ‘a leg up,’ but to-day they are so busy assisting us to conduct the world’s large activities that they overlook our dissatisfaction with the low moral plane that we occupy.

“I think, sir, that old Sir William Devereux was wrong when he said that the best way to keep the dear creatures from playing the devil was to encourage them in playing the fool. We have been for more than a generation encouraging them to play the fool in a thousand and fifty ways, and they play the devil as never before.

“These dreadful creatures—I mean these dear, delightful darlings—care for nothing but abstract ideas having no practical application to actual conditions in a faulty world. In the councils of Them Loud nobody cares for anything but principles and Principle. Every Mere Male who anywhere ventures to lift up his voice in behalf of an imperfect but practicable reform is outfitted by them with a set of motives that would disgrace a pirate. To the she colonels of uplift, nothing is so fascinating as Abstract Reform; they roll it as a sweet morsel under and over their tireless tongues. At every session of Congress you shall hear again the clank of the female saber in the corridors and committee rooms of the Capitol, intimidating the poltroon law maker. You shall hear the war whoop of the Sexless Impracticables, acclaiming the Sufficient Abstraction and denouncing the coarse expedients of the Erring Male. May the devil shepherd them in a barren place!”

Overcome by his emotions, the Curmudgeon Philosopher cruelly kicked the house dog (which “answered not with a caress”), and snorted at vacancy.

“What good does it all do, anyhow—this irruption of women into the domain of public affairs? The advantages that Lively Woman promised even herself in becoming New and Audible are illusory; those that she renounced were real. For one thing, we no longer love her. Why, sir, I remember the time when I myself would have taken trouble to serve and honor women. I may say that I felt for them a special esteem. How is it to-day? They pass me by as the idle wind, unobserved, and—most significant of all—unobserving.

“Love, sir, ‘romantic love,’ as Tolstoi calls it, is a purely artificial thing. Many nations know it not. The ancient Greeks knew it not; the Japanese of yesterday did not at all comprehend it. There have been no other really civilized nations. We love those who are helpless and dependent on us. That is why we love our children and our pets.

“In demanding equal rights before the law woman renounces her claim to exceptional tenderness; in granting the demand, man accepts the renunciation in good faith. If the rest of you are going to look out for my wife, sir, I am left free to look out for myself. Have I really a wife? God forbid—I’m supposing one.

“When in the history of our civilization was romantic love at high noon? Why, sir, ‘when knighthood was in flower’; when woman was a chattel; when a gentleman could divorce himself with a word. It was then that woman was set upon a pedestal and adored. Men consecrated their lives to the service of the sex—fought for woman, sang of her with a sincerity that is sadly lacking in the imitation troubadours of our time. Why, sir, even I, in my youth, composed some verses.”

The Curmudgeon Philosopher educed a manuscript from his breast-pocket and the Timorous Reporter began to withdraw from the Presence.

“O, very well—I’ll not force them on you; but permit me to remark, sir, that the decay of courtesy toward women is not unattended with a certain growing coarseness of manners in general. Those who have caught the base infection are not gentlemen, and you may go to the devil!”

THE NEW PENOLOGY

“True science,” said the Curmudgeon Philosopher, “began with publication, in 1620, of Lord St. Albans’ _Novum Organum_. Why not Lord Bacon’s? Because, my benighted friend, there was no ‘Lord Bacon.’ He was Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, and, later, Viscount St. Albans. When you hear a man speak of ‘Lord Bacon’ fly from that man.

“The _Novum Organum_, or new method, has overthrown the _Organum_ of Aristotle and released men’s minds from thraldom to the belief that truth could be got by mere reasoning, unaided by observation and experiment. This faith in the all-sufficiency of Logic had persisted for more than two thousand years, an intellectual paralysis invulnerable to treatment; and all the while the world thought itself enjoying robust mental health.

“Belief in the sufficiency of Deduction was not the only delusion that dominated and shackled the human mind, and some of the others are with us to-day, to comfort and inspire! We think that if we did not have them we should be sick.”

Pleased with his wit, the Curmudgeon Philosopher executed the great convulsion of nature which he knew as a smile.

“One of the most mischievous of these false and futile faiths is known as the Reformation of Criminals. With no result, we have been embracing it with a devout fervor since the dawning of time. Our mistake is not so much that we have neglected to get the consent of the criminals as that we think ourselves able to reform them without it.

“Each habitual criminal is the hither end of an interminable line of criminal ancestors. He can reform no more than he can fly: his character is as immutable as the shape of his head or the texture of the muscle that he calls his heart. Our efforts in his behalf recall the story of the physician who, after examining a patient afflicted with a disorder of the skin, said: ‘This is hereditary; we must begin at the beginning. Go home and tell your father to take a sulphur bath.’ Our criminals are in worse case than that patient; he had an accessible father for the treatment.

“What have I to propose? What is the ‘New Method’ that I favor? What would I substitute for ‘reformation’ of the unworthy? Their destruction—I would kill them.”

With obvious pride in this humane suggestion, he stroked his ragged beard with both hands and adored his reflection in the mirror opposite his pedestal.

“It sounds harsh, I dare say, to one unfamiliar with the thought, and I might have said ‘remove’ if that would seem less alarming; but ‘kill’ is an honest word, and I’ll stand to it.

“Think of it! The New Method would give us in two generations a nation without habitual criminals! What other will do that? Think of the lessened misery, the security of life and property, the lighter burden of taxation to maintain the machinery of justice, the no police—all that the besotted proponents of ‘Reformation’ hope and hope again and hope in vain to accomplish brought about in the lifetime of one man!

“And by means that are merciful to the criminals themselves. Can there be a doubt that if in him the love of life were not the mere brute instinct of a perverted soul the habitual criminal would prefer death? What does life hold that is worth anything to such as he, devoid of self-respect and the respect of others, victim alike of justice and injustice, denied the delights that come of refined sensibilities, hunted from pillar to post and ever cowering in fear of the law? Nothing is more cruel than to let him live. And at last he dies anyhow.

“But suppose that the painless putting to death of all criminals were as deep a misfortune as it would be to—to philosophers, for example? Yet in the long run it would vastly lessen the total of human unhappiness, even of public executions. The earth was not made yesterday: for thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of years, men have been putting other men to death for crime.

“Even under the mild laws of to-day in civilized countries the number executed will in the course of the ages enormously exceed to-day’s total criminal population. Moreover, it would not be necessary to kill them all: most of them, if confronted by a law for their killing, would take themselves out of the country, quarter themselves upon foolish nations still willing to stand their nonsense—nations still enamored of that ancient delusion, Reformation of Criminals.

“That would serve _your_ purpose as well as anything, but as a citizen of the world, owing my first allegiance to Mankind,” concluded the Curmudgeon Philosopher, with a gesture appropriate to some noble ancestral sentiment, “I should deem it my duty to endeavor to prevent their escape by writs of _ne exeat regno_.”

THE NATURE OF WAR

The Bald Campaigner was looking over the tops of his spectacle lenses, silent, obviously wise, a thing of beauty.

“Do you approve the punishment of General Jacob Smith, who was dismissed from the army for barbarism?” asked the Timorous Reporter. “Doubtless you remember the incident.”

“My approval,” said the great soldier, “is needless and of no significance. I have long been on the retired list myself, and am not the reviewing officer in this case. I think General Smith’s punishment just, if that’s what you want to know. He committed a serious indiscretion. As a commander of troops in the island of Samar he gave to a subordinate the following oral instructions:

“‘I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better you will please me.’ He said, further, that he wanted all persons killed who were capable of bearing arms and were in actual hostilities against the United States—I am quoting the Secretary of War—and, in reply to a question by his subordinate, asking for an age limit, designated it as ten years.

“All this was highly improper and unmilitary. It is customary in matters of so great importance for the commander to give his instructions in the form of written orders—a good commander is without a tongue.

“I am no great literary genius, but in the matter of military orders I know a hawk from a handsaw by the handsaw’s teeth. Suppose General Smith’s orders (written orders) had read like this:

“‘It is thought that it will be to the advantage of the expedition in point of celerity of movement, and will simplify the problem of supply, if the column be not encumbered with prisoners. The commander of the expedition will not be unmindful of the military advantages that flow from the infliction of as many casualties upon the enemy as is practicable with the small force that he commands and the evasive character of the enemy; nor will he overlook the need of removing by fire such structures and supplies as are incompatible with the interests of the United States, or inconsistent with professions of amity on the part of the island’s inhabitants, or conducive to the prosperity of those in rebellion. No person engaged in hostilities against the United States will, of course, be suffered to plead sex or age in mitigation of such mischances as the fortunes of war may entail, provided, however, that no non-combatants of either sex under the age of ten years shall under any circumstances be put to death without authority from these headquarters; the traditional benevolence of the American army must not be impaired.’

“Sir, if General Smith had issued an order like that he would to-day be a popular hero and an ornament to the active list of the army.”

Waving his remaining arm with a gesture singularly cogent and convincing, the Bald Campaigner ceased and marched against a hostile bottle near by. After study of the suppositious “order” in his stenographic notes, the reporter ventured the opinion that the difference between it and the oral instructions actually given was mainly one of expression. The Bald Campaigner said in reply:

“Expression is everything. An army officer should be a master of expression, as a baseball pitcher should be a master of delivery. The straight throw and the curved throw carry the ball to the same spot, but consider the different effect upon the fortunes of the pitcher. What General Smith lacked was not heart, but style. He was not cruel, but clumsy. His words were destitute of charm. His blundering tongue had succeeded only in signifying his fitness to be thrown to the civilian lions.”

The reporter hazarded a belief that the General’s instruction to make Samar “a howling wilderness” was brutal exceedingly.

“Certainly it was,” assented the Bald Campaigner, “an officer of refinement and taste would have said: ‘It will be found expedient to operate against the enemy’s material resources.’ There is never a military necessity for coarse speech.

“As to devastation—did you mention devastation?—that is the purpose of war. War is made, not against the bodies of adult males, but against the means of subsistence of a people. The fighting is incident to the devastation: we kill the soldiers because they protect their material resources—get between us and the fields that feed them, the factories that clothe them, the arsenals that arm them. We cannot hope to kill a great proportion of them at best; the humane thing is to overcome them by means of hunger and nakedness. The earlier we can do so, the less effusion of blood. Leave the enemy his resources and he will fight forever. He will beget soldiers faster than you can destroy them.

“Do you cherish the delusion that in our great civil war, for example, the South was subdued by killing her able-bodied males who could bear arms? Look at the statistics and learn, to your astonishment, how small a proportion of them we really did kill, even before I lost my arm.

“The killing was an incident. I speak of the latter part of the conflict, when we had learned how to conduct military operations. As long as our main purpose was bloodshed we made little progress. Our armies actually guarded the homes and property of the men they were sent to conquer—the very men that were fighting them, and who, therefore, assured of the comfort and safety of their families, continued fighting with cheerful alacrity. If we had continued that rose-water policy they might have fought us to this day.”

The reporter involuntarily glanced at a calendar on the wall, and the war oracle continued:

“Wisdom came of experience: we adopted the more effective and more humane policy of devastation. With Sherman desolating the country from Atlanta to Goldsborough and Sheridan so wasting the Shenandoah Valley that he boasted the impossibility of a crow passing over it without carrying rations, the hopes of Confederate success went up in smoke.

“And,” concluded the hairless veteran, rising and opening the door as a delicate intimation that there was nothing more to say, “I beg leave to think that the essential character of the _Ultima Ratio_ is not permanently obscurable by the sentimental vagaries of blithering civilians such as you have the lack of distinction to be.”

The Timorous Reporter retired to his base of operations and the war-drum throbbed no longer in his ear.

HOW TO GROW GREAT

“I do not overlook the disadvantages of defeat in a war with some foreign power,” said the Bald Campaigner; “I only say that in the resulting humiliation would be a balance of advantage. It does a nation good to ‘eat the leek.’ The great Napoleon thrust that tonic vegetable into the mouths of Prussia and the other German states. They took a bellyful each, and the result of that penitential feast is the splendid German empire of to-day. Before their racial health was entirely restored the Germans passed the unwelcome comestible to the ailing dominion of Napoleon the Stuffed, and France has so thriven on the diet that she no longer fears the hand that wrote the _menu_. Alone among modern states, Great Britain has grown powerful without having had to cry for mercy. In the voice of supplication is heard the prophecy of power.”

The Timorous Reporter cautiously named our own country as one that has risen to greatness without suffering defeat and humiliation.

“Sir, you are in error,” said the Bald Campaigner loftily. “We were defeated in the War of 1812. Wherever our raw volunteers met the trained veterans of Great Britain (except at New Orleans, when the war was over) we were beaten off the field. Our attempts to invade Canada were all repelled, our capital was taken and sacked, and when we sued for peace it was granted in a treaty in which the grievance for which we had taken up arms was contemptuously ignored.

“Remember that for this conflict we enlisted and equipped more than a half-million men, while Great Britain had at no time more than sixteen thousand opposing us.

“As historians of the conflict we have done heroic work, as have Southern historians of our civil war and French historians of the struggle with the Germans—as all beaten peoples naturally do. Sir, do you know that the great body of the Spanish people believe, and will always believe, that Spain brought us to our knees in 1898? The Russian who does not think that the armies of the Czar wrung the most humiliating terms from the Japanese is an exceptionally intelligent Russian—he knows enough to disbelieve the ‘popular histories’ in the Russian tongue and the official falsehoods of his government.”

The Timorous Reporter inquired how a second beating would profit us, seeing that we got no good out of the other.

“The other was not bad enough,” the great man explained. “Having Napoleon on her hands, Great Britain did not, until he had been got rid of, make an aggressive war. When she began to we cried for mercy. What we need is a beating that neither our vanity can deny nor our ingenuity excuse—one which, in the slang of your pestilent trade, ‘will not come off.’”

“And then?”

“Then, sir, we shall give ourselves an army strong enough to repel invasion from the north, or, if something should happen to our navy, from the east or west. Then, sir, we shall get our soldiers by conscription, and the man who is drawn will serve. The words ‘volunteer,’ ‘recruiting,’ ‘bounty,’ ‘substitute’ will disappear from our military vocabulary, with all the inefficiency, waste, and shame that they connote. In brief, we shall recognize the truth, obvious to reason, that a citizen owes his country military service in the same way that he owes it pecuniary support. (If taxpaying had always been optional what an expostulation would meet the proposal to make it compulsory!) We shall then not need to concern ourselves with ‘the problem of desertion,’ ‘the effect on the army of high wage-rates in civil employment,’ and the rest of it. There will be no problem of desertion: the discernment that recognizes a citizen’s military obligation will find an effective method preventing him from running away from it. All this will come after we have been sorely defeated by some power, or combination of powers, that has not only a navy but an army.”

The Timorous Reporter hesitatingly advanced the view that a large standing army might seriously imperil the subordination of the military to the civil power.

“Young man,” said the hairless veteran, austerely, “you talk like a Founder of this Republic!”

A WAR IN THE ORIENT

“Considering your pro-Russian sympathies,” said the Timorous Reporter, “the results of some of the fighting in the Japanese and Russian war must have been deeply disagreeable to you—that of the great naval engagement in the Sea of Japan, for example.”

“Yes,” replied the Bald Campaigner, “the escape of two or three Russian ships affected me most unpleasantly.”

The reporter professed himself unable to understand.

“I had confidently expected Togo to destroy them all. He is disappointing—Togo.”

“Please pardon me,” said the man of letters; “I thought that you had favored the Russian cause.”

“So I did, sir, so I did, and do. But something is due to the art and science of war. As a soldier I stand for them, deprecating any laxity in the application of the eternal principles of strategy and tactics by land or sea. Admiral Togo should have been dismissed for permitting those ships to escape.”

The reporter suggested the possibility that in the uproar and obscurity of battle the ships that got away were overlooked.

“Nothing should be overlooked,” said the Bald Campaigner. “The commander in battle should know everything that is going on—or going away. With the light that we have, I am unable to explain the Japanese admiral’s lamentable failure; I can only deplore it.”

“Had he, then, so overwhelming an advantage?” the reporter asked. “It is thought the fleets were pretty evenly matched.”

“Sir,” said the Bald Campaigner, loftily, “it was a fight between an inland people and an insular. If Rojestvensky had had a hundred battleships he would have been over-matched and defeated. Ships and guns do not make a navy, and landsmen are not transmuted into sailors by sending them to sea. The Russians are not a sea-going people. Their country has no open ports—that is what they are always fighting to get. They have no foreign commerce; they have no fisheries. Why, sir, it reminds me of the reply made by a Scotch carter to an angry soldier who had challenged him to fight. ‘Fecht wi’ ye? Na, na, fechtin’s yer trade. But I’ll drive a cart wi’ ye.’ If command of the ocean were a matter of planting potatoes, Russia would be a great sea power.

“The born sailor is a being of an order different from ourselves—as different as a gull from a grouse, a seal from a cat. What, to a landsman, is a matter of study, memory and calculation, is to him a matter of intuition. An unstable plane is his natural, normal and helpful footing. As a gun-pointer he sights his piece not only consciously with his instruments and his eye, but unconsciously with that better instrument, the sense of direction—as one plays billiards. The rolling and pitching of the ships do not spoil his aim; he allows for them automatically—_feels_ the auspicious instant with the sure instinct of an expert rifleman breaking bottles in the air. It is impossible to impart this subtle sense to a farmer’s boy, or to a salesman in a shop, no matter how young you catch him; he cannot be made to understand it—cannot even be made to understand that it can be. For that matter, nobody does understand it.

“I am not unaware, sir, of the ‘modern’ methods of sea-fighting—keeping at a safe distance from the enemy and pointing the guns by means of range-finders and other instruments and machines, but nothing that can be invented can eliminate the ‘personal equation’ in sea-fighting, any more than in land-fighting parapets, casemates, turrets and other defensive works can profitably replace the breasts of the soldiers, or arms of precision take the place of their natural aptitude for battle with both feet on the ground. I am not unmindful of the time when the Romans improvised a fleet (constructed on the model of a wrecked Carthaginian galley) and manning it with landsmen destroyed the sea-power of Carthage in a single engagement. That exception tests the rule (_probat regulam_) but the rule stands. Landsmen for soldiers, sailors for the sea and to the devil with military machinery!

“Before our civil war we had a merchant marine second only to that of Great Britain. American sails whitened every sea, the stars and stripes glowed in every port. We were a nation of sailors. Even so long ago as the war of 1812 we held our own with Great Britain on the ocean, though beaten everywhere on land by inferior numbers with superior training. To-day we could not hold our own against any maritime people, even if we fought with full coal-bunkers near our own shores. The American behind the gun is no longer a born sailor with the salt of the sea in every globule of the blood of him. Our fate in encountering a seagoing people, sailors and fishermen and the sons of sailors and fishermen, with sea legs, sea eyes and sea souls, would be that which has befallen inlanders against islanders, from Salamis to Tsu Shima. The sea would be strewn with a wreckage of American ‘magnificent fighting-machines.’”

The Timorous Reporter murmured the words “Manila Bay” and “Santiago de Cuba,” then diffidently lifted his eyes, with a question mark in each, to the face of his distinguished interlocutor—which darkened with a smile.

“With regard to Manila,” he said, “I am told that Dewey’s famous command, ‘You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,’ was not accurately reported. According to my informant, the Spanish ships were ingeniously wound with ropes to keep them from falling apart. What Dewey actually said was this: ‘When you are ready, Gridley, you may fire at those ropes.’ Anybody can cut a rope with a cannon if not molested. At Santiago, the Spanish Admiral was ordered not to give battle, but to escape, and ships cannot run away and fight at the same time.

“Sir, two naval victories in which the victors lost one man killed do not supply a reasonable presumption of invincibility. Manila and Santiago were slaughters, not battles. They are without value.”

The reporter said he thought that they were not altogether worthless as “horrors of war,” and visibly shuddered. The superior intelligence flamed and thundered!

“That is all nonsense about ‘the horrors of war,’ in so far as the detestable phrase implies that they are worse than those of peace; they are more striking and impressive, that is all. As to the loss of life, I submit that civilians mostly die some time, and are mourned, too, quite as feelingly as soldiers; and the kind of death that is inflicted by war-weapons is distinctly less objectionable than that resulting from disease. Wars are expensive, doubtless, but somebody gets the money; it is not thrown into the sea. In point of fact, modern nations are never so prosperous as in the years immediately succeeding a great war. I favor anything that will quicken our minds, elevate our sentiments and stop our secreting selfishness, as, according to that eminent naturalist, the late William Shakspeare, toads get venom by sleeping under cold stones. A quarter-century of peace will make a nation of block-heads and scoundrels. Patriotism is a vice, but it is a larger vice, and a nobler, than the million petty ones which it promotes in peace to swallow up in war. In the thunder of guns it becomes respectable. I favor war, famine, pestilence—anything that will stop the people from cheating and confine that practice to contractors and statesmen.

“To return to Russia—”

“Which,” said the reporter, _sotto voce_, “many Russians abroad do not care to do.”

“You said, I think, that she does not seem to be much of a power on either sea or land. She was a power in the time of the first Napoleon. She held out a long time at Sevastopol against the English, the French, the Turks and the Sardinians. She defeated the Turks at Shipka Pass and Plevna, and the Turks are the best soldiers in Europe. True, in the war with Japan, she lost every battle. That was to be expected, for she was all unready and her armies were outnumbered two to one from the beginning. No one outside Russia, and few inside, has ever come within a quarter million of a correct estimate of the Japanese strength. There were not fewer than seven hundred thousand of these cantankerous little devils in front of Gunshu Pass.”

“Then they are—in a military sense—‘cantankerous,’” said the reporter. “That is about the same as saying that they are good soldiers, is it not?”

“Oh, they fight well enough. Why shouldn’t they? They have something to fight for; the pride of an honorable history; a government that does not rob them; a civilization that is to them new and fascinating, reared, as the superstructure of a glittering temple, upon an elder one, whose stones were hewn and laid and wrought into beauty by their forefathers, while ours were chasing one another through marshes with flint spears. Best of all, they had a sovereign whom they adore as a deity and love with a passionate personal attachment. What can you do against such a people as that?—a people in whom patriotism is a religion—a nation of poets, artists and philosophers, like the ancient Greeks; of statesmen and warriors, like those of early Rome?”

“If the Japanese are all that you think them,” said the reporter, “how do you justify your pro-Russian sympathies?”

“It is not the business of a student of military affairs to have sympathies,” replied the Bald Campaigner, coldly; “but it is precisely because they are that kind of people that their overthrow is, to America, a military necessity. They are dangerous neighbors to so feeble barbarians as we, with a government which all extol and none respects—a loose unity and no illusions—a slack allegiance and no consciousness of national life—a bickering aggregation of individuals, man against man and class against class—a motley crowd of lawless, turbulent and avaricious ungovernables!”

He paused from exhaustion and mopped his shining pow with his handkerchief.

“Maybe Americans are like that,” assented the reporter, “but it is said that we fight pretty well on occasion—in a civil war, for example.”

“Certainly, all Caucasians fight ‘pretty well’ compared with other Caucasians. The Japs are another breed.”

The Inquiring Mind was convinced, but not silenced. “Suppose,” said he, “that a collision ever occurs between an American and a Japanese fleet or army on equal terms, what, in your honest judgment as a military expert, will be the result?”

“Damn them!” shouted the man of no sympathies, “we’ll wipe them off the face of the earth!”

A JUST DECISION

“Ah, I have long hoped for this,” said the Sentimental Bachelor.

“It is a good while now—I think it must be ever since Adam—that Tyrant Man has had to pay all too dearly for the favor—and favors—of the unfair sex. Of course, there is a difference in the value of the advantages enjoyed. For illustration, there is the good will of Celeste, of Babette, of Clarisse—best of all, of the incomparable Clorinda! I say good will, for I speak of that which I myself have had the supreme distinction to enjoy; and no gentleman, sir, will ever so far forget himself as to call a lady’s preference for him by a stronger name. Discretion, sir, discretion—that is what every man of sense and feeling goes in for.”

The Timorous Reporter signified such approval as was consistent with the public interest and the prosperity of the press.

“As I was saying, the good will of the admirable Nanette, the most excellent Lucia—excellent no longer, alas, for she is dead—of the superb Héloise, and I might, perhaps, add to the list one or two others, is above price and beyond appraisement. Yet it was not to be had for nothing; the gods are not so kind. I have suffered, sir, I have paid, believe me.

“What am I coming to? Why, this, my lad, this. The supreme court of one of our States has decided that, in proving an intention of marriage on the part of a male defendant, what the lady plaintiff may have said to others about it is not competent evidence. ‘Hearsay evidence’? Why, yes; the honorable court was polite enough to call it so, but, doubtless, if, with all due respect for the ladies mentioned—Herminia, Adèle, Demetria and the others—I may venture to say so, the real ground of exclusion of such evidence is its incredibility. I trust to your discretion not to report me as uttering that opinion; not for the world would I wound the sensibilities of the adorable Miranda, most veracious of her sex.”

The speaker paused, gazing pensively at vacancy as if communing with the day before yesterday. The reporter endeavored to reveal by his manner a policy of expectation.

“My dear boy,” resumed the Sentimental Bachelor, “if you aspire to the good will of a woman, and are marriageable, you should be prepared and willing to have it believed by all her friends that your intentions are honorable—yes, sir; you must submit to be placed in that false position: it is a part of the price. True, you may swear the lady to secrecy; and Congreve says that no one is so good as a woman to keep a secret, for, although she is sure to tell it, yet nobody will believe her. Alas! he underestimated human credulity, which is the eighth wonder of the world. Beware of human credulity; it is always ready to believe the worst.

“What’s that? You have had sweethearts that did not say you wanted to marry them; women friends that did not say you were in love with them? Fortunate man! But consider how young you are. It is a just inference that they too are young. Youth is the season of veracity; wait. As these excellent young ladies (whom Heaven bless) grow older—as they miss more and more the attentions of men—as they dwell more and more upon joys of the irrevocable past, they will have a different story to tell, and right mercifully is it decreed that they shall believe it themselves. Why, even the once charming Doretta finds, I am told, a consolation for the horrors of age and whist in the dream of repeated proposals from me—Meeee! Ah, well, it were inhuman to deny to one to whom I gave so much the happiness of stating the amount of the benefaction. Far be it from me to bring down her gray hairs in sorrow to the truth.

“But, suppose, my dear young friend, that I were wealthy enough to be sued for breach of promise of marriage—which Heaven forbid! You see how this righteous decision of that supreme court would remove from me the temptation and necessity of contradicting a lady. Oh, it is a great decision! It marks a notable advance in the apprehension of the underlying motives of human action. For they are human—except Iphigenia, who is divine. Not so beautiful as Perdita; not so intelligent as Lorena; not so devoted as Janette; so young as Marie; so faithful as Theodora—peerless Theodora! But Iphigenia—she has the cleverness to be so very new! It makes a difference.”

Remarking that Bulwer was a most admirable writer, the Timorous Reporter took his leave.

THE LION’S DEN

“I can not accept the view,” said the Sentimental Bachelor, looking up from his piano stool, “that because one has a houseful of books and pictures one is necessarily a lover of literature and art. I have a few myself—not many; but you will observe that my book-cases have not glass doors; on the contrary (if you understand the significance of that phrase), they are beautiful examples of the cabinetmaker’s craft, harmonizing well with the architectural and color schemes of the rooms containing them. But the devil a book can you see in them without opening them.

“Why is that? Because, in the first place, books are not beautiful—at least none of those within the means of any but a millionaire. Even the most costly and sumptuous of them are angular, blocklike objects, displeasing to the eye. Unless bound with special reference to the room in which they are to turn their backs on you, most of them will be out of harmony with their environment and with one another.

“Yes, you see here scattered about, mostly on the floor, a few books” (the Sentimental Bachelor indicated them by a graceful gesture of his right hand) “that are as unlovely as any. But these are volumes having for me a peculiar value from pleasant or tender association—just as any article might have—just, in fact, as that rug has, upon which the divine Janette has deigned to set her little feet. Ah, Janette the adorable!—Melissa being dead.

“You dare to think, no doubt, that with glass doors to my book-cases I should be better able to find readily any particular volume that I might want. Pardon me, but it is unworthy of you to impute to me so deep and dark an ignorance. I should be sorry if ever I failed to put my hand on any desired book in the darkest night. Believe me, my friend, it is not the book-lover who displays his books in a show-case.

“As to pictures, if I were so unfortunate as to own all the treasures of the Dresden galleries, you would see no more than one painting in a room. That is the Japanese way, and the Japanese are the only civilized people in our modern world; they are born artists all, though some neglect their mental heritage and go out as cooks. Think of it!—a people among whom the arranging of three cut flowers in a vase (they know not the dreadful ‘bouquet’) is an art having its principles and laws, its learned professors to expound them, its honorable place in the curriculum of public and private education!

“Trust the Japanese to be always right in a matter of art. His instinct is as infallible as that of the ancient Greek; and our European ‘schools’ of painting are already greatly indebted to him. It is a silly new picture in which the Japanese influence can not be traced. I’m ordering my dependent young brother from Paris to Tokio to study art—the little rascal!

“One painting in a room fixes attention; two divide it; more than two disperse it. Than a wall plastered with bad canvases I know of nothing more distracting and confusing except a wall plastered with good ones. It is like a swarm of pretty girls, or a table d’hôte dinner in a country hotel, where all you are to eat is brought in at once and arranged round your plate. It kills the appetite.

“Why does one do that sort of thing? To impress one’s visitors—to show off. No, no; it is not because one is fond of paintings and never tires of them. Be pleased to exercise your faculty of observation. I passed a few weeks recently at the country house of a friend. Before I had been half an hour in the place he had taken me through all the rooms and shown me a hundred of his ‘art treasures’—paintings by famous ‘masters.’ (Maybe I had my own opinion as to that.) For my pleasure? Why, no; he allowed me less than a half minute to each. Gadzooks! can a fellow digest a painting that he has _bolted_? No, sir; ’twas for gratification of his vanity of possession. During the weeks that I remained in his house I never once caught him, nor any member of his family, standing before any one of all those pictures, silently ‘taking it in.’ The purpose of the pictures was to supply an opportunity for his visitors’ envy and compel their tongues to the service of his ears.

“You observe on my walls here,” the veteran virtuoso continued, revolving slowly on his pivot, “one water-color and a lot of trifles—photographs, pen-and-ink drawings, and so forth—most of them rather bad. The painting itself is none too good; I should not like to have my taste in such things judged by it. But observe: it is the work of a young friend, and into every inch of it he has put something of his heart, for it was done in the hope of pleasing me. The carved oak frame, too, is one of his own creation, the mat (of copper)—all. Would the costliest and ugliest of old masters give me as much pleasure? You, yes; but, dear fellow, you are not considered.

“See that pen-and-ink head—there are better. But it is a first attempt, done by the uninstructed young girl whose photograph you see alongside. She is to be a great artist some day, but none of her work will have to me the interest and value of that.

“Ah, those faded and soiled little photographs—Mary, Hélène, Katy, the divine Josie and the rest—you need not look at them; they are merely little soft spots for _my_ eyes to fall upon and rest. Why, sir, there’s not the most trifling object in this room but has a hundred tender recollections clinging to it like bats to a stalactite—swarming about it like bees about Hymettus. Should I replace them with ‘works of art’ bought in the shops and damnably authenticated?

“This room is for me. I live here, read here, write here, smoke here. Wherever my eye falls, it rests upon something that starts a train of thought and emotion infinitely more agreeable, and I believe more profitable, than any suggested by the work of a hand that I never grasped, guided by however sure an eye that never looked into mine. Don’t, I pray you, take the trouble to appear to be interested in these things, such as a country maiden might decorate her sleeping room withal. (Ah, happy country maiden, untaught in the black art of showing off!) Don’t, I beg, give anything here a second glance: ‘there was no thought of pleasing thee’ when it was put here.

“Come,” concluded the Sentimental Bachelor, taking his hat and stick, “let us go to the Park. I want to show you the fine Rembrandt that I presented to the Art Gallery. Celestine adored it.”

THE MARCH HARE

A FLOURISHING INDUSTRY

The infant industry of buying worthless cattle, inoculating them with pleuro-pneumonia and tuberculosis, and collecting the indemnity when they are officially put to death to prevent the spread of the contagion, is assuming something of the importance and dignity of a national pursuit. The proprietors of one of the largest contageries on Long Island report that the outlook is most encouraging; they begin each fiscal year with a large surplus in their treasury. Some of the Western companies, too, have been highly prosperous and intend to mark their gratification by an immediate issue of new shares as a bonus.

The effect of this industry upon pastoral pursuits is wholesome. The stock ranges of Texas, Wyoming and Montana thrill with a new life, and it is estimated that their enlargement during the next few years will bring not less than five million acres of public land into the service of man and beast. The advantage to manufacturers of barbed-wire fencing is obvious, while the indirect benefit to agriculture through the enhanced price of this now indispensable material will supply the protectionist with a new argument and a peculiar happiness. Cattle-growing has hitherto been attended with great waste. A large percentage of the “stock on hand” was unsalable. Failure of the cactus crop, destitution of water and prevalence of blizzards, together with such natural ills as cattle flesh is heir to, have frequently so reduced the physical condition of the herds that not more than a half would be acceptable to the buyer. The ailing remainder were of little use. A few of the larger animals could be utilized by preparing them as skeletons of buffaloes for Eastern museums of natural history, but the demand was limited: nine in ten were suffered to expire and become a dead loss. These are now eagerly sought by agents of the contageries, purchased at good prices, driven by easy stages to the railways and, arriving at their final destination, duly infected. They are said to require less infection than they would if they were in good condition, with what the life insurance companies are pleased to call a fair “expectation of life.” Some of the breeders prefer to isolate these failures and do their own infecting; but the tendency in the cattle trade, as in all others, is toward division of labor. The regular infectionaries possess superior facilities of inoculation, and government inspectors prefer to do business at a few great pleuro-pneumoniacal and tubercular centers rather than make tedious journeys to distant ranges. The trend of the age is, in fact, toward centralization.

The effect of the new industry upon commerce cannot be accurately foreseen, but it is natural to suppose that it will largely increase the importation of lowgrade cattle from South America. Hitherto it has not been profitable to import any that were unfit for beef. But if the _Bos inedibilis_, the milkless crowbait and other varieties “not too good for human nature’s daily food”—in fact not good enough—can be laid down in New York or New Orleans at a cost of not more than thirty dollars each, including the purchase price of ten cents, and inoculated before they have eaten their heads off, there would seem to be a reasonable margin of profit in the traffic. If not, the legal allowance for their condemnation and slaughter can be easily increased by legislative action. If Congress will do nothing to encourage capital in that direction the States most benefited by this extension of American commerce can respond to the demand of the hour with a judicious system of bounties. Importation of cheap foreign cattle eligible to pleuro-pneumonia and the junior disorder will provide employment to a great number of persons who, without apt appropriation’s artful aid, might languish on farms and in workshops, a burden to the community and a sore trial to themselves.

THE RURAL PRESS

There will be joy in the household of the country editor what time the rural mind shall no longer crave the unwholesome stimuli provided by composing accounts of corpulent beetroots, bloated pumpkins, dropsical melons, aspiring maize, and precocious cabbages. Then the bucolic journalist shall have surcease of toil, and may go out upon the meads to frisk with kindred lambs, frolic familiarly with loose-jointed colts and exchange grave gambolings with solemn cows. Then shall the voice of the press, no longer attuned to praise of the vegetable kingdom, find a more humble but not less useful employment in calling the animal kingdom to the evening meal beneath the sanctum window.

To the overworked editor life will have a fresh zest, a new and quickening significance. The hills shall seem to hump more greenly up to a bluer sky, the fields to blush with a tenderer sunshine. He will go forth at dawn executing countless flip-flaps of gymnastic joy; and when the white sun shall redden with the blood of dying day, and the pigs shall set up a fine evening hymn of supplication to the Giver of All Swill he will be jubilant in the editorial feet, blissfully conscious that the editorial intellect is a-ripening for the morrow’s work.

The rural newspaper! We sit with it in hand, running our fingers over the big, staring letters, as over the black and white keys of a piano, drumming out of them a mild melody of perfect repose. With what delight one disports him in the deep void of its nothingness, as who should swim in air! Here is nothing to startle, nothing to wound. The very atmosphere is suffused and saturated with “the spirit of the rural press;” and even one’s dog sits by, slowly dropping the lids over its great eyes; then lifting them with a jerk, tries to look as if it were not sleepy in the least degree. A fragrance of plowed fields comes to one like a benediction. The tinkle of ghostly cowbells falls drowsily upon the ear. Airy figures of prize esculents float before the half-shut eyes and vanish before perfect vision can attain to them. Above and about are the drone of bees and the muffled thunder of milk-streams shooting into the foaming bucket. The gabble of distant geese is faintly marked off by the barking of a distant dog. The city, with all its noises, sinks away, as from one in a balloon, and our senses swim in the “intense inane” of country languor. We slumber.

God bless the man who invented the country newspaper!—though Sancho Panza blessed him long ago.

“TO ELEVATE THE STAGE”