Chapter III: Part 3

Old Brindle worked at the chain awhile, but it was no use. They were puzzled. They took a long look at the gate, shook it viciously with their horns, then turned impatiently away, like a man who has run four blocks to a bank, only to find "closed" staring him in the face. Several more cows came up, and when they were shown the new jewelry they acted hurt and proceeded to hold an indignation meeting and pass a vote of censure, after which one old she-pirate broke a horn trying to lift the gate off its hinges. After this mishap they acted so discouraged that I concluded they had given it up; but they hadn't. Old Brindle returned to the attack. She spent half an hour "monkeying" with the gate, and then stopped short and began to study. She had more gall than a ward heeler, more tenacity than an office- seeker, more brains than a boodle alderman. In just ten minutes by the town clock she had the problem solved. With her horn she lifted the chain over the top of the gate- post and walked in, as proud as a boy with a sore toe. I felt like a homicide as I raised the double-barreled gun and pulled both triggers. I felt worse after I had crawled out of the cistern, where the perfidious gun had kicked me, and learned that I had missed the whole drove and sent a hatful of slugs and nails into a neighbor's china closet. I broke the gun over Old Brindle's vertebrae and followed up the attack with the garden-fork. After I had chased the entire drove back and forth over the garden a dozen times, and seen what was left of my summer's work inextricably mixed with the sub-soil, fallen over the wheelbarrow and ruined a $14 pair of trousers, a constable came and arrested me for discharging firearms inside the corporate limits. A young theological gosling, who has since died of excessive goodness, preferred a charge of cruelty to animals against me, and my neighbor sued for the price of his china and got judgment. Old Brindle died and the court decided that it was my duty to buy her. I found her meat too tough for eating and her hide too full of garden-fork holes to be available for sole-leather.

If the retail butchers are to be believed, the cow is a calf until there is no more room on her horn for rings. She seldom lives to be too old to be carved up with a buzz-saw and a cold-chisel and sold as veal.

After she has passed her time of usefulness in the dairy; when she has forgotten how to give four quarts of milk per diem and then kick it over the dewy-lipped maid who has carefully culled it from the maternal fount, the thrifty farmer drives her upon the railway track, wrecks a train with her, then sues the company for $150 damages. Of course the company kicks worse than ever the cow did, but the farmer secures an intelligent jury of brother agriculturalists and the soulless corporation has to come to taw.

Her consort is less brilliant and more impulsive. He has a surly, unsocial disposition and uncertain temper, but can be very polite when he chooses. He has been known to neglect his regular business to assist an embarrassed young man over a rail fence, or entertain a party of picnickers from the city. He has a natural antipathy for red flags, and will cross a forty-acre field to make a mop rag of one and rub its bearer's nose in the mud--an example that might be advantageously followed by the Chicago authorities.

The calf is one of the most interesting studies in the science of natural history. In its earliest youth it wears long wobbly legs and an expression of angelic innocence; but before it is a week old it knows more than some men who have been honored with high offices and expensive funerals. The calf will eat anything it can swallow, and what it can't get through its neck it will chew and suck the juice. Tablecloths, hickory shirts, store pants, lace curtains, socks, in fact the entire range of articles familiar to the laundry are tid-bits to the calf. A calf that has any ambition to distinguish himself will leave the maternal udder any time to chew one leg off a new pair of "boughten" pantaloons or absorb the flowing narrative of a "biled" shirt. The calf learns bad habits as readily as an Indian, and the man who did not have a youthful masculine bovine for partner in his boyish deviltry looks back upon a barren and uneventful youth.

I remember one promising calf that I taught to "bunt" like a William goat. One day my eldest brother and my parent on my father's side were cleaning out an open well, while the calf and myself lingered near, waiting for a glorious opportunity to merit killing. The old gentleman superintended the work and pulled up in an iron kettle the mud which the son of his youth industriously scraped from the bottom of an eighteen-foot well with much labor and an old tin pan. While he was leaning over the mouth of the well, pulling up a kettle of slush, his suspender buttons groaning and his tailor-made pantaloons strained to the utmost tension, I called the calf's attention to him. The bovine grasped the situation, lowered his head, kicked up his heels, emitted a triumphant bellow, shot forward like a baseball reaching for the stomach of an amateur shortstop, and struck the rear elevation of the head of our distinguished house with the solid impact of an hydraulic ram toying with a stone fence. A moment later there was a sound from the bowels of the earth, but it was not a sound of revelry. It resembled an able-bodied cyclone ripping up four miles of plank road and driving it through the pulsating heart of a colored camp-meeting. The calf had forgotten to remember the well, and while my respected sire was chasing the kettle to the bottom, the calf was chasing him. Half a dozen robust neighbors armed with a windlass and a two-inch rope dragged the youthful ox and his unfortunate companions from the pit, and the volunteer fire brigade was sent for to turn the hose on them. I haven't forgotten the sequel to this little story; but it would not possess that lively interest for the great public that it did for me, so I will let it pass.

* * * CHRISTIAN ENGLAND IN INDIA.

HER TEARS ANENT TURKISH ATROCITIES

"Christian England" is agonizing over the pitiful condition of the Armenians under Moslem rule, but has nothing to say anent her own awful record in India. It were well for John Bull to get the beam out of his own eye before making frantic swipes at the mote in the optic of the Moslem. The oppression of the children of Israel by the Egyptian Pharaohs, the Babylonian king and Roman emperors were as nothing compared to that suffered by the patient Bengalese at the hands of Great Britain. The history of every barbarous prince of the Orient, in those dark days when might made right and plunder was the recognized prerogative of royalty; the annals of every potentate who has reigned by the grace of Allah and kneeled to kiss the robe of the prophet, may be searched in vain for a parallel in unbounded rapacity and calculating atrocity. England's despoilment of India constitutes the supreme crime of all the ages, the acknowledged acme of infamy- Europe never dreaded Alaric the Visigoth, nor hated Attila the Scourge of God, as India dreads and detests John Bull, "the white beast from over the black water." He has not persecuted because of difference of religious dogma, as have the Mohammedan Sultans and the Christian Czars. That kind of enterprise doesn't pay, and John Bull never wastes on theological sentiment one ounce of energy that can be coined into cash.

A British trading company had leased land at Madras and Calcutta, for which it paid rent to the native powers. For the protection of its warehouses it was permitted to built forts and keep a few armed police, but was in no sense independent. Its position in India was analogous to that of British capitalists in America who are operating a mine or factory and have been authorized to police their property. The mighty house of Tamerlane had become a political nonentity, the empire of the Great Mogul was divided among nominal viceroys who were really independent sovereigns, gorgeous but indolent. The teeming millions of India were, for the most part, as unfitted by nature and occupation for the fatigues of war, as were the countless host which Xerxes led into Greece, or Darius hurled upon the steel-crested phalanxes of that bloody prototype of John Bull, Alexander the Macedonian marauder. The governments of India were showy rather than strong, and a condition of semi-anarchy had been engendered by the frequent incursions of fierce tribes of robbers, the jealousies and ambitions of rival nabobs and the mischievous schemes of a French adventurer named Dupleix. The company continued to augment its forces until strong enough not only to protect its own property, but to overawe the native governments. Then, on one dishonest pretext or another, it began the work of transforming India into a British province. Robert Clive succeeded in accomplishing in Asia what Dr. Jamieson attempted with far better excuse in South Africa. Rival powers applied to the company for assistance, and it mattered not with which it allied itself, both were in the end destroyed or enslaved, compelled to pour their wealth into the coffers of the British corporations. No crime was too horrible, no breach of faith too brazen if it promised to further the ambition and increase the gains of the company. Its policy was to unite with a weak government to plunder a strong one, then, by subjugating its ally, to make itself master of both. By treasons and stratagems, by forged treaties and briberies, by infamies planned in cold blood and executed with more than Kurdish barbarity, the garden spot of the earth, with its teeming millions and inestimable wealth, was made to pay tribute to British greed. Macaulay, the eulogist of both Lord Clive and Warren Hastings, thus describes India when Great Britain, without a shadow of excuse, laid her marauding paw upon it in the same manner and for the self-same purpose that Cortez invaded the halls of the Montezumas:

"The people of India when we subdued them, were ten times as numerous as the vanquished Americans (the Indian subjects of Montezuma), and were at the same time quite as highly civilized as the victorious Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the cathedrals of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz, Viceroys whose splendors far surpassed that of Ferdinand the Catholic, myriads of cavalry and long trains of artillery which would have astonished the Great Captain. It might have been expected that every Englishman who takes any interest in any part of history would be curious to know how a handful of their countrymen, separated from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years, one of the greatest empires of the world. Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is, to most readers, not only insipid, but positively distasteful." Good God! Is it any wonder that British readers should find the conquest of India "positively distasteful?" Is it not quite natural that Englishmen had rather read of Turkish atrocities in Armenia than of British atrocities in India? Lord Macaulay rehearses all the treacheries and cruelties and double-dealings by which "a handful of his countrymen subjugated one of the greatest empires of the world," then complains that British readers find such a catalogue of horrors positively distasteful! Did he expect even Englishmen to become enthusiastic over the hiring of British troops to the infamous Surajah Dowlah for the massacre of the brave Rohillas? Did he expect them to peruse with pleasurable pride the robbery of the Princesses of Oude, the brutal execution of Nuncomar, or the forged treaty by which Ormichund was entrapped? Having painted the atrocities and craven cowardice of Chief Justice Impey, could he reasonably expect them to be proud of this representative Englishman in India? Having told us that Lord Clive was a freebooter in his boyhood and a butcher in his prime, did he anticipate that even Englishmen would be proud of this countryman of theirs who founded the British Empire in India? Lord Macaulay gives us the following description of conditions in Bengal under British Domination, then wonders that his countrymen find its perusal "positively distasteful."

"They (the servants of the East India company) covered with their protection a set of native dependents, who ranged through the provinces, spreading desolation and terror wherever they appeared. Every servant of a British factor was armed with all the power of his master. And his master was armed with all the power of the company. Enormous fortunes were thus accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the last extremity of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never tyranny like this. They found the little finger of the company thicker than the loins of the Surajah Dowlah. It resembled the government of evil genii rather than the government of human tyrants."

The people of India, it must be remembered, had experienced the tyranny of the Brahman and Buddhist, of Moslem and even the terrible Mahratta; they had groaned beneath the exactions of the Great Moguls, plundering viceroys and robber chiefs; they had paid tribute to Aurungzebe and to Hyder Ali, but here we are told they never experienced such tyranny and pitiless despoliation as under the rule of Christian England, and this upon the testimony of an Englishman! Now that British preachers and pamphleteers are agonizing over Mohammedan atrocities in Armenia, let us see what the latter thought of Christian domination in India. "If," says the Mussulman historian of those unhappy times, "if to so many military qualifications, they (English) knew how to join the art of government--if they exerted as much ingenuity and solicitude in relieving the people of God, as they do in whatever concerns their military affairs, no nation in the world would be preferable to them, or worthier of command; but the people under their dominion groan everywhere, and are reduced to poverty and distress. Oh God! come to the assistance of thine afflicted servants, and deliver them from the oppressions they suffer."

Lord Clive, having acquired an immense fortune, concluded to round out his political career by inaugurating a reform that would in some manner atone for his past excesses, and did succeed in giving India more than a Roman peace and abating some of the worst abuses; but the reform was ephemeral. In his essay on Warren Hastings, Lord Macaulay--who wonders that the conquest of India is "distasteful" reading to Englishmen--gives us the following pen-picture of conditions under the administration of his ideal:

"The delay and the expense, grievous as they are, form the smallest part of the evil which English law, imported without modifications into India, could not fail to produce. The strongest feelings of our nation, honor, religion, female modesty, rose up against the innovation. Arrest on mesne process was the first step in most civil proceedings; and to a native of rank arrest was not merely a restraint, but a foul personal indignity. That the apartments of a woman of quality should be entered by strange men, or that her face should be seen by them, are in the East intolerable outrages--outrages which are more dreaded than death, and which can be expiated only by the shedding of blood. To these outrages the most distinguished families of Bengal, Bahar and Orissa were now exposed. A reign of terror began--a reign of terror heightened by mystery. No man knew what was next to be expected from this strange tribunal. It had collected round itself an army of the worst part of the native population--informers, and false witnesses, and common barrators, and agents of chicane; and above all, a banditti of bailiffs' followers compared with whom the retainers of the worst English spunging- houses, in the worst times, might be considered as upright and tender-hearted. There were instances in which men of the most venerable dignity, persecuted without cause by extortioners, died of rage and shame in the grip of the vile alguazils of Impey. The harems of noble Mohammedans-- sanctuaries respected in the East by governments that respected nothing else--were burst open by gangs of bailiffs. The Mussulmans, braver and less accustomed to submission than the Hindoos, sometimes stood on their defense and shed their blood in the doorway, while defending, sword in hand, the sacred apartments of their women. No Mahratta invasion had ever spread through the province such dismay as this inroad of English lawyers. All the injustice of former oppressions, Asiatic and European, appeared as a blessing when compared with the justice of the Supreme Court."

No wonder that "Christian England" is horrified by the atrocities of the Moslems in Armenia! She cannot understand persecution for the sake of religious opinion-- having done her dirty work for the sake of the almighty dollar. It is true, that a Hastings, with his forged treaties and despoilment of ancient "bee-gums," is no longer governor-general of India; it is true that an Impey no longer deals out "Justice" in that unhappy land; but the industrial condition of the toiling millions is worse to-day than when they were being despoiled to erect the Peacock throne at Delhi, adorned with its "Mountain of Light." Sir David Wedderbun--who will be accepted as authority even by our Anglomaniacs--says: "Our civil courts are regarded as institutions for enabling the rich to grind the faces of the poor, and many are fain to seek a refuge from their jurisdiction in native territory." "We do not care for the people of India," writes Florence Nightingale; "the saddest sight to be seen in India--nay, probably in the world--is the peasant of our Eastern Empire." Miss Nightingale declares that the Indian famines, which every few years cost millions of lives, are due to British taxation, which deprives the ryots of the means of cultivation and reduces them to a condition far worse than the worst phases of American slavery. Mr. H. M. Hyndman, an English writer of repute, declares that in India men and women cannot get food, because they cannot save money to buy it, so terrible are the burdens laid by Christian England on that unhappy people. Just as Ireland exported food to England during her most devastating "famines," so does India send food to the "Mother Country" in the discharge of governmental burdens, while her own people are starving by millions. Henry George, who has never been suspected of anti-English tendencies, says: "The millions of India have bowed their necks beneath the yokes of many conquerors, but worst of all is the steady grinding weight of English domination--a weight which is literally crushing millions out of existence, and, as shown by English writers, is inevitably tending to a most frightful and widespread catastrophe."

"Christian England" wouldn't murder a Moslem because of his religion--she's too good for that; but she starves millions to death to fill her purse, then tries to square herself with God and man by singing psalms and pointing the finger of scorn at the barbarities of Islam.

MAN'S IMMORTALITY.

Is there a life beyond the grave?

Ten thousand thousand times this question hath been answered, yet answer there is none that satisfies the soul.

Never yet did man look into the cold face of one he loved and not feel, creeping like a thousand-fanged adder into his desolate heart, the awful fear that death's the end of all.

Never yet did mother stand by her first born's bier and say, "Thank God for Death that bringeth to my beloved eternal Life." Though Bibles were piled as high as Helicon and every son of Adam a white-stoled priest, proclaiming the grave the gate to glorious life, still would Doubt, twin brother of Despair, linger ever at that dread portal, and Love long to tear aside Futurity's awful veil--to see and know, as only those can know who see, that Death is but Life's messenger.

Oh Love! thou art at once the sweetest blossom that ever perfumed the bowers of Paradise, and the most poignant thorn that grows in the empoisoned shadows of everlasting Pain! But for thee, mad sorceress, every individual life were a microcosm, complete within itself. We would live but our own life, suffer our own pangs, and dying, descend without a sigh to ever dreamless sleep; but thy soft fingers do sweep the human harpsichord, the ego doth "pass in music out of sight"; the single note of life is blended with others in holy diapason, sweeter than fabled song of Israfil.

But alas! the penalty of this terrestrial Paradise, this blending of human hearts in heavenly harmony! The added pleasures bring redoubled pains; of symphonies so sweet is born the discord of Despair. Loving others more than our proper selves, their wounds are deeper far than our own hurts, and death to them is death and hell to us.

Of love was born the hope of immortality. We part to-night from those so near and dear that they seem our better selves, looking with longing eyes to the glad to morrow when we shall meet again; but when comes the sleep of Death, and Reason, that pitiless monarch of the Mind, proclaims that all the to-morrows in Time's fecund womb will come and go and bring them never back to our fond embrace, the heart revolts and wars on Destiny.

Hope, dear daughter of the Gods, angel of Light, what seraphic visions thou dost weave for us in thy celestial loom! How beautiful and bright the star that blazes upon thy ethereal brow; yet alas! how oft obscured by the deadly vapors of Doubt and dark Despair.

Is thy enchanted world a world indeed, where Love is lord and Death is driven forth? or dost thou seek to soothe us with lying pictures of Paradise, such as the shipwrecked mariner in tropic seas beholds beneath the sultry brine? Is thy beacon in very truth a star; shining eternal in our cimmerian sky, a guide infallible to life's worn voyager; or a wandering fire such as the foolish follow,--a lying flame that leads the trusting traveler to his loss?

Since man first placed his foot upon this earth he hath been listening with greedy ear to thy sweet song; since Death first did show his horrid front thou hast been whispering to the stricken heart that Love could never die,--that there is not, cannot be in nature a pang so cruel as Love's farewell forever. Thou hast been the world's comforter in all ages past; will faithful prove through the long ages yet to be.

Is there a life beyond the grave?

Aye, it must be so; but what that life will be it boots not to inquire. Even a land of sand and thorns, with grinding toil, yet everlasting life with those we love, were heaven and heaven enough.

Perhaps--who knows?--the sweet blending of our lives with other and dearer ones upon this earth is but an earnest of what will be in the great hereafter; that when every spark of that bright effulgence increate is released from its thrall of clay, all Life, and Light and Love will forever blend in One; that husband, wife and child, and each and all the human heart holds dear will be resolved into one perfect Life, and thus at once in God and self, emparadised in each other's souls in Heaven as in the loving arms of each on earth, let Eternity roll on!

* * * EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION.

THE PLUTOCRAT AND THE PAUPER

"For Christ's sake, Cap, give me the price of a sandwich!"

I stopped and surveyed the speaker, not because the request was unusual, but because the applicant for aid had not acquired the beggar's whine. He was a large, powerful man, evidently a mechanic, for every trade leaves its peculiar stamp upon its followers.

"Why should I give you a dime? You are far more able to work than I. A man with half your strength should be ashamed to beg."

"Work?" he retorted bitterly. "Give me a job--at anything-- and see if I do not prove myself a man."

"But I have nothing for you to do."

"A dozen men have told me that to-day . You sneer at me because I do not earn the bread I eat, yet decline to give me an opportunity to do so."

I steered him against a lunch counter and watched him chisel desolation into a silver dollar, then listened to his story--one that I had heard a hundred times within the year. Thrown out of employment by the business depression, he had tramped in search of work until he found himself penniless, starving in the streets of a strange city. He handed me a letter, dated St. Louis, written by his wife. Some of the words were misspelled and the bad chirography was blotted as if by falling tears, but it breathed the spirit of a Roman matron, of a Spartan mother. Both the children were ill. She had obtained a little sewing and provided food and some medicine, but two months' rent was due and the landlord would turn them out unless it was promptly paid. She would do the best she could, and knew that her husband would do the same. Then through the blinding tears came a flash of nether fire. Transformed into respectable English it read:

"Were I a man I would not tramp from city to city begging employment only to be refused. Were I a man I would not see my babies starve while people are piling up millions of money which they can never need. In this country there should be an opportunity for every man to make a living. Were I a man I would make an effort to release myself and my unhappy fellows from this brutal industrial bondage, this chronic pauperism--if it cost my life. I have two sons, whom God knows I do dearly love; but I would consecrate them to the holy cause of human liberty if I knew they would perish on the scaffold. I would rather see them die like dogs than live like slaves."

He sat a long time silent after returning the letter to his pocket, then said as though speaking to himself:

"I wonder if the rich people ever pause to reflect that there's a million brawny men in my condition to-night--a million men who only lack a leader? I wonder if they think we'll stand this kind o' thing forever? Don't talk to me about patriotism," he interrupted, fiercely. "No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach! Why should I care for the preservation of a government of, for and by the plutocrat? Let it go to the devil across lots! D--n a flag beneath which a competent and industrious mechanic cannot make a living. Anarchy? Is anarchy worse than starvation? When conditions become such that a workingman is half the time an ill-fed serf, and the other half a wretched vagabond, he's ready for a change of any kind--by any means. I am supposed to be entitled to 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.' I have Liberty--to starve--and I can pursue Happiness--or rainbows--to my heart's content. There's absolutely no law prohibiting my using the horns of the moon for a hatrack if I feel so disposed!"

. . .

The optimists who are depending upon the "conservatism" of the American people to maintain intact our political and industrial systems; who proclaim that the present too apparent spirit of unrest is but the ephemeral effect of a few professional agitators, are of the same myopic brood as those French aristocrats who declared that all was well until the crust over the tartarean fires--steadily eaten away from beneath, steadily hammered upon from above--gave way with a crash like the crack of doom and that fair land was transformed as if by infernal magic into a high-flaming vortex of chaos, engulfing all forms and formulas, threatening the civilization of a world.

"After us the deluge!" cried those court parasites, who, with more understanding than their fellows, read aright the mene, mene, tekel upharsin traced upon the walls of royalty. But the deluge waited not upon their convenience. Like another avatar of Death gendered by Pride in the womb of Sin, it burst forth to appall the world. But the American multi-millionaires mock at the "deluge"--can in nowise understand how it were possible for the thin crust that holds in thrall the fierce Gehenna fires to give 'way beneath THEIR feet, dance they upon it never so hard.

The American nation is trembling on the verge of an industrial revolution--a revolution that is inevitable; that will come peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must. So ripe are the American workingmen for revolt against the existing order of things; so galled are they by the heavy yoke laid upon them; so desperate have they become that it but needs a strong man to organize and lead them, and our present industrial system--perhaps our political, also--would crumble like an eggshell in the grip of an angry Titan.

Nor is the dissatisfaction confined to the industrial class, the farmer, that Atlas upon whose broad shoulders the great world rests, is in full sympathy with every attack made upon the Cormorant by the Commune. While not ready for a revolution by force, he would not take up arms in defense of the prescriptive rights of the plutocrat from the assaults of the proletariat. Yet the American press proclaims that all is well! The "able editor" looks into his leather spectacles-- free trade or high tariff brand--and with owl-like gravity announces that if the import tax on putty be increased somewhat, or fiddle-strings be placed on the free list, the American mechanic will have money to throw at the birds-- that mortgages and mendicancy will pass like a hideous nightmare, and the farmer gayly bestride his sulky plow attired like unto Solomon in all his glory.

. . .

What is wrong? In God's name, what is right? Here we have the most fertile land upon the globe, the best supplied with all things necessary to a prosperous people. Our resources are not half developed; there is no dearth of capital; our working people are the most intelligent, energetic and capable upon which the sun ever shone.

Man for man the world never contained their equal. Their productive capability is the marvel even of this age of industrial miracles. And yet, with every nerve strained to its utmost tension; toiling, saving--at very death-grips with destiny--they are sinking year by year deeper into the Slough of Despond--into that most frightful of all Gehennas, the hell of want!

Nor is this all. While those who toil are but fighting a losing battle wearing out hand and heart and brain for a crust that becomes ever scantier, ever more bitter--there are thousands and tens of thousands who cannot even obtain the poor privilege of tramping in this brutal treadmill, but must stand with folded arms and starve, else beg or steal. All this might be borne--would be endured with heroic fortitude--if such were the lot of all; but while the opportunity to wear out one's strength for a bare existence is becoming ever more a privilege to be grateful for, we are making millionaires by the hundreds. While the many battle desperately for life, the few are piling up fortunes beside which the famed wealth of ancient Lydia's kings were but a beggar's patrimony. The employer is becoming ever more an autocrat, the employee ever more dependent upon his good pleasure for the poor privilege of existing upon the earth.

. . .

To say that the "conservatism" of the American workingman will cause him to patiently endure all this is to brand him a spiritless slave, deserving not only slavery, but the shackles and the knout. He will not endure it much longer, and when his patience reaches its utmost limit-- when he tires of filling his belly with the East wind supplied him in such plentitude by aspiring politicians and "able editors," look ye to see something break.

. . .

The problems for our statesmen to solve are, First, how to insure to every person able and willing to work an opportunity to earn an honest livelihood; Second, to effect a more suitable distribution of the wealth created among the factors engaged in its production. All other problems now engaging the attention of publicists sink into insignificance beside these. They are to practical statecraft what the immortality of the soul is to theology. They must be solved; at least, some progress must be made in that direction or force will ere long attempt it. The trouble with such convulsions is that they invariably produce temporary evil, but do not always compensate it with permanent good. They are a kind of social mania a potu, racking the whole organism, debilitating it--good chiefly as frightful examples of what evil customs lead to.

To diagnose the disease and prescribe a remedy were no easy task. There is infinitely more the matter than a maladjustment of the tariff, inflated railway stocks or a dearth of white dollars. It is a most difficult, a wonderfully intricate problem--one entirely without precedent. The rapid development of America; the still more remarkable advancement in the science of mechanics, conjoined to a political organism not yet fully developed, but half understood, yet marking an epoch in man's social progress; commercial customs of by-gone days surviving in the midst of much that is new--really when you come to think of it you may well wonder that we have got thus far without more than one great convulsion! Clearly it is no place for catholicons.

That a comparatively small class of men are absorbing the wealth of the country as fast as it is produced, leasing to those who create it scarce a bare subsistence, is patent to all; that the vast body of the people, clothed with political power and imbued with the spirit of "equality," will not permit such conditions to long continue, any thoughtful man will concede. Even in European countries, where the working people have come to regard privileged classes as a matter of course, there are mutterings of a coming storm that will only gather fresh terrors by delay. In Europe the change will probably be wrought by revolution; in America it may be achieved by peaceful evolution if the moneyed aristocracy does not, with its checks and repressions--with its corrupted judiciary, purchased legislators and obsequious press--drive a people, already sorely vexed, to unreasoning madness.

. . .

What shall we do? We must avoid the two extremes--that of the radical reformer and the apostle of laissez faire. We will find a middle course safest and best--will need to proceed with caution, but by no means with cowardice. The politico-economic school that would at once change the existing order of things with as much sang-froid as a miller substitutes steam for water-power forgets that society is not a machine; that it was not made to order like a newspaper editorial, and that to attempt by a radical process to make it other than what it is--to change its genius arbitrarily--were as fatuous as trying to transform a wolf into a watchdog by a chemical process or surgical operation. But while the radical "reformer"--the man who would ignore the lessons of history and launch boldly out upon the tempestuous sea of experimentalism--is one dangerous extreme, we must remember that it is not the only one. In avoiding Scylla we must not forget Charybdis. If we are to look ever to the past, to make no experiments, to become the bondslaves of precedent, then progress is at an end and society must petrify, retrograde or consume itself in fierce fire whirlwinds.

When the American people emancipate themselves from party-slavery--than which there is none more debasing; when they cease to fight the battles of ambitious place- hunters and begin in true earnest to fight their own, then, and not till then, will the faults of our social organism be rapidly reduced to the minimum. When the common people of this country decline to be divided into two or more hostile camps by "issues" carefully concocted by political harlequins, then will the combined wisdom, purified of partisan prejudice, evolve the best possible national polity.

How many of the hard-working people of this nation who are now assiduously assailing or defending the dogma of protection or free trade or any other of the many "issues" evolved from time to time by professional politicians as a kind of Pegasus upon which they fondly hope to ride into power--ever carefully considered the question in all its bearings; studied it from a national, sectional or even individual standpoint. Questions upon which Adam Smith and Auguste Compte, Jefferson and Hamilton disagreed, are settled by the dicta of a partisan convention--composed chiefly of political hacks and irresponsible hoodlums--with less trouble than a colored wench selects a calico gown.

The American people, as P. T. Barnum long ago pointed out, have a weakness for humbugs. They are the natural prey of the charlatan, and in nothing more so than in matters political. Despite their boasted intelligence, they will follow with a trust that partakes of the pathetic the mountebank who can perform the most sleight-of-hand tricks, the demagogue who can make the most noise. They think, but are too busy or indifferent to think deeply, to reason closely. They "jump at conclusions," assert their correctness stubbornly and prove the courage of their convictions by their ballots. They demonstrate their "independence" by choosing their political fetich, their confidence in the infallibility of their judgment by worshiping it blindly. Herein lies the chief danger--danger that the American workingman will follow this or that ignus fatuus, hoping thereby to find a shorter northwest passage to impossible spice islands, until poverty has degraded him from a self-respecting sovereign into a volcanic sans culotte; until he loses hope of bettering his condition by whereases, resolutions, trades-unions, acts of Congress, etc., and, like another blind and desperate Samson, lays his brawny hands upon the pillars of the temple and pulls it down about his ears.

* * * THE WOMAN THOU GAVEST ME.

Now that the clarion voice of the reformer is heard in the land, demanding for woman all the rights and privileges enjoyed by the sterner sex, perhaps it would be well to ask the fair client to come into court and establish that "natural equality" so vigorously claimed for her, as well as the fact, if fact it be, that she is being "wronged" and "cruelly oppressed" by the tyrant man.

Is it possible that the dear creature has, for some thousands of years, been robbed of her birthright and relegated to an inferior position in matters mundane simply because her biceps are not so large as those of her big brother, and she has no warlike whiskers?

As her attorneys in the suit to try title to this world's wardship clamor for truth without trimmings, and rest their case upon "principles of justice" untainted by prescription or praemunire, suppose we grant their prayer and proceed to the consideration of their cause unhandicapped by chivalric sentiment.

That the greater intelligence should control the lesser must be conceded. To deny it would be to deny man's right to the life and labor of inferior animals, to question God's authority to govern man or beast. If the experience of several thousand years may be admitted in evidence the subserviency of the minor to the major intelligence is an immutable law of nature. Only equal minds can be accorded equal authority without doing violence to this law.

Is woman man's intellectual peer, entitled to share equally with him the wardship of this world? The simple fact that for thousands of years man has been able to hold her in that "state of subjection" of which her attorneys so bitterly complain, is sufficient answer to this question,--is proof positive that he is as much her superior mentally as physically. This sounds unchivalrous, but she will please remember that her attorneys insist that this cause be tried solely upon its merits. Brute force does not rule the world. If it did the lion or the elephant would be creation's lord, and the Ethiop and the red Indian drive the Caucasian into the waste places of the earth or reduce him to slavery. Knowledge is power; brain not brawn is master throughout the world. Had all Eve's fair daughters been blessed with more than masculine strength their position would have been practically the same. They would have sung lullabies to the little ones, adorned themselves, and dreamed of love and love's conquests while their brothers founded empires, subdued the forces of nature and measured the stars.

And both sexes would have been well content, as they have ever been, despite the protests of self-constituted "reformers" of the order established by the Infinite. Man is creation's lord de facto and de jure. The immutable laws of nature make his sovereignty both a privilege and a duty. The voice of prophecy proclaims him king; he wears his crown by Divine ordination and right of conquest. Woman was created to be "an help-meet unto man," not his co-ruler. It matters not whether Genesis be fact or fiction; that such was her destiny she has proven by fulfilling it.

Whatever "rights and privileges" she enjoys must be man's free gift. Man asserts his position; woman can but ask to share the fruits of his victories. These he can divide with her; but he could not if he would, share with her his sovereignty, his power, because he cannot endow her with his judgment, his mental vigor, his courage and enterprise. Whether he wills it or not, man must perforce remain the master of the world, God's sole viceregent on this earth.

In very few civilized countries does man manifest much opposition to the enfranchisement of woman. Many favor it heartily, and those who object do so chiefly on the ground that woman does not want it. Let a majority of the women in any state of the American Union ask enfranchisement and it will be accorded them. Let them unite in demanding any particular legislation and it will be enacted. Let them ask any possible thing whatsoever of their husbands and brothers and it will not be denied them.

Woman does not demand the ballot, because her interest centers in her home rather than her country; because she shrinks from responsibility; because she knows that she may safely trust her destiny to those who would die for her.

Paradoxical as it may appear, woman is at once the subject and the sovereign of man, his inferior and superior, mentally and physically. His inferior in strength she is his superior in beauty. Woman is the paragon of physical perfection. It is small wonder that the simple people of bygone days believed that gods and angels became enamored of the daughters of men and left heaven to bask in their sunny smiles. The mental differences of the sexes correlate with the physical. Woman's mind is not so comprehensive, her intellect not so strong as that of man, but it is of finer texture. What it lacks in vigor it gains in subtility. If the mind of man is a Corliss engine, throbbing with resistless strength and energy, that of woman is a Geneva watch, by which the mightier machine is regulated. Occasionally a woman enters the field of masculine endeavor and keeps pace with the strongest; but such cases are rare exceptions. The women who have really taken high rank in art or literature may be counted on the fingers of one hand, and those who have achieved anything remarkable in the field of invention, science or government, upon the fingers of the other.

"It is not good that man should be alone;" and it would not be did he, like Cadmus' soldiers, spring full grown from the earth. Man is the brain, woman the heart of the human race. She is the color and fragrance of the flower, the bright bow in the black o'erhanging firmament of life, the sweet chord that makes complete the human diapason.

If woman is kept in a "state of subjection," as those who are trying to drag her into court and force her to file a bill of grievances against her companion assert, she is certainly the proudest of earthly subjects. If she is a "slave" she is bound with chains of her own forging and wears them because she wills it. In obeying she rules, in serving she leads captive her captor. Really she is the autocrat of earth, the power behind the throne, the ruler of those who rule.

In all life's battles woman's love is man's chief incentive, his greatest guerdon of victory. For woman he bares his bosom to every peril, braves every danger. It is for her that he subdues the elements and searches out the hidden treasures of earth; for her that he measures the stars and determines the procession of the planets, for her that he fills the world with art and luxury,--for her that he is a creative god, rather than a destructive demon.

Woman is with us but not of us. She is in very truth "but little lower than the angels," and we should not drag her down to our level under pretense of lifting her to greater heights. Give to her every possible advantage; open to her every calling and profession that she cares to enter; accord her all she asks, not grudgingly but cheerfully; but do not force upon her "rights" she does not want, duties she would shun, and which that beneficent God, who gave her to us to civilize and humanize us, destined for our own strong hands.

* * * CHRIST COMES TO TEXAS.

AND CALLS ON THE ICONOCLAST.

The editor was reading a report of the regular meeting of the Dallas Pastors' Association, at which the Second Coming of Christ was learnedly considered. Dr. Seasholes declared that all good people will rise into the air, like so many larks, to meet the Lord and conduct him to earth--with flying banners and a brass-band, I suppose-- where he will reign a thousand years. At the conclusion of this felicitous period Satan is to be loosed for a little season, and after he has pawed up the gravel with his long toe-nails and given us a preliminary touch of Purgatory, we are to have the genuine pyrotechnics. Some of the divines did not agree with the spectacular ceremonies arranged by Dr. Seasholes for the Second Coming; but he seems determined to carry out his program or enjoin the procession. The editor was musing on this remarkable controversy and wondering, in a vague, tired way, why the fool-killer did not take a pot-shot at the Dallas Pastors' Association, when there came a gentle rap at his door and a strange figure stood before him. It was that of a man of perhaps three-and-thirty years, barefoot, bareheaded and clothed in a single garment, much worn and sadly soiled.

"Peace to this house," he said, in a voice soft and sweet as that of a well-bred woman. "A cup of cold water, I pray you." "Water? Cert. Steer yourself against the cooler over there. You look above the Weary Willie business. Sit down until I find a jumping-off place in this article on 'The Monetary Situation,' and perhaps I can fish up a stray quarter that's dodged the foreign mission fund." He bowed his thanks and sank wearily into the proffered seat. In five minutes he was sleeping softly, and the editor made a careful study of his face. It was of the Jewish type, strong but tender. The beard was glistening black and had evidently never been to the barber's, while a shock of unkempt hair, burned by the sun, hung around his shoulders like the mane of a lion.

"Hello," said the business manager, as he helped himself to the editor's plug tobacco; "another of your Bohemian friends? Some fellow who's tramping around the world on a wager of 'steen million dollars? Good face, but a bath wouldn't hurt him." The stranger roused himself and the B. M. continued: "Neighbor, we were just about to crack a bottle of beer. Have you any conscientious scruples about joining us?" He winked at the bookkeeper, and the stranger bowed his thanks, accepted the amber fluid, scrutinized it curiously and drank it off with evident relish.

"That is very refreshing," he commented as he wiped the foam from his black beard with his sleeve. "Will it intoxicate?"

He was informed that if taken on the allopathic plan it would make one drunk some, but not the wild-eyed, murderons mania peculiar to Prohibition booze. He declined a second glass, saying gently, "We should not abuse the good things of life." The bookkeeper was so startled that he missed his face with a pint cup, and the mailing clerk did up a package of hymn books for a dealer who wanted "Potiphar's Wife." But the stranger was evidently unconscious that he had forever queered himself with the Bohemian Club. He took a dry crust from a leathern wallet, and, blessing it, offered a portion to the editor.

"Jesus Christ! You don't eat that, do you?"

The visitor rose, a startled look on his face.

"You know me, then? Yes, it is I--Jesus of Nazareth. I have walked the earth an entire year, clad as I was eighteen centuries ago, living as I did then, mingling with those called by my name, conversing with those who profess to teach my doctrine, and none knew me. Nay more: They sometimes spurned me from their doors, and even delivered me to the minions of Caesar as a vagabond. You look incredulous. Behold the nail-prints in my hands and feet, the spear wound in my side, the scars made by the crown of thorns upon my brow."

"But I thought your second coming would be in power and glory, and all the righteous would rise up into the atmosphere to meet you and show you a soft spot to 'light. Dr. Seasholes says so, and if he doesn't know, who does?"

"I attended the discussion by the Dallas Pastors' Association," he said wearily. "They permitted me to sweep out the room and stand down in the hall. It may appear incredible; but there are just a few things that the Dallas Pastors' Association doesn't know. Of course you couldn't make those gentlemen believe it; but it is a lamentable fact. The world is young; it must run its course. Our Heavenly Father did not create it as the Chinese make crackers--just to hear it pop. Not until its power to produce and nourish life is exhausted will the end be. Your poet, Campbell, was a true prophet. The sun itself must die, and not until that mighty source of light and heat becomes a flickering lamp, will those fateful words be spoken. 'Time was, but time shall be no more.' I am not come as yet to judge the world, but to mingle once again with the sons of men, and observe how they keep my laws."

An expression of unutterable sadness stole into his face and he sat a long time silent.

"I have suffered and sacrificed much for this people," he said at length, as though speaking to himself, "and it has borne so little fruit. The world misunderstood me. The church planted by toil and nurtured with my blood has split up into hundreds of warring factions, despite my warning that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Nor has it stood--the Temple of Zion is a ruin, the habitation of sanctified owls and theological bats. The army of Israel is striving in its camp, tribe against tribe, or wandering desolate in the desert while the legions of Lucifer overrun the land. Here and there, among the simple poor, I find traces of the truths I taught--here and there a heart that is a holy temple in which abide Faith, Hope and Charity; but the shepherds do not keep my sheep."