Chapter III: Part 3

There is a dignity about public service which private service somehow does not grant. Our legislators are public servants. When we consider the difficulty inherent in serving some one person, we can understand the sacrifice that our public servants make in the multiplied duty of serving the many.

I once told my cook that she ought to be very proud to be a servant. “All our great men are servants,” I assured her. Thereupon she called me a fool, and took other service. She served me at last by giving me some occupation for my alleged thoughts. The burden of my cogitations is to discover how she found me out.

The public servant is he who protects us from all evil. He saves us from the vicious elements in society.

His work is hard on the brain, and therefore he must have an abundance of material things to compensate the great drain on his system. He loves to serve the public. So much so indeed, that he is inclined to be jealous of the like service being rendered by any other person than himself. He often spends more than one-half of the emoluments of his job in order to keep from being supplanted by some other servant who would dearly love to serve the public.

The public servant is often a glittering and conspicuous success as a financier. Without any special training in finance, before assuming the duties and responsibilities of being a public servant, he early discovers methods whereby it is possible for him to save, during his incumbency, anywhere from 97 per cent to 2,463 per cent of his salary. These mathematics are not taught by the laborers who teach young children, but the results of that system of financiering are held up to the tender and plastic mind of childhood as worthy of all emulation, and indicative of great merit.

The labor of being a public servant may be summed up as being good business and scintillant patriotism. A fool might be pardoned for considering it as patriotic business.

There be other laborers, too, who sit astride the necks of the lower classes. All of them have no greater desire than to benefit the worker who works, but they are not willing to dismount. And the worker who works and carries his additional burden seems disposed to feel a vague sort of pride in being a part of the system whereby he can sustain the entire load of society. The merit, however, is not so much his as that of the masterly trainers who keep him contented with his lot. When we see a particularly well-trained dog we give our admiration to the trainer--not to the dog.

Great is Democracy! Under its palladium even the humblest of us has a voice. We are permitted to vote. We elect our public servants. Then we permit our good masters to select a committee to watch our appointees. Then we have a voters’ league to keep an eye on the committee. Then we have a society to watch the voters’ league. And so ad infinitum.

An English writer would not even deprive his poultry of the franchise. He tells us that when he kills a hen for his dinner he always consults the fowl as to her preference in the matter of her cooking. If she is too stolid (as so many of our voters are) to signify her preference, of course he goes ahead in his own way. She has had her day at the polls, and having failed to exercise her privilege, has practically abandoned her rights. Should the chicken protest against being plucked, that would be anarchy, and she would then suffer death as a penalty.

Our public servants manipulate the taxing power very much as my English friend wields his cleaver on chicken-killing day. Plucking is good for chickens, and taxing is good for the producers of commodities.

A fire insurance company protects us from loss by fire; an accident insurance company from loss by accident; a life insurance company from monetary loss by death.

But government is a combine. All rights are taken under its wings and protected. The charge is small, and is collected whether you agree or not. You pay it when you buy the things you need. They are getting the trading-stamps instead of you, and for that you get so much protection that it is almost incomprehensible.

For the payment of a certain sum, an accident, life, and burglar insurance company will pay you the amount insured on your furnishing the evidence that you sustained the loss against which they insured you.

How different it is with government. The government charges you so much for being protected from all aggressions, and when they have failed to protect, and you have been aggressed, there are more fees which you pay, by way of expense of trying the aggressor, and if the aggressor has been proven guilty (which means that the government has not kept its contract to protect you) there is another cost to you to defray the expense of feeding and clothing the aggressor.

If a person would run an insurance company on that basis, how insured would the insured ones be?

Altogether we should be very proud of our Democracy.

PRESSING HIS TROUSERS

It is a great privilege to be civilized. Uncivilized people have too little regard for what their neighbors think; although there is just the possibility that uncivilized neighbors are not disposed to be censorious.

Two people, in civilization, who become enamoured of each other and have the prompting to rear a family, must first consult the neighborhood and secure the sanction of some authority under proper and altogether necessary forms or incantations.

Should they discover that they were mistaken in the strength of the attachment which brought them together, they can again go to the neighborhood with their grievances, and by subjecting their differences to other formula, they may be relieved of the burden of continuing an untenable relation.

Uncivilized people would regard so intimate a relation as concerning only the contracting parties themselves. Their point of view is warranted by their state of uncivilizedness.

The ethics of civilization demand that we be thoroughly unselfish in such matters. If we find that our marriage contracts have involved us in misery, we should bear up under the affliction. It is but little to suffer for the good of civilization. The Tolstoian doctrine of non-resistance should serve well in a divorce court. If I can convince a court that I am dead in love with my husband I can get a decree within an hour. If it becomes known that I am miserably unhappy with my spouse, the court will deny me relief. If you analyze it critically you will see the wisdom of that. Why should people separate merely because they cannot agree? Disagreement is a good reason for them to keep on living together. Uncivilized people would separate when harmony ceases, but the ethics of civilized people is to be unselfish, and the more misery you have the larger the duty implied.

A Chicago man applied for a divorce, and his petition set forth the specification that “tootsie wootsie” failed to perform her wifely functions, and refused to do her bounden duty in not pressing “hubby’s trousers.”

The club women of Chicago have seldom enjoyed a more enticing subject. And I thought that I, too, would take a hand in this discussion, and figure out in my own way whether it be indeed a woman’s duty to press her husband’s trousers. I picked up Webster’s unabridged dictionary to find what duty was, and I saw that he divided it into three classes, natural, social, and legal.

A man’s obligation to nature is called his natural duty; his obligation to society is his moral duty; his compliance with the law is his legal duty.

Angels may well fear to tread upon the sacred ground pre-empted by the definition-makers. I am a fool, and have no fear about rushing into the fray, and declaring that when Webster does not agree with me, then Noah is wrong, and that there is no other duty than legal duty. We look in vain for the germ of duty in nature. It is not the duty of the lightning to flash; it just flashes. It is not the duty of the bird to sing; it sings. It is not the duty of the rose to emit perfume; nor of the dunghill to--but why go into unsavory crannies, though nature lead the way? Nor is there any evidence of moral duty anywhere on the mental horizon. There is only Love that prompts us, and wherever anything is done that is not done by love it is done by hypocrisy. Surely duty is not hypocrisy--or am I foolish in saying this? If one be honest only from a sense of duty, how honest is he?

But legal duty is a “sure-enough” concept. We may obey our parents because we honor them. He is a coward who obeys from fear. Hence obedience yielded from any other sense than that of love is cowardice, not duty. Shall we exalt cowardice? Being a fool I would advise against that course. What say you, O ye wise? Duty means to do something you don’t like to do, while obedience to nature is one of joy, besides giving you health, pleasure, and happiness. Nature will always give you the desire to fulfil the obligation she imposes upon you. Disobey nature and she will punish you with ill health and misery. Society will thank you for complying with its moral obligations. If you are the cause of stopping a runaway horse, thereby preventing an accident; if you save a drowning person, or in any manner become active in averting danger to others, you become a hero. You have the praise of the public. Society will shun and look down upon you if you have not the welfare of others at heart. Rewards for obedience and punishment for disobedience are the methods by which life imposes its obligation on the individual.

Now, our legal duty is to obey the laws. There is no direct reward for obedience to legal behests, but there is punishment for disobedience, if one be not careful. Hence the first duty of the citizen is to beware lest he be caught undutifully attitudinizing toward the law of the land. There are some laws so adjusted that there is a direct reward for conformity. As for instance, those enactments that provide that one-half the penalty be awarded the informer. A fool might wish that the penalty in all such cases were lashes on the bare back, in order that the informer might be justly rewarded. However, it is not for the fool to make laws. Then there are extra rewards for officers of the law to perform so disagreeable a “duty” as to hang or electrocute the condemned. There is here a sort of confession that society is requiring from an officer a service which itself condemns, and soothes the conscience of the functionary with some thirty pieces of silver. It is against the natural feeling of man to kill, maim, or injure his fellows, and therefore he must be paid for his act in some more substantial manner than the mere recognition of duty done. And so, in greater or lesser degree, all these things which are done from a sense of duty are in conflict with the natural and moral perceptions of man. Any other compliance with “good citizenship” does not hinge upon the duty spook at all. A mother nurses her child, not because she has to, but because she loves to. If you dislike to take a fool’s dictum for this, analyze for yourself, and see where it leads you. Hence the whole scheme of society is being sustained by an artificial prop. It is the province of the school and church to keep this prop continually braced. Obedience to the law is the surface cry of these institutions. They teach it, preach it, insist upon it, yet all the cajolery and blandishments employed are not sufficient without the element of force. And with all the force that is exerted to sustain the laws, they are violated continually. There is no one, however much inoculated with the duty spook, who does not violate some law some of the time, though perhaps it cannot be said that any one violates all the law all the time. Yet the more conscious we are of disobedience to existing laws, the more new laws we pile upon our statute books to be broken.

Pressing a husband’s trousers does not appear to be a natural duty. If it be a natural pleasure, then the reward for doing the pressing is the pleasure that follows the operation. The woman in the case cited seemingly derived no pleasure from pressing the trousers of her lord and master. Hence nature had no voice in the case. Nor could such a service be called a moral duty, inasmuch as there is nowhere a moral code whereby one could be adjudged immoral by refraining from applying the pressure of a hot iron to hubby’s “pants.” Indeed, it may be said that the custom is one more honored in the breeches than in the trousers. But that is the comment of a fool, and need not be seriously considered. I am ostracized for being a fool, but I have never yet heard of a woman being ostracized for omitting to press her husband’s trousers, nor, on the other hand, have I ever heard a woman praised for faithful attention to the requirements of her husband’s bifurcated garments. Even at funerals of noble women have I never heard (and generally at that time all the good deeds, big or little, are said in her favor) the funeral orator say, “Here lies a noble woman who never missed a day without pressing her husband’s trousers.”

While there is a question of legal duty, no penalty seems to have been prescribed for non-observance, and no legal reward for compliance. Perhaps if after all it were a legal duty, you would find that the wife of each public functionary would be setting a lofty example by being photographed at the ironing-board and having a daily levee at pressing time. And by not doing it, it is plainly to be seen, that it is not a legal duty. While it is neither natural, moral, nor legal to press husband’s pants, yet if your husband be a tailor, and you an industrious woman, you will press pants, sew buttons, and do anything to help along.

POTATOES

By means of certain noises, such as hisses and grunts, producing in combination various sounds, created by manipulations of the muscles of mouth, jaws, lips, throat, and tongue, thoughts are communicated among mankind. Before language was well developed there must have occurred many oddities of expression. Doubtless numerous misunderstandings resulted by reason of different words being used for names of one and the same object. But as the tailless varieties of bipeds adopted lingual methods of communication, certain sound-tags have at last come to stand for definite material objects, thoughts, and feelings. Thus words have meaning. Vocal labels which express whole ideas are not easily misunderstood. When I use the word potato, I make a mental image of a succulent tuber, white inside, and with a surface of brown, red, or gray; a most convenient adjunct to roast beef. I convey to the listener a conception in all respects similar to my own, he knowing that I refer to a certain food product which grows underground. Thus, without further description, a potato is known as a potato.

Acts are likewise named. We speak of a robber, a thief, a genius, and a prostitute, and a whole idea is conveyed by each of these terms, and quite a definite one. But the irregular tags which we attach to many things--tags which convey an uncertain, double, or shifting meaning--are most puzzling, and therefore remain quite outside of my comprehension. The brain-fagging puzzle is the irregular label which stands for effect, and carries an equivocal meaning with it;--own cousin to the vessel that has a false bottom.

When I use the word thief I do not have in mind a general term which applies to all persons that secretly appropriate property belonging to another, for if one steals an overcoat and people know that he has an overcoat at home and so has no need of another (and also that he has the price to get himself an overcoat if he wishes), he cannot then be called a thief; he is a kleptomaniac, which is a joke on stealing. The word thief is used and applied only to the person who steals an overcoat because he is sorely in need of one, or he needs the money which the overcoat would bring him in the pawnshop. This man is a thief!

The term “thief,” besides explaining the act, carries with it also a certain reproach. On the other hand, when I say “he made a good bargain,” I mean that, while the fellow took the property of another like the thief did, his act is deserving of praise; and a thief is not a thief. When I call a man a robber, I am thinking of one who takes property by brute force--a term which carries with it an odor of ill-repute; a man to be avoided. But when I speak of some robbers I call them soldiers. They are patriots who save the country--whose career is one of conquest; and robbers are not robbers. The term murder signifies the taking of the life of one human being by another or others, and there is conveyed an idea of violence, cruelty, and disgrace. But the infliction of capital punishment, which is also taking the life of another may elicit my approval; and thus murder is not murder.

The term prostitution implies a temporary, loveless, but pecuniary relationship between man and woman, and it has disgraceful implications; but I justify the pride of a woman who has made a good catch; her act is like the other, but meets with my approval; and a prostitute is not a prostitute. A fight is looked upon as an unmanly and disgraceful proceeding, and one who will strike another with his fists is described as being low; but let a thousand men fight with another thousand, the act is called war, and I justify and praise it; for a fight is no longer a fight. When a stronger person hits a weaker we call it a cowardly act, and it is condemned; still a judge on the bench said that should a man whip his wife, a mother her daughter, a teacher her pupil, it is called discipline. Thus it is easy to be seen that a potato is not always a potato after all, no matter how clearly the word potato signifies the staying powers of the Irish stomach; no matter how plainly the word calls to mind the irregular-shaped and various-sized murphies which the farmer digs, sacks, and takes to market.

Being what I am, I do not pretend to know when a potato is not a potato, but I do know when a potato is a potato, and I know that I know it. As an ignoramus then, I should like to be informed why it is that an untruth is sometimes in plain English called a lie, and at other times a piece of diplomacy; why should scandal passing from mouth to mouth be called harmful gossip, and immediately it appears in a daily paper is dignified by the name of news; why playing upon green cloth is called gambling, while playing upon the susceptibilities of financial lambs, who bleat on the floor of a chamber of commerce, is called speculation. I am waiting for a man to arise who can explain to me the difference between a libertine and a devil; who can tell me why a beer-soaked laborer is described as being drunk, and a champagne-saturated baron is spoken of as being exhilarated. Again, who can make as plain as day the difference between hypocrisy and the keeping up of appearances; or between a stuck-up woman and one having a proud, haughty bearing. The latter I am sure could make clear to me when a potato is not a potato. It is a fool’s privilege to ask questions, and the wise may answer them in terms the scoffer cannot understand.

Mary goes into symbolical gustatory raptures over beef steak and green onions, while she does not care a single kitchen whiff for the names with which these solid dainties have been labeled. The real joy lies in the juicy steak and the succulent green onions which she masticates so vigorously. Had our ape-like progenitors of the long ago named the juicy steak and green onions loneliness and barrenness respectively, Mary would have gone into raptures just as readily. She would have ruminated the loneliness and barrenness of it all, while “darning” all thoughts of steak and onions!

If “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” is there any explanation to be had of the case in hand? Though if a rose, called a skunk-cabbage, would smell as sweet, would a skunk-cabbage, though called a rose, cease to present its pungent challenge to our olfactories? If we were all skunk-cabbages would we delight in enjoying our own odors? Of one thing only am I sure in this connection, that a potato is a potato--sometimes.

BUZZ-SAWS, SHORTCAKE, AND RIGHTS

To a man and his wife a child was born. As they were legally married, I suppose the child had a right to be born. The infant had a head and all the members which belong to a well-regulated head. It had two legs, and each leg had a foot; on each foot there were five toes. It also had two arms with hands attached to them, and each hand had five fingers. I suppose he had a right to everything he had.

The parents named the boy Eugene McCaren Bumphrey, and I cannot see why they should not have the right to name him Bumphrey, or any other name, if they had so chosen.

No wise man will deny that Eugene had the right to life, to his name, and to his fingers.

Nevertheless when in the course of time he went to work, Eugene lost three fingers off his right hand while employed at the saw-mill. He didn’t know much about the taking ways of a circular saw when its buzz is in active business.

The wise men have not yet informed us whether, in taking Eugene’s fingers, the saw also took his right to the fingers. Now, if the saw took the fingers and left Eugene the right, what good is the right to Eugene? He cannot manipulate the right in such a way as to make it serve in the stead of the missing digits. If, on the other hand (although really the left hand has nothing to do with the case), the saw, in taking the fingers took the rights also, what use can the saw make of the rights to Eugene’s fingers?

Another question for the wise to decide is (that same saw having at various times dismembered other people), when in the course of its human acquirements it will have accumulated flesh of sufficient variety that it will have in the aggregation a whole human being, has it, or has it not, also acquired the right of a whole human being, namely, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and if it did, then what particular human being will come within the purview of these joint (if for a time disjointed) rights?

The wise man may not be able to point out the individual who would in such fashion become the Slave of the Saw, but we must surely insist that the saw’s right is not that which we have in the Declaration of Independence, and is called natural rights, but it acquired its rights by conquest. That may be; but where did Eugene get his rights to his fingers in the first place? And do we by conquest acquire not only the thing we capture, but the rights that it is claimed go with the acquisition?

It must be fine to be wise enough to solve such a riddle, yet there are many who do it off-hand, or, as in this case, off-finger.

We have been assured by the abnormally wise that each of us has the right to life. In that case he who takes his brother’s life is justified, for he cannot take that life dissociated from the rights that go with it, and if he has taken the right along with the life, then he has a right to take it.

A mere fool has life, and does not require any right to life so long as life remains in him. And what in the name of all that is wise will any one do with the right to live when he has not life to live with?

If a fool is overboard and striving to keep afloat until help arrives, he is concerned about preserving his life, and has neither time nor strength in such a contingency to be striving to save his right to live. Quite otherwise with the wise man. He will not trouble to save his life at all. His sole purpose will be to preserve his right to life, and he will insist on it even as he gasps his last gasp.

Really I cannot muster up a very high regard for the right to life after one has become a “demnition moist body.”

Recently some of our wisest insisted on a “sane” celebration of Independence Day. By this they mean that fewer firecrackers should be exploded. Of course they will sneer at a fool who suggests that it were the part of sanity to omit from the program of that holiday our raucous insistence on the doctrine of natural rights. We won no rights from Great Britain when we set up national housekeeping on our own hook. The mother country had none that we could win. We did not fight our Revolutionary War in order to gain any rights. Our revolt was a denial of rights. We denied that King George had any of the rights cited in our catalogue of denials called our Declaration of Independence.

There is a most important difference between our denial of the right of the other fellow to aggress, and our putting a chip on our own shoulder, calling it by the name of “rights” in order to terrify the invader.

When I was down at the farm last year, my uncle brought in some peaches on Saturday night. My cousin and I ate them, not knowing that they were especially consecrated to the purpose of Sunday peach shortcake. Uncle was wroth when he learned that his plans had been frustrated, as he is “powerful fond o’ shortcake.” He said that he had planted “them peaches, and had the right to say what was to be done with ’em, and didn’t like the idea of a passel of silly gals that oughter have better sense nebbin’ in.” He had all the rights after we had devoured his peaches that he had ever had, and I never thought to ask him why he did not have Jane make a shortcake of the rights, for I know we did not eat any when we feasted on his peaches.

When the wise speak of the non-interference with speech, press, assembly, and the like, they refer to these liberties as rights. Yet the thought of so thinking of them would never have occurred to any one had no invasion of these liberties ever been undertaken under the name of “rights.”

Free speech and kindred liberties are not dependent on the doctrine of rights, but, on the contrary, are assailed only in that name. We are on firm ground when we demand to be shown by what right our liberties are abridged. The invader cannot show us how his rights to invade were established, or whence derived. We are secure against his claim of rights by denying them. Once we acquiesce in his plea, and oppose it by asserting contrary rights, we may in turn be called upon to show the origin of the rights we claim, and I warrant even the wisest of us will stumble at that task.

Does the bird need any declaration of her rights to fly? I know she needs wings, and if I should pluck one of the wings she would then be unable to fly. But should our wise legislative assembly declare that a bird has no right to fly, will that cause her wings to wither, or what will happen to her?

A fool does not claim the right to laugh at the wise. It is enough to know that the wise have no rights against being the subjects of the laughter of fools.

IN WONDERLAND

In the pottery, by the wheel sits the potter, molding pots from the clay which is before him. It is a work of pleasure with him, for, after admiring the pots for a while, he puts them back in the clay pile to be reshaped into new pots. How marvelously the potter works the unending variety of the pots. The pots are alive; they never are at a standstill--always on the go; they are not to-day what they were yesterday, and to-morrow they will be again different.

Life, the potter, is an artist. He molds his pots in various shapes and endless designs. I understand that he is always at work. We have no certain knowledge when he began, neither do we know when he will end. The designs are infinite, from the common thistle to the most delicate flower; from the tiniest blade of grass to the most majestic oak. The marvelous ways of life, the unending change in all his creation, challenges attention. From the smallest to the largest works of art in this workshop of life a constant change goes on. And how deftly, too, the constant waste is repaired--the steady drain compensated. There is not much difficulty in the absorption and repair of waste by units which move not from place to place. The rain and sunshine comes to the plant to assist in its repair; if those be denied, it withers and decays. Some forms of vegetation apparently assist themselves; many plants lift their heads to the sun, others set wiles to ensnare; some decoy by fragrant perfumes, others by pleasant juices. Their needs are satisfied by the mere lifting of their heads and the absorption of a few insects.

In the animal world the organic units move from place to place and the change is more apparent. Each comes into being small and weak, but complete. It gathers and absorbs to itself parts of other organisms till it reaches perfectness, then dies. It dissolves itself to be absorbed by others. In the animal, from the tiniest amœba to the most complicated form, the repair requires effort and exertion. The more complex an organism the greater the effort required of it. A worm is satisfied to eat of the earth on the spot where it is. Birds have to travel miles in order to get away from climatic conditions. The more complex the organism the more it needs to assert itself. When we come to man, the most complicated animal of them all, his conscious effort is required in repairing his waste.

Scientists tell us that by waste and absorption we have new bodies every seven years; that is, in seven years the old body is wasted away, but by constant repair--the building up of new tissues--new bodies are created.

Man needs air, sunshine, water, food, and shelter. Air and sunshine are around about him; for food, water, clothing, and shelter his exertion against nature is ceaseless. He must be active, he must be creative, to satisfy his constant needs. His capital to start on is a head, hands, and feet. The head plans, the feet take him to the place of action, and with the hands he makes tools and executes and carries out the ideas formulated by the brain. He prepares his food, shelter, clothing, and means of locomotion. Any defect in either of these natural tools renders him unable to satisfy his wants. Unless charitably inclined comrades of his species provide for the idiot, the cripple, the paralytic, and repair the waste for them, they must perish.

Life, therefore, means work, and the joy of work is the joy of life. We see this in animal and human development. To be active, to create, to meet the constant need--these are titles to survival. Nevertheless, there is a tendency on the part of the more active to be kindly to the laggard. Even the drone is tolerated long before he is driven from the hive. Life consists in repairing, in compensating, for the inevitable waste. Death is the result of neglect.

And ruminating thus I fell asleep, and dreamed a dream of Wonderland. There is no law, as yet, against dreaming. The nihilist may dream in Russia without awaking in Siberia. The most pious Methodist may dream of dancing without being in danger of the council, and he may escape brimstone and other satanic chemicals if his dream shift from the waxed floor to the poker table. William Morris dreamed a dream of anarchic communism and labeled it “News from Nowhere.” Perhaps he derived more real pleasure from the dream than he could have realized from a “coming true” of the filmy fabric of his fatigue.

Professor Triggs dreamed that he was in a city of comrades. He dreamed a little too loud and woke Charlie Hutchinson, who in turn woke the professor.

In my dream of Wonderland, I seemed to be surrounded by the kindliest and most charitable beings that I had ever known. I saw able-bodied and alert-witted men and women who accepted charity as though it were their due. They did nothing for themselves nor for others, yet their every want and need was gratified by the dear people of Wonderland.

The dolers of this charity kept for themselves barely enough to repair their own waste. Such beautiful self-immolation I had never seen. I saw the toilers working on the farms, cultivating grain that was being fed to fatten the cattle designed for the food of the beneficiaries of their charitable efforts. Others were building slaughter-houses, and others again were converting the live cattle into porterhouse and tenderloin, and still others were preparing these dainty cuts for the table of the recipients of this charity. And the latter required savory and piquant sauces of mushrooms and capers and the like, in order that their appetites might be properly aroused and stimulated. The workers, less dainty, needed none of these artful aids to appetite; for the bones and gristle and entrails they reserved for themselves.

In my vision of Wonderland I saw others endangering their lives in quarries, cutting out marble to ornament the beautiful mansions which the charitable were building for their wards. Many were content to be cooped up in stuffy factories manufacturing beautiful rugs and carpets to be enjoyed by the helpless ones for whom they were serving. I saw earnest men designing artistic furniture and inlaid musical instruments to adorn the elegant mansions of the beneficiaries of all this charitable endeavor. And the wives of the toilers were in the kitchen and their sisters in the laundry and their children in the shops, all striving to relieve the slightest need of the helpless class.

The workers themselves stole away to rest in cramped and poorly furnished garrets, damp basements, or under sidewalks.

The wards of charity were never beaten or ill-used. No harsh words were spoken to them, nor were they reproached for their dependent condition. In this dreamland the charity wards were not set to work on the street nor sent to soup-houses for food, as is the case in the wideawake world. Instead, they were furnished fine carriages, drawn by spirited horses, while the donors of charity sat in livery. These accommodating dream-people were very considerate, responding to each nod and beck of their wards.

Believe me, Wonderland is the ideal place. Nowhere have I seen self-sacrifice and brotherly love exemplified in such perfection.

A loud voice woke me from my beautiful dream. It was the landlord, demanding the rent.

INVENTORY

The term inventory is readily understood when used in commerce by persons who are engaged in some manner with the supply of the satisfaction of man’s desire. If your industries figure into the millions, or if you are a clerk selling calico; if you are spending an allowance, or are a housekeeper depending on your husband’s or children’s wages, you take stock. The method and time of taking stock varies. In vast industrial or commercial enterprises it is not so frequent as with the man of meager resources. The large commercial dividend-paying houses ought to take stock before they declare dividends. If they don’t take inventory of the assets and the liabilities, they take inventory of the stockholders. The ones who can be easily frozen out of their stock considered as assets, the ones who cannot are marked as liabilities, for they have to be taken along in the combine when reorganization takes place.

The man who sells his labor at one dollar per day need not work overtime to take stock; he takes stock mentally. “I get six dollars per week; can’t have champagne for dinner; saloon must be my club; free lunch and ‘schooner’ is my bill of fare; one dollar for the week’s lodging, fifty cents to Lizzie or Mary, and by Christmas I will have enough to get me a second-hand suit of clothes and an overcoat.”

Success in business does not depend so much on the largeness of the capital as upon the knowledge of how to use this capital to the best advantage. You find when you take stock what goods sold best, what paper is the best advertising medium, who is your best clerk, what departments you are to enlarge, and from what charity donation you got the most benefit. All must focus to this one point if you wish to succeed--to increase the assets, decrease the liabilities, get as much as possible, give as little as you can, and have the people satisfied.

The taking of stock is not only in what we call legitimate business. Even the criminals have a way of taking stock. The assets are the plunder, the liabilities are the risks. They have to figure as to the price of the policeman on the beat, what a pull with the alderman will cost, and how about straw bail. The robber has his way, the preacher his way; there is not one that can escape it.

It is not business alone that monopolizes stocktaking. In whatever you are trying to accomplish you must take inventory. Success does not depend so much on vastness of resources as on the knowledge of how to use the capital with which to work to the best advantage.

In European countries even the family is inventoried--daughters are the liabilities, sons the assets. With an income per annum of so much, if his children be sons he can live up to the limit; if girls he cannot; he must be saving for the dowry. It is amusing how some try to minimize the liabilities and maximize the assets when they are being inspected.

The young man who calls on a girl with the intention of making an impression upon her, dresses in his best, takes out his Sunday manners, and shows himself off all assets and no liabilities. And she has the parlor and sitting-room furniture dusted, massages and powders her face, sprinkles rose-water on herself. If her cheek or her chin is beautiful she takes pains that he may see them, so a beauty spot is pasted that it may call attention; he cannot fail to notice it. And her language, how choice, and her voice, how different, when her best young man is there than when she scolds the cook. I know a lady who changes her voice automatically whenever a stranger is near. If you see her at that time you see a bundle of assets and no liabilities.

Stocktaking is not monopolized by man. The taking of stock goes on everywhere; it is the most important factor in the world; it is responsible for everything there is.

The forest with its animal life, the sea with its life, the air with its life, owe their being to the taking of stock in the beginning by the molecules and atoms which compose them. The world, with its pains and its pleasures, its happiness and its misery, its arts and its sciences, its progress and its woes, its smiles and its tears, is the net balance of the inventory.

Natural selection is the result of the summing up as to whether you will remain where you are and receive hard knocks, or struggle to get ahead and change your environment to escape the knocks--and you have decided to change--which results in evolution. It began with the mystery of the world. It has been kept up ever since, and will continue unto its very end. Things that came into being are records; and the things brought into being by the things are records. The world is a counting-house, life its book-keeper, and the net balance, man.

The balance is the working capital of the future, and while the present balance cannot be changed, as that is the net results and is final, yet man thinks he can and exerts himself to change the balance, and does change it, but not for himself; the change is for the future. Man is working for the future by working in the now--for what he thinks the present will bring to him. Being uncomfortable where he is, he has to move. His motives in stepping up is the betterment of himself, and in so doing he unconsciously carves the future. Life is a series of stocktaking, from the cradle to the grave; the figures are alive; they are actors, spectators, and critics; some have the privilege of being players, and some are being played upon.

Stocktaking is Judgment Day; then we get the net balance of the past, but do not forget that the lessons for the future are the most important in the day of inventory. If you miscalculate on that day you shall surely “go broke.”

LIFE’S MESSAGE

I have listened to what Life says, and I will tell you a few truths as I have them recorded. Not only have I heard, but I am the voice as well as the sender of the voice. Not only am I the messenger, but I am also bid to be the executor of the message.

Life desires to get acquainted with you and what concerns you, and I would be pleased to have you know Life. As you are a stranger to yourself, therefore I will introduce yourself in me to yourself in me. There are so many of you in me that I can scarcely count you. There is you who have sinned and you who have sainted; you the judge passing sentence on you the convict.

Come, all of you in me, and get acquainted with each other. Really you ought to like each other. Here you, shake hands with yourself! Love each other! As there is really only one of you, and when the different fragments of yourself shall have become united, you shall know Life. Come! I will show you how to get at one with yourself. You are myself, you know; that accounts for my interest in you. You become a unit by sacrificing the different selves in you. Spare nothing. The Christ in you must be sacrificed with the evil in you. I feel your reasoning self say, it is unreasonable that in order to live one must sacrifice self. I cannot help you any, for this is the law. It is reasonable also, and the only unreasonableness about it is your reason.

The smith stands at his forge. Fragments of iron he welds into a bar. Each piece he passes through the cleansing fire before he can amalgamate them into the oneness of the bar. No fragment is spared this ordeal, else it would not unite. The fragment is lost--it has been absorbed by the bar.

Of what service think you was the tiny strength of the isolated fragment? But behold! Its own strength it has sacrificed, but it has inherited the power of the bar. It is performing miracles.

Of what use is your reason in separateness? Reason is a part of you, and though it is important, it is only a small part of Life. You use reason in placing your food into your mouth instead of into your ear, but reason did not make the food, ear, or mouth; nor did it make anything else. Suppose your nose, which is an important factor on your face, should say there is no liver, because it nosed and found it not. Does that prove that the nose knows? When your liver gets in such a state that the nose knows about it, your liver will be out of business as a liver. Yes, sacrifice is the law of Life.

I see the doubter of yourself doubt. You wonder why it is that I should be more favored than you. Why don’t Life talk to me? you say. So you believe that I lie when I say that I hear Life. Well, you are right. I have lied, and it being true proves that what I said is true, and it in turn proves that I did not lie.

The waste which your body throws off, because your body cannot use it, has become a lie, yet is not less truth than the stuff which your body absorbed and is truth. The waste makes the absorption possible. If you would spare your body the effort of separating and discarding the waste and reserving the life force from the food it ate, your body would be spared life, as it is nourished by the very thing you spared it of. Skepticism, lying, evil, falsehood, and pain are a part and necessary to life, just as the waste is a part of the food that has performed its service. And the work of separating the unpleasant from the pleasant, the lies from the truth, the evil from the good, the pain from the pleasure, is the food which life lives upon, and with which it could not dispense. It is true, I have not heard Life. Life does not talk to the ear, thus I could not hear. I saw the voice--No, that is a lie too! I did not see it; I felt it in my heart. No! I did not do that either. Let me see, what did I do? Well, I don’t know what I did do, nor do I know how I came by Life’s message, but I know it is the message of Life, and I am satisfied. Oh, I have it! I know now! I know! I know! Your scrutinizing self has somewhat confused me. What was it you said that you said? Was it not something about Life and a message? Let’s see, you had a message I believe, and were telling about it, and I was skeptical, and did not believe a word you said, and I embarrassed you by asking questions, and you could not explain how you came by Life’s message. Tell us again, please. What did you say Life’s message was? Get together? That’s funny! I am wrong, I know I am. If you look at me like that I shall go mad, I know I will. Let me think! You have me all befuddled. Oh, yes, you were trying to clarify to me the clearness of Life, and the Life which is not to be made clear. That which can be revealed in a vision, and the unvisionable you are trying to visionize. You were trying to reasonize Life, the what that can and the what that cannot be reasoned.

You were trying to cram the universe into a pint measure. Time, love, sacrifice, happiness, wisdom, God, and what not, you were trying to measure with the toy foot-rule of reason which I gave you. You failed! You are discouraged and doubt, and are angry! Now I can see you laugh at me, mock me! I see you pity me. Why should you laugh at me, why should I be pitied? What have I done to be mocked? Say, am I foolish? What! Ha! ha! You did not say anything about Life to me? You say that it was I who was telling you about Life and its message. Really you are mistaken; it could not have been I. Who is “I”? There was once an I, but “I” is no more. It is you who lives in the house where I used to live, and you are so large that it fills me all. There is no room for “I” in there. In the whole of my being I feel you. It laughs when you laugh. It cries with you. It feels your pain. It loafs and sins with you. It saints when you saint; it reasons for you. So you see, it was not I who was talking, because there is no more I; I has moved and has taken apartments in Life. It was you talking to yourself; you laughing at yourself; you mocking yourself; you angry with yourself--and all because you could not explain. And why should you? What is there to explain? Is it then not all clear?

Hark! and listen to what Life says. Life is talking now, talking through all its being, to all of yourself. How the grass smiles at you, and the moon, and the stars, how they look at you! How all the animals, the birds, and everything in Life wishes to get at one with you! And you understand them not; you are listening for a voice to be heard with ears. You are waiting for a vision to be seen with eyes; you are waiting for something to be smelled and sensed.

Life is all around you. It is in you and you find it not. Don’t you know me? It is “I,” Life!

I am everywhere. I have no limitations. In the depths and on the heights, I am! The winds take me in their breezes and in their gales; the sunlight in its shadows and in its brightness. I am in the song of the birds. The lowing of the kine and the roar of the wild beasts, I am. I glisten in the dew, and the spark of the diamond radiates me. The whisperings of the tree and brook, the thunders of the storm, the mighty rush of waters--all are mine.

I am the Life of the forests; the Life of the seas: I am the sea and the forest. I am the Life of the insects: I am the insects. I am the life of the deserts: I am the desert. I am the life of the quadruped and the biped: I am the quadruped and the biped. I am the life of the good and the evil: I am the good and the evil--all are included in me. I am the best of that which is good and the worst of that which is bad--and that is good.

By seeking you will not find me. When you have forsaken me I am with you. Come unto me, you weaklings, and I will give you strength; you weary ones, and I will give you rest. Come you perturbed ones, and I will give you peace. And to you who are little children I will give wisdom. To love and to serve; to let Life live through you, from everlasting to everlasting.

This is the message of Life.

SYMBOLS AND TAGS

There is something the matter! A feeling of uneasiness is within me. What’s up, I wonder? My physician tells me that my liver is in good shape. My heart, he says, beats normal; he examined me carefully, and assured me that there is nothing wrong with me. My health seems to be good, and my appetite is in splendid working order. I have a place to sleep; I could have all the clothes I need; still, I am not very happy. There is something wrong--I know there is. A kind of restless feeling possesses me. I have examined myself all over, and I cannot account for the cause of it within myself, because it is not myself that I feel; I feel others within me; I feel you. There is something radically wrong with me in you, which I feel. What is it that you have not, and for which your heart craves? I feel that you feel lonely; you feel that you are separated from something to which you ought to be united; you are like a wanderer, a stranger you are--even amongst your most intimate. You are hungry for love; you feel depressed because even the ones who love you love not you--but what you give them.